Her Life Outside the Letter
The kettle whistled again, sharp and impatient, but she didn't move right away.
It wasn't that she'd forgotten about the tea; she just… forgot why she'd boiled the water in the first place. Her hands were still cold from rinsing the dishes, and the window above the sink was blurred with condensation. Outside, London's August sky was the colour of dishwater, as if the weather had also lost interest in making an effort.
This was her routine now—half-movements, unfinished thoughts. She had learned to live like a ghost in her own flat, drifting from room to room without touching much, as though she was keeping the space for someone else who never came home.
The street outside was louder than usual, children shouting in two different accents, an argument between delivery cyclists, the low growl of a bus pulling up. It all felt far away. Even when she stepped outside for groceries, the city rarely touched her anymore. The bustle used to make her feel part of something, but lately it only reminded her of the silence she carried back inside with her.
Her sister hadn't called in two weeks. That was strange, but also not strange. Since the engagement was announced, conversations between them had been clipped, tiptoeing around the truth neither of them wanted to name. She'd stopped checking Instagram, stopped scrolling past the photos of rings and bridal brunches. Stopped looking for his face in the background of her sister's posts.
But she still saw him.
The memory of him had a habit of showing up in the quietest places—in the way her fingers curled around a mug, remembering how his hand used to cover hers when they passed tea between them in the dead of winter. In the way her throat tightened when she walked past the bakery that used to smell like Sunday mornings with him.
Her students had begun to notice. She could tell. They were polite about it—university kids who could sense the difference between a distracted lecturer and a heartbroken one, even if they didn't know the details. She still graded their essays with care, but sometimes she'd read a line so earnest, so clumsy with feeling, it would undo her completely. She'd have to step away from her desk, sit on the floor by the radiator, and breathe until she could see straight again.
It was in those moments she thought of him—not her almost-brother-in-law, but the man across the world.
The one she had never met, whose handwriting had begun to feel like a heartbeat she could rely on.
Her friends, the few who hadn't drifted away, had noticed the small changes. She smiled differently now, more to herself than to anyone else. There was an ease in her voice when she talked about "a colleague in my field" who understood her frustrations. She never mentioned the letters, of course. Not the weight of the paper in her hands, not the strange anticipation of the postman's knock.
The letters had started as a reckless act, a way to push her grief into the ocean, to watch it sink without expecting anyone to fish it out. But then he had replied. And his words—sharp, clever, sometimes unbearably kind—had pulled her into a current she didn't know how to resist.
Her life outside the letters was not much of a life at all. She attended faculty meetings. She stood in line at the chemist. She took her clothes out of the dryer hours after they'd gone cold, folded them into perfect rectangles, and stacked them in drawers she barely opened again. She kept her plants alive but not thriving. She went days without music because sometimes even melodies felt like intrusions.
She still went to the library, though. Not the university one, but the public library a few blocks away, the one with soft chairs and the faint smell of rainwater in the carpets. She liked to sit by the farthest window, where she could watch the street and imagine what his city might look like at that exact moment. She didn't even know his street name, only the vague outline of the world he lived in—different time zone, different light, different sea.
Once, she nearly told her sister about him. Nearly. But the words caught on her tongue, twisted into something careless, and she swallowed them. The truth was too fragile to hand to someone who might crush it without meaning to.
At night, she often found herself lying awake, staring at the faint glow of the alarm clock. She didn't think about the wedding anymore—at least, not directly. But she thought about the version of herself who had once believed she'd stand beside him in some other way. That girl felt far away now, almost like a younger cousin she'd lost touch with.
The morning after she received his latest letter, she walked into her kitchen and found herself humming without realising it. She didn't know the tune, but it stayed with her while she made coffee. She thought of telling him about it, maybe weaving it into her next letter as a small detail—how her voice had remembered a song before her mind did. She liked the thought of him reading that and smiling, imagining her in her kitchen, unaware she was giving herself away.
Outside of the letters, she kept her loneliness tidy. She ironed it into her sheets, poured it into her tea, pressed it between the pages of books she might never finish. But with him—through the paper, the ink—she let it spill. Not all of it, not yet. But enough to feel lighter when she sealed the envelope.
And still, life went on.
The postman came twice a week. Rain streaked the windows. The neighbours argued about bins in the hallway. Somewhere across the world, he lived his own days, touched by his own light. And somewhere in the middle of all that—between her empty kitchen and his unknown street—there was the quiet, impossible truth that someone she had never met had begun to make her life feel like hers again.
Jessica to E.
You're impossible, you know that?
One day you sound like you're about to confess something monumental, the next you're teasing me about how I spell "colour" with a 'u'.
This morning, I read your last letter three times.
Not because I didn't understand it—though sometimes I think you enjoy being deliberately cryptic—but because there was something in it that felt... dangerous.
Like you almost said something you weren't supposed to.
Don't look so smug. Yes, I can hear your smirk from across the ocean.
You asked me why I haven't written about my sister lately.
Well—because every time I do, you get quiet. And when you get quiet, I feel like I've pushed you somewhere you're not ready to go.
But also… she's still engaged. To him.
And I'm still me—pretending it's fine.
Speaking of pretending, I tried your "three cups of coffee before thinking about anything serious" rule yesterday.
By the second cup, I was shaking like a Victorian widow on the brink of a fainting spell.
By the third, I was convinced I could run a marathon or confess my undying affection to the postman.
You'd have liked the postman—he has that grumpy intellectual vibe you seem to enjoy.
And you?
I have this mental image of you, writing your last letter, half-laughing at your own jokes and half-afraid I might actually read between the lines.
Spoiler: I always do.
—J.
---
E. to Jessica
You shouldn't read my letters three times. That's how people get the wrong idea.
Or the right idea.
Or, more dangerously, the idea I was hoping they'd get all along.
Yes, I nearly said something I shouldn't have.
Yes, I deleted it.
And yes, I am regretting it—because now you're imagining a thousand things I might have written, and every single one of them is probably far more scandalous than reality.
I'm not quiet when you talk about your sister.
I'm… cautious.
There's a difference.
(And if you're going to accuse me of smirking, at least admit you like it.)
As for the coffee rule—ah, you poor English creature.
Two cups is the warm-up.
By the third, you should be leaning on the kitchen counter wondering if you can solve quantum physics or start a revolution.
And no, I don't like the postman.
He sounds like competition.
Write soon.
—E.