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Letters from Tara · August: One Year

The draft she did not send

Danya,

This is a strange letter to write, because I'm at home. I'm sitting on my old bed, in my old room, which still feels smaller, and if I looked out of the window and leaned a bit I could probably see the roof of the Whetstone café from here.

I go back up in three weeks. Second year. I've got a room in a shared house with Hollie and Joss and two people I haven't met. Joss has already put a note on the fridge, which Hollie sent me a photo of. It says WELCOME, in very small letters, which for Joss is practically a speech.

I wanted to say thank you, and I wanted to do it properly, so I'm writing it down.

You read every single letter. Twelve of them. You wrote back to every one, even the October one about the rota, which was very boring. You never once told me to hurry up, or that I should have said something sooner, even when I obviously should have. You just asked "how do we know?" about everything, which turned out to be exactly what I needed.

I'm going to post this from the train in September, on the way back up, so that you get it after I've gone. That way I won't have to see your face when you read it, and you won't have to think of something to say. It's easier like this for both of us. I'm better at writing these things than

The draft stopped there, as all the drafts did.

Tara read it at about four in the afternoon, sitting on her old bed, with her notebook open on her knees.

She noticed something, and this time she laughed out loud, on her own, in her old room.

It was the same plan. It was the very first plan, from September, wearing its best clothes. On the train. After I've gone. So I won't have to see your face. She had spent a year learning to say things a little sooner, and here she was, three hundred yards from the person she wanted to say them to, planning to post it to him from a train.

She looked at the sticky note inside the front cover. Seven lines now, the last one very small.

The cheapest time to say the thing is before there is a plan for it to be against.

Ask on the second day, not the last.

First chance, not last.

A no on the day costs a minute.

The first minute is the cheapest.

You don't have to be sure to ask.

Ask the question before the yes.

None of them said write it down.

She put the draft in the back of the notebook. There were twelve now. Twelve letters sent, twelve drafts kept. Twenty-four pieces of paper, one year.

Then she peeled the sticky note off the inside of the cover, very carefully, and put it in her pocket.

Across the Green

It was a warm afternoon. The Green was full of the usual things: a game of football with too many players, two dogs who had decided to be friends, Lan and Ti arguing about whose turn it was on the swing. The library had its doors propped open. The shop on the corner had its lime pickle in the window.

The Whetstone café was quiet, because it was the time of day when it was always quiet. Danya was at the back table, on his own, with a notebook, a pen behind his ear, and a glass of something orange.

He looked up.

"You're back," he said. "Since when?"

"Tuesday," said Tara. She sat down opposite him. The sugar bowl was in the middle, exactly where it had always been. "Can I say one thing?"

Danya put the pen down. He knew that sentence.

The one thing

She did not take out the draft. She had thought about reading it to him, and then decided that reading it out would only be posting it from a slightly shorter distance.

"Thank you," she said. "For reading all of them. All twelve. For writing back every time, even about the rota. For never once telling me I should have said something sooner, even when I obviously should have. And for asking how we know about everything. I used that all year. In seminars, in the kitchen, with the hall, at an interview. I could hear you."

She stopped. It had taken about thirty seconds. It had been much shorter than the draft.

Danya did not say anything for a moment. He looked at the sugar bowl.

"Who checked that?" he said at last, very quietly. "That I never told you to hurry."

"Me," said Tara. "I've got them all. I checked."

He laughed. Then he went slightly red and looked down at his notebook.

"Can I say one thing too?" he said.

What Danya had been waiting to say

It turned out that Danya had written his first article for the Friday paper. It was about the bus timetable, and how the times printed at the stop did not match the times on the app, and how he had stood at the stop with a notebook for six mornings to find out which one was true.

He had finished it nine days ago. He had been meaning to ask Tara to read it. He had decided he would wait until she was settled, then until she wasn't busy, then until he had rewritten the ending, then until September.

"I didn't want to bother you," he said. "And I wasn't sure it was any good."

"You don't have to be sure to ask," said Tara.

He looked at her.

"It's on the sticky note," she said. "Line six."

She read the article there and then, at the back table, with the orange drink and the sugar bowl. It was good. The ending did need a bit of work, and she told him so, plainly, and he wrote it down with the pen from behind his ear, and said "show me the source" when she said the app was usually right, and she couldn't, so they crossed that bit out.

The letter she gave him

When she got up to go, she took the sticky note out of her pocket and put it on the table in front of him, next to the sugar bowl. Seven lines, in three different pens, one of them very small at the bottom.

And beside it, a piece of paper folded once, which she had written on the walk across the Green, leaning on the library wall.

Danya,

This is the last letter, and I'm handing it to you, which is the point.

All year I wrote you one letter and kept one draft. The drafts were always the same: wait, and say it later. The letters were me saying it a little sooner.

This month the sooner was across the Green.

The note is yours now. You'll need line six more than I do.

Tara

P.S. Twelve drafts. This is the first letter I didn't need one for.

The question for your own table

Is there something you have been meaning to say to someone, and planning to write instead, or to say later, when it would be easier? Are they somewhere you could reach this week?

Something to do

Choose one person who has helped you this year without being asked. Go and find them, and tell them, in one or two plain sentences, what they did and what it meant. Don't write it first.

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