Page 118 of The Girl You Left Behind
She tries to smile at him. “Thanks, Henry,” she says. “I’ll—call you.”
It feels strange out here, in the wintry sunlight, as if they have spent much longer than an afternoon in the confines of the court. She feels as if she has come here straight from 1945. Henry hails a taxi for her, then leaves, nodding farewell. It is then that she sees him, standing at the security gate. He looks as if he has been waiting there for her, and walks straight over.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his face grim.
“Paul, don’t—”
“I really thought—I’m sorry for everything.”
His eyes meet hers, one final time, and he turns and walks away, blind to the customers exiting the Seven Stars pub, the legal assistants dragging their trolleys of files. She sees the stoop to his shoulders, the uncharacteristic dip of his head, and it is this, on top of everything else that has happened today, that finally settles something for her.
“Paul!” She has to yell twice to be heard over the sound of the traffic. “Paul!”
He turns. She can see the black rim around his irises even from here.
“I know.”
He stands very still for a minute, a tall man, a little broken, in a good suit.
“I know. Thank you... for trying.”
Sometimes life is a series of obstacles, a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, she realizes suddenly, it is simply a matter of blind faith. “Would you... would you like to go for that drink some time?” She swallows. “Now, even?”
He glances at his shoes, thinking, then up at her again. “Would you give me one minute?”
He walks back up the steps of the court. She sees Janey Dickinson deep in conversation with her lawyer. Paul touches her elbow, and there is a brief exchange of words. She feels anxious—a little voice nagging—What is he telling her now?—and she turns away, climbs into the taxi, and tries to quell it. When she looks up again through the window, he is walking briskly back down the steps, winding a scarf around his neck. Janey Dickinson is staring at the taxi, her files limp in her arms.
He opens the door, and climbs in, slamming it shut. “I quit,” he says. He lets out a breath, reaches over for her hand. “Right. Where are we going?”
32
Greg’s face betrays nothing as he answers the door. “Hello again, Miss Liv,” he says, as if her appearance on the doorstep is entirely to be expected. He steps back into the hallway as Paul peels her coat from her shoulders, shushing the dogs, who rush to greet her. “I’ve ruined the risotto, but Jake says it doesn’t matter, as he doesn’t like mushrooms anyway. So we’re thinking maybe pizza.”
“Pizza sounds great. And my treat,” says Paul. “It may be our last for a while.”
They had held hands in stunned silence halfway down Fleet Street. “I lost you your job,” she’d said finally. “And your big bonus. And your chance to buy a bigger flat for your son.”
He had gazed straight ahead of him. “You didn’t lose me any of it. I walked.”
Greg raises an eyebrow. “A bottle of red has been open in the kitchen since around half past four. This has nothing whatsoever to do with me looking after my nephew for the day. Does it, Jake?”
“Greg says it’s always wine o’clock in this house,” a boy’s voice calls from the other room.
“Tattletale,” Greg calls back. And then he says to Liv, “Oh, no. I can’t let you drink. Look what happened last time you got drunk in our company. You turned my sensible big brother into a tragic, mooning adolescent.”
“And this is where I remind you yet again that mooning means something quite different in this country,” Paul says, steering her toward the kitchen. “Liv, you’d better acclimatize for a minute. Greg’s idea of interior decorating is basically Too Much Is Not Enough. He doesn’t do minimalist.”
“I stamp my personality on my little house, and, no, it is not a tabula rasa.”
“It’s beautiful,” she says, of the colorful walls, the bold prints, and the tiny photographs that surround her. She feels oddly at ease in this little house, with its blaring music, incalculable numbers of loved things on every shelf and crammed into every wall space, and a child who lies on a rug in front of the television.
“Hey,” says Paul, going into the living room, where the boy flips onto his back like a puppy.
“Dad.” He glances at her, and she fights the urge to drop Paul’s hand when he sees him registering it. “Are you the girl from the courthouse?” he says, after a minute.
“I hope so. Unless there was another one.”
“I don’t think so,” says Jake. “I thought they were going to squash you.”
