‘Yes, sorry.’ Liv tugged the phone out of her pocket and saw Jake was calling. She tucked her chin into her neck. ‘Hi, yes, I’m still at work,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be half an hour or so… Okay, I hadn’t forgotten… bye.’ Liv turned off her phone. ‘Sorry, my son’s bringing a new girlfriend home and I said I’d make a cake for tea. I’ll get one from Aldi instead.’
‘Really? I do recommend Bentley and White. Their patisserie is divine.’
‘Oh? Thanks.’ Liv had no intention of visiting the extortionately priced shop. ‘The window displays are gorgeous.’
An awkward silence fell between them.
Liv had an urge to apologize, but Essie waved her hand. ‘That is all,’ she said.
Liv’s legs shook as she left the room. Thank goodness she still had her job, at least for the moment. She took a few minutes to gather together her cloths and cleaning solutions, then tugged the vacuum cleaner back into the store cupboard. When she’d finished, she pulled on her scuffed yellow Converse. ‘Have a good evening,’ she shouted out to Essie.
Strangely, the writing door was wide open. There was no reply.
Liv padded towards it to say goodbye properly, but Essie’s chair was vacant and pushed up to her desk.
‘Essie,’ she called out, frowning as she moved from room to room. She wanted to feel the air was clear between them before she left for the weekend. However, all the rooms were unoccupied. The author was nowhere to be seen.
‘Essie?’ Liv whispered, as she pirouetted alone in the empty writing room. ‘Where the hell are you?’
But it was no use. The author was gone.
Chapter 2
Cake in the Bath
Liv hurriedly bought a cake from Aldi and listened to the end ofFew and Far Betweenas she jogged across the city, but her mind was firmly set on Essie. The author had pulled that vanishing trick a few times before. One minute she sat in her writing room scribbling away, and the next she disappeared like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. It was at odds with her reclusive behaviour, and Liv wondered if she went to visit a neighbour or run an errand. She felt like it wasn’t her place to ask.
By the time she reached home her knuckles glowed cherry red from carrying the cake in the chilly late April weather. Liv inhaled a few last seconds of calm before opening her front door.
Entering the Greens’ redbrick terraced house was like wandering into an arcade. Lights were on in every room, screens blaring and music blasting. Johnny was eighteen and attended a local sixth form college, and Mack was twenty and home from university for Easter. They were both six feet tall and bounded rather than walked, making vases wobble and floorboards groan. No matter how many times Liv and Jake tidied up after them, their bedrooms resembled the aftermath of a hurricane.
After the stress of her conversation with Essie, Liv craved normality and a laugh over the lasagne Jake had said he’d make. She hoped Johnny’s new girlfriend being present would stave off the constant talk about football around the dinner table.
She called out a quick, ‘Hi, I’m back,’ before kicking off her shoes and placing the cake on the radiator shelf. ‘Bentley and White?’ she muttered to herself and laughed. ‘As if.’
Upstairs, she slipped into a shapeless black dress she’d had for years and kept on her socks. She bought them in shades of pink so they didn’t get mixed up with the boys’ pairs.
She cleaned her teeth and gave her hair a quick ruffle in the bathroom mirror. She’d recently cut it herself to save on salon costs and had taken a slice out of her right eyebrow. Johnny had laughed and called her edgy. Her butterscotch layers were now shaggily uneven, though her contrasting dark roots made her sage eyes appear greener.
Back downstairs, Liv found Johnny slumped at the dining table flicking through one of his dad’s film magazines so roughly he almost ripped Keanu Reeves’s face. When she squeezed his shoulder to say hi, he grunted without looking up.
Jake stood behind the kitchen island, wearing Liv’s pink apron with KEEP IT CLEAN printed on the front. The sight of his biceps flexing while he buttered bread could still make her belly flip, though the tawny curly hair she’d fallen in love with over twenty years ago was now cropped and greying. She tried to plant a kiss on his cheek, but they clumsily butted foreheads when he turned to greet her.
‘You’re here,’ he said with mock surprise. ‘I thought you’d been kidnapped.’
Liv broke off a piece of bread and popped it in her mouth. ‘Essie wanted to chat to me about a book review.’
‘Hmm,’ Jake said flatly. He wasn’t impressed by the kind of books Essie wrote. His family’s business, Paperpress, specialized in bookbinding, typesetting and printing textbooks with a particular focus on sports, politics and local history. He preferred to read biographies and journalistic non-fiction over novels. He called Essie’s novelsmade-up stories.
That’s what fiction is, Liv always wanted to retort, though never said anything back.
An Italian recipe book lay open on the worktop, but there were no pasta sheets or tomatoes next to it. ‘Aren’t we having lasagne?’ she said.
‘Beans on toast is quicker. Mack’s playing football with his mates, so it’s just us three eating.’
‘Oh.’ Liv tried to mask her disappointment. Jake’s girlfriend mustn’t be coming anymore. Her shoulders drooped as her vision of a fun, chatty evening evaporated. ‘Um, three?’
Her husband mouthed,They broke up, before nodding towards Johnny.
