Then She Was Gone

by Lisa Jewell

She had never let herself go. Herself was all she had left in those days.

She’s always made herself look nice, but has not worried about looking pretty for a long time.

‘Sara? She’s …’ For the first time Laurel sees a light veil fall across Floyd’s natural effervescence. ‘She’s unusual. She’s, er …’ He appears to run out of words.

She feels suddenly as though this was all fated, that her meeting with this strangely attractive man was not as random as she’d thought, that they’d somehow recognised the strange holes in each other, the places for special people who had been dramatically and mysteriously plucked from the ether.

Laurel looks at him, judging the appropriateness of her next question. ‘Do you ever think maybe she’s dead?’

He looks up at her darkly and she knows that she has gone too far. ‘Who knows?’ he says. ‘Who knows.’

she realises that it’s the first time in years she’s wanted to talk to Paul about anything other than Ellie.

His touch feels both gentle and hard, sexual yet benign. His touch makes her feel everything she thought she’d never feel again, things she’d forgotten she’d ever felt in the first place.

‘Wow,’ she says eventually. ‘Sorry. You look …’ But she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say, You look just like my lost girl … the dimple, the broad forehead, the heavy-lidded eyes, the way you tip your head to one side like that when you’re trying to work out what someone’s thinking. Instead she says, ‘You remind me of someone. Sorry!’ and she laughs too loud.

‘What did you think?’ he says. ‘Of my Poppy?’

She pauses for a moment, swallows hard, and then reaches down into herself to retrieve the word she never thought she’d say to Paul. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t lose me, Laurel. I’m still yours. I’ll always be yours.’

Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient, it nurtures the chef.

One small thing. She’s obsessed with other people’s photos. If you have any of Ellie, maybe best to put them away. I haven’t told her about Ellie and think it’s best she doesn’t know. Hope that’s OK.

Laurel and Floyd exchange another look. She’s waiting for him to pull Poppy back a bit, rein her in. But he doesn’t. He watches her in something approaching awe as though waiting to see just how far she will go.

Poppy finally seems sated and takes a seat next to her father, who grips her knee and gives it a quick hard squeeze as if to say good job on grilling the lady.

‘I’m not really that kind of girl,’ she says. ‘Jeans and hoodies and stuff. I like to look … smart.’ Floyd’s hand goes to the knee again, gives it another encouraging that’s my girl squeeze.

Poppy, she is so like Ellie.

they’re almost mathematically identical.

They are not identical. But there is something, something alarming and arresting, a likeness that she can’t leave alone.

Her flat had felt odd in the wake of her dinner guests, as though it didn’t really belong to her.

Something not right. Something to do with Floyd and Poppy. She can’t pin it down.

Poppy is clearly a strange child, who is both charmingly naïve and unsettlingly self-possessed. She is cleverer than she has any need to be, but also not as clever as she thinks.

Floyd, who in the time that Laurel has spent alone with him, is virtually perfect, warps into something altogether more compl...

‘It was like,’ she says, ‘you know, like when you’re supposed to be having drinks with a friend and they bring their partner along and suddenly you’re at the pointy end of a triangle?’

The evening had essentially been the Floyd and Poppy Show with Poppy as the star turn and Laurel as the slightly dumbfounded audience of one. Floyd and Poppy shared the same sense of humour and lined up jokes for each other. And Floyd’s eyes were always on his precocious child, sparkling with wonder and pride. There was not one conversation that had not involved Poppy and her opinions and there had not been one moment during which Laurel had felt more important, special or interesting than her.

He narrows his eyes and she hears a small intake of breath.

A muscle twitches in Floyd’s cheek.

‘Your parents sound amazing,’ she says. Floyd blinks and smiles sadly. ‘In many ways I suppose they are,’ he says. But there’s a chip of ice in his delivery, something sad and dark that he can’t tell her about.

‘She looked really like Poppy, don’t you think?’

Horrible and she smelled of chips.’

Her hair

‘It was red. And it smelled...

everyone blossoms at a different point in their life: clearly Floyd is blossoming right now and maybe his life was once much, much darker.

‘It’s not a philosophy. It’s life. Once you learn how to look at the world, once you stop trying to make sense of it all, it’s blindingly obvious.’

She realises what she has done. She has dressed this child up as her dead daughter. And the result is unnerving.

there is a moment of gentle hilarity as they realise that they are dressed virtually identically and that they are in fact wearing exactly the same Paul Smith socks.

You’re moving on, because you can. You couldn’t before. There’s a right time for everything.

read two books a week. At least.’

What is it about fiction that you enjoy?’ Poppy’s hands fall on to the book. ‘Stories’, she says, ‘are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.’

Ellie used to read two books a week and when they teased her about always having her nose in a book, Ellie used to say, ‘When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.’

‘Funny’, he says, plucking his coat from a coat rack, ‘that you’ve found yourself in a lookalike family.’

Noelle Donnelly must be Poppy’s mum.

‘For a moment, I thought maybe it was Poppy’s mum.’ Floyd doesn’t move. After a minute he turns towards the fridge and says, ‘Well, actually, it is.’

Yeah. I remember her. Ellie hated her.’

I remember her saying she was weird and creepy. That’s why she stopped the lessons.’

And your boyfriend … his aura is all wrong? It’s dark.’

the minute I sat down and saw him there, the minute he and I made eye contact, I knew.’

‘That he’s hiding something. And I know you and I aren’t close, Laurel, and I know that’s mainly down to me because I’m so self-protective, but I do care about you, you’re the mother of the man I love and I want you to be safe.’

‘And you know,’ SJ continues, ‘there’s another thing, something really strange, about Poppy’s mum—’ She stops talking and they both turn at the sound of the door opening. It’s Floyd.