My study door is unlocked. On my desktop computer I have left you a video message. Simply press play and I will explain everything.
Yours, always and in good faith,
Floyd Dunn
Laurel rests the card on the table and looks through the kitchen door. Slowly she walks toward Floyd’s study. She sits in Floyd’s chair and grasps the mouse tentatively. As she touches it the screen comes to life, and there is Floyd, dressed in the same jumper he wore this morning, his face paused in an expression of terrible grief. She clicks the play button and she watches his confession.
60
Laurel, there are so many things I want you to know. But the first is this: when I walked into that café in November, when I chose the table next to yours, when I complimented you on your hair and invited you to share my cake, I was not trying to seduce you. You were far too beautiful and far too delicate and I would never have been so presumptuous.
Everything that happened after that meeting was entirely unexpected, and, I can see now, with hindsight, horribly, horribly selfish.
Earlier this year I switched on the TV to watch the news and there was a trailer for the show coming up afterward. Crimewatch. Not a show I’d normally watch. Not my thing at all. But they said they’d be staging a reconstruction of the disappearance of a girl called Ellie Mack and then a picture of Ellie Mack appeared on the screen and my heart stopped. The missing girl looked exactly like Poppy. Older than Poppy. But exactly like her.
So I sat and I watched the show.
“It’s been ten years since Ellie Mack, a fifteen-year-old from north London, disappeared on her way to the library,” the presenter said. “Ellie was a popular girl, well liked at school, in a happy relationship with her boyfriend of eight months, and the beloved heart and soul of her family. According to her teachers, she was set for a full house of As and A stars in the GCSE exams she was sitting that month. There appeared to be no obvious reason why this smiley, charmed girl should leave her home one Thursday morning and not return.
“We first launched an appeal for witnesses to Ellie’s disappearance in 2005. That appeal was unsuccessful. Now, ten years on, with no sightings of Ellie and no evidence to suggest her abduction, we have staged a reconstruction. But first, here’s Ellie’s mum and dad, Laurel and Paul Mack, to remind us of the girl they haven’t seen for ten long years.”
The footage shifted from the presenter to a video of a tired-looking couple sitting side by side in a very nice kitchen. She had a sheet of vanilla-blonde hair, cut sharp at the ends and clipped back on one side. She wore a black polo neck with the sleeves pushed back, a simple watch, no rings. He was a classic city boy: pale blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck, thick graying hair parted at the side, short at the back and longer on top, a soft, spoon-fed face that was probably steam shaved in Jermyn Street twice a week.
It was you and Paul.
You started talking first, to someone off camera who had been edited out. Your voice was serious and mature, like a newsreader, and you had the same broad forehead and wide-set eyes as Ellie and Poppy. I could see the line that went straight down through the three of you; it was breathtaking. You talked about the golden light of your girl, the journey she’d been taking to the stars when she went, the laughter and the dreams, the lasagna she’d asked you to save for her lunch on her return. Your eyes turned to glass as you talked. You circled your narrow wrists with your thumb and fingers. You had beautiful hands: long, elegant, feminine.
Paul started to talk then. I don’t mean to be rude but I could tell that he was a flibbertigibbet. Well meaning but ultimately pointless. And I could tell that you were no longer a couple. Your body language was all off. He talked about the bond he’d had with his daughter—with all of his children, he hastened to add—how she’d been an open book, always told her parents everything, didn’t have any secrets. His eyes also turned to glass and flicked briefly toward you. He was hoping, desperately I could tell, for some reassurance, but he did not