Then She Was Gone(71)

Laurel keeps smiling. ‘The pair I had were definitely worth a fair bit. Some friends bought them for us, for a wedding present, said they’d got them at an auction. These friends were incredibly wealthy and they suggested that we should get them insured, but we never did.’

She leaves that there, between them, waiting to see what Floyd does with it.

‘Well, there you go then,’ he says, smiling tightly. ‘Maybe Noelle did manage to leave Poppy something worth having after all.’

‘But, what about her house? Doesn’t that belong to Poppy? Technically?’

‘Noelle’s house? No, she didn’t own her house. It was rented.’

‘Was it? I thought …’ Laurel stops herself. She’s not supposed to know anything about Noelle’s house. ‘I don’t know, I just assumed she would have owned it. And what about Noelle’s family? Did you ever meet them? Did they ever meet Poppy?’

‘No,’ says Floyd. ‘Noelle didn’t have much of a family. Or at least not one she told me about. It’s possible they were estranged. It’s possible they were dead. She might have had a dozen brothers and sisters for all I know.’ He sighs. ‘Nothing would surprise me about that woman. Nothing.’

She nods, slowly digesting Floyd’s lie. ‘And when you went to her house to get Poppy’s things, what was it like? Was it nice?’

Floyd shudders slightly. ‘Grim,’ he says. ‘Really grim. Cold and bare and uncomfortable. Poppy’s room looked a room in a Romanian orphanage. It had this really weird wallpaper. Everything was painted Pepto-Bismol pink. And my God, Laurel, the worst thing, the worst thing of all …’

His eyes find hers and he licks his lips. ‘I’ve never told anyone this before because it was so bleak and so sick and so …’ He shudders again. ‘… depraved. But in her cellar she had been hoarding hamsters or gerbils or something. God knows what. Mice maybe. In cages stacked one on top of the other. Must have been about twenty of them. And a dozen in each cage. And all of them were dead. The smell. Jesus Christ.’ He blinks away the memory. ‘I mean, seriously, what sort of woman, what sort of human …?’

Laurel shakes her head, widening her eyes in faux wonder. ‘That’s horrible,’ she says, ‘that really is.’

Floyd sighs. ‘Poor sick woman,’ he says. ‘Poor, poor individual.’

‘Sounds like the only good thing she ever did was to give birth to Poppy.’

He glances at her and then down at his lap. His eyes are dark and haunted. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose it was.’





Fifty-two


I kept you very sweet in those days after our big contretemps. I made all the right noises about Poppy coming to live with you, pretended I was ‘giving it some thought’, said that I could ‘see the advantages’. But all the while I was painstakingly planning our escape.

It was your turn to have her overnight and I’d packed all our bags ready for our journey to Dublin, filled the car with petrol so we wouldn’t have to stop. My mother was expecting us on the 9 a.m. ferry the following day. I thought I was so clever, I really did.

But I’d underestimated you. You’d worked out what was going on. Poppy wasn’t there when I came for her that evening. You’d taken her to stay at someone’s house. You were ready for me.

‘Come in,’ you said, ‘please. We need to talk.’

Were there ever four more terrifying words in the English language?

You sat me down in the kitchen. I sat in the same chair I’d used that perfect day when I first brought Poppy to meet you. I remembered how your kitchen had swallowed me up like a womb then. But that afternoon, your kitchen broke my heart. I knew what you were going to say. I knew it.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ you said, ‘about Poppy. About arrangements. Going forward. And it can’t go on like this. And to be horribly, horribly frank with you, Noelle, I fear for her, living with you. I think …’

Here it came. Here it came.

‘I think you’re toxic.’

Toxic.

Dear Jesus.

‘And this is about much more than home-schooling, Noelle. This is about everything. Did you know that Poppy hates you? She’s told me that. Not just once. Not just when she’s cross with you. But often. She’s scared of you. She doesn’t …’ You looked up at me, eyes full of cool guilt. ‘She doesn’t like the way you smell. She’s said that to me. And that … that’s not normal, Noelle. A child should not be able to differentiate between their own smell and the smell of their mother at this stage. That, to me, suggests a terrible, fundamental disconnect between you both; it suggests a failure to bond. And I’ve been talking to a social worker about what my options are and she said that I should take Poppy out of the picture for now, just while we thrash this out, so she’s gone to stay with a friend. Just for a few days …’

‘Friend?’ I said cynically. ‘What friend? You don’t have any friends.’

‘It doesn’t matter what friend. But we really need to reach an agreement on this, civilly, before Poppy comes home. So I’m asking you, Noelle, as Poppy’s mother, could you …’

You struggled for the words here, I recall.