Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell Page 0,29

you know, some fathers and daughters just have that sort of thing, don’t they? Daddy’s girls. They usually turn into the sort of women who can only be friends with men.”

Laurel nods gratefully. Yes, that all makes perfect sense. She has seen that bond before between fathers and daughters. Not with her own daughters. Ellie was both a mummy’s and a daddy’s girl and Hanna is just a law unto herself. And maybe the surprise she is feeling is due to her own issues and nothing to do with Floyd and Poppy. Poppy is entertaining in a gauche kind of way and Floyd is clearly a wonderful, nurturing, and loving father.

By the time Laurel leaves the office at five thirty and gets into her car in the underground car park she is feeling clearheaded and right-footed.

She cannot wait to see Floyd again.

Laurel and Floyd spend the whole of the following weekend together. It wasn’t planned that way, but there never seemed to be a point at which leaving his house made any sense. They had dinner out on Friday night, a late breakfast on Saturday morning, a trip to the cinema with Poppy that afternoon followed by a detour to M&S for new underwear and a toothbrush, Chinese take-out on Saturday night, and then brunch in a café around the corner on Sunday before Laurel managed to tear herself away and back to her flat on Sunday evening, ready for work on Monday morning.

At the office Laurel feels as though she has shed a skin, that she is somehow reborn and that she needs to mark the transition in some landmark way.

She calls Hanna.

“How would you feel . . .” she starts tentatively, “if I invited my new boyfriend to our birthday dinner?”

The silence is black and heavy.

Laurel fills it. “Totally don’t mind if you say no. Totally understand. I just thought, in the spirit of us all moving on? In the spirit of a brave new world?”

The silence continues, growing in depth and darkness.

“Boyfriend?” says Hanna eventually. “Since when did you have a boyfriend?”

“The guy,” says Laurel, “the guy I told you about? Floyd.”

“I know the guy,” she replies. “I just wasn’t aware that he’d made boyfriend status.”

“Yes, well, if you ever answered your phone . . .”

Hanna sighs. Laurel sighs too, realizing she has just done the thing she always promised herself she would never do. When the children were small, Laurel’s mother would occasionally make small, raw observations about gaps between phone calls and visits that would tear tiny, painful strips off Laurel’s conscience. I will never guilt trip my children when they are adults, she’d vowed. I will never expect more than they are able to give.

“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to nag. It’s just, yes, things are moving quite fast. I’ve met his kids. I’ve stayed at his. We talk all the time. We’ve just spent the whole weekend together. I just . . .” Ridiculous, she suddenly realizes. A ridiculous idea. “But forget I mentioned it. I mean, I haven’t even asked Floyd yet if he’d like to come. He’d probably rather saw his legs off. Forget I said anything.”

There’s another silence. Softer this time. “Whatever,” Hanna says. “Invite him. I don’t mind. It’s going to be so fucked up anyway, we may as well go the whole hog.”

Floyd says yes. Of course Floyd says yes. Floyd has made it very clear from the moment she headed home after their second date that he is wholly committed to their romance and that he is not interested in playing games or hard to get.

“I would love that,” he says. “As long as your family are OK with it?”

Paul had been OK about it. Hugely surprised, but OK. Jake had said it was fine. No one was jumping up and down about it but no one had said it was a mistake.

“And Poppy?” Laurel adds. “Would Poppy like to come too?”

She half hopes he’ll say no.

“She’ll be thrilled,” Floyd says. “She keeps saying how much she’d like to meet your children.”

“And my ex-husband. And my ex-husband’s girlfriend.”

“The whole shebang.”

The whole shebang. The whole hog.

She books a table for eight at a restaurant in Islington, a legendarily chichi place down a narrow cobbled alleyway off Upper Street.

She must be mad, she tells herself. She must be absolutely insane.

20

On her birthday, Laurel receives a large bouquet of purple hyacinths and laurel from Floyd. Paul always used to put laurel in her bouquets. But this doesn’t take away