Laurel frowns at her passenger. ‘So, what about New York? I can’t see it. Neither can you. Does that mean it doesn’t exist?’
‘That doesn’t count. We could see New York on a thousand webcams right now. We could call someone up in New York and say please send me a photo of New York. But with my mum, well, I can’t see her on a webcam or in a photo, I can’t call her up, I can’t even go and look at her remains in a graveyard. So my mum does not exist.’
Laurel feels thrown for a minute and breathes in sharply. ‘Would you like her to exist? Do you miss her?’
‘No. I never even think about her.’
‘But she was your mum. You must think about her sometimes, surely?’
‘Never. I hated her.’
Laurel glances at Poppy quickly before returning her gaze to the road in front of her. ‘Why did you hate her?’
‘Because she hated me. She was mean and ugly and neglectful.’
‘She can’t have been that ugly, to have had a daughter as pretty as you.’
‘She didn’t look anything like me. She was horrible. That’s all I remember. Horrible and she smelled of chips.’
‘Chips?’
‘Yes. Her hair …’ She peers through the rain-splattered windscreen. ‘It was red. And it smelled of chips.’
Laurel can’t quite form a response. This awful woman with greasy hair sounds so far removed from anything she’d have imagined as a mother for this self-assured, groomed and brightly shining girl. Not to mention as a romantic partner for Floyd. But then she remembers the photos she’d found online of Floyd when he was younger and rather more seedy-looking and she remembers that everyone blossoms at a different point in their life: clearly Floyd is blossoming right now and maybe his life was once much, much darker.
‘Would you say that your father is happier now than he was then, Poppy?’
It’s a leading question but she needs an answer. She’s only known Floyd for a couple of weeks. He’s without context, a man who walked into a cake shop and changed her life from the outside in. She’d love a little insight from someone who’s been on the inside for a long time.
But what she gets is not what she expected. Instead of offering bland reassurances Poppy says, ‘What’s happy got to do with anything? Look, we’re here for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You do know that, don’t you? People try and make out there’s a greater purpose, a secret meaning, that it all means something. And it doesn’t. We’re a bunch of freaks. That’s all there is to it. A big bunch of stupid, inconsequential freaks. We don’t have to be happy. We don’t have to be normal. We don’t even have to be alive. Not if we don’t want to. We can do whatever we want as long as we don’t hurt anyone.’
Laurel exhales audibly. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘That’s some philosophy you’ve got there.’
‘It’s not a philosophy. It’s life. Once you learn how to look at the world, once you stop trying to make sense of it all, it’s blindingly obvious.’
Laurel turns quickly to look at Poppy. ‘You’re a very unusual girl, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ says Poppy firmly. ‘I am.’
In the shopping centre they head straight to Nando’s for something to eat. Laurel skipped lunch after seeing her mother and now she’s starving.
‘How do you get on with SJ’s mum?’ she asks as they sit and wait for the food to be delivered.
‘Kate?’
‘Is that her name?’
‘Yes. Kate Virtue. She’s nice. I like her. She’s not very clever, but she’s very sweet and kind.’
‘And SJ? Are you two close?’
‘Ish. I mean, we’re very different.’
‘In what sort of ways?’ Laurel asks, thinking that they’re both certainly rather strange.
‘Well, she’s an introvert, I’m an extrovert. She’s good at art. I’m good at maths. She cares about everything. I care about nothing. She’s humourless. I’m hilarious. She’s not close to Dad. I’m super close to Dad.’ She smiles.
‘And why do you think that is?’
She shrugs. ‘I guess I’m just more like him. That’s all.’
They stop talking as their food is delivered. Laurel watches her for a moment, studies the intensity of her focus on a bottle of ketchup, the way her forehead bunches into lines, and suddenly she finds herself thrown headfirst out of her own continuum and into a moment from her past. She is here, in this very spot, with Ellie. She doesn’t know where Jake and Hanna are in this isolated vignette; maybe it’s an INSET day at Ellie’s school? But she is sitting here and Ellie is sitting there and everything is exactly the same but completely different. Her head spins for a second and she grips the edge of the table and breathes deeply to centre herself. She blinks and looks again at Poppy and now she is Poppy. Definitely Poppy. Not Ellie.
Poppy has not noticed Laurel’s brief moment of extra-corporeal time travel. She bangs the ketchup bottle to dislodge some sauce and then replaces the lid.
‘I’m really looking forward to meeting your family tomorrow night,’ she says. ‘Do you think they’ll like me?’
Laurel blinks slowly. ‘I’m surprised you care,’ she says drily.
‘I don’t care,’ Poppy replies. ‘I’m just interested in your opinion. Caring and being interested are two very different things.’
‘Yes,’ says Laurel, smiling. ‘Yes. They’ll like you. You’ll be a breath of fresh air.’
‘Good,’ says Poppy. ‘That’s nice. I love being with other people’s families. I sometimes wish …’
Laurel throws her a questioning look.
‘Nothing,’ says Poppy. ‘Nothing.’
Laurel takes Poppy into New Look. She takes her into Gap. She takes her into H&M and Zara and Top Shop and Miss Selfridge. But Poppy refuses to countenance anything fashionable. Eventually they find themselves in the John Lewis childrenswear department where Poppy heads steadfastly towards a rail of printed jersey dresses.
‘These,’ she says. ‘I like these.’
‘But don’t you already have a dress like this?’ Laurel asks, thinking of something she’d seen her wearing that weekend.
‘Yes,’ Poppy replies, pulling a dress sideways from the rail. ‘I’ve got this one. But they’ve got it in another print now. Look.’ She pulls another dress from the rail. ‘I don’t have this one.’
Laurel sighs and touches the fabric of the dress. ‘It’s very pretty,’ she says, ‘but I thought we were going to, perhaps, break you out a bit, you know, of your usual style.’
Now Poppy sighs. She looks mournfully at the dress and then up at Laurel. ‘We did say that, didn’t we?’
Laurel nods.
‘But all that other stuff. In the other shops. It’s all so trashy. And scruffy.’
‘But you’re young, and that is the joy of being young. You can wear anything and look amazing in it. Scruffy looks great when you’re young. So does cheap. And trashy. You can save all the smart stuff for when you’re my age. Come on,’ she urges. ‘One more whizz round H&M? For me?’
Poppy beams and nods. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Fine.’