‘What on earth for?’
‘Oh, you know, Paul. You don’t have to pretend. I was a bitch to you. You know I was.’
‘Laurel.’ He sighs. ‘You were never a bitch.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘I was worse than a bitch.’
‘You were never anything other than a mother, Laurel. That’s all.’
‘Other mothers lose children without losing their husbands too.’
‘You didn’t lose me, Laurel. I’m still yours. I’ll always be yours.’
‘Well, that’s not strictly true, is it?’
He sighs again. ‘Where it counts,’ he says. ‘As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are for ever.’
Now Laurel sighs, an awkward smile twisting the corners of her mouth. ‘Thank you, Paul. Thank you.’
She hangs up a moment later and she holds her phone in her lap for a while, tenderly, staring straight ahead, feeling a sense of peace she never thought would be hers to feel again.
Hanna sounds annoyed even to be asked about it.
‘What do you mean, all of us?’ she asks.
‘I mean, me, you, Dad, Jake, Bonny, Blue.’
‘Oh God,’ she groans.
Laurel stands firm. She’d known Hanna wouldn’t leap headfirst into the concept. ‘Like you said,’ she explains, ‘it’s time for us all to move on. We’re all healing now, and this is part of the process.’
‘Well, for you maybe. I mean, you’ve never even met Bonny. How awkward is that going to be?’
‘It won’t be awkward because me and your father won’t let it be awkward.’ How long had it been since she’d used those words? Me and your father. ‘We’re all grown-ups now, Hanna. No more excuses. You’re almost twenty-eight. I’m virtually an OAP. We’ve buried Ellie. Your father has a partner. He loves her. I have to accept that and embrace her as part of this family. The same with Jake and Blue. And, of course, with you …’
‘With me?’
‘Yes. You. And whoever sent you those beautiful flowers.’
There’s a cool beat of silence. Then, ‘What flowers?’
‘The bouquet on your kitchen table.’
‘There is no bouquet.’
‘Oh, well, then, the imaginary bouquet with the imaginary pink roses in it. That one.’
Hanna tuts. ‘That’s not a bouquet. It’s just a bunch. I bought them for myself.’
Laurel sighs. ‘Oh,’ she says, breezily, disingenuously, ‘my mistake then. Sorry.’
‘Will you just stop trying to invent a boyfriend for me, Mum? There is no boyfriend, OK?’
‘Fine. Yes. Sorry.’
‘And I really don’t like the idea of this big family meal. It’s too bizarre.’
‘Are you free?’
She pauses before she replies. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Well, not on my actual birthday. On our birthday. No. But I could do another day next week.’
‘What are you doing on our actual birthday, then?’
‘Oh, you know, just drinks after work. Nothing special.’
Laurel blinks slowly. She knows her daughter is lying. That ‘T’ is taking her out somewhere special. But she says nothing. ‘Well, then,’ she says measuredly, ‘how about the Friday?’
‘Fine,’ says Hanna. ‘Fine. But if it’s all a hideous disaster I’ll blame you for the rest of my life.’
Laurel smiles.
As if that was anything new.
Laurel arranges to see Floyd again on Thursday night. She didn’t need to fret and simmer this time. He’d texted her within half an hour of her leaving his house on Wednesday morning. That was the best date I’ve ever been on. And Poppy loves you. Could I see you again? Please? Tomorrow?
It had arrived on her phone as the Tube burst out of the tunnel and into the daylight at East Finchley. She’d sucked her smile deep inside herself and texted back: Maybe. Unless … ?.
She asked him if he’d like to come to her flat for dinner. He said that would be lovely, he’d ask SJ to sleep over at his.
And now she is shopping for that dinner, alarmed and exhilarated by the litany of choices she is having to make. For so long she has done everything by rote, out of necessity. She has eaten the same meals cooked from the same ingredients that she has picked up in the same aisles. All her meals are roughly calorie controlled. Three hundred for breakfast, four hundred for lunch and three hundred for dinner. Enough left over for a chocolate bar or some biscuits at work, two glasses of wine at the tail end of the day. That is how she views food: as calories.
She stopped cooking for Paul and the kids the day Ellie disappeared. Slowly they’d finished the contents of the fridge, and then the freezer, and then at some point Paul and Hanna had gone to Asda and filled a giant trolley to the brim with ‘staples’ – pasta, canned fish, sausages, frozen meat – and Paul had, without any form of official handover or agreement, taken over the kitchen. And, God bless him, he was a terrible cook – no sense of taste, no idea about balanced meals – but the bland, well-intentioned food had appeared and the family had eaten and no one had got rickets or died of malnutrition, and that was all that mattered, she supposed.
But now she has to cook a meal for a man. A man she’s had sex with. A man she would be having sex with again. A man who took his daughter to an Eritrean restaurant when she was a toddler. And she feels completely out of her depth.
She’s clutching a computer printout of a Jamie Oliver recipe for jambalaya.
Rice. How hard can it be?
She collects peppers, onions, chicken, chorizo. But it’s the other elements that throw her. Nibbles. Aperitifs. Puddings. Wine. She has no idea. None. She piles her trolley with strange-sounding crisps made out of pitta bread and lentils, then throws in some Walkers ready salted, just to be safe. Then tubs of taramasalata, hummus, tzatziki, all of which she throws back when she realises that they didn’t go with American food. But what does go with American food? What do they nibble on in New Orleans before dinner? She has no idea and picks up a Tex-Mex dip selection pack which feels like something a student might buy for a house party.