by Lisa Jewell
“But Sara-Jade and her mum? They do a tree?”
“Yes!” Poppy’s eyes light up. “Kate is mad about Christmas. Totally nuts about it. Their house looks like a Christmas card.” She catches herself. “It’s a bit much, really,” she finishes.
“Sounds lovely to me.”
Poppy smiles then and says, “Will there be a tree at Bonny’s house? On Christmas Eve?”
“Oh, God, yes. I’m sure there will be. Definitely. A big one probably.”
Poppy smiles broadly. “I can’t wait,” she says. “It’ll be nice to have a proper Christmas for a change.”
“What do you normally do on Christmas Day?”
“Nothing much, really. Have lunch. Swap presents. Watch a movie.”
“Just the two of you?”
Poppy nods.
“You don’t see family?”
“I haven’t got a family.”
“You’ve got SJ.”
“Yes, but she’s just one person. I mean like a whole big family. Like yours. I sometimes wish . . .” She glances toward the sitting-room door and then lowers her voice. “I love being with Dad. But I sometimes wish there was more.”
“More what?”
Poppy shrugs. “More people, I suppose. More noise.”
They take a step back from the tree a while later, just as “Fairytale of New York” comes on the TV. The tree is fully dressed and Laurel has switched on the fairy lights.
Floyd comes in and gasps. “Ladies,” he says, putting an arm around each of their shoulders, “that is a triumph. An absolute triumph.” He turns off the overhead lights and then turns back to the tree. “Wow! Just look at it!”
The three of them stand like that for a moment or two, the Pogues playing in the background, the lights on the tree flashing on and off; Floyd’s arm is heavy across Laurel’s shoulders and she feels him tremble slightly. She looks up at him and sees that he is crying. A single tear rolls down his cheek, a thousand tiny Christmas lights refracted through it. He wipes it away and then smiles down at Laurel.
“Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t know how much I wanted a Christmas tree this year.” He leans down and kisses the crown of her head. “You,” he said, “have made everything perfect. I love you, Laurel. I really do.”
She stares at him in surprise. Not that he has said it, but that he has said it in front of Poppy.
She glances quickly at Poppy to gauge her reaction. She is smiling at Laurel, willing her to complete the moment. She has no idea how hard this is for Laurel. But they are both gazing at her, waiting for her to give them something, and it is Christmas and it is dark and for some reason Laurel feels that she must do this, that it is hugely important in some strangely sinister way she can’t quite define, and so she smiles and says, “And I love you both, too.”
Poppy pulls Laurel into a hug. Floyd follows suit. They hold each other for a moment or two, the three of them, the heat of their combined breath meeting in the heart of the embrace. Eventually they pull apart and Floyd smiles at Laurel and says, “That’s all I want for Christmas. That’s all I want. Full stop.”
Laurel smiles tightly. She thinks of the press cuttings on Floyd’s desk. She thinks of the carrot cake they’d shared in that café near her hairdresser, the overpowering certainty of him as he’d walked in the door and found his way to her. And then she thinks of the phone call from Blue.
Your boyfriend. His aura is all wrong. It’s dark.
And she feels it, right there and then. Stark and obvious. Something askew. Something awry.
You’re not who you say you are, she suddenly thinks, you’re a fake.
55
Laurel’s mother is still alive when Laurel pops in to see her the next day on her way to work.
“Still here then?” she asks, pulling her chair closer to her mother’s.
Ruby rolls her eyes.
“You know it’s Christmas Day on Friday,” she says. “You can’t go and die before Christmas and ruin it for everyone. You do know that? If you were going to do it, you should have done it last week.”
Ruby chuckles and says, “Next week?”
“Yes,” says Laurel, smiling. “Next week is fine. It’s always a quiet time.”
She takes her mother’s hands and says, “We’re having a big Christmas Eve do. At Paul and Bonny’s. Hanna will be there. Jake. My new boyfriend. His daughter. I wish you could come.”
“No thank you,” says Ruby, and Laurel laughs.
“No,” she says. “I don’t blame you.”
“How is n-n-new b-boyfriend?”
The smile freezes on Laurel’s face. She doesn’t know how to answer the question so she smiles and says, “He’s wonderful. It’s all good.”
But as the words leave her mouth, she can feel the heavy lie of them.
Her mother feels it, too. “Good?” she repeats, concernedly.
“Yes,” she says. “Good.”
Her mother nods, just once.
“If you say so,” she says. “If you say so.”
Laurel calls Jake when she leaves her mother’s care home.
He picks up the call within two ringtones. “Mum,” he says, a note of concern in his voice.
“Everything’s fine,” she says. “Not an emergency. I just wanted to say hello.”
“I’m really sorry, Mum,” he starts immediately. “I’m really sorry about me and Blue and what we said to you the other day. It was out of order.”
“No, Jake, honestly. It’s fine. I’m sorry I overreacted. I think I was just so shocked to find myself in a relationship after so long I was a bit raw. Just wanted everything to be perfect. You know. And of course nothing’s perfect, is it?”
“No,” says Jake in a voice full of things he’d like to say but can’t. “No. That’s true.”
“Am I seeing you tomorrow?” she says. “At Bonny’s?”
“Yes,” he replies. “We’ll be there.”
“You know Floyd will be there too? Will that be a problem?”
“No,” he says, overly assured, she feels. “No. It will be fine.”
She takes a breath, ready to get to the point of her call. “Is Blue there?” she says. “I wondered if we could have a word?”
“Yeah,” says Jake. “Yeah. She’s here. You’re not going to . . . ?”
“No. I told you, Jake. Water under the bridge. I just want to ask her something.”
“OK.”
She hears him call out to Blue, who comes to the phone and says, “Hi, Laurel. How are you?”
“I’m good, thank you, Blue. I’m fine. How are you?”
“Oh, you know. Busy, busy. As always.”
There’s a pause and then Laurel says, “Listen, Blue, I wanted to apologize for the way I reacted last time we spoke. I think I may have been a little over the top.”
She can almost hear Blue shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No, really. I’m sorry. And I just . . . I’ve been . . . I don’t know. I suppose I just wanted to know more about why you thought what you thought when you met him.”
“You feel it, too.”
Laurel blanches and brings her hand to her throat. She feels horribly caught out. “No,” she says, “no. It’s—I just want to know what you think, that’s all.”
Blue sighs and continues. “Floyd has a dark aspect. Very dark. Dangerous, almost. But the discrepancy between his true self and the way he presents himself is striking. It’s like he’s taking cues from people. Working out how to be. And then there’s the way he is with his daughter. It’s not quite right. He watches her all the time, did you know that? You can almost see him prompting her under his breath. Like she’s acting, too, and he’s there to stop her making a mistake, to stop her exposing him for what he is. I don’t think . . .” She pauses. “I don’t think he really loves her. Not in the normal sense of the word. I think it’s more that he needs her, because she makes him human. She’s like a cloak.”
Laurel nods and makes an affirm
ative noise, although she is still processing what Blue has said.
“But what you just said, about him being dangerous. What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” says Blue, “that a man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed. And I think Floyd is dangerous because he’s pretending to be someone he’s not in order to get you to love him.”
Laurel shudders at Blue’s words. They chime so completely with her own feelings yesterday standing by the Christmas tree.
“What about Poppy?” she says. “What did you make of Poppy?”
“Poppy is like a rainbow. Poppy is everything. But she needs to get away from her father before he starts taking her colors away.”
There is a long pause. Then Laurel says, “Thank you, Blue. Thank you for your time.” She slowly slides her phone into her handbag and drives to work feeling slightly numb.
56
When Laurel gets to the office she finds she’s the only one not wearing a Christmas jumper.
“Was there a memo?” she asks Helen.
“Yes,” says Helen, who is wearing a jumper with flashing fairy lights somehow built into it and has red baubles hanging from her earrings. “Last week. It should be in your inbox.”
Laurel sighs. She’s sure it was. She’s sure she must have read it. And then edited it out somewhere in the tangles of her life.
“Here.” Helen throws her a piece of tinsel. “Put this in your hair.”
Laurel twists the tinsel into her hair and smiles. “Thank you.”
There are carolers in the shopping center today; she can hear them from her desk. They’re singing “Good King Wenceslas.” The management have invested in a job lot of mince pies from Waitrose and at 5 p.m. there’ll be Secret Santa and sherry.
She can’t wait to get home.
She goes into Waitrose on her way to her car that night, buys two bottles of champagne, two scented candles, and two boxes of chocolates. She’ll work out what to give to whom tonight when she’s wrapping them.
Everywhere she goes that day she hears Blue’s words of doom echoing portentously around her head. When she’d been talking to Blue this morning she’d fully believed all she’d said. Yes, she’d thought, yes, this all makes perfect sense. Of course Floyd has a dark aspect. Of course he’s pretending to be someone he’s not.
But as the hours pass and Floyd sends her silly, festive text messages adorned with Santa Claus emojis and bunches of holly, as the carolers’ repertoire sinks into her psyche and the sherry softens the edges of her consciousness, her fingers push the blades of the scissors back and forth through the shiny paper on her living-room floor, and the lights of the neighbors’ Christmas trees flash their reflections on to her windows, it starts to seem bizarre and dreadful.
What a strange girl Blue is, she thinks to herself, turning off her lights, slipping off her clothes, untwirling the tinsel from her hair. What a very strange girl indeed.
57
Laurel rises late on Christmas Eve. She has two text messages from Floyd, one asking what to bring for Paul and Bonny, the other asking what to wear. She types in a reply: Bring them cheese. The smellier the better. And wear a nice jumper and a festive persona. I’m wearing green.
He replies immediately: So, green cheese and a smelly jumper. I’m on it .
Silly bugger, she replies.
And then she has a shower.
When she gets out of the shower there is another message from him. Could you come here first do you think? I have a gift for you, but it’s too big to bring to the party.
She feels a blade of dread pass through her. She’s unsettled by his excitement about his gift to her. She’s never been a fan of grand gestures. But more than that, she feels strange about this last-minute change of plans. Blue’s words come back to her again: “A man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.” She remembers Floyd’s lies about Noelle Donnelly’s house, about her family. She thinks of Noelle’s flat stomach at eight months pregnant and she thinks of the lip balm in Noelle Donnelly’s basement. And then she thinks of the press cuttings in Floyd’s study and the candlesticks in Poppy’s bedroom and she knows, she knows without a doubt that Floyd is bringing her to his house for some ulterior purpose.
She texts Paul and she texts Hanna.
I’m going to Floyd’s on my way to Bonny’s but I won’t be late. If I am late please call me immediately. If I don’t answer my phone please send someone to come for me. I’ll be at 18 Latymer Road N4. I’ll explain everything later.
Then she flicks back to Floyd’s text.
OK, she types back. No problem. I’ll come over when I’m ready.
Fantastic, he replies. See you soon!
She loads her car with wrapped gifts and champagne and leaves for Floyd’s house at 11 a.m.
A text arrives from Hanna.
Mum?
She doesn’t reply.
The roads are busy and slow. People pour out of the cinema at High Barnet, the high street is packed with shoppers, and there is a long-suffering reindeer in Highgate being petted by a crowd of children while a glowering Father Christmas tries to control them.
As she approaches Stroud Green Laurel feels a lump form in the back of her throat. Every street corner, shop front, and side road here holds a memory of Christmases past. The annual pilgrimage for pizzas on Christmas Eve, where they prebooked the same table every year. The last-minute run down to the pound shop on the high street for extra wrapping paper. The little park at the bottom of the road where they used to take the children after lunch to let off steam. The neighbors’ doors that Laurel and the children would post cards through on Christmas morning.
All of those messy Christmases, each a perfect gem, all gone, all turned to ash.
She pulls into Floyd’s road and turns off her ignition.
And then she stops for a moment, sits in her car, feeling the air chill as the heater dies down, watching the wind whip the bare branches of the trees overhead, waiting to feel ready to face Floyd.
Five minutes later she takes a deep breath, and heads toward his front door.
PART FIVE
58
Laurel Mack.
My God, what a woman.
Dazzling.
I could not believe that this woman was allowing me to put my hands upon her. That she was in my house. In my bed.
She smelled like five-star hotels. Her hair, under my fingertips, was like a satin sheet. Her skin was smooth and gleamed under the light. She tasted of icy winter mornings when my mouth was on hers. She held the back of my head hard against hers, those pretty hands entwined in my hair. She laughed when I joked. She smiled when I called her name. She spent an entire weekend in my home. And then another. She told her dying mother about me. She let me join her for a family birthday celebration. She sought their approval and she got it. She took my daughter shopping. She cupped my buttocks as she passed me on the stairs. She woke up with her head on my chest and she changed into my clothes and walked barefoot through my house and drank coffee out of my mugs and parked her car on my street and kept coming back and coming back and every time she came back she was better than I remembered and every time I saw her she was more beautiful than I remembered and I spent every waking hour in a state of raw disbelief that a woman like her would want to be with a man like me.
But now it is Christmas Eve and I am sitting in my living room trussed up in a Paul Smith jumper and a pair of trousers that are slightly too tight on me. Poppy is in her room wrapping gifts and choosing clothes. And Laurel is parked in her car on the street outside and I can see the serious set of her face from my front window; I can see the way her jaw sits a millimeter offset, the slow blink of her eyelids as she finds the strength to come into my home. Because I know and now she knows it, too.
I am not the man she thought I was.
The doorbell rings and I go to my door.
59
Floyd greets Laurel w
ith a kiss on each cheek. She smiles brightly and says, “You look lovely. Really Christmassy.”
And he does. He looks handsome and jolly. The holly green of his jumper suits him. But under her chest her heart races, her breath comes tight and hard.
“And you look beautiful as ever. I love your jacket.”
“Thank you.” Laurel runs her hands down the silk velvet and forces another smile. “Where’s Poppy?”
“Upstairs,” says Floyd. “Wrapping your gift.”
“Oh, bless her.”
“Come in.” He ushers her into the kitchen. “Come. I’ve got a bottle of champagne chilling. Can I interest you in a Buck’s Fizz?”
Laurel nods. A small drink will calm her nerves.
Floyd seems tense, too, she notices, not his usual effortless self. She watches him closely as he pours her drink, checks that the glass is fresh from the cupboard, that he doesn’t hide it from view as he pours in first the champagne and then the orange juice.
He raises a toast.
“To you,” says Floyd. “To wonderful extraordinary you. You are the most remarkable person, I think, that I have ever known. I am honored to call you a friend. Cheers, Laurel Mack. Cheers.”
Laurel smiles tightly. She feels that she should reciprocate in some way. But all she can think of to say is, “Cheers. You’re pretty fab, too.” Which sounds utterly pathetic.
She glances upward to the ceiling. “Is Poppy coming down?” she says, her voice catching nervously on the last word.
Floyd smiles at her. “Should be,” he replies simply. “Should be.”
“Here.” She hands him the bag with his gift in it. “You may as well have this now. Save taking it to Bonny’s.”
He opens the shaving mirror and he makes all the right noises and all the right gestures. And then he comes toward her with his arms outstretched and she flinches as he hugs her, feels her breath catch, adrenaline pulsing through her. She is ready to push him from her, ready to escape. She can’t imagine that she’d ever found this man’s touch pleasing. She can’t imagine she’d ever found this man anything other than terrifying.