Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell Page 0,26

and bin bag away from looking perfectly presentable. But it’s the lack of personality that worries her. Her flat is smart but soulless. Shiny, new, low-ceilinged, small-windowed, featureless. She’d let the children take most of the things from the old house. She’d given a lot to charity, too. She’d brought the bare minimum with her. She regrets that now. It was as though she’d thought she’d be here for only a short time, as though she’d thought that she would just fade away here until there was nothing left of her.

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.