Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell Page 0,22

something then, the closest thing to her, the door frame. She grips it hard and for a moment she is rendered entirely mute.

“Wow,” she says eventually. “Sorry. You look . . .” But she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say, You look just like my lost girl . . . the dimple, the broad forehead, the heavy-lidded eyes, the way you tip your head to one side like that when you’re trying to work out what someone’s thinking. Instead she says, “You remind me of someone. Sorry!” and she laughs too loud.

Laurel used to see girls who looked like Ellie all the time, after she’d first gone. She’d never quite got to the point of chasing anyone down the street, calling out her daughter’s name and grabbing them by the shoulder as people did in movies. But she’d had the butterflies, the quickening of her breath, the feeling that her world was about to blow apart with joy and relief. They were always so short-lived, those moments, and it hadn’t happened for years now.

Poppy smiles and says, “Can I get you anything? A tea? A coffee?”

“Oh,” says Laurel, not expecting such slick hostessing from a nine-year-old girl. “Yes. A coffee, please. If that’s OK?” She looks behind her, to see if Floyd is coming. He’d told her he would be down in two minutes. He hadn’t told her that his daughter would be here.

“Dad said you were really pretty,” says Poppy with her back to her as she fills the filter machine from the tap. “And you are.”

“Gosh,” says Laurel. “Thank you. Though I must look a state.” She runs her hand down her hair, smoothing out the tangles that this child’s father put there last night with his hands. She’s wearing Floyd’s T-shirt and she reeks, she knows she does, of sex.

“Did you have a lovely evening?” Poppy asks, spooning ground coffee into the machine.

“Yes, thank you, we really did.”

“Did you go to the Eritrean place?”

“Yes.”

“That’s my favorite restaurant,” she says. “My dad’s been taking me there since I was tiny.”

“Oh,” says Laurel. “What a sophisticated palate you must have.”

“There’s nothing I won’t eat,” she replies. “Apart from prunes, which are the devil’s work.”

Poppy is wearing a loose-fitting dress made of blue and white striped cotton, with navy woolen tights and a pair of navy leather pumps. Her brown hair is tied back and has two small red clips in it. It’s a very formal outfit for a young girl, Laurel feels. The sort of thing she’d have had to bribe both her girls to wear when they were that age.

“No school today?” she inquires.

“No. No school any day. I don’t go to school.”

“Oh,” says Laurel, “that’s . . . I mean . . .”

“Dad teaches me.”

“Has he always taught you?”

“Yes. Always. You know I could read chapter books when I was three. Simple algebra at four. There was no normal school that would have coped with me really.” She laughs, a womanly tinkle, and she flicks the switch on the filter machine. “Can I interest you in some granola and yogurt? Maybe? Or a slice of toast?”

Laurel turns to look behind her again. There’s still no sign of Floyd. “You know,” she says, “I might just have a quick shower before I eat anything. I feel a bit . . .” She grimaces. “I won’t be long.”

“Absolutely,” says Poppy. “You go and shower. I’ll have your coffee waiting for you.”

Laurel nods and smiles and starts to back out of the kitchen. She passes Floyd on the stairs. He’s fresh and showered, his hair damp and combed back off his face, his skin uncooked-looking where he’s shaved away yesterday’s stubble. He encircles her waist with his arm and buries his face in her shoulder.

“I met Poppy,” she says quietly. “You didn’t tell me you home-schooled her.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No.” She pulls away from another attempt at affection. “I’m going to have a shower,” she says. “I can’t sit chatting to your daughter smelling like an old slapper who’s been up all night shagging her dad.”

Floyd laughs. “You smell delicious,” he says, and his hand goes between her legs and she’s torn between pressing herself hard against it and slapping it away.

“Stop it,” she says affectionately and he laughs.

“What did you think?” he says. “Of my Poppy?”

“She’s charming,” she says. “Totally delightful.”

He glows at the words. “Isn’t she just? Isn’t she just magnificent?”

He leans down and he kisses her gently on the lips before descending the stairs and heading into the kitchen