Spoilers!
Lisa Jewell said her 2017 book, Then She Was Gone, was bizarre when she handed it over to her editors, and indeed, it’s bizarre in the best way. My first Jewell book was an unexpected dark delight. It was one of those books where Jewell wasn’t even necessarily trying to twist the reader into knots with the plot, but rather, to delve deeper and deeper into the frayed psyches that are at the fringes of society and how that reverberates out onto the innocent and affected families. Then She Was Gone was a great introduction to Jewell and her style of writing, which makes me excited to explore the rest of her work.
Ellie is a brilliant 15-year-old, who adores her boyfriend, Theo, and is thinking ahead to acing her upcoming tests. However, she needs to shore up her maths (gotta love the British). So, she implores her mother, Laurel, to secure her a tutor. Enter Noelle. She’s a curmudgeon, who dotes on Ellie in such a way that it becomes creepy. Yes, she initially helps Ellie with her maths, but when the creep factor becomes undeniable, Ellie then insists her mother dump Noelle.
Meanwhile, we also know that that’s all in the past because in the present, it’s been 10 years since Ellie disappeared. Laurel’s grief is as potent as it was the day Ellie disappeared leading to a deteriorating family dynamic. Her ex-husband, Paul, has moved on to a new girlfriend, and her other children, Jake and Hanna, are trying to get on with their lives. Hanna, we will learn, rightly clocked that her mother wished it was her that disappeared instead of Ellie, creating a rift in their relationship. So much so, she won’t tell her mother about her new boyfriend, Theo (!). What becomes something of a salve for heartbroken, hollowed out Laurel is when Ellie’s remains are found and a proper burial can take place. Afterward, she meets Floyd, who seems charming and is rather forward with her; that is perplexing to Laurel who hasn’t seen herself as desirable since Ellie’s disappearance, or of course, has sought to be desirable.
Floyd has an older daughter, 21-year-old SJ, with his ex-wife, Kate, and 9-year-old, Poppy, from a different relationship. Poppy bears a striking resemblance to Ellie. So, it wasn’t as if Jewell was hiding the obvious here. Poppy is clearly Ellie’s child; we just don’t know the specifics yet. Here’s where my brain was at: Floyd was Noelle. He pretended to be an oafish 40-something woman to groom and prey upon Ellie, abducted her, raped her, and Poppy became his “reward.” Now, he’s repeating the cycle, this time with Ellie’s mother. Sick and depraved, to say the least. My prediction was too bizarre even for this book. Nonetheless, Laurel even becomes aware of a connection between Noelle and Floyd because mail came to his house addressed to Noelle. Then, she remembers Noelle as the maths tutor and her connection to Ellie. Floyd hand waves Noelle away as Poppy’s deranged, ugly mother who randomly disappeared. How bizarre.
What I was imagining in my head wasn’t so clear cut. In fact, we learn that Ellie ran into Noelle again, who cajoled Ellie to come to her house. That’s when Noelle drugged and imprisoned Ellie in her basement. The reason? She was in love with Floyd, and wanted to give him a baby. Twice she lost the baby. So, she reasoned, the only way to remain with Floyd was to kidnap the brilliant Ellie and inseminate her with Internet-bought-semen and take her birthed child away, which Ellie named Poppy, and present her to Floyd as her own. This, of course, meant faking a pregnancy in front of Floyd (which SJ caught, but nobody believed her) and lying to doctors and social workers when Poppy was born. Floyd eventually played his own nefarious hand: he wanted Poppy to raise as his own and for Noelle out of the picture. Aghast at such a notion, Noelle reveals her scheme, to which Floyd responds by choking Noelle to death.
That was a shocking implication. Floyd knew about Ellie and Poppy’s origins, and so, while not what I predicted, Floyd was still implicated as a cunning psychopath, who was clearly maneuvering Laurel into position … for what end exactly? Well, Floyd wanted to be loved and he got that, to some extent, with Laurel, who genuinely did like him at first. But as Blue, Jake’s girlfriend, warned, a man who wants to be loved but can’t be loved is a very dangerous person. In his brain, Floyd was introducing Poppy to her grandmother, and Laurel to her granddaughter. They needed each other. Surprisingly, Jewell does not build to a climactic, violent end. Instead, Floyd simply leaves, leaving behind a taped confession for Laurel, and then he goes into the desert and kills himself.
But what about poor Ellie? The deranged Noelle left her to die in the basement after she gave birth to Poppy, whereupon she took her remains and left them in two different locations to be found. Ellie left a secret letter in a book Noelle had given her that closes this book. It was devastatingly sad to read.
When children are involved, or would-be children, as it were, some of the most unimaginable, and indeed, bizarre, crimes occur. Jewell tapped into that with her story while also giving beautiful attention to Laurel’s grief and frayed familial relationships, particularly with Paul and Hanna. I also thought she wrote Laurel exceedingly smart, which doesn’t always happen with main characters. Yes, she was initially hesitant to heed Blue’s warning about Floyd, but it didn’t take long for her to turn into an amateur detective to uncover Noelle’s story and Floyd’s subterfuge. She was great, if a little daring to go back to Floyd’s house once she fully suspected everything.
I would recommend Jewell’s book to any thriller genre fans.
