The Girl You Left Behind

surreptitiously from behind
     polite smiles, trying to ascertain whether, as the only single woman there, she is
     likely to be a threat. It is an expression with which she has become wearyingly
     familiar. The men glance sideways, checking her out for a different reason. She feels
     the warm, garlicky blast of Roger’s breath as he leans in and pats the chair
     beside him.
    He holds out a hand. ‘Rog.
     You’re very wet.’ He manages to make it sound faintly lascivious; the kind
     of ex-public-schoolboy who finds it impossible to talk to women without introducing a
     sexual undertow.
    She pulls her jacket across her. ‘Yes.
     Yes, I am.’
    They smile vaguely at each other. He has
     sparse sandy hair, and the ruddy complexion of someone who spends a lot of time in the
     country. He pours her a glass of wine. ‘So. What do you do then,
Liv
?’ He says her name as if she may have invented it and he is humouring
     her.
    ‘Copywriting mainly.’
    ‘Well. Copywriting.’ They both
     pause. ‘Any children?’
    ‘No. You?’
    ‘Two. Boys. Both at boarding school.
     Best place for them, frankly. So … no children, eh? And no man in the wings.
     What are you, thirty-something?’
    She swallows, tries to ignore the faint stab
     of his words. ‘Thirty.’
    ‘You don’t want to hang around.
     Or are you one ofthose …’ he holds up his fingers to make
     inverted commas ‘… career women?’
    ‘Yes,’ she says, and smiles.
     ‘I had my ovaries removed when I last updated my CV. Just to be on the safe
     side.’
    He gawps at her, then barks a laugh.
     ‘Oh! Funny! Yes. A woman with a sense of humour. Very
     good … ovaries … hah.’ His voice tails away. He takes a swig
     of wine. ‘My wife left when she was thirty-nine. Apparently it’s a tricky
     age for the girls.’ He downs the rest of his glass and reaches for the bottle to
     refill it. ‘Not too tricky for her, obviously, seeing as she got away with a
     Puerto Rican called Viktor, the house in France and half my bloody pension.
     Women …’ He turns to her. ‘Can’t live with ’em, can’t
     shoot ’em, eh?’ He lifts his arms and fires off an imaginary round of
     bullets into the restaurant ceiling.
    It’s going to be a long night. Liv
     keeps smiling, pours herself a second glass of wine, and buries herself in the menu,
     promising herself that, no matter how persuasive Kristen is next time, she will chew off
     her own arm rather than agree to go to any kind of dinner party ever again.
    The evening stretches, the couples bitch
     about people she has never met, the courses come agonizingly slowly. Kristen sends her
     main back to be redone to her exact specifications. She lets out a weary little sigh, as
     if the kitchen’s failure to put the spinach
on the side
is the most awful
     imposition. Sven gazes at her indulgently. Liv sits trapped between the broad back of a
     man called Martin, whose wife’s friend seems determined to monopolize him, and
     Roger.
    ‘Bitch,’ he says, at one
     point.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘First it was my nostril hair putting
     her off. Then my toenails. Always a reason why we couldn’t do the
     old … you know.’ He forms his thumb and finger into an O and slides his
     other index finger through it. ‘Or a headache. No such headaches with old Viktor,
     eh? Oh, no. I bet she doesn’t care how long his ruddy toenails are.’ He
     swigs from his glass. ‘Bet they’re at it like bloody rabbits.’
    The lamb is congealing on her plate. She
     puts her knife and fork neatly together.
    ‘What happened to you,
     then?’
    She glances up at him, hoping he
     doesn’t mean – but of course he does.
    ‘Kristen said you were married before.
     To Sven’s business partner.’
    ‘I was.’
    ‘Left you, did he?’
    She swallows. Composes her face into a
     blank. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
    Roger shakes his head. ‘I don’t
     know. What’s wrong with people, these days? Why can’t they just be satisfied
     with what they’re given?’ He takes a toothpick and digs vigorously into a
     back molar, pausing to examine his pickings with grim relish.
    Liv looks down the table and meets
     Kristen’s eye. Kristen lifts both brows suggestively, and gives her a
     surreptitious thumbs-up.
Big hit!
she mouths.
    ‘Will you excuse me?’ Liv says,
     pushing back her chair. ‘I really need to visit the Ladies.’
    Liv sits in the silent cubicle for as long
     as she can without someone staging an