Then She Was Gone(11)

Then she gives the hairstylist a five-pound note and says, ‘Thank you, Tania, it looks great, it really does. Thank you so much.’

She eyes her reflection one more time in the wall-length mirror before leaving. Her hair is shoulder-length, blond, shiny and swishy. Her hair is entirely unrepresentative of what lies beneath. If she could pay someone in Stroud Green eighty pounds to give her a psyche a shiny, swishy blow-dry, she would. And she would give them more than a five-pound tip.

Outside it is a blowy autumn afternoon. Her hair feels light as silk as it is whipped around her head. It’s late and she’s hungry and decides that she can’t wait to get home to eat so she pushes open the door to the café three doors down from her hairdresser’s and orders herself a toasted cheese sandwich and a decaf cappuccino. She eats fast and the cheese pulls away from the bread in unruly strings that break and slap against her chin. She has a paper napkin to her chin to wipe away the grease when a man walks in.

He is of average height, average build, around fifty. His hair is cut short, grey at the temples, receding and darker on the top. He’s wearing good jeans with a nice shirt, lace-up shoes, tortoiseshell glasses: the sort of clothes that Paul would wear. And whatever her feelings are now about Paul – and they are conflicted and horribly confusing – she has to concede that he always looks lovely.

She finds, to her surprise, that she is almost admiring the man in the doorway. There is something about him: a low-key swagger and a certain – dare she say it? – twinkle in his eye. She watches as he queues at the counter, takes in more detail: a flat but soft stomach, good hands, one ear that protrudes slightly further than the other. He’s not handsome in the traditional sense of the word but has the air of a man who has long ago accepted his physical limitations and shifted all the focus to his personality.

He orders a slice of carrot cake and a black coffee – his accent is hard to place, possibly American, or a foreigner who learned English from Americans – and then carries them to the table next to hers. Laurel’s breath catches. He didn’t appear to have noticed her staring at him yet he’s chosen the table closest to hers in a café full of empty tables. She panics, feeling as though maybe she’s subconsciously, inadvertently, invited his attentions. She doesn’t want his attentions. She doesn’t want any attention.

For a few moments they sit like that, side by side. He doesn’t look at her, not once, but Laurel can feel some kind of intent radiating from him. The man plays with a smartphone. Laurel finishes her cheese sandwich in smaller, slower mouthfuls. After a while she begins to think maybe she was imagining it. She drinks her coffee and starts to leave.

Then: ‘You have beautiful hair.’

She turns, shocked at his words and says, ‘Oh.’

‘Really pretty.’

‘Thank you.’ Her hand has gone to her hair, unthinkingly. ‘I just had it done. It doesn’t normally look this good.’

He smiles. ‘You ever had this carrot cake before?’

She shakes her head.

‘It’s pretty amazing. Would you like to try some?’

She laughs nervously. ‘No, thank you, I …’

‘Look, I have a clean spoon, right here.’ He pushes it across his table towards her. ‘Go on. I’m never going to eat all this.’

A blade of light passes across the café at that moment, bright as torchlight. It touches the spoon and makes it glitter. The cake has the indents of his fork in it. The moment is curiously intimate and Laurel’s gut reaction is to back away, to leave. But as she watches the sparkles on the silver spoon she feels something inside her begin to open up. Something like hope.

She picks up the spoon and she scoops a small chunk of cake from the end that he has not touched.

His name is Floyd. Floyd Dunn. He offers her his hand and says, ‘Pleased to meet you, Laurel Mack.’ His grip is firm and warm.

‘What’s your accent?’ she asks, pulling her chair closer to his table, feeling the blade of sunlight warming the back of her head.

‘Ah,’ he says, dabbing his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘What isn’t my accent would be a better question. I am the son of very ambitious Americans who chased jobs and money all around the world. Four years in the US. Two in Canada. Another four in the US. Four in Germany. A year in Singapore. Then three in the UK. My parents went back to the States; I stayed here.’

‘So you’ve been here for a long time?’

‘I’ve been here for’ – he screws his eyes as he calculates – ‘thirty-seven years. I have a British passport. British children. A British ex-wife. I listen to The Archers. I’m fully assimilated.’

He smiles and she laughs.

She catches herself for a moment. Sitting in a café in the middle of the afternoon, talking to a strange man, laughing at his jokes. How has this happened, this day? Of all the days, all the hundreds of dark days that have passed since Ellie went? Is this what closure does? Is this what happens when you finally bury your child?

‘So, do you live around here?’ he asks.

‘No,’ she says. ‘No. I live in Barnet. But I used to live around here. Until a few years ago. Hence the hairdresser.’ She nods her head in the direction of the shop a few doors down. ‘Total phobia of letting anyone else touch my hair so I trek down here every month.’