The Last Time I Saw You by Eleanor Moran Read Free Book Online Page A

it out at a moment’s notice.
    I head for the garden, suddenly struggling to get enough air into my lungs. There are a few people milling around on the lawn, and I back away, unable to endure any more constipated conversation. I inch my way around the side of the house, hoping to find somewhere to hide.
    There is William. He’s holding his phone, just looking at the screen, a lit cigarette in his other hand. He takes a deep drag on it, then spots me.
    “I’m sorry I—”
    “No, please don’t apologize,” he says, guiltily dropping it and grinding it into the ground before picking it up and neatly secreting in the packet. “So sorry, disgusting habit. I don’t think we’ve met.”
    It is a horrible habit, and oddly nihilistic at a funeral. Sally always loved her Marlboro Lights, but even she, I would have thought, would have given them up by now. I chide myself for being so judgmental: surely he’s entitled to whatever props he needs to get him through today?
    “I’m Olivia.”
    I don’t know whether it’s my imagination, but I feel like it shakes him.
    “You’re Olivia?”
    “Yes,” I say, self-conscious. What did she say? If she told him that I pleaded with her not to marry him, he’ll surely want me seen off the premises.
    “You’re Olivia!” he says again, smiling. I can’t quite work out if this one reaches his eyes. “The card you sent when Madeline was born had pride of place on our mantelpiece.”
    “Really?” I say, trying to keep the shock from my voice. It was the last time I tried to breach the gap—stupidly, naively hopeful that giving birth would have transformed Sally into some kind of beatific madonna, her hard edges planed off and replaced by something yielding and soft. In a moment of madness I decided to write a poem, something I used to love doing at university, then felt doubly humiliated when the only response was stony silence.
    “Oh yes. It was never a case of out of sight, out of mind. She was terribly cast down when you couldn’t come to the wedding.”
    Is it remotely possible that my invitation got lost in the post? Of course not: I hate that Sally’s still making me question my own knowing, even in death. I consider William, my heart thumping inside my chest, trying to work out how to pick my way through the marshy ground of our conversation. It’s funny—looking at him now I realize I was both right and wrong when I made my sharp, bruised little assumptions on the basis of those wedding pictures. I spotted that honesty in the joy that he exuded, but I’d assumed it was puppyish, that Sally had picked up yet another acolyte. There’s a strength about him I couldn’t have divined, a surety about his presence that’s far more fundamental than that horrible sense of entitlement that’s drummed into public schoolboys as their birthright. He’s even taller than he looked—of course, now I think about it, Sally would inevitably have worn the kind of heels that made walkingup the aisle as treacherous as an ice rink—with a comforting kind of solidity to his body. I can’t imagine he’s packing a six pack under the charcoal suit that he wears like a second skin, but his bulkiness adds to that sense of presence. It’s his eyes that I like most. They’re soft and dark—deep set, with a kindness about them that isn’t extinguished by the pain that they radiate.
    “So you know who I am?” I ask, hesitant.
    “Know who you are? Madeline’s middle name is Olivia.” I can feel the blood draining from my face. I remember her, that very first night. “O-liv-ia,” she said, like she’d never heard anything more ridiculous. “She very much regretted you drifting apart.”
    Drifting: it sounds so gentle, so dreamy, so unlike the Sally I knew. I’m falling, losing my footing in the chasm between the girl I knew and the woman he describes.
    “Yes, me too,” I say, the words as dry as sawdust in my mouth. I should go: I should go before my anger starts to spit and