All That I Leave Behind by Alison Walsh Page A

wouldn’t notice it. He didn’t like to see her like this. It upset him.
    She jumped when she heard a little cough behind her. ‘Oh,God, India, you gave me such a fright.’ She looked guilty. ‘I didn’t see you there.’
    India grunted and continued to stare at her phone and June had to resist the urge to yell at her. She hated that bloody mobile. All India did was take endless selfies on it and text nonstop. June didn’t know what on earth she found to say on it – could she not speak to her friends the way June had at the same age?
    ‘I was at Rosie’s dress fitting,’ June said, trying to make a bit of conversation.
    India looked up from the phone and her features softened. ‘Did she look amazing?’
    ‘She did. You’ll look like that one day.’
    India rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘Not if I can help it.’
    ‘Oh, why not – isn’t it every girl’s dream to find Mr Right?’ June smiled, taking in her daughter’s lovely fair features, her bright blue eyes – when she was a baby, she’d looked like a doll, the kind you’d find in an antique toy shop. Even now, with her skin a bit spotty and her hair greasy, she had a freshness to her, a bloom.
    ‘Yeah, right,’ India said, curling her lip in distaste, ‘like we have nothing else to be doing, like educating ourselves or getting careers – important stuff.’
    ‘Oh, right.’ June felt hurt, catching the unspoken bit – ‘not like you’, thinking of how carefully she’d looked for Mr Right. How much thought she’d put into it, determined not to settle for the first man who came along. Determined not to find herself with another Daddy.
    She was about to say something else, when India got up from her seat. ‘Better go and do some study. By the way, there’s a gaff on in Alice’s on Saturday – can I go?’
    June winced at the word. ‘Gaff’. It sounded so … unpolished. ‘No, I don’t think so, India, you have a flute recital the following Wednesday.’
    ‘Please, Mum. If I go, I’ll practise all day Sunday.’
    June sighed. ‘I’ll ask Dad – OK?’
    ‘He always says no.’ India was beginning to whine.
    ‘Well, no means no then.’
    ‘I’m nearly fifteen, not five,’ India blustered.
    ‘I know, India, but we’re still your parents and—’
    India swore under her breath and stomped out of the kitchen. June closed her eyes for a second. Why did everything have to be so difficult?
    ‘June, is that you?’ Gerry’s voice wafted down from the landing. He sounded like a small child sometimes, June thought, wondering if he’d heard the clunk of the fridge door closing, the exchange with India. He had the hearing of a greyhound.
    ‘Coming now, love,’ June yelled up the stairs.
    ‘
The Apprentice
is on,’ he yelled back. He liked to watch it live and got annoyed she didn’t watch it with him, and even more annoyed if there were any interruptions. She was fed up telling him that he could pause live TV with the clicker. ‘Coming,’ she called, putting on her ‘face’, as she called it, that expression that she’d practised for so long she’d forgotten it wasn’t natural. A half-smile, a slight lift of the eyebrow.
    He was watching the programme when she padded across to the bed, the TV remote balanced on his tummy, which June noticed was a bit bigger than usual, a round dome under the thickly padded duvet. She’d have to put him on the Atkins again. The two of them: one was as bad as the other with all the monitoring and controlling. It wasn’t like that at the beginning. At the beginning, they’d had so much fun. Now, everything was just … work.
    He lifted the duvet and patted the empty spot beside him without looking up at her. She slid underneath and tucked her head onto his shoulder, and he rested a hand on her stomach, under her cream camisole. ‘You smell nice.’ His voice was a low rumble in his chest, but his breath smelled of whiskey. Surely it was a bit early in the week for that – he only ever