Then She Was Gone

by Lisa Jewell

So, I’ll keep you supplied with everything you need, all the straw and toys and nibbles and what have you. Your job will be to nurture them. You will need to keep them clean and loved and fed.” She laughed. “A little like I do for you. Do you see? I keep you clean and fed. You keep them clean and fed. A lovely little circle of caring we have here.”

How could her mother think she’d run away? Her own mother? Her mother who knew her better, loved her better than anyone? How could she just have given up on her like this?

Even when there were cages full of them. She knew each and every one by name. She was amazing like that. Is it any wonder I was obsessed with her? Is it any wonder I did what I did? And yes, clearly I knew what I was doing. Of course there was a bigger picture. Of course there was. I had a truly audacious plan. And my goodness me if I didn’t go and pull it off.

It all spiraled away from her then, her peg in the map of time was irretrievably lost.

She missed Theo but she needed her family. Ached for them. Curled herself into a ball with her hands pressed hard into her stomach and cried for them.

Ellie’s days were longer than twenty-four hours. Each hour felt like twenty-four hours. Each minute felt like thirty.

“But if you let me go home, you wouldn’t have to pay for me. You could just go somewhere and I’d never tell anyone it was you. I’d just be so happy to be home, that’s all I’d care about. I wouldn’t tell the police, I wouldn’t…” And then crash. The back of Noelle’s hand hard and sharp across Ellie’s cheek. “Enough,” she said, her voice still and hard. “Enough. There’ll be no going home until I say. You need to stop with your talk of going home. Do you understand?” Ellie held the back of her hand to her cheek, rolled the cool flesh across the red sting of Noelle’s knuckles. She nodded. “Good girl.”

“Mummy,” Ellie whispered into the palms of her hands. “Mummy.” Ellie would never really know what happened the following night. She could guess, because of what happened afterward, but the actual facts, the details, only one person knew, and she would never tell her.

And after that it was the morning. And even though everything felt normal, Ellie knew it wasn’t normal, that something had happened.

“Look,” said Noelle, exasperated. “I am not going to get a concussion. And if anything else happened, I’d tell someone you were here. OK?” Ellie saw that Noelle was losing patience, that she should drop the conversation right now and eat in silence, but what she’d just said, that she would tell someone she was here, this was new and transcendental and extraordinary and thrilling. This couldn’t be ignored. “Would you really?” she asked, slightly breathless. “Of course I would. You think I’d just leave you here to die?” “But what about…” She picked her next words carefully. “Wouldn’t you be worried? That the police would come? That you’d be arrested or something?”

Outside the high window a sharp wind threw the tangles of the leafless foliage around like tossed hair while Ellie ate her Wotsits and prayed for a bus to bang into Noelle Donnelly next time she went to the shops, prayed for her to be hospitalized for long enough to have to tell someone about the girl in her basement with a miracle baby growing in her tummy.

Other times these chats were a kind of catharsis for Noelle, an unburdening of herself. Ellie had found these mood swings terrifying at first, had never been quite prepared for whichever version of Noelle might come through her door that day. But as the time passed she started to get an instinct for Noelle’s psychology, started to sense immediately what their chat would be like before Noelle had opened the door, just by the rhythm of the fall of her feet on the wooden staircase outside, the sound of the key in the lock, the speed with which it opened, the angle of her hair across her face, the sound of her breath as she drew it in to form her words of greeting.

She knew better than to offer any input when Noelle was like this. Her role was simply to be a human sounding board.

I mean, you can see why some people take to the street, can’t you? I see them sometimes, the homeless, lying there on their cardboard mattress, dirty old blanket, can of something strong, and I envy them, I do. No responsibility to anyone, for anything.

Ellie knew what Stockholm syndrome was. They’d studied it at school.

She knew that her feelings were normal. But she also knew that she must not let those feelings of affection—those moments when she yearned for Noelle’s attention or for her approval—she mustn’t allow them to dominate. She needed to hold on to the parts of her that wanted Noelle dead. Those were the strong, healthy parts of her. Those were the parts that would one day get her out of here.

That we should work out “how to be apart” before the baby came. How to be apart. Ha! What does that even mean, Floyd? I don’t think you really knew, to be honest. I think you were just sick of not getting any sex, I think you wanted to be able to go off and screw someone else. That’s what I think.

Because I knew what I had in my basement. And I knew that it was better than her. And if it was better than her, then it could still bring us back together. I had not lost hope.

We’d send news on to her: new nephews and nieces, degrees and what have you. But there was never a reply. She genuinely, genuinely didn’t care about us. Not about any of us. And in the end I’d say we’d stopped caring about her, too.”

“Bye bye, gorgeous Poppy,” you said, kissing your fingertips and placing them against her cheek. “I hope I see you again really, really soon.” I smiled inscrutably and then drove away, leaving you there on the pavement not knowing where you stood with anything. And that was exactly where I wanted you.

by the time it was clear that she wasn’t coming back, Poppy and I were a team.

A thought passes through her head, so fast and so unpalatable that she is unable to keep hold of it.

She crossed her arms across her chest. She closed her eyes. She let herself float higher and higher until she could feel the clouds against her skin, until she could feel her mother’s arms tight around her, her breath against her cheek.

She’d passed over at some point. I don’t know when exactly. It was for the best, I’d say. Yes, it was for the best. According to the papers they’d scaled back the search for her. That to me said they had her as a runaway. So I decided to make it look that way.

But then I could see the two of you forming a kind of breakaway team.

she’d look across at me as if I was nothing to her. Less than nothing.

None of the stuff I’d given her to shut her up. Just books and music and trips to the park.

“My mini-me.” That’s what you used to call her.

And if I’m going to home-school her, it makes sense for her to come and live with me permanently.”

You knew how hard I found her at home. You knew how much we clashed. And you knew, deep down, that I wasn’t a natural-born mother, that I wasn’t a nurturer.

But what you didn’t know was what I’d done to get that child for you. You had no idea. You had no idea that my life was not a life, not in any real sense of the word, and that the only thing that lit the path for me was you, Floyd. And if you had full custody of Poppy, then, really, what was the use of me? You’d have no reason to see me anymore. You’d have no reason to keep me on the side. I couldn’t let you take Poppy. She was my ticket to you.

I knew then that you wouldn’t let it go. And a few weeks later you found your moment and you pounced.

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.

He sighs. “Nothing would surprise me about that woman. Nothing.” She nods, slowly digesting Floyd’s lie.

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.”

“Come in,” you said, “please. We need to talk.” Were there ever four more terrifying words in the English language?

it can’t go on like this. And to be horribly, horribly frank with you, Noelle, I fear for her, living with you. I think…” Here it came. Here it came. “I think you’re toxic.” Toxic.

You’re not well. In the head, Noelle. You’re not well. And you’re not fit to be a parent.” And there. There it was. The defining moment of all the defining moments.

thought of what I’d allowed myself to become, for you. I never wanted that bloody child. I only wanted you.

“A girl called Ellie had that baby for me. I was never pregnant, you dumb idiot. How could you have thought I was, you with your big, brilliant brain? Ellie had that baby. She was the mother. And the father was some stranger on the Internet selling his sperm for fifty pounds a shot.”

The whole thing was a total scam, Floyd. And you fell for it, you feckless, bollockless, soulless shit. You totally fell for it.

I had my handbag by its strap. I was done. It was over. The splinters in my head were spinning so fast and so wildly I could barely remember my own name. But I felt euphoric.

And then I watched your face turn to stormy skies, saw your skin color change from gray to seething purple. You leaped to your feet; then you threw yourself bodily across the table at me. You had your hands at my throat and my chair tumbled backward with me still in it; my head hit the floor and by God I thought you meant to kill me, by God, I really, really did.

And now she is cross with Hanna. Cross enough to wonder what Theo even sees in Hanna, in comparison to Ellie. She imagines, in the warped threads of her irrational thought processes, that Theo chose Hanna as a consolation prize.

And it occurs to her for the very first time that maybe Hanna isn’t intrinsically unhappy. That maybe she just doesn’t like her.

“So, I’m right, you see. It is me. She can’t stand being with me.” “I’m sure that’s not true.”

What did I do, Paul? What did I do wrong?” She hears Paul take a breath. “Nothing,” he says. “You did nothing wrong. But I’d say, well, it wasn’t just Ellie she lost, was it? It was you, too.” “Me?” “Yes. You. You went kind of—off radar. You stopped cooking. You stopped—you stopped being a parent.”

Why do you think I go to her house every week and clean it for her? I try so hard with her, Paul. I try all the time and it makes no difference.”

“Laurel,” he says carefully, “I think what Hanna really needs from you is your forgiveness.” “Forgiveness?” she echoes. “Forgiveness for what?” There is a long moment of silence as Paul forms his response. “Forgiveness…” he says finally, “for not being Ellie.”

Everyone had fought for Ellie’s attention, for a blast of her golden light. Then the light had gone and they’d dissipated like death stars falling away from the sun.