Free More Than Love Letters by Rosy Thornton

stupidity tonight – how about meeting at 10 p.m. in the Lobby?
    Richard.
     
    Richard Slater (Labour)
    Member of Parliament for Ipswich
     
     
    From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 18/4/05 22:10
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
     
    Dear Becs,
    How are Zoe and her dad, then? Has she asked Daddy what Miss Prichard is doing in the bathroom in her underwear yet? (I bet you’re a bit nervous when it’s her turn to ‘Show and Tell’ about her weekend.)
    Well, I had my meeting with Mr Slater. In fact he told me to call him Richard, but it doesn’t seem right calling your MP by his first name, somehow. Like calling someone’s grandad Reginald, or when Dad’s bishop asked me to call him Sid. Though he does seem more of a Richard than a Mr Slater, actually. He’s not as old as he looks in the pictures in the paper, and he’s got nice eyes.
    When I got there I had to wait a bit, and there were rows of chairs like at the dentist, but no one there waiting except me. He came out of his office and called my name, and I got really embarrassed, you know how I always do if someone says my name in public. Not that it was exactly in public, there were only the two of us there, but you know what I mean. I hate – hate – my name. I always imagine people looking round, expecting to see a woman in her fifties, in a sensible raincoat – and I’m sure that was what he was thinking. People have aunts, and even great-aunts, called Margaret; I’ve never met anyone else our age cursed with the name. You can’t shorten it either. Imagine being a Madge, that would be even worse (slatternly 1950s housewife with a fag in her mouth and curlers in her hair), or a Marge (cartoon character with yellow face and two-foot blue beehive). And my best friend from school had a border collie called Meg. That just leaves Maggie . . . and for me the only image that conjures up is documentary footage on TV from the 1980s, CND demos, or striking miners on picket lines, and that inevitable angry chanting: ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – out, out, out!’ Still, I suppose it could have been worse – Dad didn’t just like Elizabeth Gaskell, he was also into George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, so I might have ended up a Rosamond or a Bathsheba.
    Sorry, I digress. Basically, he seemed interested (though I suspect Mr Richard Slater MP might be adept at seeming all sorts of things). He’s going to meet with me again next Saturday and tell me what he’s been able to find out. I think next time I’ll wear my interview blouse, and those black trousers I had for graduation, instead of just jeans. I need to look more businesslike. Then he might take me more seriously, you know – not just think I’m some kind of kid.
    I know it sounds corny, Becs – but wouldn’t it be just amazing if I were really able to make a difference over this issue?
    Love,
    Margaret xx
     
     
    From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 18/4/05 22:44
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
     
    Hi Margaret,
    First of all: Declan. I think he is gorgeous, and things are hotting up nicely. I care nothing for your contumely and vilipendency – it’s water off a duck’s back, chuck.
    Second of all: this Richard bloke. Nice eyes, eh?
    And third of all: names. At least Margaret Hale is a decent heroine. Virtuous, but feisty with it. My mum called me Rebecca after the Daphne du Maurier (or in fact more likely the Hitchcock). Having read the book, at age fifteen, I took her to task about naming me after someone who is so obnoxious, so faithless and philandering, that she ends up drowned for her trouble – and has an extremely questionable relationship with her housekeeper. It seems to have passed Mum by completely that Rebecca wasn’t the name of the heroine. Come to think of it, she didn’t have a name at all, did she, the second wife? Maybe I should change my name to /&%>, the schoolteacher formerly known as Becs.
    Hugs,
    Becs