by Lisa Jewell
“Come in,” you said, “please. We need to talk.”
Were there ever four more terrifying words in the English language?
You sat me down in the kitchen. I sat in the same chair I’d used that perfect day when I first brought Poppy to meet you. I remembered how your kitchen had swallowed me up like a womb then. But that afternoon, your kitchen broke my heart. I knew what you were going to say. I knew it.
“I’ve been thinking,” you said, “about Poppy. About arrangements. Going forward. And it can’t go on like this. And to be horribly, horribly frank with you, Noelle, I fear for her, living with you. I think . . .”
Here it came. Here it came.
“I think you’re toxic.”
Toxic.
Dear Jesus.
“And this is about much more than home-schooling, Noelle. This is about everything. Did you know that Poppy hates you? She’s told me that. Not just once. Not just when she’s cross with you. But often. She’s scared of you. She doesn’t . . .” You looked up at me, eyes full of cool guilt. “She doesn’t like the way you smell. She’s said that to me. And that . . . that’s not normal, Noelle. A child should not be able to differentiate between their own smell and the smell of their mother at this stage. That, to me, suggests a terrible, fundamental disconnect between you both; it suggests a failure to bond. And I’ve been talking to a social worker about what my options are and she said that I should take Poppy out of the picture for now, just while we thrash this out, so she’s gone to stay with a friend. Just for a few days . . .”
“Friend?” I said cynically. “What friend? You don’t have any friends.”
“It doesn’t matter what friend. But we really need to reach an agreement on this, civilly, before Poppy comes home. So I’m asking you, Noelle, as Poppy’s mother, could you . . .”
You struggled for the words here, I recall.
“Could you let her go? Please? You could still see her. Of course you could. But it would have to be under supervision. It would have to be here. And it would have to fit in with Poppy’s education.”
I struggled for words then, too. It wasn’t so much what you were saying—though that was bad enough—as the tone in which you were saying it. There was no oh, I’m terribly sorry, Noelle, but I’ve passed your child onto strangers and now I want you to fuck off away from us. There was no sense in the tone of your voice that what you were saying was anything other than entirely reasonable.
Finally I said, “No. No, Floyd. I won’t allow it. I want my child back. And I want her back right now. You have no right. No right whatsoever. She’s my child and—”
You put your hand up then. You said, “Yes. I know that. But, Noelle, you have to accept the fact that you’re not strong enough to be a parent. The way you’re raising her, the junk food and the TV on all day and the lack of physical affection. Not to mention leaving her alone in the house, Noelle. It’s verging on abuse, and that’s exactly how a team of social workers would see it. Poppy’s teeth are appalling. She has nits half the time that you simply don’t deal with. You’re not well. In the head, Noelle. You’re not well. And you’re not fit to be a parent.”
And there. There it was. The defining moment of all the defining moments.
Everything in my head splintered. I saw that girl’s bones laid out in front of me on a dark road in Dover, my headlights shining over the bumps of them, my foot against the gas pedal. I thought of what I’d allowed myself to become, for you. I never wanted that bloody child. I only wanted you. And I looked at you then, so calm and reasonable, and I knew you hated me and you wanted me gone and I wanted to hurt you, I wanted to really hurt you so I said to you, “What makes you so sure she’s your child, Floyd? Did you never wonder why she looks so little like either of us?”
Your face was worth the horror of me showing myself to you, it really was.
“She doesn’t belong to either of us, Floyd,” I said, feeling the twist of my words into your heart. “I made her for you, with another woman’s womb and another man’s sperm.”
The words were falling from me uncontrollably. I’d nothing left to lose. “She’s a Frankenstein’s monster, Floyd, that child you so adore. She’s barely human, in fact.”
“Noelle, I don’t—”
I spoke over you, desperate to answer your questions before you asked them, desperate to take control. “A girl called Ellie had that baby for me. I was never pregnant, you dumb idiot. How could you have thought I was, you with your big, brilliant brain? Ellie had that baby. She was the mother. And the father was some stranger on the Internet selling his sperm for fifty pounds a shot.”
Oh come on now, Floyd. You didn’t honestly think that child could be yours, did you? That glorious golden thing? That she could be formed from your tired old genes? Really? Didn’t you wonder? Didn’t you think? No, Floyd. Poppy’s father was a young, young man, a PhD student. The website I bought his sperm from said he was under thirty, that he was six foot one with green eyes and dark hair. I pictured Ellie’s boyfriend when I picked him out. I pictured Theo. And then I came to you in my satin shirt and high heels and seduced you in a way that you’d be sure to remember. The whole thing was a total scam, Floyd. And you fell for it, you feckless, bollockless, soulless shit. You totally fell for it.
“Well, you can keep her, you scumbag. Keep her and pay for her and know for the rest of your life every time you look at her that she’s nothing but a big bag of cells and other people’s DNA. Good luck to you both.”
I had my handbag by its strap. I was done. It was over. The splinters in my head were spinning so fast and so wildly I could barely remember my own name. But I felt euphoric.
And then I watched your face turn to stormy skies, saw your skin color change from gray to seething purple. You leaped to your feet; then you threw yourself bodily across the table at me. You had your hands at my throat and my chair tumbled backward with me still in it; my head hit the floor and by God I thought you meant to kill me, by God, I really, really did.
53
Laurel drives past Hanna’s flat on her way from Floyd’s to work that morning. She’s hoping for a sneaky glimpse of Theo and Hanna leaving for work together. But it’s dark and quiet and at least now Laurel can picture where her daughter has been. She has been in Theo Goodman’s bed.
Theo is a schoolteacher now. Hanna had told her that, funnily enough, about a year ago. Said she’d bumped into him somewhere or other. Laurel couldn’t really remember the details. That must have been when it started, she supposed.
Laurel is unfairly horrified by this twist in the fabric of things.
Theo was Ellie’s. He’d belonged to her and she’d belonged to him. They’d inhabited each other completely, like a pair of gloves folded into itself. And now she is cross with Hanna. Cross enough to wonder what Theo even sees in Hanna, in comparison to Ellie. She imagines, in the warped threads of her irrational thought processes, that Theo chose Hanna as a consolation prize.
But then she remembers seeing that blonde girl coming out of the supermarket on Sunday morning, that smiling, golden girl who looked nothing like the sour-faced girl who greets Laurel at her door from time to time, the pinched child who never laughs at her jokes, the tired-looking woman who sighs down the phone at the sound of her mother’s voice.
And it occurs to her for the very first time that maybe Hanna isn’t intrinsically unhappy.
That maybe she just doesn’t like her.
She calls Paul later that afternoon. He’s at work and she can hear the warm rumble of normality in the background.
“Listen,” she says, “can I ask you something? About Hanna?”
There’s a beat of silence before Paul says, “Yes.”
He knows, thinks Laurel, he already knows.
“Has she said anything to you about a boyfriend?”
There’s another silence. “Yes, she has.”
She exhales. “How long have you known?”
“A few months,” he replies.
“And you know—you know who it is?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
Laurel closes her eyes. “And she told you not to tell me?”
“Yes. Something like that.”
Now Laurel pauses. “Paul,” she says after a moment, “do you think that Hanna hates me?”
“What? No. Of course she doesn’t hate you. Hanna doesn’t hate anyone. Why would you say that?”
“It’s just, whenever we’re together she’s so . . . spiky. And cold. And I’ve always put it down to arrested development—you know, losing Ellie when she was just on the cusp of adult life. But I saw her the other day, with Theo. And she was so bright and so happy. She looked like a completely different person.”
“Well, yes, she is madly in love, by all accounts.”
“But when she’s with you, and Bonny, what’s she like then? Is she lighthearted? Is she fun?”
“Yes. I’d say she is. On the whole.”
“So, I’m right, you see. It is me. She can’t stand being with me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is true, Paul. You’ve never seen it. You’ve never seen what she’s like with me when it’s just the two of us. She’s like a . . . a void. There’s nothing there. Just this blank stare. What did I do, Paul? What did I do wrong?”
She hears Paul take a breath. “Nothing,” he says. “You did nothing wrong. But I’d say, well, it wasn’t just Ellie she lost, was it? It was you, too.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You. You went kind of—off radar. You stopped cooking. You stopped—you stopped being a parent.”
“I know, Paul! I know I did! And I’ve apologized to Hanna a million times for the way I was then. Why do you think I go to her house every week and clean it for her? I try so hard with her, Paul. I try all the time and it makes no difference.”
“Laurel,” he says carefully, “I think what Hanna really needs from you is your forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?” she echoes. “Forgiveness for what?”
There is a long moment of silence as Paul forms his response.
“Forgiveness . . .” he says finally, “for not being Ellie.”
Paul’s words have unfurled a whole roll of thoughts and feelings that Laurel hadn’t known were so tightly wound inside her and she is plunged straight back into the minutes and hours following Ellie’s disappearance, recalling the sour resentment at being left with Hanna, denying her the lasagna that Ellie had staked her claim on, as Ellie had staked her claim on so much in their family. Everyone had fought for Ellie’s attention, for a blast of her golden light. Then the light had gone and they’d dissipated like death stars falling away from the sun.
And yes, Laurel had never accepted Hanna as a consolation prize. She really hadn’t. And as a result she’d got the relationship with her daughter that she deserved. Well, now she knows this, she can work on it and make things better.
Laurel calls Hanna. It goes through to voicemail, as she’d known it would. But this can’t wait another moment. She needs to say it right now.
“Darling,” she says, “I just wanted to say, I am so proud of you. You are the most extraordinary girl in the world and I am so lucky to have you in my life. And I also wanted to say that I’m sorry, so sorry if anything I’ve ever done has made you feel like less than the center of my world. Because you are, you are absolutely the center of my world and I could not live without you. And”—she draws in her breath slightly—“I wanted to say that I saw you the other day, I saw you with Theo, and I think it’s wonderful and I think he’s a very, very lucky man. A very lucky man indeed. Anyway, that’s what I wanted to say and I’m sorry I haven’t said it before and I love you and I’ll see you on Christmas Eve. I love you. Bye.”
She turns off her phone and she rests it on the kitchen counter and feels a wave of relief and weightlessness pass through her. She is unburdened of something she hadn’t even known she was carrying.
54
When Laurel arrives at Floyd’s house that evening she feels lighter, more present, in the moment. And she notices for the first time that although there are only three days till Christmas, there is no tree in the house. In fact, there are no decorations of any kind.
“Do you not do Christmas trees?” she asks as Floyd helps her off with her coat in the hallway.
“Do Christmas trees?”
“Yes, do you not put one up?”
“No,” he says. “Well, we used to, but we haven’t for years. But we can if you want one. Do you want one? I’ll go and get one now.”
She laughs. “I was thinking more of Poppy,” she says.
“Pops!” he calls up the stairs. “Would you like a Christmas tree?”
They hear her footsteps, loud and fast. She appears at the top of the stairs and says, “Yes! Yes please!”
“Right then,” says Floyd. “That’s settled then. I will go out now, like a proper father, and I will bring home the mother of all Christmas trees. Want to come with me, Pops?”
“Yes! Let me just get my shoes on.”
“We’ll need fairy lights,” says Laurel, “and baubles. Have you got any?”
“Yes, yes, we do. In the attic. We always had a tree when Kate and Sara lived here. There’s boxes of the stuff up there. Let me go and get it.”
He bounds up the stairs two at a time and returns a few minutes later with two large paper shopping bags full of tree decorations. Then he and Poppy get into the car and disappear into the dark night together and Laurel looks around and realizes that she is alone in Floyd’s house for the very first time.
She turns on the TV and finds a satellite channel that is playing Christmas songs. Then she pulls some things from the bags; random is the word she’d use to describe them. Scuffed plastic balls, a knitted reindeer with three legs, a huge spiky snowflake that snags a hole in her jumper, stern-faced wooden soldiers, and a group of slightly alternative-looking wood nymphs in pointy hats with curled toes on their shoes.
She leaves them in the bag and takes out the fairy lights. There are two sets: one multicolored and the other white. The white ones work when she plugs them in at the wall. The multicolored ones don’t.
She goes through some of the drawers in the kitchen, looking for a spare fuse. She looks in the drawers in the console table in the hallway. Takeaway menus, parking permits, spare keys, a roll of garden refuse bags. But no fuses.
Then she looks at the door to Floyd’s study. This is where he and Poppy do their home-learning together, where he writes his books and his papers. In her own version of this house, they’d knocked through from the front to the back to make a double reception. But Floyd has left the two rooms separate, as they would have been in Victorian times. She hasn’t been in Floyd’s study yet, just viewed it fleetingly as he’s walked in or out. She feels, quite strongly, although she’s not sure why, that Floyd would not want her in his study without his permission, so she stands for a moment or two, her hand on the doorknob, persuading herself that it is just another room in the house, that Floyd cannot live without her, that of course she can go into his study to look for fuses.
She turns the handle.
The door opens.
Floyd’s study is well furnished and cozy. The floorboards are covered over with threadbare kilims. The furniture is solid and old; there are two chrome table lamps with arced necks, one with a green glass shade, the other white. A laptop is open on his desk showing a screen saver of changing landscapes. She quickly starts to sift through his drawers.
Pens, notebooks, foreign coins, computer disks, CDs, memory sticks, everything organized in internal compartments. She goes to another desk, one that sits by the back window overlooking the garden. Here the drawers are locked. She sighs and absentmindedly riffles through the piles of paper that sit on top of the desk. She is no longer looking for a fuse, she knows that. She’s looking for something to snap her out of the strange fug she’s been trapped in for the past few days.
&n
bsp; And suddenly she has it in her hands. A pile of newspaper cuttings, all from around the time of the Crimewatch appeal on May 26. There’s her face, there’s Paul, and there’s Ellie. There’s the interview she did for the Guardian and the interview she and Paul did together in the local paper. She remembers Floyd in his kitchen coyly confessing to having googled her after their first date. Yet six months earlier, before he’d even met her, he’d been tearing out and collecting newspaper cuttings about Ellie’s disappearance. She slots the cuttings back into the pile of paperwork at the sound of a car door closing on the street outside and quickly leaves Floyd’s study.
Floyd and Poppy return a moment later. The have bought an eight-foot tree.
“Well,” says Floyd, his cheeks flushed pink with the effort of getting it into the house, balancing it on its stump briefly so that Laurel can appreciate its great height. “Will this fulfill the brief?”
“Wow,” says Laurel, pressing herself against the wall so that Floyd can negotiate it through the hallway and into the sitting room. “That is a tree and a half. We’re going to need more lights!”
“Ta-da!” Poppy appears behind him, clutching bags from a DIY store full of fairy lights.
“Brilliant,” says Laurel. “You thought of everything.”
The TV is still tuned into Christmas songs; “Stop the Cavalry” by Jona Lewie is playing.
Floyd cuts the netting around the tree and they all watch as the branches spring free. Floyd is strangely overexcited about the tree. “Hey,” he says, turning to Poppy and Laurel, “it’s a good one, huh? I got a good one?”
They both assure him that it is a good one. Then Poppy and Laurel begin to dress the tree while Floyd goes to the kitchen to prepare supper.
“So, you don’t normally bother with a tree?” Laurel asks.
“No,” says Poppy. “I don’t really know why. We’re just not a Christmassy kind of family, I guess.”