The Love She Left Behind Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    You’re still on my lips, salt and sour and sweet all at once. I hope you missed your train and he knows what you’ve been doing and the whole world knows. I live for the taste of your cunt.
    Leave him—and the children—and live with me. It’s the only way, you know it is.
    I love you.
    P x
    PS. If he tells you that, he’s a liar.
    Â 
    T HE VACUUM CLEANER was broken. With all Mum’s clothes and bits sorted, Louise had decided to make a start on the house. It was nearly overwhelming, the amount there was to do if she was going to make a proper job of it. She assembled her materials: bucket, bleach, polish, dusters, rolls of paper towels. But the broken vacuum cleaner was a problem. There was no point discussing it with Patrick, or suggesting he fork out for a new one, although he’d have to eventually. She decided to call on the neighbour, Jenny, to see if she minded lending hers for the day. Holly could have done with the fresh air as well, but she refused to come with her. She still looked peaky, so maybe she was better off in the warm, thumbs busy on her phone.
    â€˜I’m just popping out.’
    Patrick was in his study, answering Mia’s questions. Louise had made them both a coffee. There should have been biscuits, but she had eaten them all herself watching TV the night before with Holly. By the look of her, Mia didn’t go in much for biscuits. She even took the mug of coffee gingerly, as though its proffered handle was a mild, surprising insult she was graciously prepared to overlook.
    â€˜Honest toil,’ said Patrick. Louise wasn’t sure if this was getting at her or talking about him and the girl, who sat with her laptop angled on her crossed legs, tapping in notes. She closed the door on them, quickly.
    It was a strange time, she thought, walking up the black unpavemented road to the other house. The countryside, that was strange in itself. Louise couldn’t remember being in the country ever, really, apart from the odd school trip, although there was plenty of countryside around Leeds. Different from this: less something, or more something else—green? Up and down? There was thesea, as well, making it even stranger. She wondered if her mother, a Leeds girl all her life, had loved it. She must have, to have lived here nearly thirty years. Although she had loved Patrick enough to have been happy in a cardboard box. Those had been her exact words, Louise remembered that: her frozen to the stairs, her mum and dad rowing in the lounge, Dad shouting, ‘Where are you going to live?’ and Mum shouting back, ‘What does it matter where we’re living—I’d be happy in a cardboard box!’ Luckily, it had never come to that.
    The neighbour’s house was chasteningly smart, with a gravelled drive and twin bay trees, pruned into lollipops, on either side of the matt, sage-painted front door. Jenny answered the bell, harried and pleasant and less forbidding than her paintwork.
    â€˜Oh, Sara’s daughter—of course, come in!’
    Sara. With the long ‘a’, like ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’. Louise never called Mum that, to herself. Sara was Patrick’s invention; he had hated Sally and changed it. Since Louise had been here, she’d had to get used to attaching the other name to her mother, and to hearing herself say it, just to be understood. Auntie B had always stuck to calling Mum Sally, to make a point.
    Louise, apologising for the intrusion, explained about the hoover. Jenny insisted she come in. Louise felt a right lump in that lovely house. Even by her standards, it was well looked after, and the furniture was gorgeous. Exactly the sort of thing she might have had herself if she’d been able to afford it, although she would have gone for a bit more colour than the chilly whites and beiges and greys that toned in so well with Jenny’s thick ash hair and layered jumpers. Even the