Dear Amara

The first letter was waiting on the doormat when Ifeoma Nwachukwu carried the last box up the stairs.

It lay face down on the tiles, a cream envelope with a slightly curled corner, as if it had been waiting a long time. She set the box on the sofa, wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, and picked it up. The Yaba heat was merciless. The flat was two rooms and a kitchen, third floor, with a window that looked out on a mango tree and a wall painted with a faded advertisement for powdered milk. It was the cheapest place she had found. She had signed the lease that morning.

The envelope was addressed in a neat, slanted hand. Miss Amara Okoro. Flat 6, 14 Herbert Macaulay Way, Yaba, Lagos. There was a Port Harcourt postmark.

"Not mine," she told the empty room.

She was about to drop it into the bin when she noticed the back flap. It was not sealed. Someone had tucked it shut but never pressed it down. Through the gap, she could see the edge of a folded page.

She should not have looked. She knew that. But she was twenty-eight, newly single, newly broke, in a flat that smelled of old paint and somebody else's cooking. She was lonely in the particular way you are lonely when you have just moved to a city that is supposed to be home.

She opened it.

Dear Amara,

I know you will not read this. I write it anyway. It has become a habit, like brushing my teeth.

It rained all week in Port Harcourt. The generator at the yard broke, and I spent three nights reading by candle. I finished the book you left me. The one with the green cover. I did not understand the ending, but I liked how it made me feel, which was a little less alone.

Mama sends greetings. She has started growing tomatoes on the balcony. She says you would laugh. The first one came out the size of a marble and she cried.

I am well. I am sleeping better. I will write again next month.

Chidi

That was all. Four short paragraphs, in blue ink, on lined paper. At the bottom, a small drawing: a stick-figure sitting on a roof, with a stick-figure moon above.

Ifeoma stood in the middle of her new sitting room and read it three times. Her chest ached in a way she couldn't explain.

"Who are you?" she murmured. "And why isn't she answering?"

She put the letter on the shelf above the sink. She told herself she'd return it to the postman. She told herself it wasn't her business.

The second letter came three weeks later. The third a week after that.

Dear Amara,

The tomato plant has produced six more. Mama has named them. The big one is called Governor.

I went to the sea today. It was grey and rough, and I stood on the jetty for a very long time. A fisherman asked if I was all right. I said I was fine. He said he had never seen a man stand so still. I think he was worried I would jump.

I won't, you know. I'm only looking.

Chidi

She read it standing in the hallway, still in her work clothes, her handbag over her shoulder. Her hand was shaking by the end. There was something in the plain unadorned lines, something she recognised, like a note played in a room she hadn't realised she was standing in.

On the fourth letter, she sat at her kitchen table with a pen, and wrote back.

Dear Chidi,

I am not Amara.

I am Ifeoma Nwachukwu. I moved into this flat on the fifth of February. I don't know where Amara went. The landlord says she left no forwarding address. I'm sorry. I should have written sooner. I've read your letters, which I should not have, and I wanted to say that Governor sounds like a very fine tomato.

I hope your mother's balcony is well.

Ifeoma

She stared at the page. It was short, and awkward, and slightly mad. She almost tore it up. Instead she folded it, wrote the Port Harcourt address on an envelope, and walked to the post office before she lost her nerve.

The reply came in nine days.

Dear Ifeoma,

I am deeply embarrassed. I owe you an apology and an explanation, and I'm not sure I can supply either.

First, the apology: I'm sorry for intruding on your mail. I did not know Amara had moved. I had thought, if I'm honest, that she might still be there. That one day she might open one of my letters.

Second, the explanation. I can't give it yet. It is a long story, and I would not impose it on a stranger. But I would like to say thank you. You are the first person who has ever written back.

It means more than I can say.

If you would like to stop here, I will understand. If you would like to continue, I should be glad of it.

Governor, I regret to say, has been eaten by a lizard.

Chidi

Ifeoma laughed so hard that her neighbour banged on the wall.

She wrote back that night.