The First Letter

The book was a battered copy of Portuguese poems, bought for two pounds in a shop near the Royal Mile. Inside the back cover, Iris found a sealed envelope, yellow with age, addressed to a Duarte Almeida at a street in the Alfama.

She meant to throw it away. Instead she kept it on her desk for a week, propped against the lamp, and wondered who had written it and why it had never been posted.

In the end she bought a stamp and sent it, with a short note of her own. Found in a book. Sorry it is late. I hope it still means something.

The reply came three weeks later, in a neat hand on thick cream paper. The letter, Duarte wrote, was his own: a clumsy confession written at twenty-three to someone who had moved away before he found the courage to send it. He had laughed reading it, he said. He had also been oddly moved that a stranger in Scotland had cared enough to post it.

Tell me about the book, he wrote. Tell me which poem you like best.

She told him. He wrote back. By spring they were exchanging a letter a week, never emails, never calls, as if by unspoken agreement. He described the light on the river and the smell of grilled sardines drifting up from the street. She described the sea fog rolling in and the sound of rain on her skylight. They argued about translation. They argued about poetry. They did not talk about what they looked like.

In June his letter ended differently.

I have been reading your handwriting for four months, he wrote. I think I would like to hear your voice. Not on the phone. Here. If you ever wanted to see Lisbon.

Iris read it standing in the hallway, then sat down on the stairs and read it again. Her heart was beating absurdly fast for a woman of forty-one who had told herself she was finished with romance.

She did not answer for a week. Then she booked a flight.