The Girl You Left Behind

construction.
     It had been a problematic build, the materials delayed in their shipping from China, the
     wrong glass, the foundations proving inadequate in London’s clay. But now,
     finally, it is rising exactly as planned, each glass panel shining like the scales of
     some giant serpent.
    Sven rifles through some documents on his
     desk, picks out a photograph and hands it over. She gazes at the vast structure,
     surrounded by blue hoardings, but somehow, indefinably, David’s work.
     ‘It’s going to be glorious.’ She can’t help but smile.
    ‘I wanted to tell you – they’ve
     agreed to put a little plaque in the foyer in his memory.’
    ‘Really?’ Her throat
     constricts.
    ‘Yes. Jerry Goldstein told me last
     week – they thought it would be nice to commemorate David in some way. They were very
     fond of him.’
    She lets this thought settle.
     ‘That’s … that’s great.’
    ‘I thought so. You’ll be coming
     to the opening?’
    ‘I’d love to.’
    ‘Good. And how’s the other
     stuff?’
    She sips her coffee. She always feels
     faintly self-conscious talking about her life to Sven. It is as if the lack of
     dimensions in it cannot help but disappoint. ‘Well, I seem to have acquired a
     housemate. Which is … interesting. I’m still running. Work is a bit
     quiet.’
    ‘How bad is it?’
    She tries to smile. ‘Honestly?
     I’d probably be earning more in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.’
    Sven looks down at his hands.
     ‘You … haven’t thought it might be time to start doing something
     else?’
    ‘I’m not really equipped for
     anything else.’ She has long known that it had not been the wisest move to give up
     work and follow David around during their marriage. As her friends built careers, put in
     twelve-hour days at the office, she had simply travelled with him, to Paris, Sydney,
     Barcelona. He hadn’t needed her to work. It seemed stupid, being away from him all
     the time. And afterwards she hadn’t been good for much at all. Not for a long
     time.
    ‘I had to take out a mortgage on the
     house last year. And now I can’t keep up with the payments.’ She blurts out
     this last bit, like a sinner at confession.
    But Sven looks unsurprised. ‘You
     know … if you ever wanted to sell it, I could easily find you a
     buyer.’
    ‘Sell?’
    ‘It’s a big house to be rattling
     around in. And … I don’t know. You’re so isolated up there, Liv.
     It was a marvellous thing for David to cut his teeth on, and a lovely retreat for the
     two of you, but don’t you think you should be in the thick of things again?
     Somewhere a bit livelier? A nice flat in the middle of Notting Hill or Clerkenwell,
     maybe?’
    ‘I can’t sell David’s
     house.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because it would just be
     wrong.’
    He doesn’t say the obvious. He
     doesn’t have to: it’s there in the way he leans back in his chair, closes
     his mouth over his words.
    ‘Well,’ he says, leaning
     forwards over his desk. ‘I’m just putting the thought out there.’
    Behind him a huge crane is moving, iron
     girders slicingthrough the sky as they travel towards a cavernous
     roof space on the other side of the road. When Solberg Halston Architects had moved
     here, five years previously, the view had been a row of dilapidated shops – bookmaker,
     launderette, second-hand clothes – their bricks sludge brown, their windows obscured by
     years of accumulated lead and dirt. Now there is just a hole. It is possible that the
     next time she comes here she will not recognize the view at all.
    ‘How are the kids?’ she says
     abruptly. And Sven, with the tact of someone who has known her for years, changes the
     subject.
    It is halfway through the monthly meeting
     when Paul notices that Miriam, his and Janey’s shared secretary, is perched not on
     a chair but on two large boxes of files. She sits awkwardly, her legs angled in an
     attempt to keep her skirt at a modest length, her back propped against more boxes.
    At some point in the mid-nineties, the
     recovery of stolen artwork had become big business. Nobody at the Trace and Return
     Partnership seemed to have anticipated this, so, fifteen years on, meetings are held in
     Janey’s increasingly cramped office, elbows brushing against the teetering piles
     of folders, or boxes of faxes and photocopies, or, if clients are involved, downstairs
     in the local coffee shop. He has said often that they should look at new