“No,” says her mum. “Not n... n... now. Ellie found. You happy. I...” She prods at her collarbone. “I go.”
Laurel wipes away the tear with the back of her hand and forces a smile. “It’s your life, Mum,” she says. “I can’t choose when to let you go.”
“No,” says her mum. “N... n... no one can.”
That afternoon, Laurel takes Poppy shopping. It’s raining, so she suggests Brent Cross as an alternative to Oxford Street.
Poppy greets her at her front door wearing smart trousers with a jade-green round-neck cardigan and a floral raincoat. Her hair is in two plaits, one on each shoulder. She loops her arm through Laurel’s as they run through the rain to her car across the street. Then she rolls down her window and waves frantically at her father, who stands in the doorway in his socked feet waving back at her.
“How are you?” Laurel asks, turning to glance at Poppy as she pulls out of her road.
“I’m superexcited,” she says.
“Good,” Laurel replies.
“And how are you?”
“Oh, I’m OK, I guess. A little the worse for wear after last night.”
“Too much champagne?”
Laurel smiles. “Yes. Too much champagne. Not enough sleep.”
“Well,” says Poppy, patting Laurel’s hand, “it was your birthday after all.”
“Yes. It was.”
The rain is ferocious and Laurel switches on her headlights and pushes the wipers up to the top speed.
“What have you been up to this morning?” Poppy continues in the precocious way she has that Laurel is quickly becoming used to.
“Hm,” she replies, “well, I’ve been to see my mum.”
“You have a mum?”
“Yes, of course! Everyone has a mum!”
“I don’t.”
“Well, no, maybe not one you can see. But you have a mother. Somewhere.”
“If you can’t see something, it doesn’t exist.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes total sense.”
Laurel frowns at her passenger. “So, what about New York? I can’t see it. Neither can you. Does that mean it doesn’t exist?”
“That doesn’t count. We could see New York on a thousand webcams right now. We could call someone up in New York and sayplease send me a photo of New York. But with my mum, well, I can’t see her on a webcam or in a photo, I can’t call her up, I can’t even go and look at her remains in a graveyard. So my mum does not exist.”
Laurel feels thrown for a minute and breathes in sharply. “Would you like her to exist? Do you miss her?”
“No. I never even think about her.”
“But she was your mum. You must think about her sometimes, surely?”
“Never. I hated her.”