I have both my passport and a hand gun. I have a change of clothes in a small bag and a fully charged phone. My plan is to get as far away from London N4 as I can and then either blow my brains out or leave the country. I will see how I feel when it comes down to it. At this juncture I have no idea what is worse: to break my daughter’s heart or to break my daughter’s heart and then spend the rest of my life either in hiding or in jail. Plan B at least does not involve a funeral.
And so finally I have cleared up your shitty disgusting mess, Noelle. As I speak (or think, or write or whatever the hell it is I’m doing with a dead person) Laurel will be introducing herself anew to her granddaughter and then they will go together to the twinkling Richard Curtis Christmas meal in the twinkling mews house in twinkling Belsize Park – and imagine everyone’s faces, Noelle, when they walk in together, those two fine women with their strong brows and their big brains and all that golden light dazzling the bejesus out of everyone. Just imagine.
I wish I could be there to see it.
But I denied myself that privilege when I chose my own happiness and my own needs over Laurel’s.
I’m out of London now, Noelle. I appear to be heading west. Yep, there goes Slough. And I’m feeling good. In fact I’m feeling amazing. I’ve finally shed you, like a dead skin.
I touch the gun in the innocuous Sainsbury’s carrier bag on the passenger seat. I caress its solid lines, feel the cool of the metal through the plastic. I imagine the barrel of the gun, hard against the roof of my mouth, the pressure of the trigger against my fingertip. The day is still bright and clean. I imagine myself pulling off the road a few hours hence and driving into a dark-skied, sleepy Cornish village, finding a bed for the night, or sleeping in my car. Tomorrow I would awake and it would be Christmas Day. The world would fall silent as it always does at Christmas, all those big loud lives sucked up behind a million closed doors. And where would I go? Where would I be? And the day after that? And the day after that?
I feel clean and pure, purged and new. I have just done the best and greatest thing I have ever done or ever will do. Do I want to be here when this breaks in the newspapers? Really? Christ, just imagine the terrifying photographs they would dig out of the two of us. Fred and Rose West would look like Brangelina in comparison.
I pass the Glastonbury Tor. The sun is beginning its descent and the sky is a pearly grey. Pale gold light shines off the stones and a few sightseers are thrown into delicate silhouette. I pull off the M5 at the next junction and make my way back to the tor. I find a field a road back. From here I can watch the sunset, can see the shadows of the Glastonbury stones shrink and grow in the changing light. I think of Laurel and Poppy in the flickering candlelight of Bonny’s dining table, of their faces open and bright. And then I think again of you and me, inextricably linked for infinity, our faces side by side on the front pages of the newspapers for years to come, and I know that I do not want to be here to see that. I think of Poppy, of her brave face as I held her hands in her bedroom this morning and told her the truth about herself, the solid set of her chin as she bit back on her emotions, the tiny nod of her head as she silently absorbed words that no nine-year-old girl should ever have to hear. I think of how she will learn to live without me and I know that she will. I know that she will flourish. I think of my parents in Washington, the purse of their lips, the unspoken words going through both of their minds: We should have left him in the hospital. And I know that this will be my last sunset, this one, here, right now, on Christmas Eve, playing out in violent flames of red and gold across the horizon. And I know that these are my last moments.
And that is fine.
That is absolutely fine.
I put my hand into the plastic bag and I take out the gun.
Sixty-five
Eight months later
Theo and Hanna walk hand in hand through a bower of white roses and baby’s breath. Petals of pastel-coloured confetti float around their heads and a tinny recording of church bells peels across the urban streets of Finsbury Park. For a brief moment the sun breaks through the bank of clouds that’s been brooding overhead since early this morning.
Laurel holds Poppy’s hand in hers and watches as her newly married daughter greets her friends and well-wishers on the street outside the church. Hanna’s in pure white and her hair glitters with gems. She looks glowing and golden. Her husband stands beside her handsome and assured, his hand resting gently on the small of her back, his face bursting with pride.
How, she wonders, could she have ever thought that Hanna would be Theo’s consolation prize? How, she wonders, could she have allowed herself ever to feel that way?
After a short while the wedding party, only thirty strong, climbs aboard an old red Routemaster bus. Poppy sits on Laurel’s knee, her hands still clutching the bouquet she’d carried into the church in her role as a flower girl. Laurel loops her arms around Poppy’s waist and holds on to her as the bus lurches forwards. Poppy calls her Mama. Not Granny. Not Mum. Not Laurel. Mama. She chose the appellation herself. Poppy is the bravest and most brilliant child. She has cried when she has needed to cry and she has been cross when she has needed to be cross. And she misses Floyd every moment of every day. But mostly she has been the light and the joy, the sun around which Laurel and her family all orbit. Mostly she has just been a miracle.
The atmosphere on board is high-octane and chatty. Bonny and Paul sit together at the front of the bus, Bonny’s extraordinary hat almost entirely obscuring the view through the front window. Behind them sit Jake and Blue. Blue is holding a tiny puppy in a bag on her lap. It’s called Mister and apparently will grow not much bigger than a small rabbit. She and Jake have been fussing over it like a newborn baby since they arrived from Devon last night.
On the seat next to Laurel is Sara-Jade. Poppy had asked if she was allowed to invite her, even though she doesn’t really know Hanna and Theo. And although Poppy now knows that Sara-Jade is not her biological sister, she still wants her to be part of her family. Sara-Jade looks, as always, thin and otherworldly in a silver bomber jacket and a shapeless pink dress. She is with a bearded man called Tom who may or may not be her partner. She has thus far introduced him only as her friend. Jacqui and Bel sit opposite Laurel, with a twin on either side. The boys are only a couple of years older than Poppy and Laurel has found to her delight that her life is back in sync, once more, with those of her closest friends.
On the seats to her right are Theo’s parents. Mr Goodman looks old but Becky Goodman still looks unfeasibly young for her age. Laurel sees the drag of skin away from her jawbone and towards her ears and holds the observation inside herself reassuringly.
Elsewhere she sees friends of Hanna’s from her schooldays, she sees Paul’s father and she sees strangers, twenty-somethings in uncomfortable shoes and too much make-up, friends of Theo’s she assumes, or colleagues from Hanna’s office.
But there are, as at every wedding, people who are not here: ghosts and shadows.