Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell Page 0,93

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—I just want to know what you think, that’s all.”

Blue sighs and continues. “Floyd has a dark aspect. Very dark. Dangerous, almost. But the discrepancy between his true self and the way he presents himself 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 said.

“But what you just said, about him being dangerous. What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” 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 did you make of Poppy?”

“Poppy is like a rainbow. Poppy is everything. But she needs to get away from her father before he starts taking her colors away.”

There is a long pause. Then Laurel says, “Thank you, Blue. Thank you for your time.” She slowly slides her phone into her handbag and drives to work feeling slightly numb.

56

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.”

There are carolers in the shopping center today; she can hear them from her desk. They’re singing “Good King Wenceslas.” The management have invested in a job lot of mince pies from Waitrose and at 5 p.m. there’ll be Secret Santa and sherry.

She can’t wait to get home.

She goes into Waitrose on her way to her car that night, buys two bottles of champagne, two scented candles, and two boxes of chocolates. She’ll work out what to give to whom tonight when she’s wrapping them.

Everywhere she goes that day she hears Blue’s words of doom echoing portentously around her head. When she’d been talking to Blue this morning she’d fully believed all she’d said. Yes, she’d thought, yes, this all makes perfect sense. Of course Floyd has a dark aspect. Of course he’s pretending to be someone he’s not.

But as the hours pass and Floyd sends her silly, festive text messages adorned with Santa Claus emojis and bunches of holly, as the carolers’ repertoire sinks into her psyche and the sherry softens the edges of her consciousness, her fingers push the blades of the scissors back and forth through the shiny paper on her living-room floor, and the lights of the neighbors’ Christmas trees flash their reflections on to her windows, it starts to seem bizarre and dreadful.

What a strange girl Blue is, she thinks to herself, turning off her lights, slipping off her clothes, untwirling the tinsel from her hair. What a very strange girl indeed.

57

Laurel rises late on Christmas Eve. She has two text messages from Floyd, one asking what to bring for Paul and Bonny, the other asking what to wear. She types in a reply: Bring them cheese. The smellier the better. And wear a nice jumper and a festive persona. I’m wearing green.

He replies immediately: So, green cheese and a smelly jumper. I’m on it .

Silly bugger, she replies.

And then she has