The Girl You Left Behind

intervention, listening as severalwomen come in and perform ablutions. She checks for non-existent
     email and plays Scrabble on her phone. Finally, after scoring ‘flux’, she
     gets up, flushes the loo and washes her hands, staring at her reflection with a kind of
     perverse satisfaction. Her makeup has smudged beneath one eye. She fixes this in the
     mirror, wondering why she bothers, given that she is about to sit next to Roger
     again.
    She checks her watch. When can she beg an
     early-morning meeting and head for home? With luck, Roger will be so drunk by the time
     she goes back out that he will have forgotten she was even there.
    Liv takes one last look at her reflection,
     pushes her hair off her face and grimaces at her appearance.
What’s the
     point?
And then she opens the door.
    ‘Liv! Liv, come here! I want to tell
     you something!’ Roger is standing, gesticulating wildly. His face is even redder
     and his hair is standing upright on one side. It’s possible that he is, she
     thinks, half man, half ostrich. She feels a momentary panic at the prospect of having to
     spend another half-hour in his company. She’s used to this: an almost overwhelming
     physical desire to remove herself, to be out on the dark streets alone; not having to be
     anyone at all.
    She sits gingerly, like someone prepared to
     sprint, and drinks another half-glass of wine. ‘I really should go,’ she
     says, and there is a wave of protest from the other occupants of the table, as if this
     is some kind of personal affront. She stays. Her smile is a rictus. She finds herself
     watching the couples, the domestic cracks becoming visible with each glass of wine. That
     one dislikes her husband. She rolls her eyes with every second comment he makes. This
     man isbored with everyone, possibly with his wife. He checks his
     mobile compulsively beneath the rim of the table. She gazes up at the clock, nods dully
     at Roger’s breathy litany of marital unfairness. She plays a silent game of Dinner
     Party Bingo. She scores a School Fees and a House Prices. She is on the verge of a Last
     Year’s Holiday In Europe Full House when someone taps her on the shoulder.
    ‘Excuse me. You have a phone
     call.’
    Liv spins round. The waitress has pale skin
     and long dark hair, which opens around her face like a pair of half-drawn curtains. She
     is beckoning with her notepad. Liv is conscious of a flicker of familiarity.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Urgent phone call. I think it’s
     family.’
    Liv hesitates.
Family?
But
     it’s a sliver of light in a tunnel. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh,
     right.’
    ‘Would you like me to show you the
     phone?’
    ‘Urgent phone call,’ she mouths
     at Kristen, and points at the waitress, who points towards the kitchens.
    Kristen’s face arranges itself into an
     expression of exaggerated concern. She stoops to say something to Roger, who glances
     behind him and reaches out a hand as if to stop her. And then Liv is gone, following the
     short dark girl through the half-empty restaurant, past the bar and down the
     wood-panelled corridor.
    After the gloom of the seating area the
     glare of the kitchen is blinding, the dulled sheen of steel surfaces bouncing light
     across the room. Two men in white ignore her, passing pans towards a washing-up station.
     Something is frying, hissing and spitting in a corner; someone speaks rapid-fire
     Spanish. The girl gestures through a setof swing doors, and suddenly
     she is in another back lobby, a cloakroom.
    ‘Where’s the phone?’ Liv
     says, when they come to a halt.
    The girl pulls a packet of cigarettes from
     her apron and lights one. ‘What phone?’ she says blankly.
    ‘You said I had a call?’
    ‘Oh. That. There isn’t a phone.
     You just looked like you needed rescuing.’ She inhales, lets out a long sliver of
     smoke and waits for a moment. ‘You don’t recognize me, do you? Mo. Mo
     Stewart.’ She sighs, when Liv frowns. ‘I was in your course at uni.
     Renaissance and Italian Painting. And Life Drawing.’
    Liv thinks back to her degree. And suddenly
     she can see her: the little Goth girl in the corner, near silent in every class, her
     expression a careful blank, her nails painted a violent, glittering purple. ‘Wow.
     You haven’t changed a bit.’ This is not a lie. As she says it, she is not
     entirely sure it’s a compliment.
    ‘You have,’ says Mo, examining
     her. ‘You look … I don’t know.