Then She Was Gone(76)

‘If you say so,’ she says. ‘If you say so.’

Laurel calls Jake when she leaves her mother’s care home.

He picks up the call within two ring tones. ‘Mum,’ he says, a note of concern in his voice.

‘Everything’s fine,’ she says. ‘Not an emergency. I just wanted to say hello.’

‘I’m really sorry, Mum,’ he starts immediately. ‘I’m really sorry about me and Blue and what we said to you the other day. It was out of order.’

‘No, Jake, honestly. It’s fine. I’m sorry I overreacted. I think I was just so shocked to find myself in a relationship after so long I was a bit raw. Just wanted everything to be perfect. You know. And of course nothing’s perfect, is it?’

‘No,’ says Jake in a voice full of things he’d like to say but can’t. ‘No. That’s true.’

‘Am I seeing you tomorrow?’ she says. ‘At Bonny’s?’

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘We’ll be there.’

‘You know Floyd will be there too? Will that be a problem?’

‘No,’ he says, overly assured, she feels. ‘No. It will be fine.’

She takes a breath, ready to get to the point of her call. ‘Is Blue there?’ she says. ‘I wondered if we could have a word?’

‘Yeah,’ says Jake. ‘Yeah. She’s here. You’re not going to …?’

‘No. I told you, Jake. Water under the bridge. I just want to ask her something.’

‘OK.’

She hears him call out to Blue, who comes to the phone and says, ‘Hi, Laurel. How are you?’

‘I’m good, thank you, Blue. I’m fine. How are you?’

‘Oh, you know. Busy, busy. As always.’

There’s a pause and then Laurel says, ‘Listen, Blue, I wanted to apologise for the way I reacted last time we spoke. I think I may have been a little over the top.’

She can almost hear Blue shrug. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘No, really. I’m sorry. And I just … I’ve been … I don’t know. I suppose I just wanted to know more about why you thought what you thought when you met him.’

‘You feel it too.’

Laurel blanches and brings her hand to her throat. She feels horribly caught out. ‘No,’ she says, ‘no. It’s—’

Blue cuts in over her. ‘It’s like I said. I can see auras. And if you’ve never seen an aura then obviously you’re going to think it’s a big crock. I get that. But I see them and you’re just going to have to trust me on that if you want to know what I think.’

‘I do,’ she says. ‘I do want to know what you think.’

Blue sighs and continues, clearly in her element. ‘Floyd has strange colours in his aura. A lot of dark, dark colours. There’s dark green, which suggests low self-esteem and resentment. And dark red, which suggests anger. And dark pink, which is immaturity and dishonesty. But that is far from how he presents himself to the world. The discrepancy between his aura and his presentation is striking. It’s like he’s taking cues from people. Working out how to be. And then there’s the way he is with his daughter. It’s not quite right. He watches her all the time, did you know that? You can almost see him prompting her under his breath. Like she’s acting, too, and he’s there to stop her making a mistake, to stop her exposing him for what he is. I don’t think …’ She pauses. ‘I don’t think he really loves her. Not in the normal sense of the word. I think it’s more that he needs her, because she makes him human. She’s like a cloak.’

Laurel nods and makes an affirmative noise, although she is still processing what Blue has just said.

‘But what you said, about him being dangerous. What did you really mean by that?’

‘I meant’, says Blue, ‘that a man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed. And I think Floyd is dangerous because he’s pretending to be someone he’s not in order to get you to love him.’

Laurel shudders at Blue’s words. They chime so completely with her own feelings yesterday standing by the Christmas tree.

‘What about Poppy?’ she says. ‘What is her aura like?’

‘Poppy’s aura’, Blue says, ‘is like a rainbow. Poppy is everything. But she needs to get away from her father before he starts taking her colours away.’

‘And me?’

There is a long pause.

‘Your aura is so faded I can barely see the colours in it, Laurel.’





Fifty-six


When Laurel gets to the office she finds she’s the only one not wearing a Christmas jumper.

‘Was there a memo?’ she asks Helen.

‘Yes,’ says Helen, who is wearing a jumper with flashing fairy lights somehow built into it and has red baubles hanging from her earrings. ‘Last week. It should be in your inbox.’

Laurel sighs. She’s sure it was. She’s sure she must have read it. And then edited it out somewhere in the tangles of her life.

‘Here.’ Helen throws her a piece of tinsel. ‘Put this in your hair.’

Laurel twists the tinsel into her hair and smiles. ‘Thank you.’