Лайза Джуэлл - Then She Was Gone

She showers and shaves and buffs and plucks. She cooks in her pajamas to save her clothes and she finds the process of chopping and weighing and measuring and checking and tasting and stirring more enjoyable than she’d expected, and she remembers that she used to do this. She used to do this every day. Cook interesting, tasty, healthy meals. Every day. Sometimes twice a day. She’d cooked for her family, to show them that she loved them, to keep them healthy, to keep them safe. And then her daughter had disappeared and then reappeared as a small selection of bones, and the body that Laurel had spent almost sixteen years nurturing had been picked apart by wild animals and scattered across a damp forest floor and all of those things had happened in spite of all the lovely food Laurel had cooked for her.

So, really. What was the point?

But she is remembering now. Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient; it nurtures the chef.

At seven o’clock she gets dressed: a black sleeveless shirt and a full red skirt and, as she’s not leaving the house and won’t have to walk in them, a pair of red stilettoes. At seven fifteen her phone pings.

Disaster. SJ blown us out. Can either come with Poppy or reschedule. Your call.

She breathes in deeply. Her initial reaction is annoyance. Intense annoyance. All the effort. All the hair removal. Not to mention the changing of her bedsheets.

But the feeling passes and she thinks, actually, why not? Why not spend an evening with Floyd and his daughter? Why not take the opportunity to get to know her a bit better? And besides, the bedsheets needed changing.

She smiles and texts back. Please come with Poppy. It would be an absolute pleasure.

Floyd replies immediately.

That’s fantastic. Thank you. One small thing. She’s obsessed with other people’s photos. If you have any of Ellie, maybe best to put them away. I haven’t told her about Ellie and think it’s best she doesn’t know. Hope that’s OK.

19

Poppy is wearing a knee-length black velvet dress with a red bolero jacket and red shoes with bows on them, and Laurel feels another jolt of unease about the way the girl is dressed. It screams of lack of peer influence and a mother’s touch. But she puts the unease to one side and brings Floyd and Poppy into her living room where candles flicker and cast dancing shadows on the plain white walls, where bowls of crisps and Tex-Mex dips decanted into glass dishes sit on the coffee table, where soft background music blunts the hard edges of the small square room and where a bottle of Cava sits in a cooler and glasses sparkle in the candlelight.

“What a lovely flat,” says Floyd, passing her a bottle of wine and prompting Poppy to pass her the bunch of lilies she’d been clutching when she arrived.

“It’s OK,” says Laurel. “It’s functional.”

Poppy looks around for a moment, taking in the family photos on the windowsills and the cabinets. “Is this your little girl?” she says, peering at a photo of Hanna when she was about six or seven.

“Yes,” says Laurel. “That’s Hanna. She’s not a little girl anymore though. She’s going to be twenty-eight next week.”

“And is this your son?”

“Yes. That’s Jake. My oldest one. He’ll be thirty in January.”

“He looks nice,” she says. “Is he nice?”

Laurel puts the wine in the fridge and turns back to Poppy. “He’s . . . well, yes. He’s very nice. I don’t really see much of him these days unfortunately. He lives in Devon.”

“Has he got a girlfriend?”

“Yes. She’s called Blue and they live together in a little gingerbread cottage with chickens in the garden. He’s a surveyor. I’m not sure what she does. Something to do with knitting, I think.”

“Do you like her? It sounds as if you don’t like her.”

Laurel and Floyd exchange another look. She’s waiting for him to pull Poppy back a bit, rein her in. But he doesn’t. He watches her in something approaching awe as though waiting to see just how far she will go.

“I barely know her,” Laurel says, trying to soften her tone. “She seems perfectly OK. A bit, maybe, controlling .” She shrugs. “Jake’s a grown man, though; if he wants to be controlled by another human being, I guess that’s his lookout.”

She invites them to sit down and eat some crisps. Floyd does so, but Poppy is still stalking the room, investigating. “Have you got a picture of your husband?” she says.

“Ex-husband,” Laurel corrects, “and no. Not on display. But somewhere, I’m sure.”

“What’s his name?”

“Paul.”

Poppy nods. “What’s he like?”

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 onto a pita 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 realized 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 toward 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 realizes 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 favorite 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,” Poppy 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.”