The Love She Left Behind (25 page)

‘Piece of shit,' she remarked unaggressively. And then: ‘My boyfriend's car's really lush?'

It was a BMW, apparently. Holly sighed. ‘We just drive around, it's just, yeah . . . talking and that, in his car. We just talk and talk, for like hours sometimes. I tell him everything.'

The bin's right wheel was hinking on the stones, making it hard for Mia to manoeuvre. Her grunt of effort as she tried to push was mistaken by Holly as conversational, encouraging her to continue.

‘He knows everything about me? It's the best. He's like, such a
good listener? No one never listens to me, 'cos I talk all the time. Our Jamie says I talk a load of shit.'

‘Right.'

Mia kicked gravel from under the wheel to clear the way.

‘One time, it was raining so hard? I was just like soaked and Nish picked me up and said I'm not taking you home till you're dry and he give me his T-shirt and turned all the heaters up and we just drove round, I don't even know where, and he stopped and got me a hot chocolate and he listened to all like about me mum and home and me dad going and how shit school stuff is and that.'

Mia attempted to steer the bin, as Holly watched, her feelings elsewhere.

‘It was the best. I mean, it's all that matters, isn't it? Love. He loves me.'

The wheel had finally released and Mia trundled the bin back up to its place, oddly encumbered by a sense of Holly's claim to superiority over her. The shots on the phone now made sense of this, as well as her unusual friendliness.
He loves me.
Maybe he did treat her well, and the age gap was an unfortunate barrier to a rare affinity. Or more likely he'd been grooming her—hot chocolate and special cuddles—and Jamie was right that the police should be called. But whatever they did, the girl who had sent those photos was never again going to be happy just with
Homes Under the Hammer
and a trip to the shopping centre with her girlfriends. Louise was fighting a losing battle. It hadn't taken much: a flash car and a bit of attention.

Mia's left thumb spun the engagement ring on her finger. It needed adjusting to fit her properly.

‘Miss?'

The call came from behind her, inside the house. It was the electrician, a small guy around her own age whose air of tetchy contempt was seemingly contained only by his limited English.
He lifted his toolbox to indicate that he was ready to go. Mia followed him into the kitchen. There it was, finished—perhaps the brushed steel had been a mistake after all—a tidy mound of dust waiting in the middle of the floor to be bagged, an offcut of flex and a spare switchboard on the immaculate counter. Putting down his toolbox, the electrician stood at the door and snapped the lights on, one by one, brusquely swivelled the dials of the dimmers to demonstrate the work he had done. Mia hadn't bothered to find out which country he actually came from.

‘Okay?'

Mia agreed that it was. It was finished, everything worked. She had kept her promise and now she was free. With a departing glance at her arse, he left her to stand there, contemplating the transformation.
He loves me, that's all that matters.
Muted squeals came from outside as the little boys kicked the ball back to the big boy. The way the light from the spots fell, you could be anywhere.
Never complain, never explain.
It wasn't nothing, what she'd done.

 

T
HE FORCE OF
the rain was astonishing after the days of unusual heat. Even so, Louise was the only person in the house to be woken by it, so when she opened the door to Nigel, she felt glad of the company. She never liked to be quiet in the mornings.

‘Nidge.'

Louise took the huge, clown-striped golf umbrella he had started to shake on to the mat and led him to the kitchen, where it could drip in the new sink.

‘Very smart,' he said, looking round. Louise had to concede that it was. Since Kamila had conveyed Mum's approval of the changes, she felt much better about Mia's presumption. Nigel sat in one of the old chairs they'd moved back in with the pine table, which now looked even shabbier amid the new fittings. He asked some formulaic questions about Holly's recovery, but she could tell that his interest was elsewhere. He and the family were travelling home later that day. Louise braced herself to talk about money, as they had agreed.

‘I've been thinking,' she told him. ‘You might be right.'

It was all different since she'd known about Patrick, about his true feelings. How could she think of continuing to live here with him and Mia? Even Mum's own view had undergone a change in the last days. If anything, she thought Louise (and Nigel) should take the house outright and Patrick be damned, but Nigel had persuaded Louise that this would be legally difficult, if not impossible. Kamila had been a godsend, as ever. As she had pointed out, the main thing was that Holly was improving every day.

Sitting across the table from Nigel, Louise set it out to him, making sure that they agreed. He would give her her half of the money the house was worth, and with that she'd buy a place for
herself and the kids, far away from all the trouble that waited in Leeds. She could see that Nigel hadn't been expecting this at all.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Great. I'll . . . crack on, if you're sure.'

He told her that she should have a solicitor to handle her side of their agreement, which had to be drawn up formally. Surely that was money for old rope, she pointed out, with his qualifications. It wasn't as though she didn't trust him.

Nigel ran his hand down his face. His skin was pink, dewed with raindrops, or perhaps sweat. It was still clammily warm, despite the wet.

‘Weezer.'

He still remembered, then. Perhaps he even remembered it better than she did, the time before Patrick, although he never talked about it. That day, when Dad had called them in to tell them Mum had gone, Nigel standing next to her, the trapped summer air in the small, dark living room of their terrace, the garish pattern of the carpet. The unprecedented formality of being summoned by their dad in this way had inculcated them both with dread before he'd even opened his mouth. Louise's memory didn't include any of his actual words, just the import of them soaking into her as she stared down at the uneven way the inside legs of her bibbed tomato-red shorts rode up into her granular white thighs. She had cried. Nigel hadn't, and had got credit for it. Nothing had been the same again.

Much later, when everything had been rearranged because Dad couldn't be expected to work and look after children, Auntie B had put up a picture of Nigel on the china cabinet, to replace the actual Nidge who had gone away to school. When Louise saw him again, it was impossible to imagine them playing trampolines on the bed. ‘Give your brother a cuddle, then,' Auntie B had urged, and Louise had hugged this tall new boy with long hair
and odd clothes who didn't talk much like Nidge any more or even smell like him; that warm, stale, boy-smell of body and earth and chocolate biscuits. He hadn't hugged her back. She could feel how embarrassed he was by her, and he had stayed embarrassed ever since.

She put her hand out, across the table.

‘Don't look so worried,' she said. ‘You've got to trust in the universe. Things have a way of working out.'

Nigel didn't respond, but for once he kept his hand there, beneath hers. She could feel him gathering all his breath. ‘You know what she did,' he said, finally. ‘Mum—'

There was a wail from upstairs—an animal howl. Nigel was faster than her on the stairs, with her knees. When Louise reached the bedroom, Nigel was already sitting next to Patrick on the bed, patting his back, murmuring. No blood, no disaster.

Mia had gone. At first Louise thought it was just Patrick panicking because Mia had got up early and gone out without telling him, which he never liked, but as he insisted, she saw that it was true: the room had been stripped back to what belonged there. There was nothing left in Mia's side of the wardrobe, nothing in her allocated drawers. The zipped bags of toiletries were gone from the bathroom, and downstairs, her jackets and coat had been removed from their hooks, her aligned pairs of shoes taken from the mat. The dining room table was bare of the laptop she kept on it, always exactly parallel to the edge. She'd buggered off, all right. Like a thief in the night.

Patrick was wild, demanding they call the police. Nigel assured him that there was nothing the police could do. Mia was free to go. She hadn't taken anything that wasn't hers, had she?

‘I'll call them myself.' Patrick struggled up. They let him go.

‘Bloody hell,' said Nigel, still on the bed. ‘What's she playing at?'

He looked upset himself. Louise felt excited; more than that—relieved. Mia had seen sense, pure and simple. Mum was at work, somewhere.

‘It wouldn't have been right, them getting married. A young girl like that.'

Holly stood at the door. ‘What's happened?'

While bleared, she was already made up and dressed, quite carefully, even her hair straightened, so the noise couldn't have woken her up. Louise thought of Holly's Valium from the hospital, and wondered if they should give Patrick one to calm him down. She could hear him shouting on the phone.

‘She must have left a note or something,' said Nigel. But Mia hadn't. Not in the bedroom, not downstairs. There were no voicemail messages on either of their phones. When the police rang back to see if everything was okay, following Patrick's garbled rant to 999, they were advised not to waste any more police time. Between them, she and Nigel realised that they didn't know Mia's surname, let alone any details of her family, although, as Nigel pointed out, there was enough paperwork around the place to repair this ignorance and allow pursuit of her if it was really needed. Was it, though?

Louise went to retrieve the Valium packet from Holly's room. She hadn't seen Patrick so agitated since she was a teenager, and seldom so mobile. She'd expected him to take to the study with a whisky bottle, but instead he kept ranging around downstairs from room to room, talking, talking, talking. Most of it swearing, of course, tirades about faithlessness and futility and the folly of age. Nigel shadowed him tentatively all the while, like a netball marker without the confidence to try for the ball. At least Patrick didn't seem likely to make a break out of the house this time. Amid all this, Holly started trying to persuade Louise that she
should go out to do a food shop, as she'd planned, but Louise was determined to stick around until she could see Patrick felt a little calmer.

He was coughing unstoppably, doubled over, and he wasn't a good colour. All this might kill him. She knew he wouldn't take a Valium if she suggested it, and possibly not even if Nigel did, and decided on grinding a tablet into a heavily sweetened cup of tea. As she went down to the kitchen, Holly planted herself at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Leave him, Mum, he'll be fine.'

‘I'm sure he will, but I'm not taking any chances.'

‘Just—go shopping. If you miss the shops you'll be kicking yourself. There's nothing in.'

‘There's plenty in.'

God knows why she had such a bee in her bonnet about the shopping, but she'd been like that since the accident; you could never tell what would set her off. Normally, Louise was indulgent, but there was too much going on. She snapped at Holly that they could go to Tesco on the way back from physio tomorrow: she would have to sit in the car park and lump it. It was a tone Louise hadn't taken with her in a long time. Used to the protection of being an invalid, Holly recoiled. She was gathering herself to argue when the doorbell shrilled uncertainly, its circuit loose.

‘I'll get it!' Holly headed across the hall with reckless speed, careless of her crutches. Louise called after her to be careful. Patrick was already in the hall, at the midpoint of his pacing route, with Nigel close at hand. Nigel moved to open the door. Glimpsing black hair, Louise expected Mia, and she could see by the tilt of Patrick's head that he too was hopeful. But it was a young man the hair belonged to; as he spoke, she could see a sliver of him, black-haired and brown-skinned from the angle she had. There was a polite mumble, and Nigel swung the door open to let him in.

The man hovered, reluctant. He was small, Louise could see, and his posture was wired as though in anticipation of a fight, his eyeline darting back to the showy car, now visible, parked behind him in the drive.

‘You're all right. Is Holly about?' The man still spoke quietly, with a strong Leeds accent. That's when she knew.
Him.

Holly swung up to the doorway and clipped Nigel on the back of the calf with one of her crutches, so that he took an automatic step back. ‘Get out of the way!'

‘All right, mate—she wants to talk to me.' The man's tone remained soft, wheedlingly reasonable.

Louise's attempt to cry out was stifled by shock.

‘I'm afraid that won't be possible. I suggest you go before I call the police.' Thank God, Nigel had twigged. She was glad that he had a good few inches and about a stone over that piece of shit.

‘What the hell's going on?' Patrick looked as paralysed as Louise.

‘You can't stop me talking to him! He hasn't done nothing!'

‘You her dad?'

The tone was more challenging now, and Nigel's rose to meet it. It wasn't a voice Louise had ever heard him use before.

‘No. Please leave the premises.'

‘You a fucking racist?'

‘I'm calling the police.'

As Nigel went to close the door, Holly jammed the rubber-tipped end of her crutch in the jamb. ‘He's not done nothing!'

Jigging with impatience, the man whipped his phone from the pocket of his jeans.

‘You want to see the kind of slag she is?'

‘I'm a lawyer. I'm sure the police would be delighted to see it and treat it as evidence.'