“Do they live with you?”
“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 for 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 older daughter’s face when she sees her mother standing on the doorstep is 90 percent appalled and 10 percent 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 wordCheriemblazoned across the front. Hanna has never been much of a style maven. She favors a black suit from Banana Republic for work and cheap leisurewear for home. Laurel doesn’t know what she wears in the evenings since 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.