by Cat Clarke
“Wow,” says Laurel.
“Sorry it’s such a mess.”
She shakes her head and turns around, trying to take everything in. There are pictures all over the walls—photos I’ve taken, pictures cut out from magazines. You can barely see the walls underneath. I realize there are no photos of Laurel, and I wish I’d thought to put one up before she came home.
On the desk there are three rows of little toys from Happy Meals and cereal boxes. They’re lined up like little soldiers. There’s a stack of shoe boxes on the floor next to the desk. Laurel doesn’t investigate, but I wonder what she’d make of a box full of sugar packets and cubes. For a while it was a bit of an obsession of mine. I only stopped collecting them last year.
Laurel asks me about some of the pictures on the walls, which means I end up talking about my favorite films and bands. It’s easy to forget that she has no frame of reference for most of the things I talk about. She doesn’t seem to mind that I keep having to go off on tangents, that I keep having to explain more and more things before I go back to telling her what I wanted to tell her in the first place. She just takes it all in. She seems to concentrate hard on what I’m saying. She really listens; I like that.
Laurel has seen some films. Occasionally, Smith would bring an old TV and video player and hook them up in the basement. (Who has videos in this day and age?) Laurel says it only happened once a month, or even less often than that. There was no rhyme or reason to it—it didn’t seem to be a reward for good behavior. The films she watched were all really old—Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and one called One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, which she particularly liked.
“Is this your boyfriend?” Laurel points to a photo next to my bed. It’s the last thing I see before I turn off the light at night.
“Yeah, that’s Thomas.”
“He’s very good-looking.” Thomas is good-looking, but not in an obvious way. He looks like he writes poetry. His hair is too long, and he’s pale and interesting rather than tanned and chiseled. There’s something gentle about his features—a softness that I like. When he first turned up at school, you could tell none of the boys were threatened; there’s nothing remotely alpha male about Thomas. But something strange happened within days: girls were drawn to him. Some of the most popular girls in my grade started trailing after him, offering to show him around the school and help him “settle in.” He saw straight through them, politely declining their advances, preferring to spend time alone. Then he started following me around.
I didn’t even notice at first; Thomas is very good at skulking. But then I realized that I was seeing him all the time—in the corridors, in the library, in the courtyard. I mentioned it to Martha one day, and she rolled her eyes at me. “Finally. I was wondering when you were going to notice.” She was the one who encouraged me to talk to him, although “Why the hell are you stalking me?” probably wasn’t quite what she had in mind.
Thomas was startled when I confronted him in the library, but he didn’t try to deny it. He said, “I think you’re interesting.”
“Look, if there’s something you want to ask about my sister, just do it.” It happened all the time—people staring and whispering. It got to a point where I almost preferred the ones who were brazen enough to actually talk to me about it—like Laney Finch.
Thomas just stared at me.
“Well? I have better things to do than stand here being gawked at, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to go.” I wasn’t usually quite so rude, but something about his face riled me.
“Why would I want to ask about your sister?”
I crossed my arms and waited.
He closed his notebook and waited, too. Eventually, he broke the stalemate by asking a question I’d never been asked before: “Who’s your sister?”
I think it was those three words that did it for me. I’m not saying I fell head over heels in love with him as soon as he said them, but they unlocked something inside me. They made it possible for me to not hate him, to start sort of liking him, to start really liking him, and finally, after a few months, to maybe sort of almost love him. None of that would have been possible if he hadn’t asked me that question.
Thomas has lived in more countries than most people have been to on vacation—he’s an army brat. He moved here when his parents retired a couple of years ago. He doesn’t like to talk about the army thing—it doesn’t exactly mesh with his strictly pacifist views.
When I realized Thomas wasn’t joking, I told him who my sister was. He nodded vaguely. “Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard of her.” He said this in exactly the same way I do when I tell him I’ve heard of this poem or that book, when the truth is I have no idea what he’s talking about.
I stayed and talked to him until the bell rang. Two weeks later, he asked me out. I kissed him for the first time one week after that. I’ve never told him that I wouldn’t even have considered going out with him if he’d asked me about Laurel.
Laurel sits down on my bed and asks me more questions about Thomas. She asks why I like him. (She doesn’t say love.) Why, out of all the boys at school, Thomas is the one I chose to be my boyfriend. It makes me smile, her saying that. As if all the boys in school are clamoring to go out with me. I don’t tell Laurel the truth: that the reason I chose him to be my boyfriend was because he was the one person who never—not even once—asked about her.
Mom didn’t ask Laurel if this was okay—she went right ahead and organized it, only telling her this morning. I wonder what Laurel would have said if she had been consulted. It’s overwhelming even for me, so god knows what it must be like for her.
I have never seen so many members of my family in the same room before. Laurel sits in the middle of the sofa, and everyone else forms a ring around her. There have been lots of tears; there has been quite a bit of champagne. (These two facts may or may not be linked.)
The only person missing is my grandmother. Dad’s mother lives in the South of France; she’s very frail. My grandfather died when I was five years old, almost exactly a year after Laurel was taken. I don’t remember him. Mom’s parents are here, though; Gran keeps fussing over Laurel, brushing imaginary bits of fluff from her T-shirt just for an excuse to touch her.
The party is strictly a family affair. Mom had suggested inviting a couple of other people—she’d even asked if I wanted to invite Thomas and Martha—but Dad had said we should try to keep the numbers down. I was relieved; I didn’t want Thomas and Martha here. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it feels a bit like I need to keep the different parts of my life in separate boxes. For now, at least.
Mom’s sister, Eleanor, has had six glasses of champagne. (I’ve been counting.) Mom and Eleanor look really similar, but when they stand next to each other, it’s obvious that one of them has been through some awful shit and the worst thing that’s happened to the other one was missing out on a Marc Jacobs coat in the January sales. Maybe that’s a little unfair. Mom always says she couldn’t have made it through those first weeks and months without her sister. Eleanor dropped everything and moved into our house, spending most of her time looking after me.
At one point in the afternoon, Dad’s brother, Hugh, thinks it’s appropriate to ask Laurel about the offers she’s had. “Might as well get something out of all this, eh?” He nods emphatically and doesn’t seem to notice the suddenly uncomfortable atmosphere.
His wife, Sally, elbows him. “Hugh!”
And Hugh says, “What? What did I say?”
Dad glares at Hugh until Hugh turns his concentration to the crudités, taking a long time to decide between a carrot stick and a radish. No one’s going to tell him that the offers have been pouring in. TV interviews, newspaper interviews, magazine features, photo shoots (a fashion designer with a ridiculous name that I can never remember saw Laurel at the press conference and is convinced that she’s his new muse. He wants to design a whole collection—“Lost & Found”—inspired by her.
Laurel is baffled b
y it all. “Why do all these people care about me?” I haven’t got the heart to tell her that they don’t care. They’re only interested in money, just like everyone else. Everyone wants a piece of Little Laurel Logan.
I think she’ll end up accepting some of the offers. Dad’s warned her that she needs to be careful, that she needs to get advice and talk to her psychologist before she does anything. He’s worried about the repercussions of her doing anything other than hiding out at home. He thinks she’s too fragile. But this morning I overheard Mom talking to Dad in the kitchen. “It’s hard….The money would come in handy. I mean, what’s she going to do now? Get a job? Go to college? She needs some financial security, John.” Dad’s voice was quieter, so I couldn’t hear what he said.
Dad stayed over last night. He wanted to be here for Laurel’s first night at home. “What about Michel?” I asked when Dad wheeled in his little case and put it in the corner of the living room yesterday morning.
Dad looked blank. “What about Michel?”
“Shouldn’t he be here? He’s part of this family, too, remember.”
“I’m perfectly aware of that, thank you very much.” I stared at him. “Your mother thought it would be nice if the four of us were here tonight, together.”
“I bet she did. She hates him.” Mom was at the supermarket, stocking up on supplies for the party she hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about.
“She doesn’t hate him. It’s more complicated than that.” Parents always say things like this, trying to make out that you couldn’t possibly understand the complexities of their relationships.
“He should be here.” I wasn’t willing to let it go.
“It’s not up to me. Her house, her rules.” That made it sound like he wanted Michel to be here, at least. That my mother was being unreasonable, trying to re-create a perfect, simple family that hadn’t existed in thirteen years.
“I hope he’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
I shrugged. “It can’t be easy for him…Laurel coming back.” Dad looked genuinely confused by this, so I elaborated. “Maybe he’s worried you’re going to leave him, go back to Mom.” There. I’d said it. It had been on my mind all week. Most kids I know would be thrilled at the idea of their parents getting back together. Not me.
Dad laughed. “What? Are you…? You’re serious, aren’t you? Oh, Faith…” He put his arm around me, pulling me close. “That’s never going to happen. Your mother knows that. Michel knows that. I love him.” It made me squirm a bit, Dad saying that. But it reassured me, too.
I texted Michel last night, just to check on him. He texted back to say he was watching the Alien movies back-to-back, making the most of having the apartment to himself. He asked how things were going with Laurel. Great, I said.
Mom cooked a roast dinner. She really went overboard—it was like Christmas. We discovered that Laurel loves peas but doesn’t like brussels sprouts. She had two helpings of roasted potatoes. She’s starting to put on a little weight. You can see the difference already; she looks a tiny bit healthier every day.
No one was quite sure what to do after dinner. We sat in the living room, drinking tea. Laurel sat in my usual spot on the sofa, but I didn’t mind. It was me who suggested watching TV. That’s what normal families do on a Saturday night, after all. Dad handed Laurel the remote control, and she flicked through channel after channel. I presume she must have done the same in the hotel room, but she still had this look of amazement on her face at all the choices on offer. She couldn’t decide between a film featuring a giant killer shark and a documentary about earthquakes. She looked to me for help, and I mouthed the word shark and nodded hard. She nodded back, grinning, and for the first time I felt something. We were sisters. We had a bond. It was new and as fragile as a strand of spiderweb blowing in the wind, but it was there, glinting in the sunlight if you saw it from the right angle.
Then we saw Laurel on the TV. She flicked right past the channel before she realized what she was seeing, then flicked right back again. Mom tried to get her to change the channel, but it was no good. I wouldn’t change the channel if I saw myself on TV, either. It’s human nature, isn’t it? If you walk past an open door and hear your name, you’re going to stop and listen to what’s being said.
It was a studio setting, and there was a huge screen with a picture of Laurel, a photo from the press conference. I’m almost sure it was that moment when she smiled when she mentioned me. The caption under the photo was: LAUREL LOGAN—WHAT’S NEXT? Two men in suits were sitting there, talking about my sister. One of them was supposedly a psychologist, an expert in post-traumatic stress. He wore the kind of geeky glasses a person wears when they’re perfectly secure in the knowledge that they’re not actually a geek. He kept on using the word damaged. When he said it the second time, Mom said, “I think that’s enough,” but Laurel said she wanted to hear it.
“The hard truth is that it will be difficult for Laurel to live a normal life. The details we’re starting to hear about what she’s been through…” He shook his head in disbelief, trying to convey just how awful those details were without actually mentioning any of them.
The news anchor (shiny black hair, jutting chin) leaned forward in his chair. “But surely this is the result we’ve all been waiting for?” He made my sister’s homecoming sound like a football match. In fact, I think I recognized him from a TV show about football. So what the hell was he doing sitting at a serious desk for serious people, asking questions about my sister? “Her return is fairy-tale stuff—happily ever after…isn’t it?” He sat back in his chair. He was pleased with that line, you could tell.
“Of course, it’s wonderful news that Laurel’s been reunited with her family. No one’s going to argue with that. All I’m trying to say is that things are rarely that simple. A girl who has been through years and years of abuse does not just slide back into the family unit as if nothing happened.” Dr. Geeky Glasses touched the corner of his glasses. I bet they were brand-new, bought especially for his appearance on this pointless TV show.
Mr. Shiny-Hair Football Pundit thanked Dr. Geeky Glasses before turning back to the camera. “Well, that was a fascinating perspective on this story, which is, let’s face it, the story the whole nation is talking about.”
The TV screen went dark; Laurel had switched it off. Mom put her hand on Laurel’s knee. “Just ignore it, darling. They don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know you.”
My parents and I are used to that sort of thing happening. You’re going about your day, maybe listening to the radio or browsing for a magazine at the newsstand, or looking for something to watch on TV. Then bam! You hear her name or see her face, and your day is ruined. Laurel’s not used to it, though; she was really upset.
She started to cry. “Everything’s going to be okay, isn’t it? I’m going to be okay? I’m home now. This is home.”
Dad looked like his heart might break in two. Mom had tears in her eyes. “That’s right, love. You’re home now. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise.” And she gathered Laurel up in a hug and rocked her like she was a baby.
I went to make more tea.
The party’s been going on for too long now, and I suddenly realize I haven’t seen Michel in a while. He was clearly uncomfortable from the second he arrived. He’s never met Mom’s family before, and he was nervous about meeting Laurel. She was great, though; she gave him the biggest hug and said she was looking forward to getting to know him. She even asked if he could teach her some French.
Aunt Eleanor’s been a little bit too welcoming, trying to flirt with him whenever Mom and Dad aren’t looking.
I find Michel in the kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl. “What are you doing? Hiding in here?”
“I’m not hiding!” I gave him a skeptical look. “Okay, I’m hiding. But have you tasted that dip your mom bought? Dégoûtant! She asked me to whip something up.” More like she wanted to keep him out of the way so s
he can play happy family. I’m almost certain Michel knows this, too, but he’s better off in the kitchen anyway.
I check I closed the door behind me. “So…what do you think of Laurel?”
Michel starts whisking the eggs. “She’s lovely. I don’t know why I was so nervous!”
“Because you want her to like you. I was the same.”
“Do you think she will? Like me?” He avoids eye contact, concentrating on whisking.
“Everybody likes you, Michel.”
“Everybody except your grandparents.” He’s not wrong there. I’ve caught them staring at him a couple of times. God knows what Mom’s told them about him.
I nudge him with my elbow. “But Aunt Eleanor seems to like you…a lot.”
“She terrifies me,” Michel whispers.
“Just make sure she doesn’t get you alone. You’re lucky I found you first.”
We joke around about Eleanor clambering over the kitchen counter to get to him. Michel’s pouring a thin stream of olive oil into the bowl when he asks me how I’m doing. “It’s a big change, yes? Was everything okay at school?”
Mom and Dad didn’t bother to ask. I grimace. “It was fine…I suppose. The usual gawkers and fakes. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Give it time. They’ll have to stop eventually.”
I shrug. “Martha’s making mincemeat out of them.”
Michel laughs. “I bet she is. That girl can be pretty scary when she puts her mind to it.” He’s not wrong about that. “You know, I’m really looking forward to next Saturday.”
The plan is for Laurel and me to stay at Michel and Dad’s place next weekend. Mom tried to say it was too soon, but Dad said, “Too soon for what? Our apartment is their home, too, remember?” I was proud of him for saying that, for standing up to her. Anyway, Laurel’s looking forward to it.
Dad comes into the kitchen and slips his arm around Michel’s waist. “What are you two up to?” Michel holds out a teaspoon of aioli for Dad to taste. “More salt, I think.”
