The Girl You Left Behind

of the soapsuds it’s hard for hers not to slip away.
    ‘Well … here’s the thing. They want me to meet their project manager tomorrow.’
    Liv goes very still. ‘What?’
    ‘They’re flying him over specially. They want me to meet them at their suite in the Royal Monceau. I thought maybe you could go to the spa there while I was with them. It’s meant to be amazing.’
    She looks up at him. ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘I am. I heard it was voted French
Vogue
’s best –’
    ‘I’m not talking about the bloody spa.’
    ‘Liv – this means they’re actually keen. I have to capitalize on it.’
    Her voice, when it emerges, is strangely strangulated. ‘Five days. Our honeymoon is all of five days, David. Not even a week. You’re telling me they couldn’t wait to have a meeting for another seventy-two hours?’
    ‘This is the Goldsteins, Liv. This is how billionaires do things. You have to fit around their timetable.’
    She stares at her feet, at the pedicure she had booked at great expense, and remembers how she and the beautician had laughed when she’d said that her feet looked good enough to eat.
    ‘Please go away, David.’
    ‘Liv. I –’
    ‘Just leave me alone.’
    She doesn’t look at him as he rises from the lavatory. When he closes the bathroom door behind him, Liv shuts her eyes and slides under the hot water until she can hear nothing at all.



Prologue
2007
    When he emerges from the bathroom she is
     awake, propped up against the pillows and flicking through the travel brochures that
     were beside his bed. She is wearing one of his T-shirts, and her long hair is tousled in
     a way that prompts reflexive thoughts of the previous night. He stands there, enjoying
     the brief flashback, rubbing the water from his hair with a towel.
    She looks up from a brochure and pouts. She
     is probably slightly too old to pout, but they’ve been going out a short enough
     time for it still to be cute.
    ‘Do we really
have
to do
     something that involves trekking up mountains, or hanging over ravines? It’s our
     first proper holiday together, and there is literally not one single trip in these that
     doesn’t involve either throwing yourself off something or –’ she
     pretends to shudder ‘– wearing
fleece
.’
    She throws them down on the bed, stretches
     her caramel-coloured arms above her head. Her voice is husky, testament to their missed
     hours of sleep. ‘How about a luxury spa in Bali? We could lie around on the
     sand … spend hours being pampered … long relaxing
     nights … ’
    ‘I can’t do those sorts of
     holidays. I need to be doing something.’
    ‘Like throwing yourself out of
     aeroplanes.’
    ‘Don’t knock it till
     you’ve tried it.’
    She pulls a face. ‘If it’s all
     the same to you, I think I’ll stick with knocking it.’
    His shirt is faintly damp against his skin.
     He runs a comb through his hair and switches on his mobile phone, wincing at the list of
     messages that immediately pushes its way through on to the little screen.
    ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Got to
     go. Help yourself to breakfast.’ He leans over the bed to kiss her. She smells
     warm and perfumed and deeply sexy. He inhales the scent from the back of her hair, and
     briefly loses his train of thought as she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him
     down towards the bed.
    ‘Are we still going away this
     weekend?’
    He extricates himself reluctantly.
     ‘Depends what happens on this deal. It’s all a bit up in the air at the
     moment. There’s still a possibility I might have to be in New York. Nice dinner
     somewhere Thursday, either way? Your choice of restaurant.’ His motorbike leathers
     are on the back of the door, and he reaches for them.
    She narrows her eyes. ‘Dinner. With or
     without Mr BlackBerry?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Mr BlackBerry makes me feel like Miss
     Gooseberry.’ The pout again. ‘I feel like there’s always a third
     person vying for your attention.’
    ‘I’ll turn it on to
     silent.’
    ‘Will Traynor!’ she scolds.
     ‘You must have some time when you can switch off.’
    ‘I turned it off last night,
     didn’t I?’
    ‘Only under extreme duress.’
    He grins. ‘Is that what we’re
     calling it now?’ He pulls on his leathers. And Lissa’s hold on his
     imagination is finally broken. He throws his motorbike jacket over his arm, and blows
     her a kiss as he leaves.
    There are twenty-two messages on his
     BlackBerry, the first of