Then She Was Gone(24)

She smiles at Floyd, looking to be rescued, but he looks as keen to find out about Paul as his daughter. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Paul? He’s lovely, actually. He’s a really lovely man. Very gentle. Very kind. A bit daft.’

‘Then why did you split up?’

Ah. There it was. Silly her, not to have seen the conversational cul-de-sac she was walking straight into. And still Floyd does not come to her rescue, simply scoops some dip on to a pitta chip and pops it into his mouth.

‘We just … well, we changed. We wanted different things. The children grew up and left home and we realised we didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives together.’

‘Did he marry someone else?’

‘No. Not quite. But he has a girlfriend. They live together.’

‘Is she nice? Do you like her?’

‘I’ve never met her. But my children have. They say she’s very sweet.’

Poppy finally seems sated and takes a seat next to her father, who grips her knee and gives it a quick hard squeeze as if to say good job on grilling the lady. Then he leans towards the coffee table and places a hand on the neck of the Cava and says, ‘Well, shall I?’

‘Yes. Please. How did you get here? Are you driving?’

‘No. We got the Tube. Do you have an extra glass?’

She’s confused for a moment and then realises that he wants the extra glass for Poppy. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Sorry. I didn’t think. It’s the French way, isn’t it?’

‘What’s the French way?’ asks Poppy.

‘Children drinking,’ she explains. ‘Not something that happens much in other countries.’

‘Only champagne,’ says Floyd. ‘Only a sip. And only on very special occasions.’

Laurel pours the Cava and they make a toast to themselves and to her and to SJ for not showing up and meaning that Poppy gets to stay up late and wear her nice dress.

‘That is a really lovely dress,’ Laurel says, sensing an opening. ‘Who takes you shopping for clothes?’

‘Dad,’ she replies. ‘We shop online together mostly. But sometimes we go to Oxford Street.’

‘And what’s your favourite clothes shop?’

‘I haven’t really got one. Marks & Spencer is really good, I suppose, and we always go into John Lewis.’

‘What about H&M? Gap?’

‘I’m not really that kind of girl,’ she says. ‘Jeans and hoodies and stuff. I like to look … smart.’

Floyd’s hand goes to the knee again, gives it another encouraging that’s my girl squeeze.

‘So,’ says Laurel. ‘Tell me about the home-schooling? How does that work?’

‘Just like real schooling,’ she responds. ‘I sit and learn. And then when I’ve learned I relax.’

‘How many hours a day do you study?’

‘Two or three,’ she says. ‘Well, two or three hours with Dad. Obviously he has to work. The rest of the time by myself.’

‘And you don’t ever get lonely? Or wish you had kids your own age to hang out with?’

‘Noooo,’ she says, shaking her head emphatically. ‘No, no, never.’

‘Poppy is basically forty years old,’ says Floyd admiringly. ‘You know, how you get to forty and you suddenly stop giving a shit about all the stupid things you worried about your whole life. Well, Poppy’s already there.’

‘When I’m with kids my own age I tend to roll my eyes a lot and look at them like they’re mad. Which doesn’t really go down too well. They think I’m a bitch.’ Poppy shrugs and laughs and takes a mouthful of Cava.

Laurel simply nods. She can see how this self-possessed child might appear to other children. But she doesn’t believe that it’s the way it must be; she doesn’t believe that Poppy couldn’t learn to enjoy time with her peers, to stop rolling her eyes at them and alienating them. She doesn’t know, thinks Laurel, she doesn’t know that this isn’t how you grow up. That wearing shiny shoes with bows on and rolling your eyes at other kids is not a sign of maturity, but a sign that you’ve missed a whole set of steps on the road to maturity.

This child, Laurel suddenly feels with the immediacy of a kick to the gut, needs a mother. And this mother, she acknowledges, needs a child. And Poppy, she is so like Ellie. The planes and lines of her pretty face, the shape of her hairline, of her skull, the way her ears attach to her head, the shapes her mouth makes when it moves, the precise angle of her cupid’s bow, they’re almost mathematically identical.

The differences are pronounced too. Her eyebrows are thicker, her neck is longer, her hair parts differently and is a different shade of brown. And while Ellie’s eyes were a hazel brown, Poppy’s are chocolate. They are not identical. But there is something, something alarming and arresting, a likeness that she can’t leave alone.

‘Maybe you and I could go shopping together?’ Laurel says brightly. ‘One day? Would you like that?’

Finally Poppy looks to her dad for his approval before turning back to Laurel and saying, ‘I would absolutely love that. Yes please!’

Laurel goes to work on Friday. She works Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays at the shopping centre near her flat. Her job title is ‘marketing coordinator’. It’s a silly job, a mum job, a little local thing to fill some hours and make some money to pay for clothes and the like. She comes, she smiles, she makes the phone calls and writes the emails and sits in the meetings about the inconsequential things she’s being paid to pretend she cares about and then she goes home and doesn’t think of any of it again until the next time she walks through the door.