by Lisa Jewell
She shakes her head. “My dad died when I was twenty-six. My mum’s in a home now. She’s very frail. I doubt she’ll be around this time next year.” Then she smiles and says, “In fact, it was her who told me to call you. On Sunday. She can barely talk, it takes her an age to form a sentence; usually all she wants to talk about is dying. But she told me to call you. She said it was fantastic that I’d met you. She literally put my phone in my hand. It’s the most”—she glances down at her lap—“the most maternal thing she’s done in a decade. The most human thing she’s done in months. It moved me.”
And then Floyd reaches across the table and places his hands over hers, his nice gray eyes fixed on hers, and he says, “God bless your glorious mum.”
She hooks her fingers over his and squeezes his hands gently. His touch feels both gentle and hard, sexual yet benign. His touch makes her feel everything she thought she’d never feel again, things she’d forgotten she’d ever felt in the first place. His thumbs move up her wrists and pass over her pulse points. His fingertips draw lines up and down the insides of her arms. She pulls at the soft hair on his forearms, and then pushes her hands deep inside the soft wool of his sleeves. She finds his elbows and his hands find hers and they grasp each other like that across the table for a long, intense moment, before slowly pulling apart and they ask for the bill.
His house is exactly the same as her old house, just three roads down from where she used to live. It’s a semidetached Victorian with Dutch gables and a small balcony over the front porch. It has a tiled path leading to a front door with stained-glass panels to each side and a stained-glass fanlight above. There is a small square of a front garden, neatly tended, and a pair of wheelie bins down the side return. Laurel knows what the house will look like on the inside before Floyd even has his key in the front door because it will look just like hers.
And yes, there it is, as she’d known it would be, the tiled hallway with a wide staircase ahead, the banister ending in a generous swirl, a single wooden step leading down to a large airy kitchen, and a door to the left through which she can make out a book-lined room, the flicker of a TV set, and a pair of bare feet crossed at the ankle. She watches the bare feet uncross and lower themselves to the stripped floorboards, then a face appears, a small, nervous face, a shock of white-blonde hair, a crescent of multiple earrings, a thick flick of blue liner. “Dad?”
The head retracts quickly at the sight of Laurel in the hallway.
“Hi, honey.” Floyd turns and mouths Sara at Laurel before popping his head around the door. “How’s your evening been?”
“OK.” Sara-Jade’s voice is soft and deep.
“How was Poppy?”
“She was OK.”
“What time did she go to bed?”
“Oh, like half an hour ago. You’re early.”
Laurel sees the delicate head lean forward slightly, then snap back again.
“Sara”—Floyd turns to Laurel and gestures for her hand—“I’ve got someone to introduce you to.” He pulls Laurel toward the door and propels her in front of him. “This is Laurel. Laurel, this is my elder daughter, Sara-Jade.”
“SJ,” says the tiny girl on the armchair, slowly pulling herself to her feet. She gives Laurel a tiny hand to shake and says, “Nice to meet you.” Then she falls back into the armchair and curls her tiny blue-veined feet beneath her.
She’s wearing an oversized black T-shirt and black velvet leggings. Laurel takes in the thinness of her, wonders if it is an eating disorder or just the way she’s built.
On the television is a reality TV show about people having blind dates in a brightly lit restaurant. On the floor by SJ’s feet is an empty plate smeared with traces of tomato ketchup and an empty Diet Coke can. Crumpled on the arm of the chair is a wrapper from a Galaxy bar. Laurel assumes then that her build is all natural and immediately pictures her mother, some tremulous pixie woman with enormous eyes and size six jeans. She feels pathetically jealous for a moment.
“Well,” says Floyd, “we’ll be in the kitchen. Do you want a cup of tea?”
Sara-Jade shakes her head but doesn’t say anything. Laurel follows Floyd into the kitchen. It’s as she’d imagined: smart cream wooden units with oversized wooden knobs, a dark green range, an island surrounded by stools. Unlike her old kitchen it hasn’t been extended into the return but just to the back where there is a pine table surrounded by pine chairs, piles of papers and magazines, two laptops, a pink fur coat slung over one chair, a suit jacket over the other.
She sits on a stool and watches him make her a mug of camomile tea, himself a coffee from a filter machine. “Your house is lovely,” she says.
“Why thank you,” he replies. “Although I feel you should know that that exact spot where you’re sitting was where the guy who used to live in the back room kept his chamber pot. And I know that because he left it behind when he moved out. Unemptied.”
“Oh my God!” She laughs. “That’s revolting.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You know, your house is the same as my old house. Exactly. I mean, not exactly, obviously, but the same layout, the same design.”
“All these streets,” he said, “all these houses, they were modern estates once upon a time, built at the same time to house the City workers.” He passes her her tea and smiles. “Strange,” he says, “to think that one day our ancestors might be charmed by a Barratt estate, desperately trying to preserve the period features. Don’t touch that plastic coving, it’s priceless.”
Laurel smiles. “Can you believe, the people who lived here before took out the fitted wardrobes with mirrored sliding doors!”
Floyd laughs and eyes her fondly. And then he stops laughing and stares at her intently. He says, “You know, I googled you. After our first date.”
The smile freezes on Laurel’s face.
“I know about Ellie.”
Laurel grips her mug between her hands and swallows. “Oh.”
“You knew I would, didn’t you?”
She smiles sadly. “Oh, I don’t know, I suppose it occurred to me. I would have said something. Soon. I was on the verge. It just didn’t seem like first-date kind of fodder.”
“No,” he says softly. “I get that.”
She turns the mug around and around, not sure where to head next with this development.
“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I just . . .” He sighs heavily. “I wouldn’t . . . I can’t imagine. Well, I can imagine. I can imagine all too well, which makes it hard to bear. Not that me bearing it is of any relevance to anything. But the thought of . . . you . . . and your girl . . . it’s just. Christ.” He sighs heavily. “And I wanted to say something all night, because it felt so dishonest to sit there making small talk with you when I had all this knowledge that you didn’t know I had and . . .”
“I’m an idiot,” she says. “I should have guessed.”
“No,” he says. “I’m an idiot. I should have waited for you to tell me, when you were ready.”
And Laurel smiles and looks up at Floyd, into his misty eyes; then she looks down at his hands, the hands that just caressed her arms so seductively in the restaurant, and she looks around his warm, loved home and she says, “I’m ready now. I can talk about it now.”
He reaches across the counter and places his hand upon her shoulder. She instinctively rubs her cheek against it. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m sure.”
It is nearly 1 a.m. when Floyd finally leads Laurel up the stairs to his bedroom. Sara-Jade had taken a taxi home at midnight, saying good-bye to her father in hushed tones and without acknowledging Laurel.
Floyd’s room is painted dark burgundy and hung with interesting abstract oil paintings he claims to have found in the basement of the house when he was renovating it. “They’re kind of ugly, I guess. But I like them. I like that I liberated them from total obscurity, let them live and breathe.”
“Where’s Poppy’s room?” she
whispers.
He points above and behind. “She won’t hear anything. And besides, she sleeps like the dead.”
And then he is unzipping the back of her pinafore dress and she is tugging at the sleeves of his warm soft jumper and they are a tangle of limbs and clothes and tights and despite the fact that Laurel had decided a long time ago that she and sex were over, five minutes later it is happening; she is having sex and not only that but it is the best sex she has ever had in her life and within moments of doing it she wants to do it all over again.
They fall asleep as a dull brown dawn creeps through the gaps in his curtains, wrapped up in each other’s arms.
17
“Morning! Are you Laurel?”
Laurel jumps slightly. It’s ten o’clock and she’d assumed that Floyd’s daughter would have been at school by now. “Yes,” she says, flicking on a warm smile. “Yes. I’m Laurel. And you’re Poppy, I assume?”
“Yes. I am Poppy.” She beams at Laurel, revealing crooked teeth and a small dimple in her left cheek. And Laurel has to hold on to something then, the closest thing to her, the door frame. She grips it hard and for a moment she is rendered entirely mute.
“Wow,” she says eventually. “Sorry. You look . . .” But she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say, You look just like my lost girl . . . the dimple, the broad forehead, the heavy-lidded eyes, the way you tip your head to one side like that when you’re trying to work out what someone’s thinking. Instead she says, “You remind me of someone. Sorry!” and she laughs too loud.
Laurel used to see girls who looked like Ellie all the time, after she’d first gone. She’d never quite got to the point of chasing anyone down the street, calling out her daughter’s name and grabbing them by the shoulder as people did in movies. But she’d had the butterflies, the quickening of her breath, the feeling that her world was about to blow apart with joy and relief. They were always so short-lived, those moments, and it hadn’t happened for years now.
Poppy smiles and says, “Can I get you anything? A tea? A coffee?”
“Oh,” says Laurel, not expecting such slick hostessing from a nine-year-old girl. “Yes. A coffee, please. If that’s OK?” She looks behind her, to see if Floyd is coming. He’d told her he would be down in two minutes. He hadn’t told her that his daughter would be here.
“Dad said you were really pretty,” says Poppy with her back to her as she fills the filter machine from the tap. “And you are.”
“Gosh,” says Laurel. “Thank you. Though I must look a state.” She runs her hand down her hair, smoothing out the tangles that this child’s father put there last night with his hands. She’s wearing Floyd’s T-shirt and she reeks, she knows she does, of sex.
“Did you have a lovely evening?” Poppy asks, spooning ground coffee into the machine.
“Yes, thank you, we really did.”
“Did you go to the Eritrean place?”
“Yes.”
“That’s my favorite restaurant,” she says. “My dad’s been taking me there since I was tiny.”
“Oh,” says Laurel. “What a sophisticated palate you must have.”
“There’s nothing I won’t eat,” she replies. “Apart from prunes, which are the devil’s work.”
Poppy is wearing a loose-fitting dress made of blue and white striped cotton, with navy woolen tights and a pair of navy leather pumps. Her brown hair is tied back and has two small red clips in it. It’s a very formal outfit for a young girl, Laurel feels. The sort of thing she’d have had to bribe both her girls to wear when they were that age.
“No school today?” she inquires.
“No. No school any day. I don’t go to school.”
“Oh,” says Laurel, “that’s . . . I mean . . .”
“Dad teaches me.”
“Has he always taught you?”
“Yes. Always. You know I could read chapter books when I was three. Simple algebra at four. There was no normal school that would have coped with me really.” She laughs, a womanly tinkle, and she flicks the switch on the filter machine. “Can I interest you in some granola and yogurt? Maybe? Or a slice of toast?”
Laurel turns to look behind her again. There’s still no sign of Floyd. “You know,” she says, “I might just have a quick shower before I eat anything. I feel a bit . . .” She grimaces. “I won’t be long.”
“Absolutely,” says Poppy. “You go and shower. I’ll have your coffee waiting for you.”
Laurel nods and smiles and starts to back out of the kitchen. She passes Floyd on the stairs. He’s fresh and showered, his hair damp and combed back off his face, his skin uncooked-looking where he’s shaved away yesterday’s stubble. He encircles her waist with his arm and buries his face in her shoulder.
“I met Poppy,” she says quietly. “You didn’t tell me you home-schooled her.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No.” She pulls away from another attempt at affection. “I’m going to have a shower,” she says. “I can’t sit chatting to your daughter smelling like an old slapper who’s been up all night shagging her dad.”
Floyd laughs. “You smell delicious,” he says, and his hand goes between her legs and she’s torn between pressing herself hard against it and slapping it away.
“Stop it,” she says affectionately and he laughs.
“What did you think?” he says. “Of my Poppy?”
“She’s charming,” she says. “Totally delightful.”
He glows at the words. “Isn’t she just? Isn’t she just magnificent?”
He leans down and he kisses her gently on the lips before descending the stairs and heading into the kitchen where Laurel hears him greeting his daughter with the words, “Good morning, my remarkable girl, and how are you today?”
She continues up the stairs and takes a long slow shower in her lover’s en-suite bathroom, feeling a peculiarity and wrongness that she cannot quite locate the cause of.
Later that day Laurel goes to Hanna’s flat to clean it. Other people might find the thirty pounds pinioned beneath a vase of flowers on the table slightly peculiar. Laurel is aware that being paid in cash to clean her daughter’s flat is not entirely normal, but all families have their idiosyncrasies and this is just one of theirs. As it is, every week she puts the thirty pounds into a special bank account that she will one day use to spoil her as-yet-unborn grandchildren with treats and days out.
She folds up the notes and slots them into her purse. Then she does the detective sweep of Hanna’s flat that she has begun to do since Hanna stopped sleeping here every night. She remains unconvinced by Hanna’s explanation of late nights and sleepovers, this sudden rush of parties and good times. That is simply not the daughter she knows. Hanna has never liked having fun.
The flowers are of particular interest: not a hastily bought bunch of Sainsbury’s tulips or Stargazer lilies, but a bouquet. Dusky roses, baby’s breath, lilac hyacinths, and eucalyptus. The stems are still spiraled together in the middle where the twine would have tied them together.
In the kitchen she takes out the cleaning products and eyes the work surfaces, looking for clues. Hanna was not home the night before, as evidenced once again by the lack of cereal bowl and makeup detritus. The problem, Laurel can see, is that if there is a man, then Hanna is spending all her time at his house so there will be no evidence to find at her house. She sighs and leans down to the swing bin to pull out the half-full bag, which, as always, weighs nothing, as Hanna has no life. She scrunches it down to tie the top in a knot and notices the crackle of cellophane. Quickly she puts her hand into the bag and locates the flower packaging. She pulls it out and unfurls it, and there is a tiny card taped to it, a message scrawled on it in scruffy florist’s handwriting:
Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. Please don’t be late!
I love you so much,
T x
Laurel holds the card between her thumb and forefinger and stares at it for a while. Then she shoves it back into the bin bag and
ties a knot in it. There, she thinks, there it is. Hanna has moved on. Hanna has a man. But why, she wonders, is she not talking to me about it?
18
Laurel has not seen Paul since Ellie’s funeral. There they had stood side by side; Paul had not brought Bonny and had not even asked if he could.
Yes, he is a good man.
A good man in every way.
He had held her up that day when she felt her legs weaken slightly beneath her at the sight of the box going through the curtains to the sound of “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane. He’d passed her cups of tea at his mother’s house afterward, and then found her in a corner of the garden and lured her back into the house with the promise of a large Baileys and ice, her all-time favorite treat. They’d sat together after everyone else had gone and rolled the ice around the insides of their glasses and made each other laugh, and Laurel’s feelings had warped and contorted and turned into something both light and dark, golden and gray. He hadn’t once checked his phone or worried about being late for Bonny and they’d left his mother’s house together at ten o’clock, weaving slightly toward the minicabs that rumbled and growled on the street outside. She let him hold her deep inside his arms, her face pressed hard against his chest, the clean, familiar smell of him, the softness of his old Jermyn Street shirt, and she’d almost, almost turned her face toward him and kissed him.
She’d woken the following day feeling as though her world had been upended and reordered in every conceivable way. And she hadn’t spoken to him since.
But now she feels as though all that ambiguity has melted away. She is a clean slate and she can face him once more. So when she gets back from Hanna’s flat, she calls him.
“Hello, Laurel,” he says warmly. Because Paul says everything warmly. It’s one of the many things that made her hate him during Ellie’s missing years. The way he’d smile so genuinely at the police and the reporters and the journalists and the nosy neighbors, the way he’d reach out to people with both of his warm hands and hold theirs inside his, keeping eye contact, asking after their health, playing down their own nightmare, trying, constantly, to make everyone feel better about everything all the time. She, meanwhile, had pictured herself with her hands around his soft throat, squeezing and squeezing until he was dead.