The Last Time I Saw You by Eleanor Moran

sees these,” she says, shoving the photos deep in the envelope, and wiping down the table.
    He is, he most definitely is, but I don’t think it’s ever been a grand passion, more a comfortable pair of slipper socks. Maybe that’s what she needs, after the simmering, silent resentment of our parents’ marriage, but I know for me it would never be enough—although life would probably be simpler if it was. I think fleetingly of William, his face when he talked about Sally. Is there really a person for everyone? I hope so. But what happens if your person is your person, but you don’t happen to be theirs? Now it’s James I think of, even though I was trying with all my might not to.
    Once it gets to nine thirty I can see Jules swallowing down the yawns of a person who hasn’t had more than three hours’ sleep on the trot for four months. I’m making my excuses, shrugging my coat on, when the doorbell goes.
    Mom comes sweeping into the kitchen, a red velvet shawl flung around her shoulders, lips painted a similar shade, white-blond hair blown about by the windy night. She’s not glamorous per se, but she’s got enormous presence.
    “All the girls together! What a treat. I’ll have a glass of red please, Julia.”
    Jules waggles the bottle at me and I shrug my assent. She puts on the kettle for a peppermint tea, politely stifling another gigantic yawn.
    “I’m sorry to be so late. I was at my Zumba class, and it ran on. It’s so freeing! I really think it would do you good, Livvy, get you out of your head and into your body.”
    “I’m quite happy with yoga, Mom.”
    “But darling it’s so controlled. The liberation of Zumba, I can hardly put it into words . . .”
    “So you were Zumba-ing until nine?” I say.
    “No, no. I went for a bite to eat afterward, the most delicious tor-tel-loni ,” she says, adopting a ridiculous Italian accent, “smothered in the most exquisite pes-to . Meals like that make you glad to be alive.”
    Jules and I roll our eyes, very very slightly. We’re good like that; we can communicate, at least about our parents, with a mere tremor.
    “Who’d you go with, Mom?” she asks. “Was it a class thing?”
    “In a sense. Kevin is in the class.” Oh God, here we go. “Don’t give me that owlish look, Livvy, Kevin’s just a friend. How’s your electronic dating going anyway? You haven’t told me anything for weeks.”
    “Yeah, what’s going on?” asks Jules. “And also, have you sent your story in?”
    Mom looks at her questioningly. “She’s been working on this short story for a competition. It’s brilliant, of course, but she’s too much of a bloody perfectionist—”
    I stop her midflow.
    “It’s only okay, and anyway it’s not finished. To be honest, I haven’t been able to think about anything very much the last couple of weeks.”
    “Oh darling,” says Mom, coming over and enveloping me in a hug. The smell of her—Pears soap with an underlying hint of garlic—is familiar and comforting. “I was just waiting for the right moment to ask.”
    So I try and describe it, all over again, finding it even harder than I did with Jules. “It was just so sad,” I say,leaning back into her, grateful to stop searching for words that won’t come to me. She holds me close, and I sink into that familiar breast.
    “We just can’t know . . .” she says, rocking me a little.
    “Can’t know?”
    “The mysteries of the universe. When our time is.”
    I pull away.
    “How can it possibly have been her time? She’s got—she had”—I correct myself, anger increasing exponentially—“a seven-year-old child. She was only thirty-five!”
    Mom gives me the sage nod of a wise elder in a remote African village.
    “Precisely. There’s no logic to it, and yet in some cosmic sense there must be.”
    I stand up, glowering at her.
    “So here’s your Kindle!” says Jules, brightly.
    I treat myself to a cab home, still fuming. How could she be so insensitive?