The Girl You Left Behind

guesses that she is sobering up: some sensible part of her is
     wondering what she has just agreed to. He wonders if there is some girlfriend waiting
     for her somewhere. She’s pretty, but in the way that women are when they
     don’t want to draw male attention to themselves: free of makeup, hair scraped back
     into a ponytail. Is this a gay thing? Her skin is too good for her to be a regular
     drinker. She has taut legs and a long stride that speak of regular exercise. But she
     walks defensively, with her arms crossed over her chest.
    They reach his flat, a second-floor
     maisonette above a café on the outskirts of Theatreland, and he stands well back
     from her as he opens the door.
    Paul switches on the lights and goes
     straight to the coffee-table. He sweeps up the newspapers and that morning’s mug,
     seeing the flat through a stranger’s eyes: too small, overstuffed with reference
     books, photographs and furniture. Luckily, no stray socks or washing. He walks into the
     kitchen area and puts the kettle on, fetches her a towel to dry her hair, and watches as
     she walks tentatively around the room, apparently reassured by the packed bookshelves,
     the photographs on the sideboard: him in uniform, him and Jake grinning, their arms
     around each other. ‘Is this your son?’
    ‘Yup.’
    ‘He looks like you.’ She picks
     up a photograph of him, Jake and Leonie, taken when Jake was four. Her other arm is
     still wrapped around her stomach. He would offer her a T-shirt, but he doesn’t
     want her to think he’s trying to get her to remove her clothes.
    ‘Is this his mother?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You’re … not gay,
     then?’
    Paul is briefly lost for words, then says,
     ‘No! Oh. No, that’s my brother’s bar.’
    ‘Oh.’
    He gestures towards the photograph of him in
     uniform. ‘That’s not, like, me doing a Village People routine. I really was
     a cop.’
    She starts to laugh, the kind of laughter
     that comes when the only alternative is tears. Then she wipes her eyes and flashes him
     an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a bad day today. And that was
     before my bag got stolen.’
    She’s really pretty, he thinks
     suddenly. She has an air of vulnerability, like someone’s stripped her of a layer
     of skin. She turns to face him and he looks away abruptly. ‘Paul, have you got a
     drink? As in not coffee. I know you probably think I’m a complete soak but I could
     really, really do with one right now.’
    He flicks the kettle off, pours them both a
     glass of wine and comes into the living area. She is sitting on the edge of the sofa,
     her elbows thrust between her knees.
    ‘You want to talk about it? Ex-cops
     have generally heard a lot of stuff.’ He hands her the glass of wine. ‘Much
     worse stuff than yours. I’d put money on it.’
    ‘Not really.’ She takes an
     audible gulp of her wine. Then, abruptly, she turns to him. ‘Actually, yes. My
     husband died four years ago today. He died. Most people couldn’t even say the word
     when he did, and now they keep telling me I should have moved on. I have no idea how to
     move on. There’s a Goth living in my house and I can’t even remember her
     surname. I owe money to everyone. And I went to a gay bar tonight because I
     couldn’t face being in my house alone, and my bag got nicked with the two hundred
     pounds I’d borrowed from my credit card to pay my council tax. And when you asked
     if there was anyone else I could call, the only person I could think of who might offer
     me a bed was Fran, the woman who lives in cardboard boxes at the bottom of my
     block.’
    He is so busy digesting the word
     ‘husband’ that he barely hears the rest. ‘Well, I can offer you a
     bed.’
    That wary glance again.
    ‘My son’s bed. It’s not
     the world’s most comfortable. I mean, my brother slept in it on and off when he
     broke up with his last boyfriend, and he says he’s had to see an osteopath ever
     since, but it’s a bed.’
    He pauses. ‘It’s probably better
     than cardboard boxes.’
    She looks sideways at him.
    ‘Okay. Marginally better.’
    She smiles wryly into her glass. ‘I
     couldn’t ask Fran anyway. She never bloody invites me in.’
    ‘Well, that’s just rude. I
     wouldn’t want to go to her house anyway. Stay there. I’ll sort you out a
     toothbrush.’
    Sometimes, Liv thinks, it is possible to
     fall into a parallel universe. You think you know what you’re in for – a badnight in