The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes Read Free Book Online

that already echoed with the conversation of the other diners and was dotted with pedestals containing huge arrangements of flowers. He walked up the steps slowly, feeling the stone still warm from the fierce heat of the day’s sun.
    There were seven other guests at dinner: the Moncrieffs, friends of the Stirlings from London—the wife’s gaze was frankly assessing; the local mayor, M. Lafayette, with his wife and their daughter, a lithe brunette with heavily made-up eyes and a definite air of mischief; and the elderly M. and Mme Demarcier. Stirling’s wife was a clean-cut, pretty blonde in the Grace Kelly mold; such women tended to have little to say of interest, having been admired for their looks all their lives. He hoped to be placed next to Mrs. Moncrieff. He hadn’t minded her summing him up. She would be a challenge.
    “And you work for a newspaper, Mr. O’Hare?” The elderly Frenchwoman peered up at him.
    “Yes. In England.” A manservant appeared at his elbow with a tray of drinks. “Do you have anything soft? Tonic water, perhaps?” The man nodded and disappeared.
    “What is it called?” she asked.
    “The Nation .”
    “The Nation ,” she repeated, with apparent dismay. “I haven’t heard of it. I have heard of the Times . That is the best newspaper, isn’t it?”
    “I’ve heard that people think so.” Oh, Lord, he thought. Please let the food be good .
    The silver tray appeared at his elbow with a tall glass of iced tonic water. Anthony kept his gaze away from the sparkling kir the others were drinking. Instead he tried out a little of his schoolboy French on the mayor’s daughter, who replied in perfect English, with a charming French lilt. Too young, he thought, registering the mayor’s sideways glance.
    He was gratified to find himself seated beside Yvonne Moncrieff when they finally sat down. She was polite, entertaining—and completely immune to him. Damn the happily married. Jennifer Stirling was on his left, turned away in conversation.
    “Do you spend much time here, Mr. O’Hare?” Francis Moncrieff was a tall, thin man, the physical equivalent of his wife.
    “No.”
    “You’re more usually tied to the City of London?”
    “No. I don’t cover it at all.”
    “You’re not a financial journalist?”
    “I’m a foreign correspondent. I cover . . . trouble abroad.”
    “While Larry causes it.” Moncrieff laughed. “What sort of things do you write about?”
    “Oh, war, famine, disease. The cheerful stuff.”
    “I don’t think there is much cheerful about those.” The elderly Frenchwoman sipped her wine.
    “For the last year I’ve been covering the crisis in Congo.”
    “Lumumba’s a troublemaker,” Stirling interjected, “and the Belgians are cowardly fools if they think the place will do anything but sink without them.”
    “You believe the Africans can’t be trusted to manage their own affairs?”
    “Lumumba was a barefoot jungle postman not five minutes ago. There isn’t a colored with a professional education in the whole of Congo.” He lit a cigar and blew out a plume of smoke. “How are they meant to run the banks once the Belgians have gone, or the hospitals? The place will become a war zone. My mines are on the Rhodesian-Congolese border, and I’ve already had to draft in extra security. Rhodesian security—the Congolese can no longer be trusted.”
    There was a brief silence. A muscle had begun to tick insistently in Anthony’s jaw.
    Stirling tapped his cigar. “So, Mr. O’Hare, where were you in Congo?”
    “Léopoldville, mainly. Brazzaville.”
    “Then you know that the Congolese army cannot be controlled.”
    “I know that independence is a testing time for any country. And that had Lieutenant General Janssens been more diplomatic, many lives might have been saved.”
    Stirling stared at him over the cigar smoke. Anthony felt he was being reassessed. “So, you’ve been sucked into the cult of Lumumba too.” His smile was