Free The Love She Left Behind by Amanda Coe Page A

cancellation, right up to the moment when the taxi pulled up outside. It was always disappointing to be proved wrong.
    Mum spilled out first, and by the time she was busy with the fiddly catch on the low iron gate, Louise was already out of the front door and halfway down the garden path. But before she could reach her, Mum had pulled back and returned to the taxi, where Patrick appeared to be having difficulties over payment. So it was Louise who released the gate’s metal spring and welcomed them in, first enveloped by the smell of Mum she hadn’t smelled for months and the shape she’d left behind like a cut-out, and then, suddenly, confronted by the startling new shape and smell of Patrick.
    It was the very first time they’d met. Louise felt nervous, suddenly. He wasn’t smiling; he was talking to Mum about the taxi.
    â€˜â€”tipped the bugger, he didn’t know where he was going!’
    Mum waved her purse with the same hand that held the strap of her smart green handbag.
    â€˜This is Louise.’
    Patrick nodded. He was an immediate, complicated fact, like weather. Louise understood at once that he’d prefer to speak to her through Mum. His own voice was as posh as anyone on television, and seemed to taint Auntie B’s, so that when she offered him a cup of tea inside, she braced herself before each aitch as though facing a slightly challenging stair. They were already using cups and saucers instead of mugs; Louise had helped set the table. Patrick asked for coffee to begin with, but Louise saw Mum pull a face at him and he settled for tea. While the kettle boiled she climbed into Mum’s lap. Mum pulled her hair.
    â€˜What’s she been feeding you, bricks?’
    Eleven was too old to be sitting on your mum’s knee, but it was a special occasion, after all.
    â€˜This looks nice,’ Mum said, tipping her off to hover at the table. Louise had forgotten that already, the way she’d never sit in a chair. Auntie B said she had a round bum, which in fact she hadn’t, but it meant she couldn’t be still. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered, B.’
    B planted the teapot.
    â€˜It’s only a few biscuits. You’re lucky I was off. Matron’s gone sick and they’ve had me working all hours. Doing her job as well as everyone else’s, as usual.’
    â€˜B’s the brains of the family.’
    Louise had grown up with the flaunting of Auntie B’s brains. Nigel was assumed to take after her, although obviously boys couldn’t become nurses. Patrick didn’t seem particularly interested, although Mum always talked about B’s brains as the end of a conversation instead of a beginning. It wasn’t until they’d finished their tea and biscuits—Louise was the only one who had a biscuit, because they didn’t want to spoil their lunch—and were walking to the Berni Inn that Patrick became even slightly animated. Unfortunately, it was about the Berni Inn.
    â€˜Not this prefab Merrie Englande bollocks. Can’t we go somewhere where you can get a decent pint? Or even wine?’
    B looked flummoxed. The Berni was the only place they ever went as a treat.
    â€˜You can get wine at a Berni,’ Mum said.
    â€˜It used to be the Red Lion,’ B offered.
    â€˜I’m sure it did.’
    At the table, Louise watched Patrick remember to offer B a cigarette before he put the packet away (Mum didn’t smoke). He wasn’t her dad, but he put his penis in Mum’s vagina. Every night,if Nigel’s information was to be believed. Of course Nigel didn’t say penis and vagina—that was from school, where they had recently been shown a film about periods (‘menstruation’, pronounced with eccentric emphasis on the ‘u’). The boys had been removed to the gym while the screening took place, and afterwards, Louise and her friends had tantalised them with wild elaborations and