The First Time Lauren Pailing Died. Alyson Rudd

two women who had walked into the hall.

      ‘Can we have this one, please?’ said the man, whose name was Luke, as he ambled upstairs.

      The women tutted and fussed, apologised for Luke’s behaviour, made her a mug of tea and quizzed her about every inch of her life story without seeming nosy at all.

      ‘We share the big double bedroom at the front,’ one of the girls, Kat, said as the other girl, Amy, nodded. They went silent then, looking at Lauren for signs of disgust or discomfort.

      Lauren took it as a cue to ask questions about the household. Were there other couples? What jobs did they have? How long had they lived there?

      They drank more tea, laughed a good deal, and then Luke appeared, fully dressed, his hair damp from the shower.

      ‘Have they done a character assassination on me?’ he asked.

      ‘You are Luke and you are twenty-five,’ Lauren said, ‘and you are a social worker and do more good for the world than all the people Kat and Amy know put together but you never, ever put food back in the fridge.’

      Luke pouted and Lauren felt herself fall in love right there and then, but she had not asked Kat and Amy if Luke was single, or if they would hate her to be in love with him, or even if everyone fell in love with him. I’ll find out soon enough, she thought.

      Ski offered to help her move in but all he did was lean against a wall, smoking and nodding as Luke, Kat, Amy and a post-grad student only ever called Jeffers carried Lauren’s suitcases and bedding and art to her second-floor room.

      Lauren had shared a house in her second year with three girlfriends, all art students, and of course she had lived with Ski, but this felt different, much more grown-up – a rite-of-passage moment. She had two days to settle before starting her new job. Her career. Her proper life.

      Luke, predictably, was the spaghetti-sauce man, while Kat and Amy provided Sunday roasts even if no one else was in and Jeffers was a dab hand at chicken breasts in a variety of sauces all of which contained copious amounts of cream. This left Lauren to summon a specialty. She phoned Vera in a panic, who, pleased to be needed, calmly talked her daughter through the baking of fish as well as the creation of a salad Niçoise.

      The Paddington house had an old-fashioned pantry as well as a fridge and when she first opened its door she became transfixed by the smell of stale jam tarts and old butter biscuits. It was such a familiar and happy sort of smell. She held the doorframe and closed her eyes and felt herself hurtling down The Willows on a tricycle then being walked back up the cul-de-sac again, hand in hand with her mother towards a large van, and she smiled at herself for having such an odd daydream. She opened her eyes when she thought she heard a man’s voice, a Welsh accent. But when she walked into the hallway there was nobody there.

      Lauren’s office on Charlotte Street was airy, her immediate boss a short compact serious man in his thirties whose shirts were beautifully ironed, and her workmates were bustling and busy but they smiled and were welcoming. On the streets outside people wore acid-washed denim and big jumpers but in the office the staff were either impeccably suited or wore stylistically independent T-shirts with clever slogans over expensive leather skirts. The only faux pas was to not know what your own style was. One night, a few days in, she joined them for after-work drinks before travelling home for Luke’s Thursday-night pasta. Even my knee is happy, she thought, having spent an entire day without noticing even a twinge.

      Jeffers opened a bottle of port to toast her first four days in gainful employment and the fact that Thursday was the new Friday. As she drifted towards drunkenness a beam of silvery light cut across the big sagging sofa. Lauren lurched forward and then stopped, filled her glass with water and drank it quickly, refusing to be drawn towards the apparition. She drank another glass and another and then made coffee. As she sobered up the metallic light ebbed and she was filled with an indescribable sorrow. She had let someone or something down, and she went to bed confused and unhappy. In the morning, though, she remembered none of it, except that she was a maudlin drunk and needed to limit her alcohol intake.