Then She Was Gone(39)

Laurel peers closely at an entry from what seems to be January. Ellie is bemoaning her result in a maths test. A B+. She’d wanted an A. Theo had got an A. Laurel sighs. Ellie had constantly aligned herself with Theo, as though he was the only benchmark that mattered.

‘Asked Mum for a tutor,’ she wrote. ‘Fingers crossed she says yes. I am sooooo shit at maths …’

And there, a few entries later: ‘Tutor came! She’s a bit weird but a great teacher! A* here I come!’

Laurel turns the pages faster and faster. She’s looking for something but she doesn’t quite know what, something to tie all the loose fragments of her dreams together with the reality of the last few days’ revelations.

Tutor today. I got 97 % in the paper she set me. She gave me a set of lip balms. So sweet!

Tutor 5 p.m. She brought me a scented pen. She’s so sweet!

Tutor 5 p.m. She said I’m the best student she’s ever had! But of course!

Tutor 5 p.m. Bit weird today, asking me strange questions about what I want in life. Think she’s having a midlife crisis!

Tutor 5 p.m. 100%!! I literally just got 100%!!! Tutor says I am a genius. She is 100% right!

Tutor 5 p.m. Think I’m over this now. She really freaks me out sometimes. She’s so intense. And she smells. Am going to ask Mum to cancel her. I can do this by myself. Don’t need bunny boilers in my life.



There’s no more mention of the tutor after this entry.

Ellie simply slots back into her life. She sees Theo. She studies. She looks forward to the summer. Nothing more.

But Laurel’s fingertip stays poised against the last entry, against the words ‘bunny boiler’. What does that mean? Her understanding of the term is a woman who stalks and torments a man who has discarded her, unable to deal with the rejection. Clearly that is not the definition that Ellie was alluding to here. So if not that, then what? Had Noelle been overly fixated on Ellie? Obsessed with her, maybe? Maybe even physically attracted to her? Had she tried to touch Ellie inappropriately? Or maybe she was jealous of her, of her youth and beauty and unquestionable intelligence? Maybe she belittled her and made her feel bad? And if any of these scenarios was the case, what did this mean?

She squeezes her eyes tight shut and her hands into fists. There’s something in there, but she can’t get to it. And what could it possibly be anyway?

The darkness lifts after a moment and life returns to its normal proportions. She slowly puts Ellie’s books back into their box and slides it under the bed.

‘Tell me more about Noelle,’ she says to Floyd that night over dinner.

She sees a muscle in his cheek twitch and there is a missed beat before he says, ‘Oh, God, must I?’

‘Sorry. I know she’s not your favourite person. But I’m curious.’ She rests her cutlery on her plate and picks up her wine glass. ‘I looked at Ellie’s old diaries today. I wanted to see what she wrote about Noelle. And she called her … I hope you won’t be offended, but she called her a “bunny boiler”.’

‘Ha, no. That about sums it up. She was a very needy woman. Very intense.’

‘How did you meet her?’

‘Urgh.’ He swallows a mouthful of wine and puts down his glass. ‘Well, yeah. I don’t come out of this too well. But she was a fan.’

‘A fan? You have fans?’

‘Well, maybe it would be fairer to call them fervent readers. Maths groupies. That kind of thing.’

‘Well I never,’ says Laurel, sitting back in her chair and appraising Floyd teasingly, ‘I did not realise that I was facing such stiff competition.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, those days are well and truly over. I had my moment in the sun with one book. My “pay the bills book”, as I call it. Maths for dummies you could say, except we weren’t that honest about it. I got to be a bit playful with that book and it got me a little fan club of slightly peculiar, maths-obsessed women. Wasn’t my style at all. I soon went back to the big heavyweight tomes that no one with romantic yearnings would touch with a bargepole.’

‘So, Noelle, she was one of your groupies?’

‘Yeah. I suppose so. And I’d just split up with Sara’s mother and I was lonely and she was a bit crazy and a bit determined and I let her have her way with me and then spent the next few years repenting at leisure. She was like a leech. I couldn’t get shot of her. And then she got pregnant.’

‘By you?’

He sighs and casts his gaze over her shoulder. He doesn’t answer her question. ‘I didn’t even really find her that attractive. I was just … I was just trying to be nice, I suppose.’

Laurel laughs drily. She has never done anything ‘just to be nice’ in her life. But she knows the type. Paul is the same, will go against all his basest instincts and feelings to make someone else feel good for five minutes.

‘And then you were stuck with her?’

‘Yeah. I was indeed.’ He runs his fingertips around the bowl of his wine glass and looks uncharacteristically pensive.

‘Who ended it? Eventually?’

‘That was me. And that was where the bunny-boiler bit came into it. She wasn’t prepared to let me go without a fight. There were some bad nights. Really bad nights. And then one day she just said she’d had enough, dumped Poppy on my doorstep and disappeared off the face of the earth.’ He shrugs. ‘Sad, really,’ he says. ‘Really sad. Sad woman. Sad story. You know.’