The Girl You Left Behind

he thought this painting was going to ruin any chance the two of you had of having
     a relationship.’
    Liv stares at him. ‘You think
     he’s …’
    ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean
     –’
    But Liv is already pushing her way out
     through the bar.
    Empty of anything, Sunday lasts for ever.
     Liv sits in her still house, her phone silent, her thoughts spinning and humming, and
     waits for the end of the world.
    She rings his mobile number one more time,
     then ends the call abruptly when the answer-phone kicks in.
    He’s gone cold.
    Of course he hasn’t.
    He’s had time to think about
     everything he’s throwing away by siding with me.
    You have to trust him.
    She wishes Mo were there.
    The night creeps in, the skies thickening,
     smothering the city in a dense fog. She fails to watch television, sleeps in weird,
     disjointed snatches, and wakes at four with her thoughts congealing in a toxic tangle.
     At half past five she gives up, runs a bath and lies in it for sometime, staring up through the skylight at the oblivious dark. She blow-dries her hair
     carefully, and puts on a grey blouse and pinstriped skirt that David had once said he
     loved on her. They made her look like a secretary, he’d observed, as if that might
     be a good thing. She adds some fake pearls and her wedding ring. She does her makeup
     carefully. She is grateful for the means to conceal the shadows under her eyes, her
     sallow, exhausted skin.
    He will come
, she tells
     herself
. You have to have faith in something.
    Around her, the world wakes up slowly. The
     Glass House is shrouded in mist, emphasizing her sense of isolation from the rest of the
     city. Beneath it, queues of traffic, visible only as tiny illuminated dots of red brake
     lights, move slowly, like blood in clogged arteries. She drinks some coffee, and eats
     half a piece of toast. The radio tells of traffic jams in Hammersmith, and a plot to
     poison a politician in Ukraine. When she has finished, she tidies and wipes the kitchen
     so that it gleams.
    Then she pulls an old blanket from the
     airing cupboard and wraps it carefully around
The Girl You Left Behind
. She
     folds it as if she were wrapping a present, keeping the picture turned away from her so
     that she doesn’t have to see Sophie’s face.
    Fran is not in her box. She’s sitting
     on an upturned bucket, gazing out across the cobbles to the river, untangling a piece of
     twine that is wrapped several hundred times around a huge clump of supermarket carrier
     bags.
    She looks up as Liv approaches, with two
     mugs, then at the sky. It has sunk around them in thick droplets, muffling sound, ending
     the world at the river’s edge.
    ‘Not running?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Not like you.’
    ‘Nothing’s like me,
     apparently.’
    Liv hands over a coffee. Fran takes a sip,
     grunts with pleasure, then looks at her. ‘Don’t stand there like a lemon,
     then. Take a seat.’
    Liv glances around before she realizes that
     Fran is pointing towards a small milk crate. She pulls it over and sits down. A pigeon
     walks across the cobbles towards her. Fran reaches into a crumpled paper bag and throws
     it a crust. It’s oddly peaceful out here, hearing the Thames lap gently at the
     shore, the distant sounds of traffic. Liv thinks wryly of what the newspapers would say
     if they could see the society widow’s breakfast companion. A barge emerges through
     the mist and floats silently past, its lights disappearing into the grey dawn.
    ‘Your friend left, then.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Sit here long enough you get to know
     everything. You listen, see?’ She taps the side of her head. ‘Nobody listens
     any more. Everyone knows what they want to hear, but nobody actually listens.’
    She stops for a minute, as if remembering
     something. ‘I saw you in the newspaper.’
    Liv blows on her coffee. ‘I think the
     whole of London has seen me in the newspaper.’
    ‘I’ve got it. In my box.’
     She gestures towards the doorway. ‘Is that it?’ She points to the bundle Liv
     is holding under her arm.
    ‘Yes.’ She takes a sip.
     ‘Yes, it is.’ She waits for Fran to add her own take on Liv’s crime,
     to list the reasons why she should never have attempted to keep the painting, but it
     doesn’t come. Instead she sniffs, looks out at the river.
    ‘That’s why I don’t like
     having too much stuff. When I was in the shelter people was always nicking it.
     Didn’t matter where you left it –