Our goodbye at the station would have appeared perfunctory to the unbiased observer: a light kiss on the cheek before we both turned and walked in opposite directions, him to board the train, me back up the platform and onto the main concourse, immediately lost amongst the seething rush-hour crowd. We both knew there was no need for an overblown outpouring of affection in public as we’d said goodbye countless times in the weeks before. It had always been there, a ghostly bell hanging on a delicate chain between us which peeled at the slightest disturbance, the merest hint of our parting. I went directly home from the station and took out my writing set from the desk by the window in the room which I shared with a girl from the office and started writing the first of my unopened letters to him, even though it felt silly as he’d only just left, but I didn’t know what else to do. I imagined how the letter would find him, what he’d be wearing, where he’d be sitting as he read my words. I pictured him in his uniform, pressed, but dirty from the red sand; his face flushed from the desert heat, a few strands of his dark hair stuck to his forehead with perspiration. I watched him mouth the words as I signed off with love, as always, Eloise.