The Love She Left Behind Read Free

‘we’ll have to stop.’
    â€˜We’re going to be late!’ Nigel objected.
    â€˜It can’t be helped, can it?’ Louise rolled a look past Patrick to Nigel. Surprised, he caught it, just as an annihilating sneeze tore out of him. Why hadn’t he listened to Sophie about getting her mum to babysit and let her come with him?
    The driver pulled on to the hard shoulder. Louise massaged Holly’s back as she bent over the rusted barrier at the verge, hair hanging in strings. Patrick finished his cigarette.
    â€˜Suppose they can hardly start without us,’ Nigel reassured himself. Careless of the consequences, he raked his palate frantically against his tongue. Holly produced a couple of dry retches.
    â€˜Oh Christ .’
    The spent butt pitched out of the window, Patrick swigged the last of his petrol-station tea. As his jaw stretched, Nigel saw that he’d missed a patch when he’d shaved, close to his ear. The stubble was silvery, both unspeakably louche and terribly vulnerable. Outside, Holly was holding her stomach, Louise still bent to her. Nothing happened.
    Why did it always have to be like this? Why would it be any different? Mum was dead. It was the only thing that had changed. Sophie should have come with him, definitely, but it was better that she hadn’t. Tenderly, Nigel placed a cool forefinger on each closed, raging eyelid. This worked, sometimes.
    â€˜Women,’ said Patrick.
    Â 
    March 10, 1978
    Cobham Gardens
    Early hours.
    Darling Dear Girl,
    I’m sitting here drinking whisky and unable to write a word and thinking how very much I love you and want you and can’t live without you.
    I want to fuck you three times in a row.
    This will never do, will it?
    Patrick xx
    Â 
    H ER MOTHER HAD had a way with clothes. Even in the chaos of the wardrobe and its overflow into the bedroom, Louise could see this hadn’t deserted her. So far, she had come across no garments that she recognised, yet they were all familiar in expressing the singularity of her mother’s style. Part of it, she could see now, was money; old clothes that didn’t date or wear out. A good coat—that was something she could remember Mum harping on about. You need a good coat. It must have helped that she had stayed the same size for years, by the look of it, although she would have been emaciated by the end. Stomach cancer: how could it have been otherwise? Surely she must have known, long before that solitary collapse in the Tesco car park and the hurtling deterioration of her final week? Other, more secret parts of your body might harbour a tumour unknown to you, but surely not your stomach.
    Louise hadn’t asked for a look at Mum in the casket before they burned it. There was no point in seeing how much she had changed, except to upset herself. All the funeral rituals demanded you recognise death as real when it was the last thing you wanted, each impersonal stage stripping away what you held on to, finally trundling her away up a conveyor belt like a supermarket item to be scanned and bagged. And without them saying goodbye.
    At least now there was all the sorting out to bring her closer.
    Louise had volunteered at the reception. Jenny, the neighbour, was expecting her to, she could see. One look at Nigel would tell you that he never got his hands dirty. His hands were something she was shocked to recognise each time she saw him. They were still like a teenage boy’s: bizarrely knuckleless and smooth. They made him look unprepared for life, despite his suit. Anyway, sorting out was a daughter’s job.
    â€˜Oh, bless you,’ Jenny had said, too relieved for even a tokenobjection. ‘Patrick’s been saying just to put it all in bin bags, but really . . .’
    There was everything to be done. At least the bed next door where her mother had died had been stripped, thankfully. It must have been Jenny, or the nurse. The bed in this room, the one