‘I know about Ellie.’
Laurel grips her mug between her hands and swallows. ‘Oh.’
‘You knew I would, didn’t you?’
She smiles sadly. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I suppose it occurred to me. I would have said something. Soon. I was on the verge. It just didn’t seem like first-date kind of fodder.’
‘No,’ he says softly. ‘I get that.’
She turns the mug round and round, not sure where to head next with this development.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. ‘I just …’ He sighs heavily. ‘I wouldn’t … I can’t imagine. Well, I can imagine. I can imagine all too well, which makes it hard to bear. Not that me bearing it is of any relevance to anything. But the thought of … you … and your girl … it’s just. Christ.’ He sighs heavily. ‘And I wanted to say something all night, because it felt so dishonest to sit there making small talk with you when I had all this knowledge that you didn’t know I had and …’
‘I’m an idiot,’ she says. ‘I should have guessed.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m an idiot. I should have waited for you to tell me, when you were ready.’
And Laurel smiles and looks up at Floyd, into his misty eyes; then she looks down at his hands, the hands that just caressed her arms so seductively in the restaurant, and she looks around his warm, loved home and she says, ‘I’m ready now. I can talk about it now.’
He reaches across the counter and places his hand upon her shoulder. She instinctively rubs her cheek against it. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m sure.’
It is nearly 1 a.m. when Floyd finally leads Laurel up the stairs to his bedroom. Sara-Jade had taken a taxi home at midnight, saying goodbye to her father in hushed tones and without acknowledging Laurel.
Floyd’s room is painted dark burgundy and hung with interesting abstract oil paintings he claims to have found in the basement of the house when he was renovating it. ‘They’re kind of ugly, I guess. But I like them. I like that I liberated them from total obscurity, let them live and breathe.’
‘Where’s Poppy’s room?’ she whispers.
He points above and behind. ‘She won’t hear anything. And besides, she sleeps like the dead.’
And then he is unzipping the back of her pinafore dress and she is tugging at the sleeves of his warm soft jumper and they are a tangle of limbs and clothes and tights and despite the fact that Laurel had decided a long time ago that she and sex were over, five minutes later it is happening, she is having sex and not only that but it is the best sex she has ever had in her life and within moments of doing it she wants to do it all over again.
They fall asleep as a dull brown dawn creeps through the gaps in his curtains, wrapped up in each other’s arms.
Seventeen
‘Morning! Are you Laurel?’
Laurel jumps slightly. It’s ten o’clock and she’d assumed that Floyd’s daughter would have been at school by now. ‘Yes,’ she says, flicking on a warm smile. ‘Yes. I’m Laurel. And you’re Poppy, I assume?’
‘Yes. I am Poppy.’ She beams at Laurel, revealing crooked teeth and a small dimple in her left cheek. And Laurel has to hold on to 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 favourite 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 woollen 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 enquires.
‘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?’