“What did he tell you last night?”
“He told me that Noelle wasn’t my mum. He told me that your daughter was.” She turns, suddenly, and Laurel can see that her eyes are red and swollen, that she has been crying silently in her bedroom. “Is it true? Is it true that you’re my grandma?”
Laurel pauses. She swallows. “Would you like it to be true?”
Poppy nods again.
“Well. It is. Your mother was called Ellie. She was my daughter. And she was the most wonderful, golden, perfect girl in the world. And you, Poppy, are exactly like her.”
Poppy says nothing for a moment and then she turns to Laurel once more, her eyes wide with fear and says, “Is she dead?”
Laurel nods.
“Is my dad dead?”
“Your dad... ?”
“My real dad.”
“You mean...”
“The man who made a baby with Ellie. Not my dad who brought me up.”
“Your dad told you?”
“Yes. He told me. He said he doesn’t know who my real dad is. He says no one knows. Not even you.”
Laurel turns her attention back to Poppy’s hair. She pulls it as high as she can and then she twists the elastic band around it three times. “I don’t know if your real dad is dead, Poppy. It’s possible we’ll never know.”
Poppy is silent for a moment. Then she says, “Have you finished?”
“Yes,” says Laurel. “All done.”
Poppy slides from the chair and goes to the mirror on the wall outside Floyd’s study. She touches her hair with her fingertips in her reflection. “Do I look like her?” she says.
“Yes. You look just like her.”
She turns back to her reflection and appraises it again, her chin tipped up slightly. “Was she pretty?”
“She was extraordinarily pretty.”
“Was she as pretty as Hanna?”
Laurel is about to say,Oh, she was much prettier than Hanna. But catches herself. “Yes,” she says. “She was as pretty as Hanna.”
Poppy looks satisfied with this.
“Are we still going to the party?” she says.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes. I want to see my family,” she says. “I want to see my real family.”
“In which case then definitely.”
“Laurel?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”