by Lisa Jewell
“Not quite,” she said.
“Is Noah in bed?” He glanced up the stairs.
Tallulah nodded. “Been down for a while.”
“Sorry I’m a bit late. They didn’t have what I wanted at the co-op so I had to go into the pub for it. Had to queue for ages. Packed in there.”
He opened up the bag and let her peer inside.
Champagne, still cold from the fridge.
She smiled; she couldn’t help it. She loved champagne.
“Saw your mum,” he said, following her into the kitchen.
“Oh yeah?”
“Looked like she was having fun.”
“Good,” she said, sliding the champagne into the fridge and pulling out two beers.
“Got crisps as well.” He pulled out two bags of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa. “And these, ’cos I know they’re your favorites.” He presented her with a bag of Cadbury’s mini fingers.
She smiled again. “Thank you,” she said.
They settled in front of the TV with their beers and the crisps. It was the first time she’d been alone with Zach in weeks, in months. Usually he came over during the day to spend time with Noah when he was awake. She’d thought it might feel a little awkward, but actually it didn’t. She and Zach had known each other since they were fourteen years old, when he started at Tallulah’s school after moving from a boys’ school in the next village where he’d been bullied. She’d befriended him because he looked nice and she’d felt sorry for him and then they’d started dating and that was that. They were one of those teen couples that were part of the furniture, an unsurprising couple, not one to create chatter or intrigue.
So maybe it wasn’t so strange that Tallulah should have felt so comfortable in his company that night. They’d been friends, they’d been lovers, they’d been ex-lovers, and now they were parents. There was no reason why they shouldn’t be able to be friends again.
They didn’t talk much that night, they let the telly entertain them, they looked at their phones and showed each other things that were amusing. At one point Zach snatched the phone from Tallulah’s hand and said, “Here, I want to see your camera roll, let me see.”
“Get off!” She’d laughed. “Why!”
“Just want to see photos of Noah,” he said, and she let him scroll through her phone and it was nearly 100 percent photos of Noah. But then the roll got as far back as the Christmas party at college and Zach slowed down and started looking at the pictures in more detail.
“You look nice,” he said, zooming into her face in a selfie she and Chloe had taken just before they went home. “You’re wearing makeup.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just eyeliner. Mum did it for me.”
“Suits you,” he said, turning and giving her a strange look. “Not like you to get all dolled up. And who’s that?” he asked.
It’s a selfie, taken on the dance floor at the Christmas disco when she and Scarlett had been dancing to Mariah Carey. Scarlett must have taken it. The camera was held up high, both of them beaming with all their teeth on show, pieces of glitter just starting to fall from the netting overhead, catching the light.
“That’s Scarlett, a girl at college.”
“You look really happy,” he said, zooming in on their smiles. “I kind of thought you’d forgotten how to smile like that.”
She made a dry sound of laughter. There was something accusatory in the tone of his voice, as if she’d somehow let him down by being happy.
“Yeah, well,” she said, “they were playing Mariah. You’d have been smiling too.”
“Just never think of you as the party type,” he continued, and she felt herself starting to tense up. This, she thought, this was why she didn’t want to get back together with him. Having a baby had changed her; it had changed everything about her. Leaving school had changed her again. Being single after three years in a couple had changed her. She wasn’t the soft, romantic girl she’d been before she got pregnant, before he’d walked away and left her to cope on her own. And she knew deep down that that version of Tallulah Murray was the only one that Zach was really interested in being with.
“Well,” she said, “things change, don’t they?”
“I guess,” he said, and there was a note of sadness in his voice.
At a few minutes before midnight, they took the champagne out of the fridge and a pair of wineglasses and went into the garden. The next-door neighbor’s cat sat on the fence, curled into its haunches, eyeing them curiously before turning to look up into the sky. It was cold and Tallulah shivered slightly. They’d had a couple of beers by then and when Zach put his arm around her shoulders to warm her up she didn’t shake him off. They used their phones to count down to midnight and Zach popped the cork and they heard people all around them cheer and cars hoot their horns and fireworks pop and splutter in the blackness of the sky and they held their glasses of champagne aloft and said Happy New Year to each other and hugged and as they pulled away from each other, Zach looked as if he was about to kiss her and she thought, no. No, I don’t want to kiss you. I’m not sure I’m ever going to want to kiss you again.
“Oh fuck, Tallulah,” Zach said. “I wish I’d never done what I did last year. It’s, like, the greatest regret of my life. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Will you ever forgive me?” He threaded her hands into his.
“I already forgave you,” she said. “I forgave you ages ago.”
“Then why?” he said. “Why can’t we start over?”
“I just… I don’t know, I just don’t feel like I want a relationship right now. Noah, he’s enough for me.”
She felt his grip tighten around her fingers.
“But Noah,” he said, “he’s ours, we made him, that makes us a union, a team. It’s not just about our relationship anymore, is it? It’s about all three of us.”
“You get to see him all the time.”
“Yeah.” He sighed impatiently. “I know that, but it’s not the same, not the same as being with him twenty-four-seven. As a family.”
“Yes, and that’s not what I’m saying. Obviously it would be better for Noah if you were here all the time. But I don’t know if…” She paused, buying time to find exactly the right words. “… if it’s right for me.”
He laughed, slightly dismissively. “Lula,” he said, “for fuck’s sake. We’ve known each other since we were fourteen. We know we’re right for each other. Everyone knows we’re right for each other. Please. Give me a chance.”
“I mean, but where would we even live?”
“Here!” he said. “We could live here. You’ve got that big bed. Your mum loves me. Ryan loves me. I tell you what, tell you what,” he countered quickly, clearly sensing her lack of enthusiasm for the idea. “Let’s do a trial run, yeah? Maybe I could stay over one night. Nothing like that,” he reassured her. “I’d sleep on the floor. Imagine Noah’s face in the morning, waking up and seeing Dad there. And I could do his morning feed and let you have a lie-in. Yeah? Wouldn’t that be good?”
He smiled down at her, using her hands to pull her closer to him so that their stomachs just about touched, their faces just an inch or two apart, his eyes boring deep into hers. “Wouldn’t it?” he said again, kissing her knuckles, looking at her coquettishly, a lazy half smile on his lips.
And something inside her gave way at that moment, a kind of sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach paired with a swoon in her groin, a feeling of wanting to be touched by someone, but not by Zach, of wanting to be wanted but wanting to be left alone, all at the same time; and she saw Zach’s mouth move toward hers and found herself moving toward him and then they were kissing and all her misgivings fell away in a moment, all her ambivalence crystallized into a single longing for him, for it, for flesh, for limbs and mouths and all of it. Within a moment she was against the back wall, her arms and legs wrapped around him, and it was all over in under a minute and it was what she wanted, it was what she wanted so mu
ch, and he carried her afterward, still inside her, her arms and legs still wrapped around him, and twirled her around and around the garden, and she was smiling, properly smiling, the blood pumping through her, the moon shining down from the velvet sky, and when Zach said, “I love you, Lula, I love you so much,” she didn’t stop for even a second before replying that she loved him too.
Because right then, for that moment in time, she really did.
15
JUNE 2017
DI McCoy leaves Kim’s house at about 10:00 a.m. and at around 11:00 a.m. a call comes through on Kim’s phone from a number she doesn’t recognize. She assumes that it must be him, that it must be the detective, that there is news, an update, a development of some kind, and her heart immediately begins to gallop and adrenaline pumps hard through her body.
“Yes.”
“Oh, hi, is that Kim Knox?”
It’s a girl’s voice.
“Yes, speaking.”
“This is, erm, Mimi? Scarlett’s friend? She said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Oh!” Kim pulls out a dining chair and edges onto it. “Mimi. Thank you. Are you able to talk?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I just wanted to know,” Kim begins, “I mean, I’ve already spoken to Scarlett and her mother. And to Lexie. And none of them has a clue what happened on Friday night. But I just thought that maybe you might have picked up on something? Something that nobody else picked up on, that might explain what happened after Tallulah and Zach left?”
There’s a brief silence and she can hear Mimi inhaling, pictures her drawing on a cigarette clutched between the knuckles of skinny fingers with bitten-down nails.
“I mean,” Mimi begins, “literally the only thing I can think of is that they might have had a fight?”
Kim’s head rolls back slightly. “Fight?”
“Yeah. They seemed a bit, I dunno, like there was something going on between them? A bit of tension?”
Kim swivels toward the dining table and moves the phone to her other ear. “Like what?” she says. “Can you describe it?”
Mimi sighs. “I went indoors, to charge my phone,” she says. “Lula and Zach, they were sitting in, like, the little room just behind the kitchen. It’s like a snug kind of thing. They didn’t hear me go past. But I kind of peered through the gap in the door and I saw he had his hands really tight around her wrists and she was trying to get them free and he just kept them pinned down, like he was trying to stop her hitting him, or maybe trying to stop her leaving… I dunno. He looked really angry.”
Kim blinks slowly. Mimi’s words slot into the space in her head where her own misgivings have been gestating, the place where she wonders how Zach might have reacted to a rejection. As they do so, she feels a jolt of nausea pass through her. The “what if” starts to take shape, and the possibility of Zach having played some part in her daughter’s disappearance overwhelms her for a moment.
“Did you hear either of them say anything about a ring? Maybe? Or an engagement?”
There’s a solid pause on the line and then, “No. Nothing like that. They were both quite quiet, really. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure why they were there. I didn’t feel like they even wanted to be. You know?”
* * *
Sunday never ends.
Instead of putting him down in his cot, Kim takes Noah for a long walk around the village in his pushchair for his daytime nap, her eyes scanning every hedgerow, every alleyway and crevice between houses. As she passes Maypole House her eyes go to the back of the grounds where the student accommodation is. She thinks of Scarlett’s ex-boyfriend Liam, the only person who was there on Friday night whom she has not spoken to. But she’s sure, as Lexie had said, that he didn’t see or hear anything more than she had, as he left early with her.
A moment later she finds herself outside the Swan & Ducks. The front terrace is heaving, as it always is on a sunny Sunday lunchtime: prosecco on tables in wine coolers, jugs of Pimm’s, children in high chairs being fed chopped-up sausage and mash by mums in floaty dresses with sunglasses on their heads, cockapoos curled underneath tables in the shade.
Kim wheels the pushchair through the throng and into the bar, where it is cool and overcast. There are fewer people in here and she goes straight to the bar. She recognizes the young guy behind the bar; it’s Nick. He’s an out-of-work actor who likes flirting with middle-aged men just to watch them blush.
“Hello, you,” he says, “don’t normally see you here during the day. What can I get you?”
“Oh,” she says, “no. Not here for lunch. Just wondering… you were here on Friday night, yes?”
“As it happens, yes, I was. They work me like a dog.”
“And Megs told you, about my daughter and her son?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Did they get back OK?”
“No,” she says, her voice threatening to crack. “No.” She draws her breath in hard and regains control. “They’re still not back. I’ve reported it to the police now. I guess they’ll want to talk to you at some point, ask you what you saw.”
“Oh God, Kim. That’s terrible. You must be worried sick.”
“Yes,” she says, squeezing out a strained smile. “I really am. But I just wondered what you saw exactly?”
“Well, not much really, I’m afraid. They started off over there.” He points to a nook at the back of the bar. “All cozy and lovey-dovey. He bought a bottle of champagne. They had the seafood platter. They were so cute. And then there was this other group. A kind of Maypole group, you know? Loud, in your face. And I think they knew your daughter? And sort of infiltrated your daughter’s nice romantic evening. I felt really bad for them!”
Noah starts to stir in his pushchair and Kim rocks it a little, absentmindedly.
“Did you see anything strange happen?”
“Strange?” Nick turns and fixes his lighthouse beam of a smile on a customer who has appeared at Kim’s side. He takes their order; then he switches back to Kim a moment later and says, “I wouldn’t say strange, no. Lots of drinking. And given the amount of cashbacks the Maypole kids were asking for, I suspect maybe a drug delivery of some kind, but I didn’t see any evidence of that. And then it was closing time and they all just left. And that was that.” He looks at her sadly and says, “Fuck, Kim. I’m sure they’ll be home any minute now, they’re bound to be. You know what teenagers are like.”
* * *
She carries on walking. She goes to Tallulah’s friend Chloe’s house, just outside the village, the last in a row of small flat-fronted cottages with doors opening directly on the main road. Chloe says no, she hasn’t spoken to Tallulah in ages. But she also says something interesting. When Kim mentions that Tallulah had last been seen at the house of Scarlett Jacques in Upley Fold, Chloe’s eyes narrow and she says, “Weird.”
Kim says, “Why?”
Chloe shrugs. “There’s just something off about Scarlett and that lot. Something, I dunno, dark, and there was this night, last year, the college Christmas party, when I was sitting with Lula, and Scarlett sort of took her away, kind of rude, and I can’t really explain it, but it was like Lula already knew her? Even though she didn’t? And they were dancing for a while and then they went outside for like about ten minutes and Lula was all on edge when she came back in. Couldn’t really work out what it was about. I mean, as far as I was aware, Scarlett and that lot are just this uberclique, never speak to anyone, yet she spoke to Lula. It was weird. Anyway, Lula and me didn’t really talk again after that.”
Kim grimaces. “After the Christmas party?”
“Yeah. I mean, we say hi if we see each other, but we don’t hang out.”
“But what about in February? When you were… going through the thing you were going through?”
Chloe gives her a blank look.
“You were feeling really low and Tallulah came and spent the night with you?”
“Are you sure you mean me?”
“Yes, back i
n February, Tallulah told me you were really low and she needed to spend the night with you in case you did anything stupid.”
Chloe shakes her head. “God, no. No, that definitely never happened. I did not feel low and she did not stay the night. I promise you, Lula and I have barely said a word to each other this year. We’ve barely seen each other. It sounds like she might have been lying to you, to be honest.”
16
SEPTEMBER 2018
The grounds at Maypole House fill slowly but surely during the weekend before term begins. The empty buildings come alive with the movement of people, the sounds of voices and music, of doors opening and shutting, ringtones and car engines, laughter and shouting.
Sophie feels strange, less like she’s in the middle of nowhere, as she’d feared, and more like she’s actually in the middle of everything. From the garden outside the kitchen she can sit and watch the students leave their rooms and head into the main building for breakfast. Some of them take morning jogs around the grounds. She starts to recognize certain faces, certain groups of friends, and she can tell even from a distance who is new to the college and who is a returner by the confidence with which they traverse the school grounds.
On the Sunday night before term officially starts, there is what is called the Registration Day Dinner. Registration Day is the busiest day in the run-up to the new term, when the majority of students arrive from home to board and sign up for their classes. In reality, most of this is done online before the students ever set foot on campus, but it’s an old tradition and it’s a good way for students to set eyes on their classmates before they hit the classroom. And then there is the dinner, which, according to Shaun, is what it is really all about.
In days gone by, it was a sit-down affair, but since the new accommodation block was built ten years earlier, doubling the size of the student population, the dinner has morphed into a party with a buffet and a DJ.
Sophie, for some reason, wants to look stunning for the party. Not just nice, but knockout, drop-dead amazing so that the students will all talk about her behind her back—so they’ll say, “Wow, Mr. Gray’s girlfriend is really pretty, isn’t she?” She wants, for some reason, to win the approval of some of the handsome-looking boys she’s seen jogging around campus. Not the young ones, obviously, but the nineteen-year-olds, the nearly men with their summer tans and their thick hair and their swaggers.