All That I Leave Behind by Alison Walsh

because one of her boss Paddy’s clients owned a place on Fitzwilliam Square. She’d been desperate, she knew, to ‘get on’. And because she didn’t resemble the back of a bus and had worked hard on her manners, she’d succeeded. Except she knew that she didn’t like the word now, ‘acquaintances’. It was a lonely kind of a word. And she was a lonely kind of a person.
    ***
    Mary-Pat was the first to speak. ‘Very nice.’ She looked as if she’d eaten something unpleasant, her face screwed up and her mouth twisted. ‘Looks expensive anyway.’
    There was a silence and Rosie’s face fell, her arms dropping to her sides. She looked all of nine again, in spite of her finery. For a moment, none of them said anything. There was a stillness in the room and June willed herself to speak, to open her mouth and say something, anything. She could see that Melissa’s fists were balled up, the knuckles white as she bit her lip. Oh, Mary-Pat, June thought, why on earth do you have to be such a bitch? And then she found her voice, rushing forward and pulling Rosie into a tight hug. ‘Rosie, you look beautiful, magnificent, utterly fabulous,’ and the compliments were so effusive, Rosie burst out laughing, while June pushed her away again to get a really good look at her. ‘Look at you. My baby sister’s all grown up.’ She felt Rosie’s bones under her hands, like a little bird’s, and then Rosie went a bit grey and her breath began to come in short puffs. ‘Do you need your inhaler?’
    Rosie nodded, her cheeks flushed, her breath beginning to catch. ‘It’s all the excitement, I just …’
    ‘Don’t say another word,’ June said, motioning for Melissa to fetch Rosie’s handbag. ‘Just take a couple of puffs and relax.’ And she threw Mary-Pat a look over her shoulder. If you had been a bit nicer, the look said, this might not have happened. Wait till I talk to you later. But when she turned around, she noticed that Mary-Pat had tears in her eyes.
    By the time June arrived home, she felt so exhausted she could just have gone to sleep in the car. She pulled into the gate and up the driveway, gravel crunching under the wheels of the Land Rover, and when she parked, the dulcet tones of Lyric FM fading, she sat there for a few moments, taking in the silence. She loved this view of the house, the bright yellow front door in the lovely Victorian porch, the two stained glass windows on either side, the bay window above it set into the red-shingled eaves: Georgia’s room. The estate agent had called it ‘a restoration treasure’, which had been shorthand for a complete mess, but June had loved it the first time she’d set eyes on it. It had been owned by a vicar, and the garden was lovely, and even if the rooms had been a little shabby, they’d also been beautiful, with their lovely high ceilings. It was large and gracious and restful – just like the life June had longed to have ever since she was a little girl. And now, she had it.
    She sighed and climbed down from the Land Rover, opening the front door, popping her keys and bag on the eighteenth-century oak hall table, and went straight into the kitchen, where she opened the fridge and examined the contents before pulling out a plate of cold chicken, to which she added a large dollop of mayonnaise – the full-fat stuff that she kept hidden at the back of the fridge. There were a couple of cold sausages there, too, so she helped herself to them, starting to eat before she got to the kitchen table, plonking the plate down, fingers already greasy as she shoved the food into her mouth, chewing it quickly and then swallowing before sinking her teeth into the next mouthful. She wolfed it down, that was the expression, like a hungry dog and when she’d finished, licking the grease off her lips, she felt a bit sick. And guilty, and all of the other emotions she felt when she knew she’d failed to control herself. She put the plate into the dishwasher so Gerry