Liane decided to walk home – home home, as she’d started thinking of it – from the station. Usually she’d get a taxi or her mum would pick her up, but it was actually a lovely autumnal day, sunny and brisk, and walking would take fifteen minutes longer than driving so it was absolutely preferable.
She’d hadn’t really expected anything to have changed since she’d only left the previous month, but it had. New trees had been planted in front of the station. Small ones, saplings. She walked round the huge roundabout and along the main road, trying to work out how many times she’d done this walk in her life. To school, to the library, to McDonald’s to meet friends, to the station to get out of there. She couldn’t begin to imagine. And she couldn’t believe she was back so soon – she hadn’t planned to come back until Christmas, put off by the prospect of the three-hour train journey, and she hadn’t even been sure about Christmas. But her mum was having ‘a thing’ and insisted she be there.
She turned right at the dry cleaners, which had closed just before she’d left, but was actually boarded up now. Her mum wouldn’t like that, particularly not tonight with people coming round. Liane was sure she would have contacted the estate agents to try to get the boards removed. She rolled her eyes, even though there was no one to see her.
She stopped at the gate and looked up at the house. At the tiny balcony off her bedroom, where she’d spent so long sitting and looking down at the street and thinking about leaving. For as long as she could remember. Since before she even had an idea of where she might like to go, or be able to go.
Her mum’s car wasn’t on the drive, so Liane’s shoulders weren’t quite as tense as they could have been, but she still had to take a big breath before opening the front door. The hall smelled the same: furniture wax and money. She dropped her keys in the glass bowl on the round ‘telephone table’ and took her bag up to her room, dropping it on the bed before crossing to the window with the balcony. She pulled, but it didn’t open. She paused a second, thinking she’d just forgotten exactly how to open it, but no. It was locked. It had never been locked, not for as long as she could remember. She rested her head on the cool glass instead and looked at Zack’s house opposite. His balcony with its curled wrought iron, unlike the plain white wood of hers. And the tree in the garden had already grown slightly taller than it. If he was still there, he’d have to hold the branches out of the way to look across at her. But it didn’t matter. Because he wasn’t there.
She unpacked her bag and lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. She felt heavier already and she’d only been home five minutes. She took out her phone and texted the girls’ group chat.
‘Home. I’m so cold and all alone.’
‘Babe,’ Issey replied instantly. ‘Is it “Take That lyrics” bad?’
‘Always,’ Liane said.
‘You mean Sure,’ Issey replied.
‘At least you’re not Back for Good,’ Ella posted and Liane laughed out loud. That was a very good point.
Issey: ‘Ella’s right. Have a little Patience.’
Ella: ‘How’s your mum?’
Liane: ‘Not home yet. Just me here.’
Issey: ‘So you can Do What You Like?’
Liane: ‘I think it’s actually Do What U Like. But yes.’
Lou: ‘Aren’t you embarrassed to know that?’
Liane: ‘Nope. What are you all doing?’
Issey: ‘Watching Scandal.’
Liane: ‘NOT WITHOUT ME’
Lou: ‘We wouldn’t dare. Paige is making a veggie curry.’
Issey: ‘It smells fucking amazing.’
Liane: ‘I can’t believe I’m missing it.’
Issey: ‘I bet we can get her to make another.’
Paige: ‘As long as you’re all suitably impressed with this one. I’m slaving over a hot stove here!’
Issey: ‘And we love you for it!’
Ella: ‘Will you be OK?’
Liane: ‘Yeah. I’ll be fine. It’s only a couple of days, like you said. I Can Make It, I know I can.’
Issey: ‘Fuck. Deep cut.’
Lou: ‘We’re here for you. Never Forget.’
Liane: ‘Lou! Did you google Take That songs?’
Lou: ‘Might’ve.’
Liane: ‘I appreciate it.’
After letting the girls go, she scrolled Twitter for a while, before heading downstairs to make herself a drink. The kitchen was pristine as always. She made a coffee and turned the TV on in the adjoining room. They used to call it the family room until her dad left. Then her mum started calling it the snug and Liane thought of it as the TV room.
She flicked pointlessly through the channels, stopping to watch a couple of videos on the music channel and a bit of a Grand Designs repeat, before getting up again. The house was too quiet. It had always been too quiet. She wondered about texting her mum to tell her she was home, but decided against it. She made herself a sandwich, ate it on her bed, showered, and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Zack.
She’d spent so long thinking she was in love with him. She’d told herself she was. She’d thought about telling him so many times. She’d acted it out in her head: what she’d say, how he’d respond, what they’d do about telling his girlfriend. His girlfriend who Liane also really liked. But they’d only ever been friends. And she wasn’t sure now if she’d ever been in love with him. But she really missed having him as a friend.
‘What time did you get back?’ Liane asked her mum at breakfast. She was sitting at the dining table with a newspaper in one hand and an apple in the other, a piece of cheese on the side plate in front of her, next to a cup of black coffee.
Her mum glanced up briefly before looking back at the paper. ‘About eleven, I think. I told you I was at Mo’s gallery opening.’
She hadn’t. Liane loved Mo; she would have remembered. She might have wanted to go, even. Maybe.
Liane ate her own toast and drank her tea while her mum finished her apple and cheese and coffee and paper and only then looked over at Liane.
‘Any news?’
‘About what?’
Her mum sighed as if Liane was being deliberately dense. ‘University? Your courses? Your friends? Your job?’
‘It’s all good,’ Liane said. ‘Not much to report. We’ve really only just got started.’
‘The house is comfortable?’
‘It’s great,’ Liane said, smiling at the thought of the girls. ‘The other girls are great. I think we’re going to have fun.’
‘Not too much fun,’ her mum said, as Liane should have known she would.
‘Perish the thought,’ Liane said.
Her mum raised one eyebrow. ‘So. This evening. I think we have about forty people coming.’
‘Here?’
‘Of course. It may be more. Jackson had a couple of investors he was talking to. But it certainly shouldn’t be more than fifty. The caterers will be here by six.’
‘Right,’ Liane said. ‘So … what’s it for?’
‘I told you,’ her mum said briskly. ‘The new gallery.’
‘You and Jackson?’
‘You’re opening a gallery? Together?’
‘Hoping to, yes. Assuming we can get enough investment.’
‘And I’m here because …’ She tipped her head on one side.
‘Because you’re my daughter.’
Because I’m Charles Coonce’s daughter, more like, Liane thought, but didn’t say. She’d got used to these so-called parties when her dad was still at home, but it was new for her mum to be throwing one. And it would probably be all the same people, having all the same conversations. Wanting to tell her how beautiful and charming and poised her mum was. How they’d been sorry to hear about her dad, as if he was dead. Her mum had worked alongside her dad at their gallery – Liane had always thought of it as their gallery, but from the moment divorce had first been mentioned, it had become his gallery – and was now apparently desperate to establish a gallery of her own. Liane didn’t care. She didn’t care that her mum had been pushed out of the Coonce Gallery. Didn’t care that she might start a new gallery with her friend (or boyfriend, she didn’t care about that either), Jackson. Didn’t care that her dad had sent money for university, but hadn’t actually called. She didn’t care about any of it.
For years now, she’d only cared about Zack. But he was gone. And he wasn’t coming back.
‘Can you take the coats and get people drinks?’ Liane’s mum said that evening as they waited for the guests to arrive. She was standing at the kitchen counter, rearranging the canapés.
‘Seriously?’ Liane said.
‘You know what you need to do, Liane. I don’t have time for this.’
Liane stalked out of the room, almost slamming the door behind her, but catching it with her foot at the last minute. It had a glass panel and if it smashed, the evening would be ruined and her mother would never recover.
She ran upstairs, patted water on her face, stared at herself in the mirror and then sat on the loo and texted Issey. ‘I am staff tonight. It’s just like being at work, but I don’t get paid. Not even in dented tins.’
‘But you can drink, right?’ Issey replied immediately.
Liane grinned at the phone. ‘Right.’
‘And your mum buys good stuff, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Get hammered then.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Liane replied.
She stood up and reapplied her scarlet lipstick. Her mum had suggested something more subtle, but there was no way she was tackling this evening without armour lips. She actually felt better already, just from talking to Issey, knowing that she had another life away from her mother, away from this house. That’s what Zack had been for a while – an escape. But now she actually had escaped. She needed to remember that.
She batted her eyes at herself in the mirror, pulled the neckline of her little black dress a little lower and headed downstairs.