by Lisa Jewell
Because I knew what I had in my basement. And I knew that it was better than her. And if it was better than her, then it could still bring us back together.
I had not lost hope.
45
Well, I wouldn’t say it was a textbook birth. No. I wouldn’t. I’d read everything there was to read on the subject of home birth and there was no eventuality I wasn’t prepared for. Apart from the really, really awful ones that would have taken us to a hospital, I suppose (I had my story all lined up: a desperate niece, too ashamed to tell her family back in Ireland—well, you can guess the rest). But it didn’t come to that. I got that baby out of her without any medical intervention. I’m not saying it was pleasant. It was far from pleasant, but out that baby came, alive and breathing. And that was all that mattered at the end of the day.
She was a sweet baby. Full head of brown hair. Little red mouth. I let the girl choose a name for her. It was the least I could do after what she’d been through.
Poppy, she said.
I’d have preferred something a bit more classical. Helen, maybe, or Louise. But there you go. You can’t have everything your own way.
I left the baby with the girl those first few days. Well, there was not much I could be doing now really, was there? And then when the baby was two weeks old, I took her to the baby clinic to get her weighed and checked, get her on the system so that she would be a real person and not just a tiny ghost in my basement.
I had to answer lots of awkward questions but I had my spiel sorted: Didn’t know I was pregnant, thought it was my menopause, hardly changed shape, gave birth at home with my partner, all happened really fast, no time to call for an ambulance, wham bam there was the baby, so no, we never went to the hospital. No, the baby was not given an Apgar score. I told them that I’d been too nervous to bring the baby out of the house before now, that I thought it was OK as long as the baby seemed OK. I sat and took their telling off, let them slap my wrists good and proper. Oh, I said, I’m really, really sorry. But you know, I was a virgin until a few months ago (I used my strongest Irish accent for this), I’ve led a sheltered life, I don’t really know much about anything.
They sighed and looked appalled and made notes about me no doubt: “potential loony, keep an eye on this one.” But they gave me all the papers I needed to register the baby at the town hall and made me an appointment to come in five weeks later for my postnatal exam (I didn’t go, of course, but had I done, I think they’d have been very impressed with the pristine condition of my underneaths) and told me a midwife would be coming to interview me later that week. I just pretended I was out when she came and hid in the back room while she rattled my letterbox. She came again a few days later and she called me about a hundred times, but she gave up in the end. I duly took the baby to all the appointments at the clinic; she got her shots, she was weighed and measured. I did the bare minimum to keep them off the scent. But in social worker parlance, we slipped through the net. Worrying, really, when you think about it.
But the girl meanwhile . . . Well, I thought I’d done my best by her. I really did, but she didn’t seem well. It was one thing after another really. First an infection down below. That seemed to heal of its own accord but then she got an infection in one of her breasts, or at least that was my theory. I read up about it on the Internet. I told her she must feed the baby from that one breast, feed and feed and feed. She was very hot, then very cold. I gave her over-the-counter remedies but they didn’t work. She lost interest in the baby and I had to take over feeding her. Then she stopped eating. She called for her mother all the time. Incessant it was. All hours of the day and night. I couldn’t bear it for another moment.
Then one day, when the baby was about five months old, I shut the door to that room, and for a very long time I did not go back.
46
Joshua had given Laurel his grandparents’ phone number in Dublin. Henry and Breda Donnelly. They were both alive and both still working.
“They’re amazing,” Joshua had said. “Like really amazing. Scary as shit—you don’t want to cross them. But incredible people. Forces of nature, the pair of them.”
Laurel calls them on Sunday when she gets back from Floyd’s house.
A woman picks up the phone and says “hello” so loudly that Laurel jumps.
“Hello. Is that Mrs. Donnelly?”
“Speaking.”
“Breda Donnelly?”
“Yes. This is she.”
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, you’re not eating, are you?”
“No, no. We’re not. But thank you for asking. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve just met up with your grandson, Joshua.”
“Ah, yes, young Josh. And how is he these days?”
“He’s great. Really great. I went to visit him at your daughter’s house. Noelle’s house.”
There’s a brief silence on the line and then Breda Donnelly says, “Who is this, please? You haven’t said.”
“Sorry. Yes. My name’s Laurel Mack. My daughter used to be one of Noelle’s students. About ten years ago. And as a weird coincidence, my current boyfriend is Noelle’s ex-partner. Floyd Dunn? The father of Poppy?”
There’s another silence and Laurel holds her breath.
Eventually Breda says, “Ye-es,” pulling out the vowel to suggest that she needs much more information before she’ll offer any herself.
Laurel sighs. “Look,” she says, “I don’t really know why I’m calling, except that my daughter disappeared shortly after she finished her tutoring with Noelle. And she disappeared right next to Noelle’s house. And then Noelle herself also disappeared, a few years later.”
“And?”
“I suppose I just wanted to ask you about Noelle, about what you think happened to her.”
Breda Donnelly sighs. “Are you sure you’re not from the papers?”
“Honestly. I swear. You can google me if you like. Laurel Mack. Or google my daughter. Ellie Mack. It’s all there. I promise.”
“She was supposed to be coming home.”
Laurel blinks. “What?”
“Noelle. That week. She was coming home. With her little girl.”
“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t realize. Floyd just said that she disappeared. He didn’t mention that she was supposed to be going back to Ireland.”
“Well, maybe she didn’t tell him that. But she was. And the papers barely cared. The police barely cared. A middle-aged woman. A bit of a loner. An ex-partner who said she was mentally unstable. I told them she was coming home but they didn’t think it was relevant. And maybe it wasn’t.”
“And she said she was coming with her daughter?”
“Yes. She was coming with her daughter. With Poppy. And that they would be staying here. At the house. And we were all ready for her, we were. Beds all made up. We’d bought the child a big bear. Yogurts and juices. Then suddenly she’s given the child to the father, packed a bag, and disappeared. I suppose we weren’t surprised. It always did strike us as faintly unbelievable that she’d had a baby in the first place, let alone that she was able to raise it on her own.”
“So you think she changed her mind? That she was going to start a new life, with you and Poppy, and then freaked out at the last minute?”
“Well, yes, it certainly seemed that way.”
“And where do you think she is, Mrs. Donnelly? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh, God, I suppose, if I’m honest, I would say she’s dead.”
Laurel pauses to absorb the impact of Breda’s words.
“When did you last see Noelle, Mrs. Donnelly?”
“Nineteen eighty-four.”
Laurel falls silent again.
“She came home for a few weeks after her PhD. Then she went to London. That was the last time we saw her. Her brothers tried to visit when they came to London but she always kept them at arm’s length. Always made excuses. We had no Christmas cards from her, no birthday cards. We’d send new
s on to her: new nephews and nieces, degrees and what have you. But there was never a reply. She genuinely, genuinely didn’t care about us. Not about any of us. And in the end I’d say we’d stopped caring about her, too.”
47
I first brought the baby to see you when she was about six months old. I dressed her up in the most spectacular outfit: a cardigan with a fur collar of all the things. It was in the sales at Monsoon. And a tutu. And shoes! For a baby! Quite ridiculous. But this baby was the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen and I wanted her to really dazzle the life out of you.
The day I brought her to meet you I had the butterflies. I’d called you to warn you that I was coming. I wanted us to be made welcome, for a friendly cup of tea to be poured for me, for you to be ready.
It was a sunny morning, a hopeful day, I felt. You answered the door in a horrible jumper. I’m sorry, but it really was. You never were the snappiest dresser, we had that much in common, but really, this was off the scale. A Christmas present from your horrible daughter, no doubt.
You didn’t look at me. Your eyes went straight to the baby in the car seat that I was holding. I watched your face, I saw you absorb her, this fat-limbed, tawny-skinned, dark-haired plum of a child, so different from that scrawny, miserable thing your wife had made you. You smiled. And then, God bless that bonny child, she smiled right back at you. She kicked her little satin-shod feet. She gurgled at you. It was almost as though she knew. As though she knew that everything hinged on this one moment.
You ushered us in. I put the car seat down on the floor in your lovely kitchen and looked around, enveloped immediately by the sanctity and niceness of being back in your personal space. And strangely I felt more like I belonged there in that moment than I ever had when I was your girlfriend. You made me the cup of tea that I’d dreamed of you making for me. You passed it to me and then you crouched down by the car seat, looked up at me, and said, “May I?”
I said, “Please, go ahead. She’s your daughter, after all.”
You unclipped her straps and she kicked those little feet of hers and held her arms aloft for you. You plucked her out softly but securely and you brought her to your shoulder. I think maybe you thought she was younger than she was, because you hadn’t seen her when she was a newborn. But she showed you that she was a bigger girl than that and turned herself around in your arms, held her hand against your cheek, tugged at the straggles of beard on your face. You made faces at her. She laughed.
“Wow,” you said. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
“Well, I’m a bit biased of course . . .”
“And she’s six months, yes?”
“Yes. Six months on Tuesday.”
“Poppy. It’s a pretty name.”
“Isn’t it?” I said. “And it suits her, I think.”
“Yes,” you agreed. “It really does.”
You blew a raspberry at her then and she looked at you in utter delight.
“And how’s it been?” you asked. “How’s it been for you?”
“It’s been . . .” I plastered a stupid smile on my face and didn’t mention the endless, nightmarish nights when I’d be in her room two, three, four times with endless bottles of milk. I didn’t mention how sometimes I’d put her in her cot for an hour and sit in my kitchen with the radio turned right up so I couldn’t hear her crying. And I certainly didn’t mention the time I seriously toyed with the idea of leaving her on the steps of the hospital just like your own parents had done to you. “It’s been amazing,” I gushed. “She’s a real dream. She sleeps all night. And she smiles. And she eats. And, honestly, Floyd, I can’t think why I didn’t do this a long time ago. I really can’t.”
You really liked this response, I could tell. Probably in your head you’d had me painted as a terrible, sexless aging crone that you were best shot of. And suddenly here I was in your kitchen, looking well (I’d been to the hairdresser’s and made them take my hair back to its original copper. It was the first time I’d been to a hairdresser for anything other than a trim in about twenty years) and with this drop-dead gorgeous baby that I was clearly in love with, like any normal woman would be. And I could feel you then, I really could, reevaluating me, reconfiguring your prejudices. I could feel that we still had a chance.
I stayed for an hour and a half and when I left (at my behest, off to a fictional friend’s for supper), you came out of the house with me, holding the baby in her chair. You insisted on strapping the chair into the backseat. I watched you adjust the straps on the seat, making sure they weren’t too tight around her fat little arms.
“Bye bye, gorgeous Poppy,” you said, kissing your fingertips and placing them against her cheek. “I hope I see you again really, really soon.”
I smiled inscrutably and then drove away, leaving you there on the pavement not knowing where you stood with anything.
And that was exactly where I wanted you.
48
Bonny calls Laurel at work on Monday. Laurel recognizes her been-around-the-block voice immediately.
“We’ve been talking,” she begins, “about Christmas.”
Laurel stops herself groaning. She cannot possibly bring herself to think about Christmas even though it’s less than a week away and the world is full of lights and music and even the plumbing supplies shop has baubles in its windows. She’s not ready for it.
“Now, unfortunately we’re at my stepmother’s on Christmas Day itself, she’s eighty-four, far too frail to make it down to London, so we’ll be heading up to Oxford. So what I thought is that we could do a big Christmas Eve bash here. We can do gifts and games and cocktails and what have you. And I have space for thousands, so all the children, partners, etc. And you can absolutely bring your gorgeous man and his lovely daughter.” She pauses for breath; Laurel can hear the rattle of a cough in the bass of her breathing. “What do you think?”
Laurel fingers the pendant at her collarbone.
“Have you asked Jake?” she asks after another pause.
“Yes. Yes I have.” There’s a finality to this that tells Laurel immediately that Paul and Bonny are now aware of the current impasse.
“And is he coming?”
“He says he thinks so.”
“And what about Hanna?”
“She said yes. She’ll be coming.”
Laurel’s stomach lurches. Hanna has completely transmogrified in her mind from an ice princess destined never to thaw to a scarlet woman throwing herself at other people’s boyfriends with no thought for anyone but herself. Laurel no longer knows what to think about her daughter.
“Well,” she says after a significant pause, “that does sound lovely. I’ll ask Floyd. He did say that he and Poppy usually stay in on Christmas Eve, but I’m sure they could be persuaded. Can I get back to you?”
“Yes, of course! Please do. But sooner rather than later, if you don’t mind. I’ll have to get my Waitrose order in by tomorrow at the very latest.”
Waitrose orders. Laurel cannot imagine that she ever had a life that involved Waitrose orders.
She puts down her phone and sighs.
At Floyd’s that night Laurel asks him how Poppy had reacted when Noelle dropped her on his doorstep and disappeared into thin air. “Was she happy?” she says. “Was she sad? Did she miss her mum? What was it like?”
“Well, first off,” he replies, “she looked awful. She was overweight, refused to let anyone brush her hair, bathe her, brush her teeth. So she was a mess. And that was basically why Noelle left her with me. She’d had this perfect little baby and she’d totally fucked her up because she did not know how to parent and she’d ended up four years later with a monster.
“And no, Poppy wasn’t sad. Poppy loved being here with me. When she was with me she behaved. She didn’t have tantrums. She didn’t demand chocolate spread on everything. She sat and we talked and she learned and she read and when Noelle left her here she was happy. Really happy. And of course”—he shrugs—“neither of us had any idea
that we would never see her again after she dumped her with me. We thought she’d be back. And by the time it was clear that she wasn’t coming back, Poppy and I were a team. I genuinely don’t think she’s suffering because of not having Noelle in her life. I think . . .” He glances up at her. “I think it was a blessing.”
Laurel’s eyes flick to Floyd’s and then away again. A thought passes through her head, so fast and so unpalatable that she is unable to keep hold of it.
Poppy stands at the top of the stairs. She hangs off the banister, her head tilting at an angle, her hair swinging back and forth.
“Laurel,” she says in a stage whisper. “Quick. Come up!”
Laurel looks at her quizzically and then says, “OK.”
“Come in here. Quickly!” Poppy pulls her by the hand into her bedroom.
Laurel has never been into Poppy’s bedroom before.
It’s a small square room overlooking the garden. She has a four-poster bed with white muslin curtains and the walls are painted white. Her duvet cover is white and her curtains are white with a fine gray stripe. There’s a chrome lamp on her white bedside table and white bookshelves are filled with novels.
“Wow,” says Laurel, stepping in, “your room is very minimal.”
“Yes,” she replies. “I like keeping it all simple. Sit,” she says, pulling out a white wooden desk chair. “Look. My Christmas present for Dad arrived. Tell me what you think?”
She opens the door of a white wardrobe and pulls out an Amazon delivery box.
Then she pulls out a large mug with the words “UNBEARABLE COFFEE SNOB” written on it.
“Oh!” says Laurel. “That’s fabulous! He’ll love it!”