Helena kept the letters in a biscuit tin. They were not extravagant, merely carefully written: about a tram smelling of wet wool, an old man always feeding pigeons with the same hand, and the way her eyebrows drew together when she read. Adnan, whom she had dated for five months, spoke little in person. The letters seemed the place where his shyness disappeared.
At a writing workshop she met Mara, a woman who wrote wedding speeches and occasional pieces. During an exercise Mara used a sentence about wet wool. Helena laughed and said she had recently received the same image in a letter. Mara paused, asked who wrote to her, and immediately looked as though she would rather change the assignment.
She did not try to lie. Adnan paid her to help compose the letters. He brought notes about Helena, small things he noticed, and Mara turned them into graceful paragraphs. She thought Helena knew. Helena had not known. She returned home feeling someone was moving furniture in a room she had considered her own.
Adnan came that evening. He admitted the arrangement and showed his notes, written briefly, almost roughly. "Likes bread crust. Doesn't like me saying don't worry. Laughs when angry, but I shouldn't laugh then." Helena read them, confused because they were both more intimate and much less beautiful than the letters. She asked why he had not given her those. He said he thought someone like her expected better words.
She expected his. She asked him to leave and did not answer for several days. The letters had not become false in every detail, but the signature had. What hurt most was that he had let her praise his language, accepting admiration for courage he had rented. Mara offered to talk. Helena thanked her and declined; a third person skilled at sentences could not solve their problem.
After a week Adnan left a short note with the porter without asking her to read it immediately. It said he was sorry, would not use shame as an excuse, and would like to walk if she ever wanted to. He had crossed out the last word and written it again. Helena studied that awkward correction for a long time before calling him.
They continued seeing each other more slowly. She kept the letters but no longer stored the tin beside her bed. One day Adnan told her in person about waiting for a bus and seeing a dog refuse to cross a puddle. The story had no beautiful ending. Helena asked what happened next. He shrugged: the bus came. She laughed, this time knowing whose voice she heard.