The Last Time I Saw You - Couverture souple

Tuesday’s not the kind of day you expect your life to change for ever. That feels like a job for Friday, or Saturday – a flashier, shinier day that has surprise sprinkled over its surface like hundreds and thousands.

This particular Tuesday I’m doing the end of the day soft-shoe shuffle, glancing between the clock, my computer screen and my bat-shit scary boss Mary, trying to work out which will give way first. It’s a huge, retro-looking wall clock, with thick black hands that are currently crawling sluggishly towards six thirty. The wall behind it is papered with pastel pink roses, and the room is peppered with big velvet sofas that are designed to encourage the kind of impromptu brainstorms and shared confidences that never quite seem to happen. Mary presides over the room from her huge glass desk at the top, mistress of all she surveys. It’s like a twisted sort of nursery – soft on the outside, with an underlying air of menace.

I’m working on a campaign for supermarket organics, but even if my computer hasn’t turned off yet, my brain certainly has. I want to get home – I’m cooking dinner for James before I have to go out again – but I don’t want Mary to think I’m a slacker. Better to sit here playing with the same sentence for half an hour than appear half-hearted.

Mungo, my optimistically titled ‘assistant’, has no such compunction. He came in on work experience, bestowed by Mary, his godmother, and never left. Right now he’s already standing up, shoving a musty old hardback into his leather satchel and snapping off his monitor without so much as a backward glance in my direction. I take an unattractively loud slurp of water, but he fails to notice, just as he fails to notice every command or plea I throw his way: good cop doesn’t work, bad cop doesn’t work, the only authority this boy might possibly deign to respect is Martin Amis or Salman Rushdie, fellow Oxford graduates all. He styles himself as some kind of literary giant in waiting, all long scarves and corduroy jackets, with lustrous auburn hair that falls around his face like plush velvet drapes.

"Mungo," I call out. "Before you go, how are you getting on with that research on the level of consumer spending?"

A fleeting look of panic crosses his face, like he’s spotted a herd of elephants stampeding towards him through the long grass, but then he remembers it’s only me.

"It’s all in hand," he says glibly.

"I need an ETA," I snap, before losing heart. "Or at least a rough idea of when I might expect it," I add, lamely.

"Tomorrow, latest," he says, already halfway out of the door, "you have my solemn word."

I suppose it’s not surprising he’s indifferent. He’s stayed on as an intern, unpaid by anyone but the relentlessly generous bank of Mum and Dad, which is pretty much the only way to get into a job like this these days. It’s lucky for me that I started more than a decade ago, as my dad’s ingrained frugality and sense of right and wrong would have afforded me about three days max. I came in as a bright-eyed graduate trainee, as relentlessly keen as Maria taking up residence with the Von Trapps, and, much like her, soon got the corners knocked off me. Up until then, hard work and diligence had got me through. I’d smugly collected my first class degree, then barely broken a sweat when I got my prestigious traineeship. This side of life – the ticking of boxes, the academic achievements – was easy for me; it was the other side, the messy business of other people, that I found so difficult to wrangle.

I soon discovered that achievement in the big wide world was a complicated two-step between the two: 30 per cent inspiration, 70 per cent the ability to sell that inspiration as genius, and pull your genius out of exactly the right make and model of handbag. Luckily Mary saw something in me, didn’t dismiss me as the gauche goody-two-shoes I was, and allowed me to carve out a niche for myself. It’s not a comfy nook, it’s more a thin, precarious shelf, but I know how to keep my balance and, when it’s going well, I love my work. Well, sort of – I definitely like it. I’m incredibly lucky that I get paid to make things up, it’s just that I’m not sure that this is what I’d choose to make up given the choice. My imposter’s handbag currently contains the scratchy beginnings of a short story I’d like to enter for a magazine competition. I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to finish it – I’ve rewritten the opening lines so many times that it’s started to read like Greek.

It’s nearly an hour later, and Mary’s still showing absolutely no sign of leaving, despite the two young children she’s got stowed at home with the nanny. Her perfect nails are tip-tapping a tattoo on her keyboard, her eyes scanning the room at regular intervals. She’s mid-forties at least but you’d never guess it: time hung up his arrows and admitted defeat long ago. Any greys are disguised by discreet, expensive blond highlights and her outfits are so outrageously high fashion that the term "age appropriate" seems laughable.

I look at the picture of a sad-looking pig on my computer screen, oinking out a plea to harassed shoppers to save him from a life lived in a tiny pen, and just for a second he feels like my brother. Mary’s engrossed in a phone call, which seems like the perfect moment to make a run for it. The only other person left is Amy, a junior copywriter a few years younger than me who sits on the desk behind. She’s wearing a T-shirt for some obscure Indie band, her wild torrent of blond hair caught up in something that looks suspiciously like a bulldog clip, her bitten-down nails painted with tiny Union Jacks. It all gives her the kind of effortless Hoxton cool that should make her desperately annoying, but she’s too sweet to dislike. She’s poring over a folder of notes, but she looks up when she spots me shaking the ironic Reykjavik snowstorm that sits on her desk.

"You off? I was going to ask you if you fancied a glass of wine over the road when Mary’s gone."

At roughly midnight, I think, looking at the expression of grim determination on Mary’s face as she stares down her screen, but I don’t depress Amy by pointing it out.

"I’d love to, but I’ve got to go home and then go out."

It sounds stupid when I say it: I should just go straight out, but I need my fix of James to propel me into the night.

"We’ve got to go and have a proper boozy one soon."

"Soon," I promise emphatically, even though neither of us really believe me. I feel a stab of guilt – I like Amy, I really do, but I’m not very good at this stuff. What’s that phrase? Women beware women. I know in my head that it’s not true, but in my heart there’s still a skulking fear that it is.

"Livvy," calls Mary, as I push open the door.

"Yes?" I say, swivelling round. She’s off the phone now, her eyes fixed on me, her expression cold and blank. She pauses for what feels like an eternity: it’s stupid, but my heart starts to race, the handle suddenly clammy to my touch.

"See you tomorrow," she says, bestowing a smile.

Our flat – located to the left of Kennington tube, perched above an electrical shop – is most definitely shabby. Not shabby chic, just shabby, but it’s homely, and to me that’s more important. I also think it’s hard to make a home out of one person, so, whilst it means that I’m fighting my way past James’s squash racket and piles of my dog-eared paperbacks to get to the cooker, I don’t really mind.

The grease-spattered kitchen clock is edging towards 7.55, and there’s still no sign of him. The thing is, whilst he might burst through the door at any second, he might just as well have forgotten what we arranged – got distracted by work, or worse. I try to pretend that I’m cool and unconcerned, stirring the Thai chicken curry that I’ve rustled up and singing along, loudly and tunelessly to the Carpenters, who are blasting out of the tinny transistor radio on the kitchen counter. I don’t even hear him come in.

"Close to you-oo," he harmonises, coming up behind me and snapping it off.

"I was listening to that!"

"I know. I’m saving you from yourself."

He’s towering over me, ruddy and damp from the gym, smelling not of sweat or of aftershave, but of a smell peculiar to him. He’s gingery-blond, with a boyish lankiness that suits the irrepressibility of his personality. He’s bendy and springy and unstoppable, constantly in motion, and yes, before you ask, I’m more than a little bit in love with him. I always have been, ever since he walked into my A-level politics class, his timing impeccable: my parents were in the middle of their gruesome separation and I was ripe for distraction.

James was an army brat, the youngest of three boys, and the family had recently been transported to Northwood, the boring north London suburb we lived in, which was dominated by the naval base. A life spent being uprooted from place after place could go two ways. For James, rather than making him shy and mistrustful, it had given him the cast iron certainty that he could walk into any situation and charm his way to the very heart of it. It wasn’t oiliness or manipulation, it was pure self-belief combined with an innate knowledge that he was attractive.

It was that age and stage where boys and girls first peek over the barricades and try out being "friends" – a funny old version of friendship in which you can snog furiously at a party one night and go back to being mates the very next day. Or at least other people could do that. James and I had one such night at school, an hour spent kissing in the boys’ cloakroom during the first-year Christmas prom – it was brief and clumsy and awkward, and yet I did nothing but daydream about it for months, staring wistfully through my clumsily applied eye make-up and playing "Wuthering Heights" on loop, whilst he remained utterly oblivious. I hoped with every fibre of my being that he’d come back to me, that I’d be able to prove myself second time around, but he’d already moved on, climbed back aboard the romantic merry-go-round and recast me as his long-lost sister. That’s not strictly true, there was one more time but now – now is not the time to think about it. Sally whispers across my consciousness but I push her away. Perhaps it’s the ferocity with which I suppress her which makes hercontinue to surge up, like those schlocky horror films where the hero tries more and more elaborate methods to destroy the invincible slasher.

PRAISE FOR THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU:

"This compelling story of a troubled woman whose actions powerfully affect those closest to her will attract fans of Gillian Flynn's work. It may also appeal to readers who appreciate stories of women's relationships." —Library Journal

"Eleanor Moran is a stunningly good writer. Her prose is a joy to read, it wraps you up and draws you in and you daren’t take your eyes off the page for fear of being wrenched out of her gripping narrative . . . An excellent read on every level." —Santa Montefiore, author of The House by the Sea

"You’ll be transported by this gripping tale, so don’t miss it!" —Cosmopolitan UK

"Unputdownable." —Jenny Colgan

"Gripping, emotional—looks at how losing a friend can be worse than losing a lover." —Daisy Goodwin, author of My Last Duchess