Before that she was in a chest freezer in my cellar. She’d been in there since the night she told me about Ellie. The night she told me Poppy wasn’t mine.
I didn’t mean to kill her, Laurel, I promise you that. It was an accident. I went for her, I wanted to scare her, I wanted to hurt her. I mean, you can imagine, can’t you, how I was feeling, with that woman, that evil woman, in my kitchen, ripping my heart out of my chest. If you had been there, you’d have wanted to hurt her too; I know you would. But I did not intend to kill her. Her chair went flying and her head hit the floor and …
Anyway … I’ll let you decide if you want to tell the police. If you want to tell Poppy. But I couldn’t go without telling someone and I know whatever you decide to do, it will be the right thing.
Please, Laurel, forgive me. Forgive me for everything. Forgive me for meeting Noelle, for allowing her into my life; forgive me for not questioning her more when she was pregnant, for not asking more questions about the basement in her house, for not going to the police when I suspected who Poppy’s mother was, for allowing myself to fall in love with you and for taking these last few weeks with you that were not mine to be taken. Please forgive me.
The horizon is right in front of you, Laurel. March to it right now, with Poppy by your side.
Sixty-three
The film stops. Silence subsumes the house once more. A quick glance through the front window tells Laurel that Floyd’s car is gone, and that so, by extension, is he. She returns to Floyd’s office and stares at the ceiling. A choking noise comes from somewhere deep inside her. Her baby. Her baby girl. Not tramping the back roads of England with a rucksack on her back, but locked in Noelle Donnelly’s basement growing a baby for her. How long was she there for her? How was she treated? How did she die? And how could Laurel not have known? How many times had she walked those streets in the years after Ellie’s disappearance? How many times had she passed that house, her eye caught by the puff of pink cherry blossom outside Noelle’s basement window? How many times had she been but metres from her own daughter without somehow, through some powerful umbilical connection, feeling that she was there?
Tears of rage explode from her and she thumps Floyd’s desk until her fists feel bruised. She’s about to yell out again when she hears a sound behind her, the creak of the door to Floyd’s study. It opens a crack and there is Poppy. She’s wearing the little jersey and chiffon dress that Laurel bought her in H&M during their shopping expedition. Her hair is bunched inside her fist and she has a hairband and a hairbrush in her other hand.
‘I’ve been trying to do a ponytail,’ Poppy says, moving towards her, ‘a high, swingy one. But I can’t get it high enough. And it keeps going all bumpy on the top.’
Laurel smiles and gets up from her chair. ‘Here,’ she says, turning it towards Poppy. ‘You sit here. I’ll see what I can do. Though it’s been a very long time since I did a high ponytail.’
Poppy sits and passes Laurel the hairband and the hairbrush. Laurel takes the bunched hair from her other hand and starts to brush it. She finds that the act is embedded in her muscle memory. How many mornings, how many times, how many ponytails has she brushed into place? And now it seems her hairbrushing days are not behind her after all. Now it seems that she is a mother again. Something warm and delicate inside her chest opens up like an unfurling flower.
‘Where’s Dad?’ says Poppy.
‘Dad’s not here,’ says Laurel carefully. ‘He’s had to go somewhere.’
Poppy nods. ‘Is it to do with what he told me last night?’
‘What did he tell you last night?’
‘He told me that Noelle wasn’t my mum. He told me that your daughter was.’ She turns, suddenly, and Laurel can see that her eyes are red and swollen, that she has been crying silently in her bedroom. ‘Is it true? Is it true that you’re my grandma?’
Laurel pauses. She swallows. ‘Would you like it to be true?’
Poppy nods again.
‘Well. It is. Your mother was called Ellie. She was my daughter. And she was the most wonderful, golden, perfect girl in the world. And you, Poppy, are exactly like her.’
Poppy says nothing for a moment and then she turns to Laurel once more, her eyes wide with fear and says, ‘Is she dead?’
Laurel nods.
‘Is my dad dead?’
‘Your dad …?’
‘My real dad.’
‘You mean …’
‘The man who made a baby with Ellie. Not my dad who brought me up.’
‘Your dad told you?’
‘Yes. He told me. He said he doesn’t know who my real dad is. He says no one knows. Not even you.’
Laurel turns her attention back to Poppy’s hair. She pulls it as high as she can and then she twists the elastic band around it three times. ‘I don’t know if your real dad is dead, Poppy. It’s possible we’ll never know.’
Poppy is silent for a moment. Then she says, ‘Have you finished?’
‘Yes,’ says Laurel. ‘All done.’
Poppy slides from the chair and goes to the mirror on the wall outside Floyd’s study. She touches her hair with her fingertips in her reflection. ‘Do I look like her?’ she says.
‘Yes. You look just like her.’
She turns back to her reflection and appraises it again, her chin tipped up slightly. ‘Was she pretty?’
‘She was extraordinarily pretty.’
‘Was she as pretty as Hanna?’
Laurel is about to say, Oh, she was much prettier than Hanna. But catches herself. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘She was as pretty as Hanna.’
Poppy looks satisfied with this.
‘Are we still going to the party?’ she says.
‘Do you want to?’
‘Yes. I want to see my family,’ she says. ‘I want to see my real family.’
‘In which case then definitely.’
‘Laurel?’
‘Yes, sweetheart.’
‘Is Dad ever coming back?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
Poppy glances down at her shoes and then back at Laurel. Her eyes fill with tears and suddenly the unnerving stoicism passes and Poppy is sobbing, her shoulders heaving up and down, her hands pressed hard into her eye sockets.
Laurel takes her in her arms, holds her tight, kisses the top of her head, feels her love for this child flow through her like a sudden, glorious summer storm.
Sixty-four