I couldn’t bear to leave the house with that child half the time. She was a liability in public places. In shops she wanted me to buy her everything. And I mean everything. There was no shop that didn’t sell something she wanted. And if I didn’t get it for her then I was ‘mean’ and I was ‘horrible’, and she’d scream the place down. So I learned to do all my errands when she was at the nursery. But that afternoon I remembered that I needed ketchup – not for me, mind, oh no, I could live without ketchup without having an epileptic fit, but Madam couldn’t. So I left her. I was gone for ten minutes. Possibly fifteen.
She had climbed up on to the work surface in the kitchen, looking for food – of course, because she might die if she didn’t eat something for ten minutes – and she’d fallen and bashed her head against the corner of the unit and there was a cut and there was some blood and I called the 111 number and they told me what to look out for and when to bring her in if necessary and I did everything right, Floyd, everything. I behaved like a proper decent parent. But of course the next time she saw you she had a huge black eye and she was all wan and bruised and oh, mummy went out and left me and I was hungry and I just wanted some cereal, that was all and blah blah blah. And you turned to me and you said, ‘That’s it, Noelle. That is it.’
And I knew what you meant and I knew it was going to happen. So that was when I decided. Me and Poppy. We were going away. And if you wanted us back you’d have to come and find us.
I had it all planned out. I would take my bonny, brown-eyed girl back to Ireland! My mother and father would be captivated! All my brothers would say, Well, look at the child, sure if she isn’t the prettiest Donnelly in a generation. And after a few weeks I’d phone you to tell you where we were and you would get on the first plane into Dublin and you’d see me there in the bold green light of the Emerald Isle, in the bosom of my family, our child with cheeks like rose blossoms, and I’d take you to see the perfect little village school where we went ourselves when we were small and you’d meet my mother and father, the cleverest people I know, and my brothers with their huge brains and you’d see the shelves in their big Victorian villa heaving with the books and the trophies and the shields and you’d know that I’d done the best for my child, that she was in the best place and that you could not take her, not now she was so happy and so settled, cousins all around, the sheep and the sea and the sweet meadow air.
In this fantasy, you would decide to stay. You’d rent a small windswept cottage and eventually, because we were all so happy and everything was so perfect, you’d ask us to move in with you. And that was how we’d end our days. The three of us together. The perfect family.
Fifty-one
‘Where did Poppy get those candlesticks? The silver ones in her bedroom?’
Floyd looks up at Laurel from the newspaper. It’s Tuesday morning and they’re having breakfast. Laurel nearly didn’t stay last night. She’d nearly said she had a headache and wanted to sleep in her own bed. But something kept her here: the promise of a shared bottle of wine, the proximity to Poppy, unanswered questions.
‘The art deco ones?’
‘Yes. On her bookshelves.’
‘Oh, I found those at Noelle’s when I went to collect Poppy’s things. Lovely, aren’t they?’
She draws in her breath and smiles tightly. ‘I used to have a pair,’ she says, ‘just like that.’
‘I did wonder if they might be worth something. That’s why I took them. And it was strange because Noelle literally had nothing. All her stuff, all of it, just tat. Yet she had those. Genuine art deco I’d say they were. I meant to get them valued, but I never got around to it.’
Laurel keeps smiling. ‘The pair I had were definitely worth a fair bit. Some friends bought them for us, for a wedding present, said they’d got them at an auction. These friends were incredibly wealthy and they suggested that we should get them insured, but we never did.’
She leaves that there, between them, waiting to see what Floyd does with it.
‘Well, there you go then,’ he says, smiling tightly. ‘Maybe Noelle did manage to leave Poppy something worth having after all.’
‘But, what about her house? Doesn’t that belong to Poppy? Technically?’
‘Noelle’s house? No, she didn’t own her house. It was rented.’
‘Was it? I thought …’ Laurel stops herself. She’s not supposed to know anything about Noelle’s house. ‘I don’t know, I just assumed she would have owned it. And what about Noelle’s family? Did you ever meet them? Did they ever meet Poppy?’
‘No,’ says Floyd. ‘Noelle didn’t have much of a family. Or at least not one she told me about. It’s possible they were estranged. It’s possible they were dead. She might have had a dozen brothers and sisters for all I know.’ He sighs. ‘Nothing would surprise me about that woman. Nothing.’
She nods, slowly digesting Floyd’s lie. ‘And when you went to her house to get Poppy’s things, what was it like? Was it nice?’
Floyd shudders slightly. ‘Grim,’ he says. ‘Really grim. Cold and bare and uncomfortable. Poppy’s room looked a room in a Romanian orphanage. It had this really weird wallpaper. Everything was painted Pepto-Bismol pink. And my God, Laurel, the worst thing, the worst thing of all …’
His eyes find hers and he licks his lips. ‘I’ve never told anyone this before because it was so bleak and so sick and so …’ He shudders again. ‘… depraved. But in her cellar she had been hoarding hamsters or gerbils or something. God knows what. Mice maybe. In cages stacked one on top of the other. Must have been about twenty of them. And a dozen in each cage. And all of them were dead. The smell. Jesus Christ.’ He blinks away the memory. ‘I mean, seriously, what sort of woman, what sort of human …?’
Laurel shakes her head, widening her eyes in faux wonder. ‘That’s horrible,’ she says, ‘that really is.’
Floyd sighs. ‘Poor sick woman,’ he says. ‘Poor, poor individual.’
‘Sounds like the only good thing she ever did was to give birth to Poppy.’
He glances at her and then down at his lap. His eyes are dark and haunted. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose it was.’
Fifty-two
I kept you very sweet in those days after our big contretemps. I made all the right noises about Poppy coming to live with you, pretended I was ‘giving it some thought’, said that I could ‘see the advantages’. But all the while I was painstakingly planning our escape.
It was your turn to have her overnight and I’d packed all our bags ready for our journey to Dublin, filled the car with petrol so we wouldn’t have to stop. My mother was expecting us on the 9 a.m. ferry the following day. I thought I was so clever, I really did.
But I’d underestimated you. You’d worked out what was going on. Poppy wasn’t there when I came for her that evening. You’d taken her to stay at someone’s house. You were ready for me.
‘Come in,’ you said, ‘please. We need to talk.’
Were there ever four more terrifying words in the English language?
You sat me down in the kitchen. I sat in the same chair I’d used that perfect day when I first brought Poppy to meet you. I remembered how your kitchen had swallowed me up like a womb then. But that afternoon, your kitchen broke my heart. I knew what you were going to say. I knew it.