Free The Love She Left Behind by Amanda Coe

detonated instantly into high emotion, winding you in the backdraft. Still, he made an awkward clutch at Patrick’s shoulder as it jerked with the incontinent rigour of his grief. Haircut or no, with the first awful sob he had become an old man. Agonising seconds passed without abatement. Nigel patted and withdrew. There was nothing to be done. How could he possibly say anything about the house now? He, at least, would conduct himself with delicacy. All that was left to him was to stand guard by the chair as Patrick, drooling a rope of wet-crumbed spittle all the way down to the table, howled on and on, alone.
    Â 
    C’ham Gdns
    New Year’s Day, 1979
    Darling –
    I’ve written pages tonight and torn them up, they’re not even fit for you. Love an appalling annihilator of prose styles.
    Jesus, Sara. All you need to know is that your letter has made me happier than the happiest man alive. Which is only fitting, because before this you have also made me the most abject.
    Cheque enclosed, cash it at any bank, it will cover tickets and necessaries. It’s direct to King’s Cross as far as I can tell. Trains are regular, no point writing times, as you don’t know exactly when you’ll manage to get away. Drop me a line or phone once you know, and of course I’ll be there to meet you. If you can’t, phone from the station and hang on and I’ll be no more than half an hour. Don’t talk to strangers.
    I live every moment for your arrival.
    I had a letter from the bursar at St Christopher’s confirming the place will be free for the boy after the half-term holiday in February. I’veaccepted, presuming it’s all ok with your sister till then.
    Don’t be sad, my darling. You know this is the only way and the break you make is necessary in order for us to have a life together that isn’t half measures and acrimony. That’s the thing. Clarity will prevail, as the best for the children as much as us. No one thrives on the piecemeal and second-rate. As my love is absolute, so must yours be. I hope you can understand this. I think you do, because your instinctive capacity to understand—to understand me, at least—is one of the things I love most about you.
    Longing for you every night. I kiss the left nipple, then the right, then the left again. The Green Cross Code.
    For thine is the kingdom, forever and ever,
    Patrick
    xxx
    Â 
    Then
    1979
    L OUISE HAD starred the entry in her Letts Wombles diary as soon as Mum had written to tell her that she and Patrick and would be coming to take her out. The pencil that came with the diary wasn’t very good; its lead was too hard for the shiny pages, although the snug way it tucked into the spine, with the flat brim of its white plastic top perfectly flush with the edge of the cover, hectic with Wombles, gladdened Louise’s heart every time she replaced it. She considered her diary a present from Mum, since she had used some of the Christmas money Mum had sent to buy it, and Louise felt slightly guilty about how quickly she had stopped keeping it up to date. So it was good to be using the diary as it was intended, instead of manufacturing bogus reminders such as writing ‘bring baking stuff for school’ three days after the claggily underbaked scones had come home in their ice-cream tub and gone straight into the bin. Feeling that the pallid grey lead didn’t give the visit its due importance, let alone permanence, she went over the date—March 10—in felt-tip. It would be harder, surely, to cancel an event in actual felt-tip. There had already been a couple of cancellations: one before Christmas, when the weather was too bad for Mum and Patrick to travel all the way from London, and another after, when Patrick got the flu. Third timelucky, as Auntie B said. Since she only believed in the bad kind, Auntie B invoked luck purely as a dampener. Louise could tell she was expecting another