Then She Was Gone(35)

‘I am very well indeed. Oh, apart from the gaping hole in my heart where you should be right now, of course.’

‘Stop it,’ she says teasingly, although she half means it.

‘Do you not have a gaping hole in your heart, Laurel?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘No. But I am missing you.’

‘I’ll take that,’ says Floyd. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Well, I have a glass of wine, naturally.’

‘Are you dressed?’

‘Yes. I am fully dressed. I am even wearing slippers.’

‘Slippers, yes, carry on. What else?’

‘A big cardigan.’

‘Ooh, yeah. A big cardigan. How big exactly is your cardigan?’

‘It’s huge. Gigantic. Really long sleeves that cover my hands. And a hole in the hem.’

‘Oh, tatty then? A tatty cardigan?’

‘Very tatty. Horribly tatty.’ She laughs.

‘No, no, don’t stop!’ he jokes. ‘Tell me more about your big tatty cardigan!’

She laughs again and looks down at her phone as she hears another call coming in. It’s Jake’s number and Jake only ever calls her on a Wednesday, and she feels an instant jolt of primal worry and says, ‘Floyd, I’m going to have to call you back. Jake’s trying to get through to me.’

‘Quickly, quickly! What colour is it? Tell me it’s brown? Please.’

‘No,’ she says, ‘it’s black! Now go! I’ll call you back.

‘Jake,’ she says, switching to his call.

‘No,’ says a female voice. ‘It’s not Jake. It’s Blue.’

‘Oh,’ says Laurel. ‘Hi. Is everything all right? Is Jake OK?’

‘Yes. Jake’s fine. He’s sitting right here.’

Laurel’s heart rate slows and she leans back into her sofa.

‘What can I do for you, Blue?’

‘Look,’ she says. ‘I’ve been wrestling with this all weekend. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. Your boyfriend …?’

Laurel’s heart rate picks up again.

‘I have a – a, like a sixth sense? And your boyfriend … his aura is all wrong? It’s dark.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Laurel shakes her head slightly, as if trying to dislodge something from her ear.

‘I have this gift, I can see into people’s psyches. Through the walls of their higher consciousness? Into their subconscious? And I’m really sorry, but the minute I sat down and saw him there, the minute he and I made eye contact, I knew.’

‘You knew what?’

‘That he’s hiding something. And I know you and I aren’t close, Laurel, and I know that’s mainly down to me because I’m so self-protective, but I do care about you, you’re the mother of the man I love and I want you to be safe.’

Laurel waits for a moment before forming her response, and then when it comes it’s a slightly unkind, disparaging laugh. ‘Good grief,’ she says. ‘Can you put me on to Jake. Please.’

‘Jake thinks the same,’ says Blue. ‘It’s all we’ve talked about all weekend. He totally agrees with me. He—’

‘Just put him on to me please, Blue. Now.’

She hears Blue tut and then her son’s voice saying, ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Jake,’ she says. ‘Seriously. Come on. What is this shit?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just …’

‘What, Jake? What is it?’

‘I can’t really explain it. It’s what Blue said.’

‘Oh, come on, Jake. I know you better than that. You’re not like her. That’s not who you are. You don’t have a … a sixth sense. You’re the boy who never noticed when a girl liked you. The only member of the family who didn’t notice when Granny Deirdre started losing her marbles. You’ve never been any good at reading people. So don’t give me that. What the hell is going on?’

‘Nothing, Mum. We just got a bad vibe off him. Floyd, or whatever he’s called.’

‘No!’ she snaps. ‘Blue got a bad vibe off him. You just got whatever vibe Blue told you to get because you’re her little lapdog.’

Jake falls silent and Laurel holds her breath. She has never, in all the time that Jake and Blue have been together, expressed any disapproval of their dysfunctional dynamic.

‘Mum …’ he starts. But he’s whining and Laurel cannot possibly listen to her adult son whining, not now, not when everything is going so well, not when she’s finally, finally happy.

‘No, Jake. I’m sorry, I know she’s your girlfriend and the centre of your universe and I know you really, really love her. She’s your rock; I get that. But I have been sad for so long and broken for so long and finally I have something good, something special, and I am not having you and your whacko girlfriend tell me that it’s wrong. Dad liked him and Hanna liked him and that is more than enough for me.’

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ says Jake.

But she can still hear the whine in his voice and she can’t stand it and so she says, in a very quiet voice, ‘I’m going now, Jake. I’m going to hang up. Tell Blue that I know she means well but that I don’t want to hear any more of her outlandish theories.’