Huddleston Road. John Toomey

into the hallway.

      Lali managed a muted hello and handed Orla the bottle of wine. Taking their coats, Orla called into the living room for Geoff. His mop of gritty blond hair, beginning to whiten and grey, framed his cheerful face, as he reached out for a manly handshake and clapped Vic on the shoulder. ‘Now, how did you fool this beautiful lady into accompanying you?’

      Geoff ’s mild flirtation soothed Lali’s tension, but she remained on Vic’s shoulder for most of the evening. She sipped away quietly on glasses of wine as Vic tried to integrate himself among the guests. On several occasions, Vic discovered Orla beside him, offering crudités, tiny quiche slices, canapés, filled tortilla wraps, or more wine, and softly enquiring how they were doing. She seemed aware of Lali’s discomfort. Vic encouraged Orla to go and enjoy the party herself. Lali’s sole acknowledgement of Orla’s concern was to shift her gaze from whatever absent task it had set itself. Once she smiled, but in a manner that seemed insincere.

      Nervousness. Fear, maybe, came next. An anxiety regarding the unknown came over him – what would she do now? how should he react or intercept? He felt Lali drift off his shoulder, word by word. He could feel the menace of her head beginning to lift, the bravery of inebriation. Before he knew it she was wading into the small crowd of visitors, becoming more loquacious with each step.

      Vic was talking with Geoff, watching her carefully, when she stumbled against a bookcase, trying to squeeze toward the hallway. She bounced off it and put her hand out to steady herself. It worked but as she took hold of some woman’s arm it sent the woman’s drink down the front of her top and caused her to screech. Lali’s apology echoed hollowly below her hysterical laughter. The woman did her best to remain calm. But when Lali saw the look of annoyance on her face, she had what she desired – indignation!

      ‘What’s your fucking problem?’ she snarled. ‘I apologized. It was an accident.’

      ‘My top is ruined,’ the woman began, expecting, surely, to be the aggrieved in this situation, but finding that the Lali was already sky-high on a victim complex.

      Lali leered toward her. ‘It’s just a bit of wine.’

      Vic moved across the room, apace, to lead Lali away before it descended into worse. She shuffled along, with minimal resistance, but kept looking to Vic and then away, toward the woman’s tie-dye wine stain, and back again, in disgust.

      While Lali puffed and sulked in the hall, not sure where to begin her assault but certain that she would, Vic waved Orla away to fetch their coats.

      ‘Be easier if we left, would it?’ Lali challenged, as Orla returned with the coats over her arm.

      ‘I’m not sending you away,’ Orla said, defensively. ‘I thought you might want to.’

      ‘Why? Because you want me to?’

      ‘I asked her to get our coats, Lali. You’ve made an arse of yourself,’ Vic cut in.

      ‘I’ve made an arse of myself?’ she said, stressing the idiom, as if the expression was the essence of a xenophobic ganging-up; the very language they used excluding her, making her feel inept. ‘I’m the asshole?’ Then she turned her attention back toward Orla. ‘It was an accident. They happen. Probably not at parties like these, but they happen all the time. And I apologized, for fuck sake!’

      ‘Calm down,’ Orla said.

      ‘Calm down? Why don’t you calm down, you spoiled bitch!’ Lali snatched her coat and turned for the door.

      Vic called out and walked a few steps in pursuit of her, but she was moving too fast. ‘Lali,’ he shouted after her as she walked out. ‘What do you want me to do here?’ She wasn’t hearing anyone.

      Orla, standing behind him, let an involuntary sigh. Confounded, they both watched as Lali faded away among the dim street lights, passed over the road and flitted in and out between telephone poles and the foliage of thinly erect roadside trees.

      Vic was left embarrassed and angered. And flummoxed. ‘Sorry, Orla,’ he said, again, as Geoff appeared in the doorway behind her, a look of sympathy and understanding on his face. ‘Sorry about that, Geoff. Too much to drink, maybe. I’m going to go.’

      The Sunday came and went. Vic refused to call her. Then Monday arrived and he was distracted by work, purposely leaving his phone in his locker. Out of sight. But still, by the end of the day, there was nothing from Lali, not a missed call or a text message. He became angrier as Monday evening developed but remained steadfast in his refusal to break the deadlock.

      By Tuesday lunchtime he was feeling hurt to think that as easy as that she could walk away and he left school early, for a fictional dentist’s appointment, to travel into Greenwich. He wanted confrontation. Wanted his say.

      Standing as tall and certain as possible, he entered Rococo’s with the possibility of definitive ending on his mind. Donna came to the counter.

      ‘She’s not here,’ Donna began.

      ‘When will she back?’

      ‘I think you’d know that if she wanted you to.’

      ‘So she’s not in today?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked. Donna looked at Vic, pofacedly. ‘We had a fight. I want to talk to her,’ he said.

      ‘I’m sure you do.’

      ‘For Christ’s sake, Donna!’

      ‘She’s not here.’

      He was planted on the path outside when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Aldo had come out after him. ‘We haven’t seen her since early Sunday, Vic. She opened up, made up the week’s roster and called Donna. It happens.’

      ‘Was she upset?’

      ‘She looked rough. But she was okay.’

      ‘Okay, Aldo. Thanks. When she turns up, can you tell her I was looking for her.’

      Over the next two days the stated roughness of Lali’s appearance and Aldo’s ominous declaration that, ‘It happens,’ combined to complicate Vic’s instinctive response to her disappearance. Gradually, concern came to outweigh anger. He left several voice messages on her phone. He texted her a dozen times. If her decision was for them to cease being, he confided to her answering service, then so be it, but he’d like to know that she was okay.

      By Thursday evening he could think of nothing else but Lali, and when her phone didn’t ring out but instead was interrupted by her voice, he was completely at a loss. When she spoke, it was plain and unaffected. Not her, somehow. As if somebody else had come back in her stead, armed only with her accent.

      ‘Are you alright?’ he asked. ‘Of course.’