Then She Was Gone(18)

And then Floyd reaches across the table and places his hands over hers, his nice grey eyes fixed on hers, and he says, ‘God bless your glorious mum.’

She hooks her fingers over his and squeezes his hands gently. His touch feels both gentle and hard, sexual yet benign. His touch makes her feel everything she thought she’d never feel again, things she’d forgotten she’d ever felt in the first place. His thumbs move up her wrists and pass over her pulse points. His fingertips draw lines up and down the insides of her arms. She pulls at the soft hair on his forearms, and then pushes her hands deep inside the soft wool of his sleeves. She finds his elbows and his hands find hers and they grasp each other like that across the table for a long, intense moment, before slowly pulling apart and asking for the bill.

His house is exactly the same as her old house, just three roads down from where she used to live. It’s a semi-detached Victorian house with Dutch gables and a small balcony over the front porch. It has a tiled path leading to a front door with stained-glass panels to each side and a stained-glass fanlight above. There is a small square of a front garden, neatly tended, and a pair of wheelie bins down the side return. Laurel knows what the house will look like on the inside before Floyd even has his key in the front door because it will look just like hers.

And yes, there it is, as she’d known it would be, the tiled hallway with a wide staircase ahead, the banister ending in a generous swirl, ahead a single wooden step leading down to a large airy kitchen and a door to the left through which she can make out a book-lined room, the flicker of a TV set and a pair of bare feet crossed at the ankle. She watches the bare feet uncross and lower themselves to the stripped floorboards, then a face appears, a small, nervous face, a shock of white-blond hair, a crescent of multiple earrings, a thick flick of blue liner. ‘Dad?’

The head retracts quickly at the sight of Laurel in the hallway.

‘Hi, honey.’ Floyd turns and mouths Sara-Jade at Laurel before popping his head around the door. ‘How’s your evening been?’

‘OK.’ Sara-Jade’s voice is soft and deep.

‘How was Poppy?’

‘She was OK.’

‘What time did she go to bed?’

‘Oh, like half an hour ago. You’re early.’

Laurel sees the delicate head lean forward slightly then snap back again.

‘Sara’ – Floyd turns to Laurel and gestures for her hand – ‘I’ve got someone to introduce you to.’ He pulls Laurel towards the door and propels her in front of him. ‘This is Laurel. Laurel, this is my eldest daughter, Sara-Jade.’

‘SJ,’ says the tiny girl on the armchair, slowly pulling herself to her feet. She gives Laurel a tiny hand to shake and says, ‘Nice to meet you.’ Then she falls back into the armchair and curls her tiny blue-veined feet beneath her.

She’s wearing an oversized black T-shirt over black velvet leggings. Laurel takes in the thinness of her, wonders if it is an eating disorder or just the way she’s built.

On the television is a reality TV show about people having blind dates in a brightly lit restaurant. On the floor by SJ’s feet is an empty plate smeared with traces of tomato ketchup and an empty Diet Coke can. Crumpled on the arm of the chair is a wrapper from a Galaxy bar. Laurel assumes then that her build is all natural and immediately pictures her mother, some tremulous pixie woman with enormous eyes and size six jeans. She feels pathetically jealous for a moment.

‘Well,’ says Floyd, ‘we’ll be in the kitchen. Do you want a cup of tea?’

Sara-Jade shakes her head but doesn’t say anything. Laurel follows Floyd into the kitchen. It’s as she’d imagined: smart cream wooden units with oversized wooden knobs, a dark green range, an island surrounded by stools. Unlike her old kitchen it hasn’t been extended into the return but just to the back where there is a pine table surrounded by pine chairs, piles of papers and magazines, two laptops, a pink fur coat slung over one chair, a suit jacket over the other.

She sits on a stool and watches him make her a mug of camomile tea, himself a coffee from a filter machine. ‘Your house is lovely,’ she says.

‘Why thank you,’ he replies. ‘Although I feel you should know that that exact spot where you’re sitting was where the guy who used to live in the back room kept his chamber pot. And I know that because he left it behind when he moved out. Unemptied.’

‘Oh my God!’ She laughs. ‘That’s revolting.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘You know, your house is the same as my old house. Exactly. I mean, not exactly, obviously, but the same layout, the same design.’

‘All these streets,’ he said, ‘all these houses, they were modern estates once upon a time, built at the same time to house the City workers.’ He passes her her tea and smiles. ‘Strange’, he says, ‘to think that one day our ancestors might be charmed by a Barratt estate, desperately trying preserve the period features. Don’t touch that plastic coving, it’s priceless.’

Laurel smiles. ‘Can you believe, the people who lived here before took out the fitted wardrobes with mirrored sliding doors!’

Floyd laughs and eyes her fondly. And then he stops laughing and stares at her intently. He says, ‘You know, I googled you. After our first date.’

The smile freezes on Laurel’s face.