The Girl You Left Behind

now? –
and she turns away, climbing into the taxi, trying to
     quell it. When she looks up again through the window,he is walking
     briskly back down the steps, winding a scarf around his neck. Janey Dickinson is staring
     at the taxi, her files limp in her arms.
    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?’

32
    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, soI’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