The Last Time I Saw You Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the reality of today.
    “We should get going,” says James, gently.
    I slip my left foot in, threading the strap through the fiddly silver buckle. It seems utterly beyond me. I sit down heavily on the bed.
    “Remind me why we’re doing this.”
    “Because you said you needed to say goodbye.”
    I look up at him. He’s pale and anxious, and I wonder whether I’ve got any right to put him through it. I search his face, like it’ll somehow answer the questions that are swarming around my brain.
    “I just feel like if I don’t, I’ll never really believe that she’s gone. It’ll still feel unfinished and horrible and . . .” I look up at him. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. It’s not like you . . .”
    “It’s not about whether I liked her or not, Livvy. Anyway, you’re not going on your own. Put your shoes on. I’ll find your coat.”
    I smile at him, grateful, love welling up inside me unbidden. My feelings are so close to the surface right now, constantly erupting, like a shoal of tropical fish breaking cover and flashing up out of the water.
    “Are these too tarty?” I ask, looking down at my shod foot, not wanting him to see my face. “Not that it matters.”
    It does though, weirdly: I feel deeply self-conscious about all the people whom I haven’t seen properly in years. When I lost Sally I lost a whole chunk of friends who quietly snuck into her camp and took up residence. They’re all Facebook friends, eagerly swapping news and commenting on each other’s photos, while I lurk on the sidelines, hating the fact that I’m somehow compelled to watch. There shouldn’t have been camps, it didn’t need to feel like a divorce, but somehow with Sally everything always took place in Technicolor.
    “They’re not too tarty, but . . . they might not be a good idea for the graveside, not when it’s been so wet.”
    My hand flies up to my mouth, another wave of shock washing over me. I’ve been to two of my grandparents’ funerals, have grieved them and then passed through to a wistful kind of acceptance, but this . . . this is outside my remit. Just for a second I think about taking the shoes off, curling up in bed and pretending that none of it ever happened. But I know in my heart it’s not an option.
    Sally is being buried in a church near the family home in Kent, the same church in which she posed for those high-gloss wedding pictures. James drives us there, through relentless gray drizzle. We try out a few other well-worn topics of conversation—why our landlady always wears a sun visor, even in winter, how to persuade my dad to try online dating—but nothing really takes.
    “When did you last see her?” asks James eventually.
    “The last proper time was just before she got married. I told you about it.”
    We’d seen each other at the odd social event, stalked around each other like cats, my pride too hurt to risk moving any closer. I’d seen her at someone’s twenty-fifth, obediently admired the rock that shimmered and sparkled like a strobe light, and felt silently crushed by her brittle, impersonal breeziness. I’d probably been jealous too, truth be told, even though midtwenties felt incredibly young to be tying the knot, especially for someone as free-spirited and mercurial as Sally.
    But then she called me. I remember my body told me what my brain was trying so hard to deny: just hearing her voice triggered a fizzy sort of excitement, a chain of memories like a snatch of bubbles, taking me back to a time when she was the person whose company I craved above all other. I wasn’t a total amnesiac—I still remembered all the hurt she’d caused me—but some stubborn, optimistic part of me wanted to believe that the diseased part of our friendship could be sliced out, like a malignant tumor that’s caught before it’s spread, leaving the part that I’d loved to thrive and grow. Good sense dictated that I play hard to get, but she knew me too