Then She Was Gone(12)

‘Well …’ He eyes her hair. ‘It looks like it’s worth it to me.’

His tone is flirtatious and she has to ask herself if he’s weird or not. Is he? Is there something odd about him, anything a bit off? Is she failing to read warning signs? Is he going to scam her, rape her, abduct her, stalk her? Is he mad? Is he bad?

She asks these silent internalised questions of everyone she meets. She was never a trusting person, even before her daughter vanished and then turned up dead ten years later. Paul always said he’d taken her on as a long-term project. She’d refused to marry him until Jake was a toddler, scared that he was just going through a phase and would stand her up at the register office. But she asks these questions even more these days. Because she knows that the worst-case scenario is not simply a terrible thing that isn’t likely to happen.

But she’s staring at this man, this man with grey eyes and grey hair and soft skin and nice shoes and she cannot find one thing wrong with him. Apart from the fact that he is talking to her. ‘Thank you,’ she says in reply to his compliment. And then she moves her chair back, towards her table, wanting to leave, but also wanting him to ask her to stay.

‘You have to go?’ he says.

‘Well, yes,’ she says, trying to think of something she needs to do. ‘I’m going to see my daughter.’

She is not going to see her daughter. She never sees her daughter.

‘Oh, you have a daughter?’

‘Yes. And a son.’

‘One of each.’

‘Yes,’ she says, the pain of denying her gone daughter piercing her heart. ‘One of each.’

‘I have two girls.’

She nods and hitches her bag on to her shoulder. ‘How old?’

‘One of twenty-one. One of nine.’

‘Do they live with you?’

‘The nine-year-old does. The twenty-one-year-old lives with her mum.’

‘Oh.’

He smiles. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Isn’t everything?’ She smiles back.

And then he tears a corner off a newspaper left on the table next to his and finds a pen in his coat pocket and says, ‘Here. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. But it hasn’t been for long enough. I’d really like to take you out for dinner.’ He scribbles a number on the scrap of paper and passes it to her. ‘Call me.’

Call me.

So assured, so simple, so forward. She cannot imagine how a human could be that way.

She takes the piece of paper and rubs it between her fingertips. ‘Yes,’ she says. Then: ‘Well, maybe.’

He laughs. He has a lot of fillings. ‘Maybe will do me. Maybe will do.’

She leaves the café quickly and without looking back.

That evening Laurel does something she’s never done before. She drops into Hanna’s unannounced. The expression on her youngest daughter’s face when she sees her mother standing on the doorstep is 90 per cent appalled and 10 per cent concerned.

‘Mum?’

‘Hello, love.’

Hanna looks behind her as though there might be a visible reason for her mother’s presence somewhere in her vicinity.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. I’m fine. I just … I was just passing by and felt I hadn’t seen you in a while.’

‘I saw you on Sunday.’

Hanna had popped by with an old laptop for her but hadn’t crossed the threshold.

‘Yes. I know. But that was just, well, it wasn’t proper.’

Hanna moves from one bare foot to the other. ‘Do you want to come in?’

‘That would be nice, darling, thank you.’

Hanna is in joggers and a tight white T-shirt with the word Cheri emblazoned across the front. Hanna has never been much of a style maven. She favours a black suit from Banana Republic for work and cheap leisurewear for home. Laurel doesn’t know what she wears in the evenings as they never go anywhere together in the evenings.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Bit late for tea for me.’

Hanna rolls her eyes. She has little patience with Laurel’s caffeine sensitivity, thinks she makes it all up to annoy her.

‘Well, I’m going to have a coffee. What shall I get you?’

‘Nothing, honestly. I’m fine.’

She watches her daughter moving around her small kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, her body language so closed and muted, and she wonders if there was ever a time when she and Hanna were close.

‘Where’ve you been then?’ says Hanna.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You said you were passing?’

‘Oh, yes. Right. Hair appointment.’ She touches her hair again, feeling the white lie burning through her.

‘It looks lovely.’

‘Thank you, darling.’

The piece of newspaper with the scribbled number and the name ‘Floyd’ on it is in her pocket and she touches it as she speaks. ‘A funny thing happened,’ she begins.

Hanna throws her a look of dread. It’s the same look she throws her any time she starts a conversation about anything, as though she’s terrified of being dragged into something she hasn’t got the emotional capacity to deal with.