LITMIR.BIZ

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thought of being with them all makes her groan and turn her face into the pillow.

      Steve has never actually said he doesn’t want her there. Neither has Lou.

      But she sees the looks that slide between them when she’s forgotten to wash up, or left a glass and plate on the patio. Her toiletries had been a growing skyline on the bathroom shelf and every morning she sees that they have been tidied and grouped together. Steve practically follows her around with a dustpan and brush.

      It’s not like she’s deliberately taking the piss. She really is grateful that they’re putting her up like this. It’s just that mess seems to follow her. She can enter a room and within minutes has laid her keys in one place, her handbag somewhere else and where did she put her phone again?

      Steve doesn’t drink much, doesn’t smoke and doesn’t even swear. He runs, he cycles, he plays five-a-side football with people from the large insurance company where he works. He has two comfortably off parents and likes to think of himself as a hands-on dad to his daughters.

      He is almost completely lacking in a sense of humour.

      Unfortunately, people like Steve bring out the worst in Neve. The little pursed crease at the corner of his mouth as she sloshes more red wine into a glass, or says, ‘Fuck me, it’s cold,’ only eggs her on.

      She’d passed him on the way back from the shower early the other morning, dressed in only a towel. He’d kept his eyes so averted it had given her a wicked urge to drop the towel just to see what would happen. He’d probably have spontaneously combusted, like that picture of the sad stockinged leg in a pile of ash she’d seen in her dad’s old Unexplained part-work magazine as a little girl.

      Steve’s prudishness has got worse since an evening a couple of weeks before. They’d all got unexpectedly drunk together. Steve only had a couple of beers but had loosened up enough that Neve found herself quite liking him.

      But she’d made a smutty joke while helping him load the dishwasher after Lou had stumbled off to bed and he’d reacted as though he’d been bitten by a snake. Neve can’t even really remember what she’d said now. Somehow, his brain had interpreted this as her coming on to him in some way and ever since he’d avoided eye contact.

      He clearly thought she was some sort of mad sex fiend now who would jump on him, were it not for the restraints of him being married to her older sister.

      It was all so tedious.

      Neve gets out of bed feeling like an old woman and wraps herself in her dressing gown before heading to the bathroom. Thank God it’s Saturday, although these days, the pleasures of the weekend are tempered by being a) more or less homeless and b) miserably single.

      When she goes into the kitchen she sees Steve at the sink, carefully cutting sandwiches into fingers. He has already been for a run; she can tell by the ruddy glow of his cheeks. He will no doubt have a long cycle later, just at the time the girls are needing their tea. Neve has noticed this, that he manages to live exactly like he had before kids, yet gets praised for the little he does with them.

      ‘Morning,’ she says and goes to fill the kettle.

      ‘Lou told me what happened,’ says Steve, without preamble. ‘That sounds a bit grim.’

      She’s about to reply when a high fluting voice floats through from the adjoining sitting room.

      ‘What’s grim, Daddy?’

      Lottie appears below them. She peers up, scrutinizing them. Neve loves her four-year-old niece but somehow always feels as though she has been assessed and found to be wanting in some way. Maybe it’s a genetic thing.

      She has black hair like her mother, but it bounces and jiggles around her head in spirals. Her eyes are very pale blue, like Steve’s, and her small snub nose is dusted with dark freckles.

      Steve reaches over and chucks her under the chin.

      ‘Never you mind, Miss Lotts. Are you ready to go to the Heath?’

      But Lottie is not to be deterred so easily.

      ‘Did something happen to Aunty Neve?’ she says. Neve and Steve exchange glances.

      ‘Why would you say that?’ says Steve.

      The little girl hoicks her cuddly lamb higher under her armpit and regards them both seriously.

      ‘Because Mummy said you must be nice to her today and you said God, I’ll try but I’m not promising anything. And then Mummy hit you on the arm.’

      Steve barks a sharp embarrassed laugh. ‘Well …’

      Neve smiles weakly.

      ‘I’m fine, Lot,’ she says. ‘Nothing wrong with me, look.’ She holds her arms up and does a strange little turn. She’s not sure why she has done it.

      Lottie runs back into the living room, mind already elsewhere. Steve ferociously begins organizing snacks, head bent as he chops carrots and decants houmous into a Tupperware pot.

      Neve makes herself coffee and toast.

      ‘Anyway,’ says Steve now in a low voice. ‘Sorry about the … thing … that happened. Must have been rough to see.’

      ‘Thanks,’ murmurs Neve. ‘It was.’

      Half an hour later the family are ready to go. Maisie arches her back and complains as she is strapped into the buggy, while Lou says encouraging things with a bright, cheerful voice that feels like nails on glass to Neve’s ear.

      They call goodbye to Neve, who collapses with relief onto the sofa and takes out her phone, grateful that she remembered to charge it when she got home.

      Her thumb moves across the screen and before she can stop herself she has stroked up Daniel’s number. She hovers over it, filled with a dragging desire to speak to him.

      Before she can change her mind she taps out a message.

      Can I come round 2 pick up few things?

      She hesitates and then adds an N and an X. Just the one.

      Neve is suddenly desperate to tell him what happened last night and once again begins to shuffle through the pack of images in her head.

      She thinks about the first sight of her, Isabelle, looking across the water. It seems strange now that Neve’s first thought wasn’t that she was a potential suicide. Ridiculous, in fact. But she’d been cold and tired. Still a bit drunk, not to mention a little humiliated by what had happened with Whatsisname. She wasn’t really thinking straight.

      With a shiver she remembers those last seconds; the cold lips on her cheek and the whispered words in her ear.

      What had she said? She should remember a soon-to-be-dead woman’s last words. Isn’t that the very least she can do?

      Neve holds her head tightly in her hands and stares at the wooden floorboards splashed with pale winter sun, trying to dredge up the exact memory.

      But it has gone.

      So instead she taps on Safari and searches for local news about a woman jumping off a bridge. Of course there is nothing. She realizes as she is doing it that this is not even news for London. She wonders how many people have thrown themselves into the Thames in the last year. Probably loads.

      Her phone pings with a text and she snatches it up.

      Not around much this week and away for Xmas. Can we make it in the NY.

      There’s no question mark. No D. And no X.

      And before she gets any warning that it is coming, she is crying. Hard, hot tears course down her face and she clamps her arms around herself, rocking with grief.

       6

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