The Girl You Left Behind (51 page)

He opens the door, and climbs in, slamming
it shut. ‘I quit,’ he says. He lets out a breath, reaches over for her hand.
‘Right. Where are we going?’

Greg’s face betrays nothing as he
answers the door. ‘Hello again, Miss Liv,’ he says, as if her appearance on
the doorstep is entirely to be expected. He steps back into the hallway as Paul peels
her coat from her shoulders, shushing the dogs, which rush to greet her.
‘I’ve ruined the risotto, but Jake says it doesn’t matter as he
doesn’t like mushrooms anyway. So we’re thinking maybe pizza.’

‘Pizza sounds great. And my
treat,’ says Paul. ‘It may be our last for a while.’

They had held hands in stunned silence
halfway down Fleet Street. ‘I lost you your job,’ she’d said finally.
‘And your big bonus. And your chance to buy a bigger flat for your son.’

He had gazed straight ahead of him.
‘You didn’t lose me any of it. I walked.’

Greg raises an eyebrow. ‘A bottle of
red has been open in the kitchen since around half past four. This has nothing
whatsoever to do with me looking after my nephew for the day. Does it, Jake?’

‘Greg says it’s always wine
o’clock in this house,’ a boy’s voice calls from the other room.

‘Tattle-tale,’ Greg calls back.
And then he says to Liv, ‘Oh, no. I can’t let you drink. Look what happened
last time you got drunk in our company. You turned my sensible big brother into a
tragic, mooning adolescent.’

‘And this is where I remind you yet
again that mooning means something quite different in this country,’ Paul says,
steering her towards the kitchen. ‘Liv, you’d better acclimatize for a
minute. Greg’s idea of interior decorating is basically Too Much Is Not Enough. He
doesn’t do minimalist.’

‘I stamp my personality on my little
house, and, no, it is not a
tabula rasa
.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ she
says, of the colourful walls, the bold prints and tiny photographs that surround her.
She feels oddly at ease in this little railwayman’s cottage, with its blaring
music, incalculable numbers of loved things on every shelf and crammed into every
wall-space, and a child who lies on a rug in front of the television.

‘Hey,’ says Paul, going into the
living room, where the boy flips on to his back like a puppy.

‘Dad.’ He glances at her and she
fights the urge to drop Paul’s hand when he sees him registering it. ‘Are
you the girl from this morning?’ he says, after a minute.

‘I hope so. Unless there was another
one.’

‘I don’t think so,’ says
Jake. ‘I thought they were going to squash you.’

‘Yes, I sort of did too.’

He studies her for a minute. ‘My dad
put on perfume the last time he saw you.’

‘Aftershave,’ says Paul, and
stoops to kiss him. ‘Tattle-tale.’

So this is Mini Paul, she thinks, and the
idea is pleasing.

‘This is Liv. Liv, this is
Jake.’

She lifts a hand. ‘I don’t know
many people your age, so
I’ll probably say horribly uncool
things, but it’s very good to meet you.’

‘That’s okay. I’m used to
it.’

Greg appears and hands her a glass of red
wine. His eyes dart between them. ‘So what does this mean? Is there an
entente
cordiale
between our warring factions? Are you two now … secret
collaborators?’

Liv blinks at his choice of words. She turns
to look at Paul.

‘I don’t care about the
job,’ he had said quietly, his hand closing around hers. ‘I only know that
when I’m not with you I’m mean and mad at everything.’

‘No,’ she says, and she finds
she’s grinning. ‘He just realized he was on the wrong side all
along.’

When Andy, Greg’s boyfriend, arrives
at Elwin Street there are five of them squashed into the little house, but it never
feels crowded. Liv, seated around a small tower of pizza slices, thinks of the cold
Glass House on top of the warehouse and it seems suddenly so linked to the court case,
to her own unhappiness, that she does not want to go home.

She does not want to look at Sophie’s
face, knowing what is about to happen. She sits in the midst of these near-strangers,
playing games or laughing at their family jokes, and grasps that her sense of constant
surprise comes from the discovery that, despite it all, she is happy; happy in a way
that she cannot remember being for years.

And there is Paul. Paul, who looks
physically battered
by the day’s events, as if he, not her, has
lost everything. Whenever he turns to look at her something realigns itself, as if her
body has to attune itself to the possibility of being happy again.

You okay?
his look asks.

Yes
, hers says, and she means
it.

‘So what happens on Monday?’
Greg says, as they sit around the table. He has been showing them swatches of fabric for
a new colour scheme in the bar. The table is strewn with crumbs and half-empty glasses
of wine. ‘You have to hand over the painting? Are you definitely going to
lose?’

Liv looks at Paul. ‘I guess so,’
she says. ‘I just have to get my head around the idea of … letting her
go.’ An unexpected lump rises to her throat, and she smiles, willing it to go
away.

Greg reaches out a hand to her. ‘Oh,
honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you.’

She shrugs. ‘I’m fine. Really.
She’s not mine any more. I should have understood that ages ago. I suppose
I … didn’t want to see what was in front of my face.’

‘At least you still have your
house,’ Greg says. ‘Paul told me it’s amazing.’ He catches
Paul’s warning glance. ‘What? She’s not meant to know you’ve
been talking about her? What are we? Fifth-graders?’

Paul looks briefly sheepish.

‘Ah,’ she says. ‘Not
really. No, I don’t.’

‘What?’

‘It’s under offer.’

Paul goes very still.

‘I have to sell it to meet the legal
fees.’

‘You’ll have enough over to buy
somewhere else, right?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘But that house –’

‘– was already mortgaged to the hilt.
And needs work, apparently. I haven’t done anything to it since David died.
Apparently amazing imported glass with thermic qualities doesn’t last for ever,
even though David thought it would.’

Paul’s jaw tightens. He pushes back
his chair abruptly and leaves the table.

Liv looks at Greg and Andy, then at the
door.

‘Garden, probably,’ says Greg,
raising an eyebrow. ‘It’s the size of a pocket handkerchief. You won’t
lose him.’ And then, as she stands, he murmurs, ‘It’s terribly sweet
how you keep demolishing my big brother. I wish I’d had your skills when I was
fourteen.’

He is standing on the little patio, which
is crammed with terracotta pots of straggly plants, made spindly in the winter frosts.
He is turned away from her, his hands rammed into his pockets. He looks crushed.

‘So you did lose everything. Because
of me.’

‘Like you said, if it hadn’t
been you it would have been someone else.’

‘What was I thinking? What the fuck
was I thinking?’

‘You were just doing your
job.’

He lifts a hand to his jaw. ‘You know
what? You really do not have to make me feel better.’

‘I’m fine. Really.’

‘How can you be? I wouldn’t be.
I’d be mad as … Ah,
Jesus
.’ His voice explodes with
frustration.

She waits, then takes his hand, pulls him to
the little
table. The ironwork is chilly, even through her clothes,
and she scrapes her chair forward, places her knees between his, waiting until she is
sure he is listening.

‘Paul.’

His face is rigid.

‘Paul. Look at me. You need to
understand this. The worst thing that could have happened to me already
happened.’

He looks up.

She swallows, knowing that these are the
words that stall; that may simply refuse to emerge. ‘Four years ago David and I
went to bed like it was any other night, brushing our teeth, reading our books, chatting
about a restaurant we were going to the next day … and when I woke up the next
morning he was there beside me, cold. Blue. I didn’t … I didn’t
feel him go. I didn’t even get to say … ’

There is a short silence.

‘Can you imagine knowing you slept
through the person you love most dying next to you? Knowing that there might have been
something you could have done to help him? To save him? Not knowing if he was looking at
you, silently begging you to –’ The words fail, her breath catches, a familiar
tide threatens to wash over her. He reaches out his hands slowly, enfolds hers within
them until she can speak again.

‘I thought the world had actually
ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again. I thought anything might happen
if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t
want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul. Much to my own surprise, I got through it. And
life … well, life gradually became liveable again.’

She leans closer to him. ‘So
this … the painting, the house … It hit me when I heard what
happened to Sophie. It’s just
stuff
. They could take all of it, frankly.
The only thing that matters is people.’ She looks down at his hands, and her voice
cracks. ‘All that really matters is who you love.’

He doesn’t speak, but dips his head so
that it comes to rest against hers. They sit there in the wintry garden, breathing in
the inky air, listening to the muffled sound of his son’s laughter coming from the
house. Down the street she can hear the acoustics of early evening in the city, the
clatter of pans in distant kitchens, televisions firing up, a car door slamming, a dog
barking at some unseen outrage. Life in its messy, vital entirety.

‘I’ll make it up to you,’
he says quietly.

‘You already have.’

‘No. I will.’

There are tears on her cheeks. She has no
idea how they got there. His blue eyes are suddenly calm. He takes her face in his hands
and kisses her, kisses the tears away, his lips soft against her skin, promising a
future. He kisses her until they are both smiling and she has lost all feeling in her
feet.

‘I should go home. The buyers are
coming tomorrow,’ she says, reluctantly unwinding from him.

Across town the Glass House stands empty.
The thought of returning to it is still unappealing. She half waits for him to protest.
‘Do you … do you want to come with me? Jake could sleep in the spare
room. I could open and shut the roof for him. Might win me a few points.’

He looks away. ‘I can’t,’
he says baldly. And then: ‘I mean I’d love to. But
it’s …’

‘Will I see you over the
weekend?’

‘I’ve got Jake,
but … sure. We’ll work something out.’

He seems oddly distracted. She sees the
doubt that shadows his face. Will we really be able to forgive what we have cost each
other? she thinks, fleetingly, and feels a chill that has nothing to do with the
cold.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ he
says. And the moment passes.

The house is silent when she lets herself
in. She locks the door, puts her keys on the side and walks into the kitchen, her
footsteps echoing across the limestone floor. She finds it hard to believe she only left
here this morning: it feels as if a whole lifetime has passed.

She presses the button on her answer-phone.
A message from the estate agent, puffed with self-importance, announcing that the buyers
are to send in their architect the following day. He hopes she is well.

A feature writer from an obscure arts
magazine, wanting an interview about the Lefèvre case.

The bank manager. Reassuringly oblivious to
the media frenzy. Please can she call at her earliest convenience to discuss her
overdraft situation? This is his third attempt to contact her, he adds pointedly.

One from her father, sending big kisses.
Caroline says fuck the lot of them.

Liv can just make out a distant thumping
bass from the apartment below, the slamming front doors and laughter that are the
acoustics of an ordinary Friday night out. It is a reminder that elsewhere the world
turns
regardless; that there is life beyond this strange hiatus.

The evening stretches. She puts on the
television, but there is nothing she wants to watch, so instead she showers and washes
her hair. She lays out clothes for the next day, and eats some crackers and cheese.

But her emotions do not settle: they jangle,
like a rail of empty coat hangers. She is exhausted, but paces the house, unable to sit
still. She keeps tasting Paul on her lips, his words in her ears. She considers calling
him, briefly, but when she pulls out her phone, her fingers stall on the buttons. What
would she say, after all?
I just wanted to hear your voice.

She walks through to the spare room, which
is immaculate, empty, as if nobody had ever stayed there. She walks around it, lightly
touching the tops of the chair, the chest of drawers as she passes. She no longer feels
comforted by silence and emptiness. She pictures Mo, curled up with Ranic in an
overcrowded house full of noise, like the one she has just left.

Finally she makes herself a mug of tea and
walks through to her bedroom. She sits in the middle of her bed, leans back against the
pillows and studies Sophie in her gilded frame.

I secretly like the idea that you could have a painting so powerful it could shake
up a whole marriage.

Well, Sophie, she thinks, you shook up a
whole lot more than that. She gazes at the painting she has loved for almost a decade
and finally she allows herself to think about the day she and David had bought it, the
way they had held her aloft in the Spanish sunshine, her colours bouncing in the white
light, reflecting the future they believed
they had together. She
remembers them hanging it in this room on their homecoming; the way she had gazed at
The Girl
, wondering what David saw in herself that mirrored the image and
feeling somehow more beautiful for what he had seen.