‘The nine-year-old does. The twenty-one-year-old lives with her mum.’
‘Oh.’
He smiles. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Isn’t everything?’ She smiles back.
And then he tears a corner off a newspaper left on the table next to his and finds a pen in his coat pocket and says, ‘Here. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. But it hasn’t been for long enough. I’d really like to take you out for dinner.’ He scribbles a number on the scrap of paper and passes it to her. ‘Call me.’
Call me.
So assured, so simple, so forward. She cannot imagine how a human could be that way.
She takes the piece of paper and rubs it between her fingertips. ‘Yes,’ she says. Then: ‘Well, maybe.’
He laughs. He has a lot of fillings. ‘Maybe will do me. Maybe will do.’
She leaves the café quickly and without looking back.
That evening Laurel does something she’s never done before. She drops into Hanna’s unannounced. The expression on her youngest daughter’s face when she sees her mother standing on the doorstep is 90 per cent appalled and 10 per cent concerned.
‘Mum?’
‘Hello, love.’
Hanna looks behind her as though there might be a visible reason for her mother’s presence somewhere in her vicinity.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. I’m fine. I just … I was just passing by and felt I hadn’t seen you in a while.’
‘I saw you on Sunday.’
Hanna had popped by with an old laptop for her but hadn’t crossed the threshold.
‘Yes. I know. But that was just, well, it wasn’t proper.’
Hanna moves from one bare foot to the other. ‘Do you want to come in?’
‘That would be nice, darling, thank you.’
Hanna is in joggers and a tight white T-shirt with the word Cheri emblazoned across the front. Hanna has never been much of a style maven. She favours a black suit from Banana Republic for work and cheap leisurewear for home. Laurel doesn’t know what she wears in the evenings as they never go anywhere together in the evenings.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Bit late for tea for me.’
Hanna rolls her eyes. She has little patience with Laurel’s caffeine sensitivity, thinks she makes it all up to annoy her.
‘Well, I’m going to have a coffee. What shall I get you?’
‘Nothing, honestly. I’m fine.’
She watches her daughter moving around her small kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, her body language so closed and muted, and she wonders if there was ever a time when she and Hanna were close.
‘Where’ve you been then?’ says Hanna.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You said you were passing?’
‘Oh, yes. Right. Hair appointment.’ She touches her hair again, feeling the white lie burning through her.
‘It looks lovely.’
‘Thank you, darling.’
The piece of newspaper with the scribbled number and the name ‘Floyd’ on it is in her pocket and she touches it as she speaks. ‘A funny thing happened,’ she begins.
Hanna throws her a look of dread. It’s the same look she throws her any time she starts a conversation about anything, as though she’s terrified of being dragged into something she hasn’t got the emotional capacity to deal with.
‘A man gave me his phone number. Asked me out for dinner.’
The look of dread turns to horror and Laurel feels she would do anything, pay anything, give anything to be having this conversation now with Ellie, not with Hanna. Ellie would whoop and beam, throw herself at Laurel and squeeze her hard, tell her it was amazing and incredible and awesome. And Ellie would have made it all those things.
‘Of course I’m not going to call him. Of course I’m not. But it got me thinking. About us. About all of us. How we’re all floating about like separate islands.’
‘Well, yes.’ There’s a note of accusation in Hanna’s voice.
‘It’s been so long now. And yet we still haven’t found a way to be a family again. It’s like we’re all stuck. Stuck inside that day. I mean, look at you.’ She knows the moment the words leave her mouth that they are completely the wrong ones.
‘What?’ Hanna sits up, unknits her fingertips. ‘What about me?’
‘Well, you’re amazing, obviously you’re amazing, and I am so proud of you and how hard you work and everything you’ve achieved. But don’t you ever feel …? Don’t you ever think it’s all a bit one-dimensional? I mean, you don’t even have a cat.’
‘What! A cat? Are you being serious? How the hell could I have a cat? I’m out all day and all night. I’d never see it, I’d …’
Laurel puts a hand out to her daughter. ‘Forget about the cat,’ she says. ‘I was just using it as an example. I mean, all these hours you work, isn’t there anything? Some other dimension? A friend? A man?’
Her daughter blinks slowly at her. ‘Why are you asking me about men? You know I don’t have time for men. I don’t have time for anything. I don’t even have time for this conversation.’
Laurel sighs and touches the back of her neck. ‘I just noticed,’ she says, ‘a few times recently, when I’ve been in to clean, you haven’t been home the night before.’
Hanna flushes and then grimaces. ‘Ah,’ she says, ‘you thought I had a boyfriend?’
‘Well, yes. I did wonder.’
Hanna smiles, patronisingly. ‘No, Mother,’ she says, ‘sadly not. No boyfriend. Just, you know, parties, drinks, that kind of thing. I stay at friends’ places.’ She shrugs and picks again at the dry skin around her nails.
Laurel narrows her eyes. Parties? Hanna? Hanna’s body language is all skew-whiff and Laurel doesn’t believe her. But she doesn’t push it. She forces a smile and says, ‘Ah. I see.’
Hanna softens then and leans towards her. ‘I’m still young, Mum. There’ll be time for men. And cats. Just not now.’
But what about us, Laurel wants to ask, when will this stop being our life? When will there be time for us to be a family again? When will any of us ever truly laugh or truly smile without feeling guilty?
But she doesn’t ask it. Instead she takes Hanna’s hand across the table and says, ‘I know, darling. I do know. I just so want you to be happy. I want us all to be happy. I want …’
‘You want Ellie back.’
She looks up at Hanna in surprise. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes. I want Ellie back.’
‘So do I,’ says Hanna. ‘But now we know. We know she’s not coming back and we’re just going to have to get on with it.’
‘Yes,’ says Laurel, ‘yes. You’re absolutely right.’
Her fingers find the piece of paper in her pocket again; they rub against it and a shiver goes down her spine.
Fourteen
‘Hi. Floyd. It’s Laurel. Laurel Mack.’
‘Mrs Mack.’
That soft transatlantic drawl, so lazy and dry.
‘Or are you a ms?’
‘I’m a ms,’ she replies.
‘Ms Mack, then. How good to hear from you. I could not be more delighted.’
Laurel smiles. ‘Good.’
‘Are we making a dinner plan?’
‘Well, yes. I suppose. Unless …’
‘There’s no unless. Unless you have a specific unless in mind?’
She laughs. ‘No, I have no unless in mind.’
‘Good then,’ he says. ‘How about Friday night?’