There’s no more mention of the tutor after this entry.
Ellie simply slots back into her life. She sees Theo. She studies. She looks forward to the summer. Nothing more.
But Laurel’s fingertip stays poised against the last entry, against the words ‘bunny boiler’. What does that mean? Her understanding of the term is a woman who stalks and torments a man who has discarded her, unable to deal with the rejection. Clearly that is not the definition that Ellie was alluding to here. So if not that, then what? Had Noelle been overly fixated on Ellie? Obsessed with her, maybe? Maybe even physically attracted to her? Had she tried to touch Ellie inappropriately? Or maybe she was jealous of her, of her youth and beauty and unquestionable intelligence? Maybe she belittled her and made her feel bad? And if any of these scenarios was the case, what did this mean?
She squeezes her eyes tight shut and her hands into fists. There’s something in there, but she can’t get to it. And what could it possibly be anyway?
The darkness lifts after a moment and life returns to its normal proportions. She slowly puts Ellie’s books back into their box and slides it under the bed.
‘Tell me more about Noelle,’ she says to Floyd that night over dinner.
She sees a muscle in his cheek twitch and there is a missed beat before he says, ‘Oh, God, must I?’
‘Sorry. I know she’s not your favourite person. But I’m curious.’ She rests her cutlery on her plate and picks up her wine glass. ‘I looked at Ellie’s old diaries today. I wanted to see what she wrote about Noelle. And she called her … I hope you won’t be offended, but she called her a “bunny boiler”.’
‘Ha, no. That about sums it up. She was a very needy woman. Very intense.’
‘How did you meet her?’
‘Urgh.’ He swallows a mouthful of wine and puts down his glass. ‘Well, yeah. I don’t come out of this too well. But she was a fan.’
‘A fan? You have fans?’
‘Well, maybe it would be fairer to call them fervent readers. Maths groupies. That kind of thing.’
‘Well I never,’ says Laurel, sitting back in her chair and appraising Floyd teasingly, ‘I did not realise that I was facing such stiff competition.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, those days are well and truly over. I had my moment in the sun with one book. My “pay the bills book”, as I call it. Maths for dummies you could say, except we weren’t that honest about it. I got to be a bit playful with that book and it got me a little fan club of slightly peculiar, maths-obsessed women. Wasn’t my style at all. I soon went back to the big heavyweight tomes that no one with romantic yearnings would touch with a bargepole.’
‘So, Noelle, she was one of your groupies?’
‘Yeah. I suppose so. And I’d just split up with Sara’s mother and I was lonely and she was a bit crazy and a bit determined and I let her have her way with me and then spent the next few years repenting at leisure. She was like a leech. I couldn’t get shot of her. And then she got pregnant.’
‘By you?’
He sighs and casts his gaze over her shoulder. He doesn’t answer her question. ‘I didn’t even really find her that attractive. I was just … I was just trying to be nice, I suppose.’
Laurel laughs drily. She has never done anything ‘just to be nice’ in her life. But she knows the type. Paul is the same, will go against all his basest instincts and feelings to make someone else feel good for five minutes.
‘And then you were stuck with her?’
‘Yeah. I was indeed.’ He runs his fingertips around the bowl of his wine glass and looks uncharacteristically pensive.
‘Who ended it? Eventually?’
‘That was me. And that was where the bunny-boiler bit came into it. She wasn’t prepared to let me go without a fight. There were some bad nights. Really bad nights. And then one day she just said she’d had enough, dumped Poppy on my doorstep and disappeared off the face of the earth.’ He shrugs. ‘Sad, really,’ he says. ‘Really sad. Sad woman. Sad story. You know.’
The mood of the evening has become sombre and slightly uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Laurel. ‘I didn’t mean to make you feel sad. I just … it’s an odd little connection, that’s all. Between you and me. And Ellie. I just wanted to understand it a bit more.’
He nods. ‘I get that,’ he says. ‘I totally get it. And of course it’s Poppy I feel bad for, being abandoned like that. No child wants to feel that they weren’t wanted, even if they don’t care much for the abandoner. But’ – he brightens slightly – ‘now Poppy has you. And you are quite a tonic. For us all. Cheers.’ He tilts his glass towards hers and their glasses meet and so do their gazes.
She returns her focus to the meat on her plate, to the pink-grey flesh of the slayed baby calf. She cuts into it and a rivulet of wine-coloured juices run across the plate.
She finds she has lost her appetite, but she doesn’t know why.
Twenty-six
The following day, Laurel parks her car in a multi-storey car park in Kings Cross and heads to St Martin’s School of Art in Granary Square. Floyd had told her that SJ was working there today when she’d asked nonchalantly over breakfast.
It’s a bland day, newspaper grey, lifted by the Christmas lights and decorations in every window. Granary Square is wide and quiet as she approaches it, a scattering of pigeons across its surface, a few people braving the cold outside to smoke a cigarette with their morning coffee.
At reception she asks for Sara-Jade Virtue. She’s told that Sara is working until lunchtime so she sits in the restaurant next door and she eats a second breakfast and drinks two coffees and a peppermint tea before returning at twelve thirty and waiting for her outside.
Sara-Jade finally appears at ten past one. She’s wearing a huge pink fake-fur coat and boots that look far too big for her. She starts when she sees Laurel.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi! Sorry for, you know, turning up unannounced. I was just … Are you hungry? Can I take you for lunch?’
SJ looks at her wrist and then up at the sky. ‘I was supposed to …’ but she trails off. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Fine. Thank you.’
They go to the pub across the way. It’s brand new with plate-glass windows on every side giving views all across the square and the canal. It’s buzzing with business suits and students. They both order fishcakes and fizzy water and pick at the bread basket half-heartedly.
‘How are you?’ says Laurel.
‘I’m OK.’
‘How was work?’
‘Yeah, it was OK. Bit cold.’
‘Yes, I don’t suppose this is a great time of year for nude modelling.’
‘Life modelling.’
‘Yes. Sorry. How many students are there? Drawing you?’
‘About twelve today. But sometimes it can be thirty or forty.’