Page 92 of All Our Missing Pieces

FIFTY-SIX

‘Liv?’ Emily called across the landing, her voice reaching me over the opening chords of ‘You’re Beautiful’ blaring out of the speakers downstairs. ‘Can I borrow your Russian Red lippie?’

‘Only if you zip up my dress.’

‘Deal.’

Her heels clattered over the floor and she burst into my room in a cloud of L’Eau d’Issey and hairspray. ‘Love the dress. Foxy. Is it new?’

‘Mango sale,’ I confirmed. ‘But the zip’s fiddly as fuck. Here.’

I turned my back to her and felt her cool fingers on the skin of my back as she fumbled with the zip pull. For a moment, I was transported back to the basement at Damask Square.

But I wasn’t at Damask Square any more, although the Schiaparelli dress was. I’d left it, shrouded in a polythene bag from a specialist dry cleaner, hanging over the door of what had been my bedroom, pinning a note to the front.

I can’t take this with me – it’s too special. Thank you for letting me wear it, and for everything else. All my love, Livvie.

That had been two weeks ago. Since then, I’d moved into the free room in Emily’s house share, spent a dutiful Christmas with my parents in Nottingham, and returned with relief to London in time for the New Year’s Eve party Emily and her other housemates, Vanessa and Josh, were throwing.

Only two weeks, but already Damask Square seemed distant, almost like all the months I’d spent there had been a dream. Already, I’d grown used to being woken by the roar of the Westway in the mornings, rather than the song of blackbirds in the square. I’d become accustomed to the smell of Josh’s shower gel in the mornings, not Luke’s. I barely noticed that when I walked into the kitchen, it was Vanessa I saw chopping vegetables for a stir-fry, not Orla preparing dinner for the four of us.

If I came into my bedroom to find someone sitting on my bed wanting a chat, it was Emily and not Beatrice.

This all felt normal – it felt like real life. I’d return to work in a couple of days, face a new year filled with what my manager was fond of calling Challenges and Opportunities. I’d travel east on my journey to work instead of west. Emily had suggested I go along to the pub quiz on Tuesday nights with some of her other friends, promising that my knowledge of English literature, added to theirs of politics, sport and popular culture, would make us unbeatable.

In my heart, there was still an ache where my feelings for Luke had been, a space as empty as the side of my bed where I’d grown used to him sleeping.

‘Friends?’ he’d said the last time we saw each other, drawing me into his familiar embrace.

‘Friends,’ I’d agreed, knowing that meant only the liminal space between ‘enemies’ and ‘lovers’, and not the true friendship I had with Emily.

I’d probably never see him again, and I was okay with that – there was really no alternative.

Saying goodbye to Orla had been harder. When I’d gone into the kitchen for the last time, she’d been there as I’d expected, temporarily distracted from the pile of bills she was sitting over, chequebook by her side, by Maud settling down, purring, on top of her paperwork.

But Beatrice had been there too, pouring water from the kettle into the teapot.

‘You heading off, Liv?’ she’d asked, the morning sun from the window falling on her face as she’d smiled at me. ‘Take care. We’ll miss you.’

‘I’ll see you out.’ Orla had stood up and walked with me to the front door. She’d opened it, a blast of cold air enveloping me before she pulled me close into her warm arms, whispering, ‘You could stay, you know.’

‘I couldn’t,’ I’d said into her shoulder. ‘I have to go. But I’ll stay in touch.’

‘I hope so.’ There had been a sadness in her voice. We both knew I would, but that it would be faithfully at first, then intermittently, then probably not at all.

The relationship I had with her – not like a mother and daughter and not like friends, but something else, something special and unique – would never be replaced in my life. But in Orla’s, it had to. By something not like a mother and daughter and not like friends, but something special and unique. Only with Beatrice, not with me.

As for Beatrice herself, when I’d told her I was moving out she had nodded calmly, like I was confirming something she already knew.

‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. ‘I wish you could stay.’

‘I know.’ It would have been more honest if I had said, I know you don’t.

‘You must visit. Come and see the house when it’s finished, ready for the students to come and stay.’

I imagined the upstairs rooms that had been silent and empty filling with laughter, trainers clomping on the stairs, voices in the kitchen enthusing over Pre-Raphaelite art. I imagined walking in and faces turning to look at me – Who’s she? – and not knowing. And Beatrice, the daughter of the house, central to it all.

‘Maybe it would be better if we met for a drink somewhere else,’ I’d said.