The Girl You Left Behind

reason seeps out through her ears and she can hear only the growing,
     insistent hum of her own need.
Here. Now.
His arms tighten around her, his lips
     on her collarbone. She reaches for him, her breath coming in shallow bursts, her heart
     racing, over-sensitized so that she shivers as his fingers trail her skin. She wants to
     laugh with the joy of it. He tears his shirt over his head. Their kisses deepen, become
     punishing. He lifts her clumsily on to the worktop and she wraps her legs around him. He
     stoops, pushing her skirt up around her waist, and she arches back, lets her skin meet
     the cold granite so that she is gazing up at the glass ceiling, her hands entwined in
     his hair. Around her the shutters are open, the glass walls a window to the night sky.
     She stares up into the punctured darkness and thinks, almost triumphantly, with some
     still functioning part of her:
I am still alive
.
    And then she closes her eyes and refuses to
     think at all.
    His voice rumbles through her.
     ‘Liv?’
    He is holding her. She can hear her own
     breath.
    ‘Liv?’
    A residual shudder escapes her.
    ‘Are you okay?’
    ‘Sorry. Yes.
     It’s … it’s been a long time.’
    His arms tighten around her, a silent
     answer. Another silence.
    ‘Are you cold?’
    She steadies her breathing before she
     answers. ‘Freezing.’
    He lifts her down and reaches for his shirt
     on the floor, wrapping it around her slowly. They gaze at each other in the
     near-dark.
    ‘Well … that
     was …’ She wants to say something witty, carefree. But she can’t speak.
     She feels numbed. She is afraid to let go of him, as if only he is anchoring her to the
     earth.
    The real world is encroaching. She is aware
     of the sound of the traffic downstairs, somehow too loud, the feel of the cold limestone
     floor under her bare foot. She seems to have lost a shoe. ‘I think we left the
     front door open,’ she says, glancing down the corridor.
    ‘Um … forget the shoe. Did
     you know that your roof is missing?’
    She glances up. She cannot remember opening
     it. She must have hit the button accidentally as they fell into the kitchen. Autumnal
     air sinks around them, raising goose-bumps across her bare skin, as if it, too, had only
     just realized what had happened. Mo’s black sweater hangs over the back of a
     chair, like the open wings of a settling vulture.
    ‘Hold on,’ she says. She pads
     across the kitchen and presses the button, listening to the hum as the roof closes over.
     Paul stares up at the oversized skylight, then back down at her, and then he turns
     slowly, 360 degrees, as his eyes adjust to the dim light, taking in his surroundings.
     ‘Well, this – It’s not what I was expecting.’
    ‘Why? What were you
     expecting?’
    ‘I don’t know … The
     whole thing about your council tax …’ He glances back up at the open ceiling.
     ‘Some chaotic little place. Somewhere like mine. This is …’
    ‘David’s house. He built
     it.’
    His expression flickers.
    ‘Oh. Too much?’
    ‘No.’ Paul peers around into the
     living room and blows out his cheeks. ‘You’re allowed.
     He … uh … sounds like quite a guy.’
    She pours them both a glass of water, tries
     not to feel self-conscious as they dress. He holds out her shirt for her to slide into.
     They look at each other and half laugh, suddenly perversely shy in clothes.
    ‘So … what happens now? You
     need some space?’ He adds, ‘I have to warn you – if you want me to leave I
     may need to wait until my legs stop shaking.’
    She looks at Paul McCafferty, at the shape
     of him, already familiar to her very bones. She does not want him to leave. She wants to
     lie down beside him, his arms around her, her head nestled into his chest. She wants to
     wake without the instant, terrible urge to run away from her own thoughts. She is
     conscious of an echoing doubt –
David –
but she pushes it away.
It is time
     to live in the present. She is more than the girl David left behind.
    She does not turn on the light. She reaches
     for Paul’s hand and leads him through the dark house, up the stairs and to her
     bed.
    They do not sleep. The hours become a
     glorious, hazy miasma of tangled limbs and murmured voices. She has forgotten the utter
     joy of being wrapped around a body you can’t leave alone. She feels as if she has
     been recharged, as if she occupies a new space in the atmosphere.
    It is six a.m. when the cold