by Lisa Jewell
Kim still has so many things she wants to ask, so many questions she needs answers to. She’s not ready to go. “You said Tallulah hadn’t been here before?” she asks, a hint of desperation in her voice. “And on the phone earlier you said you didn’t really know her. I mean, you didn’t even know she had a child. So what… I mean, why was she even here?”
Scarlett pulls her towel over her shoulders like a cloak and rubs at her ears with its corners. “We chat sometimes,” she says, “at college. Then I saw her in the pub last night and we had a few drinks and one thing led to another.”
Kim’s eyes take her in again, this lanky, angular girl with whom her daughter chatted sometimes. She takes in the detail of her; the piercings that catch the light, the tattoo on her shoulder blade, the perfectly painted toenails. And her gaze alights on a black mark on Scarlett’s foot, a small tattoo, a pair of letters that she can’t at first quite make out. Then she sees that it is the trademark symbol. Scarlett’s hand reaches down and covers the tattoo, hard and fast, like swatting a fly. Their eyes meet briefly and Kim sees something defensive and raw pass across Scarlett’s face.
She hitches her bag onto her shoulder. “Would it be possible,” she says, “to speak to your friend Mimi, do you think? Do you have a number for her?”
“She won’t know anything more than I do.”
“Please?”
“I’ll get her to call you,” says Scarlett.
Within a minute they are pushing Noah’s buggy back through the wrought-iron gate and onto the front courtyard and Joss is standing under a bower of passionflowers with her gigantic dog, waving them off, and as they walk toward the driveway, Kim hears the splash of bodies hitting the cool, blue surface of the swimming pool, a small squeal of laughter.
7
AUGUST 2018
Sophie comes from an outdoorsy family. They go on walking holidays and sailing holidays and skiing holidays. Her father runs marathons, her mother plays golf and tennis, both her brothers work in the sports industry. Sophie was once a swimmer. She has medals and cups and certificates in a big box in her parents’ loft and still has a swimmer’s physique although she barely swims at all these days. When they were all small and getting on her mother’s nerves, she would zip them into their coats and lock them in the back garden. They would moan for a while and then find something to do. Usually involving climbing very tall trees and swinging off things that weren’t designed to be swung off. So Sophie is very comfortable being outdoors and confident in her ability to find her way about and deal with obstacles alone without assistance. And so she sets off into the woods, sensibly dressed and equipped with water, energy bars, a mobile charger for her phone, her compass, some plasters, sun cream, a hat, and a packet of bright red plastic space-marker cones that she can drop on the forest floor at intervals if she needs to find her way back.
Inside the woods, the tree cover is immense and very little of the pale gold August sun gets through. Within a few feet she feels the temperature begin to drop. She holds her compass in her right hand and follows the path alongside the arrow telling her where to go.
After twenty minutes the denseness of the middle of the woods starts to thin out again and there are established footpaths meandering through the trees, signs of humanity, pieces of litter, dog poo in a green plastic bag hanging from a branch. She checks her map again now that she has briefly regained her phone signal and finds that she is about to emerge onto a bridleway. She moves the map across her screen with her fingers and sees the linear representation of a large building to her right.
After a moment she sees a turret and a weathervane. Then she sees the curve of an ancient brick wall and a curtain of bright red Virginia creeper. She squeezes through a parade of trees that abuts the wall and finds herself in front of a rusty metal gate, a broken padlock hanging from its bars, and then she is through the gate and into a clump of woodland; the shimmer of blue sky is visible ahead of her and then she is on a ragged sun-bleached lawn that rolls downward via wide stone steps overgrown with thistles toward a house that looks like something from a Tim Burton movie.
Sophie catches her breath and puts a hand to her throat.
As she runs down the tiered lawns toward the house, she sees the pool appear; it’s dark green, a ripped cover half pulled across it, mulchy dead leaves from the previous winter stacked around it. A pagoda at one end of the pool has been covered in boldly colored graffiti.
The terrace between the pool and the house is littered with empty beer cans and cigarette ends, drug paraphernalia and discarded crisp packets and takeaway containers.
How, Sophie wonders, could a house of this magnificence, not to mention market value, have been left like this? Why is it not being cared for, even while it is uninhabited?
She picks her away around the house, trying to peer into windows through gaps in the shutters. At the front of the house is an ornate courtyard and beyond that a long cypress-lined driveway that appears to go on for a mile or more. She turns to look at the front door. Above the fanlight, carved into the dark brickwork, is the date AD 1721.
The air is thick and silent here, and nothing else in sight. This house exists almost on an island. Sophie wonders about the family who lived here, the hedge-fund manager and his glamorous wife and their talented teenage daughter. Where are they now, and what on earth possessed them to leave a place like this to go to seed?
She checks the time on her phone. It’s nearly midday.
She stands at the top end of the garden to survey the grandeur of the house one more time. She takes a photograph, then tucks her phone into her rucksack and heads back down the bridleway and into the woods.
8
OCTOBER 2016
“Zach called again.”
Tallulah glances at her mum.
“About an hour ago. Wondered if I knew where you were, because you weren’t answering your phone.”
She shrugs and heads to the baby monitor on the kitchen counter and puts her ear to it, listening for the sound of her son’s sleeping breath. “How long has he been down?”
“About thirty-five minutes.”
She glances at the time. It’s four thirty. He’ll be hungry any minute. She has a small window of time to get changed, to have a cup of tea, to sort out her college work. She’s been at college for four weeks now and has got into a really solid routine.
“Are you going to call him?”
“Who?”
“Zach,” her mum replies impatiently. “Are you going to call him? You can’t ignore him forever.”
Tallulah nods. “I know,” she says. “I know.” She unknots the laces on her trainers and pulls them off. Then she sighs. Zach asked if they could get back together when he came to visit Noah on Saturday. It was weird because when she was pregnant all she wanted in the whole world was to be back together with Zach. But now she’s a mum, now she’s at college, it’s like she’s not that same person anymore and the person she is now doesn’t want to be with anyone. She just wants to share her bed, her body, with Noah.
She and Zach had been together for nearly three years when she got pregnant. She hadn’t told him she was pregnant until she was four months gone and then he’d freaked out and said he needed time to decide how he felt about it. And now he knows how he feels about it, but Tallulah’s no longer sure that she does.
“He’s a good boy, you know,” her mum continues.
“Yes. I know.” She tries to hide her exasperation. She owes her mum everything right now and doesn’t want to sound ungrateful. “I just don’t know what to say to him.”
“You could just say that,” her mum suggests.
“Yes, but then he might try to talk me around and I haven’t got the energy for it.”
Tallulah’s so tired all the time. During the summer it had been fine: Noah slept most of the day when he was a newborn, so she had plenty of time to catch up on her sleep. But now he’s older and more wakeful and she’s at college three mornings a week and has st
udy to do on her days at home and daytime sleeps are a thing of the past.
“If Zach starts crying or something, I’ll cave. I know I will.”
Her mum passes her a mug of tea, pulls out the chair opposite her, and sits down. “But what is it?” she begins. “That you’re not sure about?”
“I just… I don’t…” But she’s saved from having to find the words to explain something she cannot explain by the sound of Noah on the baby monitor, rousing from his afternoon sleep. Her mum goes to stand up, but Tallulah wants the bliss and the distraction of scooping her boy from his warm bedsheets and rolling him into her arms, against her chest, the sweet heat of his breath against her collarbone.
“I’ll go,” she says, “I’ll go.”
* * *
The following day Tallulah has college in the morning.
She leaves the house with the vignette imprinted on her mind of Noah in her mother’s arms, Ryan in his school uniform microwaving Noah’s milk for her because she’s late and doesn’t have time to do it herself, and stands at the bus stop opposite their cul-de-sac. The bus is late. After all her rushing about and not saying goodbye properly to her baby son, she sighs impatiently. She’s aware then of a presence beside her and turns to see Scarlett Jacques sliding along the plastic bench.
“Haven’t missed it, then?” she says breathlessly.
Tallulah doesn’t realize for a split second that Scarlett is talking to her and fails to respond.
“I’ll take that as a no,” says Scarlett.
“Sorry,” says Tallulah. “Yeah. I mean, no. You haven’t missed it. It’s late.”
“Phew,” says Scarlett, pulling earbuds from the pocket of her oversize raincoat and starting to put them in her ears. Then she stops and says, “I know you, don’t I? You’re at Manton College, yes?”
Tallulah nods.
Scarlett nods too and says, “I’ve seen you around. What course are you on?”
“Social care. First year.”
“Ah, so you’re new too?”
“Yeah. A few weeks in. How about you?” asks Tallulah, although she knows exactly which course Scarlett’s on.
“Fine art. First year.”
“That’s cool,” says Tallulah, and then wishes she hadn’t said “cool.”
“Well, yeah, it’s shit, really. I mean, I wanted to go to art school in London but my parents wouldn’t let me. Because of all the traveling. And I said, well, then rent me a little flat. And they said no way, and then I didn’t get a good enough grade in my art A level to get into any of the good colleges anyway, not because I’m not good at art, but just because I didn’t do the work I needed to do, story of my life, and yeah. Here I am.”
They both turn at the distinctive rumble of the old-fashioned green bus that services the area as it appears on the far side of the common.
“Do you live around here, then?” asks Tallulah.
“No. Well, kind of. About two miles away. But I spent the night with my boyfriend. He’s at the Maypole.” She shrugs in the direction of the imposing old manor house across the common.
“Are you allowed to sleep over there?”
“Nope. Most definitely not. But I have a ‘special’ relationship with the matron there. She loves me. And I’m kind of friends with her daughter too, so she turns a blind eye.”
The bus approaches and they get to their feet. Tallulah doesn’t know what happens now. Will they sit together? Will they continue to talk?
But the decision is taken from her. Scarlett sees a friend at the back of the bus and strides away from Tallulah, throwing her school bag down on the seat and then herself, her voice traveling loudly, almost gratingly, down the aisle to the front of the bus, where Tallulah sits alone. But when Tallulah turns, just once, to look at Scarlett, she finds Scarlett looking straight back at her.
9
JUNE 2017
Kim strips off her clothes and gets into the shower, quickly, before the water has run warm. The whole episode at Scarlett’s house has left her feeling filthy and exhausted. She pictures Scarlett’s mother standing at her front door with her big panting dog, watching them pushing Noah’s buggy awkwardly down the gravel pathway and onto the drive.
“I’d offer to drive you,” she’d called out. “But I’ve had a few drinks! So sorry!”
Kim’s car was like an oven by the time they returned to it and Noah was now tired and hungry and screamed all the way from the bottom of the driveway to the parking space outside Kim’s house, whereupon he immediately fell asleep. Ryan is sitting out in the car with him now.
In the shower she can taste the salt of her own sweat as water passes down her face.
Every few seconds she peers through the gap in the shower curtain at her phone, which she’s left perched on the sink, balanced against the toothbrush mug, looking to see if she’s missed a call or a message.
After showering she gets into clean shorts and a fresh bra and top. Everything she was wearing earlier is damp and dank and heading for the laundry basket. She glances at her phone again. Still nothing.
Fear grips her gut again; it comes and goes in waves. She sits on the edge of her bed and thinks about the woods behind Scarlett’s house. She tries to imagine Zach and Tallulah, waiting in the dark for a taxi that didn’t come, giving up after a while and one of them saying, “Those woods take us back to Upfield. We could try cutting through there.” It had been a warm night; it might even have sounded appealing, and maybe they thought the fresh air would help clear Tallulah’s head.
Kim calls Megs. “Would you mind,” she says, “if I dropped Noah with you for a while? I think I know where Zach and Tallulah might be and I’d like to go and have a look?”
There’s a pause, then Megs says, “So they’re not back yet?”
Kim closes her eyes. It’s different with sons, she knows that. But still, she’s frustrated by Megs’s lack of concern. She pictures her just as she’d left her this morning, stretched out in her back garden with her edgy husband, enjoying not having any responsibilities, any agenda.
“No,” she says. “They’re not. And none of the local taxi firms has a record of picking them up from their friend’s house last night. So I have a theory that they might be lost in the woods behind the college. I want to go and have a look.”
“Oh,” says Megs. “Right.” Then, “Seems unlikely. I mean, it’s almost five o’clock. That would mean they’d been in those woods since last night. Surely no one could get lost in there for that long?”
“Well, maybe they had an accident? Fell down a… I don’t know, an old well or something. Anyway. I’ll be over with Noah in a bit. See you soon.”
She ends the call without waiting to hear what else Megs might have to say.
* * *
They spend two hours scouring the woods but there is no sign of them. No wells. No holes. No traps. No dropped clues. Nothing. As they pass the accommodation block in the grounds of Maypole House afterward, Kim glances up at the windows. She remembers Scarlett telling them that Kerryanne Mulligan’s daughter had been with them the night before; Lexie, she said her name was. She and Ryan head for the security gate and ring on a buzzer that says RESIDENCE MANAGER.
A woman replies.
“Oh, hi. Is that Kerryanne?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Hi, this is Kim Knox. I live across the common. I think my mum used to look after your mum when she was at Springdale?”
“Yes, yes. I know you. And I remember your mum. She used to bring Jamaica ginger loaf to my mum’s room when I came to visit her for tea. Paula, wasn’t it?”
Kim smiles at the sound of her mother’s name. “Yes! That’s right. And your mum was called Vanda?”
“Yes! That’s right. Well remembered. How are you? Do you want to come in?”
“Er, yes, thank you. I’ve got my son with me.”
“Lovely,” says Kerryanne. “Second floor, room 205.”
There’s the smell of cooking in Kerryanne’s fla
t, something steaming on a hob. A younger woman sits on the L-shaped sofa facing a terrace that overlooks the woods that Kim has just been trawling for her daughter and her boyfriend.
“Come in!” says Kerryanne. “Come in. This is my daughter, Lexie, she’s staying with me for a few days. Lexie, this is Kim, she’s the daughter of one of Nana’s carers from Springdale. And your mum. Is she…?”
Kim shakes her head. “No. No, she died two years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. She must have been very young?”
“Sixty-two,” she says.
“Oh no. Oh dear. Not that much older than me. I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, well. And your mother? Is she…?”
“Four years ago. But she was eighty-eight. So, you know, I can’t complain. But she loved your mum. She really did.”
They smile sadly at each other for a minute thinking of their poor dead mothers, then Kerryanne rallies and says, “Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“Well,” says Kim, “actually, it was Lexie I wanted to talk to.”
Lexie turns at the sound of her name and says, “Oh?”
Lexie is a pretty young woman, with mahogany hair cut into a bob with a blunt fringe, large black-framed reading glasses, skinny jeans, and an artfully scruffy T-shirt.
“You were at Scarlett’s house last night?”
“Yes!” she answers brightly. “How did you know?”
“Well, because my daughter was there too. Tallulah? And her boyfriend, Zach? And the thing is that Tallulah and Zach haven’t come home. And apparently they left there at three a.m. We’ve just been in the woods at the back.” Kim gestures through the glass sliding door. “I thought maybe they’d got lost coming back, but no sign of them. And I know you left early, but I just wondered if you noticed anything. Knew anything. Saw anything. Because I’m running out of ideas here!” She’s been trying to keep her voice on an even keel, keep her tone normal, but her words begin to crack apart as she reaches her conclusion, and then she finds that she is crying. Kerryanne rushes to the kitchen to find her a tissue and Lexie looks at her with genuine concern.