by Lisa Jewell
Eventually one of those detectives will take a call from one of the searchers and something will etch itself onto his or her face and they will come to her car, to her window, and she will wind it down and they will say, “They’ve found something,” and then she will know. She will know what has befallen her beautiful girl.
But for now, she sits, she looks, she watches, and she waits.
19
SEPTEMBER 2018
The first day of the new term has arrived at Maypole House. Shaun has been at work for days already, of course, but there’s something new and shiny about the day as she watches Shaun readying himself this sunny Monday.
The day will start with an assembly and Shaun has been writing his first-day speech for days now. He’d practiced it in front of Sophie last night standing at the foot of their bed in just his boxer shorts and socks, while she lay on the bed, playing the role of his audience.
“Wonderful,” she’d said, giving a round of applause. “Really wonderful. Warm, relatable, inspiring.”
“Not too short?”
“Not too short,” she’d reassured, “perfect length. Perfect pitch. And judging by the way people reacted to you at the dinner tonight, they all love you already.”
“You think?”
“The affection was tangible,” she’d said. “Truly.”
And it was true. She’d felt it everywhere Shaun went the night before, the feeling of genuine engagement he left in his wake, the sense that people had been uplifted by him, flattered by his attention, that he’d created a kind of buzz about the new term to come merely by being present, before he’d so much as held an assembly or read a speech.
Now Shaun has gone and Sophie is alone. The cottage is cool and quiet, her laptop is open on the kitchen table, her novel is blinking at her from the screen, her email inbox is full of work-related things that she should really be attending to, the dishwasher needs emptying, and she still has boxes left to unpack, but she doesn’t do any of those things. She switches screens, opens her browser, and googles “Liam Bailey.”
As she’d expected, the search term brings up a hundred people who are not the correct Liam Bailey. She adds “Maypole House” to the search. The school’s website appears.
She deletes “Maypole House” and adds “Scarlett Jacques.”
No results found.
She adds the name “Zach Allister” to her search for Liam.
No results found.
She sighs and leans back into her chair. How can two people go to the pub on a Friday night and never come back and nobody know what happened to them? The mystery consumes her, whole. She can feel it whispering to her through the branches of the trees in the woods, down the corridors of the college, from Liam’s balcony, across the surface of the duck pond on the common, from Kim Knox’s window facing the bus stop and the ring in its box in the back corner of her drawer.
At this thought she gets abruptly to her feet and runs up the stairs to her bedroom, wrenches open the drawer in the dressing table, and pulls the box out. She brushes the dirt off the lid again with her fingertips but it’s still impossible to make out the writing printed on the top. She takes the box to the bathroom and rubs it with the wetted corner of a towel. As she does so, the blackness shifts and gold block lettering begins to appear. She rubs harder, dampens the towel again, rubs more. And there, distinctly, are the words MASON & SON FINE JEWELLERY, MANTON, SURREY.
Her heart skips a beat.
Manton.
That’s the big town six miles from Upfield Common. The town where Tallulah went to college. Sophie wants to go there. She wants to go now. But she can’t drive. And she has no idea how one would summon a taxi to come to Upfield Common and maybe the receptionist here could tell her but she feels strangely like she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s going to Manton. And then she thinks of the bus stop, by Tallulah’s rosebush. She grabs her bag, drops the ring box into it, strides through the school grounds and across the common toward the stop.
* * *
The bus comes half an hour later.
She takes a seat halfway down. There are only two other people on board. As the bus trundles through the country lanes and then out onto the A road toward the big roundabout, Sophie imagines Tallulah sitting here, as she is, her rucksack perched on her lap, her delicate features set pensively, the sun glittering off her nose ring, her dark hair covering half her face.
The ride into Manton takes twenty minutes. The stop on the high street is the end of the route for the bus and the driver flashes the lights on and off to encourage everyone to disembark.
Sophie puts the name of the jewelry shop into Google Maps and follows the directions to a small turning just off the main street.
It’s a tiny, ancient shop, with low-set windows that are designed to be gazed down upon. Sophie stops and admires the display for a moment before pushing open the door. Her breath catches a little; it’s exactly the type of shop she would use for one of her Little Hither Green Detective Agency books, replete with a slightly comical-looking owner behind the glass-topped display cabinet, sitting on a tall stool, reading a hardback book. He’s terribly small, with close-cropped white hair and red-framed glasses, and when he glances up at her his face breaks into a smile of pure joy. “Good morning, madam,” he says, “and how are you today?”
“I’m very well, thank you.”
“And how can I help you?”
“I have a strange request actually,” she says, putting her hand into her bag.
The man jumps off his chair and put his hands up in the air. “Don’t shoot!” he says. “Don’t shoot! Just take what you want!”
Sophie stares at him blankly for a moment. “I, er…”
The man laughs overloudly. “Just kidding,” he says, and Sophie thinks, There you go, you should never take a man wearing red glasses seriously.
“Oh,” she says. “Good.” Then she takes the ring box out of her bag and puts it on the counter between them. “I found this,” she says, “buried at the end of my garden. I wondered if you had any idea who it might belong to? I mean, I don’t know if you keep records anywhere?”
“Well, yes, I most certainly do!” He pats the cover of a large leather-bound ledger on the desk to his left. “Everything is in there from the day I got the keys to this shop back in 1979. So, let’s have a look here, shall we?”
He opens up the small box and takes out the ring between his thumb and his index finger; then he holds it under a bright light on a bendy post, using a small eyeglass to examine it.
“Well,” he says, “I’d like to say I remember this ring immediately—I do tend to pride myself on committing everything I sell to memory—but obviously some pieces carry more resonance than others and this carries little resonance. But I can tell you it’s contemporary, not antique; the hallmark says 2011. It’s nine-karat gold and while that is a very nice sparkly little diamond indeed it is not of great value. But,” he says, flashing her a wicked look, “thankfully, I am a man who values the importance of good systems. And one of the things I do to everything that passes through this shop is to assign it a number. In case of robbery, or theft. Insurance claims. You know. So…” He pulls the ring box toward himself and hooks his fingers under the blue velvet–covered filling. He levers it out and turns it over, and there, stuck to the underside, is a tiny sticker. “There,” he says, lowering the eyeglass and beaming at Sophie. “Number 8877. So, now all I need to do is cross-reference with my bible here.”
He’s thoroughly enjoying himself, Sophie can tell. She smiles blandly as he slowly flips through the pages of his ledger, running his finger down lines of text, humming quietly under his breath as he does so, and then suddenly he stops, stabs the page with his fingertip, and says, “Eureka! There it is. This ring was bought in June 2017 by a man called Zach Allister. He paid three hundred and fifty pounds for it.”
A chill goes up and down Sophie’s spine so fast it almost winds her.
“Zach Allister
?”
“Yes. Of Upfield Common. Name rings a bell actually, come to think of it. Do you know him?”
“No,” she says, “no. Not really. I mean, no, not at all. Do you happen to have an address for him? So I can return this to him?”
“I…” He pauses. “Well, I suppose I could give you the address. I probably shouldn’t, but you look trustworthy enough. Here.” He turns the ledger around and Sophie quickly takes her phone from her bag to photograph the entry. As she lets the lens focus on the text she recognizes the address; it’s Kim Knox’s cul-de-sac. Of course it is. It must be where Zach was living when he and Tallulah went missing.
“What a very strange thing,” says the shopkeeper. “Burying a nice little ring like that in your back garden. I can only assume,” he continues, “that the lady in question must have turned down his proposal.” He looks sad for a minute, before rallying. “Are you going to reunite the ring with its owner?” he asks.
“Er, yes,” Sophie replies brightly. “Yes, I know this address. I can definitely return it.”
“I wonder what kind of applecart that might upset?” he says in a tone that suggests he’d love to be a fly on the wall.
“I’ll let you know!”
“Oh yes, please do. I’d love to find out what happens.”
“I’ll be back, I promise,” she says, tucking the ring into her bag and heading for the tiny shop doorway. “Thank you so much.”
* * *
The bus brings Sophie back to Upfield Common an hour later. She glances at the time. It’s nearly midday. She crosses the common and heads toward the cul-de-sac. It looks as if someone’s at home; the front window is open a crack and she can hear the sounds of a child’s laughter and a TV on somewhere.
She presses the doorbell and takes a step back, clears her throat, wonders what she’s doing for a moment, almost changes her mind, but then sets her jaw and reminds herself that when someone’s child is missing, what they crave more than anything else is information and the ring in her handbag might provide some kind of answer. And then the door is opened and there is Kim. She’s wearing a denim miniskirt and a black cap-sleeved T-shirt. Her feet are bare and her hair is tied back in a ponytail. She looks at Sophie through trendy black-framed reading glasses and says, “Hi.”
“Hi,” says Sophie. “Er, my name’s Sophie. I just moved into the cottage in the grounds of Maypole House. A week ago. And there’s a gate in the garden that leads out into the woods, and I know this sounds weird, but there was a sign, nailed to the fence, saying ‘Dig Here,’ so I got a trowel and dug and I found something. A ring. And according to this guy at the jeweler’s it was bought by someone called Zach Allister, who lived at this address. Here.” She takes the ring box from her handbag and offers it to Kim.
Kim blinks at her and her gaze goes slowly to the box in Sophie’s hand. She picks it up and opens it. The diamond catches the light immediately, sending spots of light across Kim’s face. She shuts it quickly and then says, “Sorry, where did you say you found this?”
Sophie tells her again. “I just took it into Manton. To see if I could find out who it belonged to. The guy there kept records. He said this ring was bought by someone called Zach Allister. In June 2017. From this address. Look.” She turns her phone to show Kim the picture of the handwritten entry in the ledger. She can’t say anything else. To say anything else would be to suggest that she knows more than she feels she should know.
Kim’s face has lost some of its color. The TV in the background is suddenly loud. “Turn it down, Noah,” she calls out over her shoulder.
“No,” comes a firm response.
Kim rolls her eyes. She looks as though she’s considering escalating the episode of intransigence but instead shakes her head slightly and pulls the door to behind her. Sophie follows her to the garden wall, where they both sit.
“This ring,” says Kim, snapping the box open again. “My daughter’s boyfriend, he bought it for her. To propose to her. And then the night he was going to propose to her, they both disappeared. And all this time,” she says, “I wondered about the ring and then you find it, buried in the grounds of Maypole House just next to the woods where we searched and searched and searched for those kids. And there was an arrow, you say?”
“Yes.” Sophie nods. “I took a photo, actually, because it was so strange. Look.”
She scrolls through her phone to the photo she took before she started digging.
Kim studies it in fascination. “The cardboard,” she says. “It looks new. It doesn’t look like it’s been sitting there for long.”
“I know,” says Sophie. “That’s what I thought when I saw it. At first I thought maybe it was something left over from a treasure hunt, maybe from one of the residential courses that were held at the Maypole over the summer. I sort of ignored it. But now, I don’t know. I can’t help thinking that someone might have left it there deliberately, for me to find.”
Kim throws her a look. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Just that it was our first day and my partner, Shaun, he’s the new head teacher at the school, and it was attached to our garden fence and I thought…” Sophie realizes she needs to backpedal a bit to avoid sounding like she knows too much. “Well. I don’t know what I thought.”
“I’ll have to take this to the police,” Kim says, somewhat absently. “They’ll need to come back. They’ll need to search again. And the sign,” she says, pointing at Sophie’s phone. “The cardboard sign. Is it still there? Did you leave it?”
“Yes.” Sophie nods. “Yes, I left it there. I didn’t even touch it.”
“Good. That’s good. That’s…” And then Kim starts to cry and Sophie unthinkingly throws an arm around her.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to throw you such a curveball. I had no idea…”
“No.” Kim sniffs loudly. “It’s not your fault. Please don’t worry. And this. This is great. Honestly. The police. They’ve done nothing for months. Ran out of avenues. Ran out of resources. Basically gave up. So this is amazing.” She sniffs again. “Thank you so much,” she says. “Thank you for taking the time to find this, to find us. To give it back.”
From indoors a child’s voice calls out, urgently, “Nana! Nana! Now!”
Kim rolls her eyes again. “My grandson,” she says, getting to her feet. “Noah. Well into the thick of the terrible twos. Honestly, I love him to death but I’m looking forward to him going back to nursery school next week.”
She goes to the front door, the ring held in her fist. She looks back at Sophie and says, “I feel like I know you. Have we met?”
“You served me a cappuccino in the pub the other day.”
“Oh,” she says, “yes, that’s right.” She waves the ring box at her and smiles. “Thanks so much. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, truly.”
Kim lets herself back into her house, and from the open window, Sophie hears her talking to her grandson. “Look,” she’s saying, “look what a kind lady found. It’s a ring that your daddy bought to give your mummy, but he never had the chance. What do you think? Isn’t it pretty?”
20
FEBRUARY 2017
Each day that term, Tallulah arrives at college, scanning every corner of campus for Scarlett’s furry coat, listening out for the lackadaisical drawl of her voice, feeling for the energy that always spins in hoops around her. But there’s nothing; the intense buzz of Scarlett is gone, taking everything else with it in its wake. Days that had once felt piquant with possibility now feel flat and muffled and Tallulah becomes once again the studious teen mum with a weight on her shoulders.
But the weight on her shoulders isn’t Noah.
The weight on her shoulders is Zach.
He is good, he is so good, with Noah. He doesn’t resent nighttime wake-ups, sharing a bed with a wriggling baby, changing nappies, endless walks around the common with the buggy. He’s happy to sit and peel through the same
fabric books time after time after time, repeating the same words again and again. He bathes Noah, towel dries Noah, buttons Noah into pajamas, mashes up food for him, spoons it into his mouth, cleans up after him, carries him when he doesn’t want to be put down, sits for ages at the side of his cot when he goes down for his daytime naps, sings to him, tickles him, loves him, loves him, loves him.
But the same intensity of love he uses to coddle his baby boy, he also shows to Tallulah. And Tallulah doesn’t want it. She loves Zach, but she loves him more as the father of her child than as a man in his own right. She wants him for help with the baby, to slowly circle supermarkets with her, push the trolley, put his debit card to the contactless machine as the total goes through. But she doesn’t want him for cuddles or companionship or emotional intimacy. She doesn’t want him to always be there. And he is always so there. If she goes to the kitchen, he goes to the kitchen. If she decides to have a lie-down when Noah’s napping, he’ll lie down with her. If she’s at the desk in her room doing college work, he’ll be lying on the bed texting his mates. Sometimes she hides in the garden, just to escape him, just for a few minutes, and she’ll hear his plaintive voice coming from indoors: “Lules. Lules! Where are ya?”
And she’ll roll her eyes and say, “I’m just out here.”
And he’ll appear and he’ll say, “What you doing out here, then? Aren’t you cold?” And then hustle her back indoors and make her a mug of tea and sit with her to drink it and ask her about things she doesn’t want to talk about, or say, “Come here,” and bring her into an embrace she doesn’t want, and she tries not to let him feel it in the sinews of her body, the need she has just to push him away, just to say please please can you not just leave me alone for five minutes.
On Sundays though, Zach plays football with his friends on the common and Tallulah has the house to herself. She and her mum eat toast and play with Noah and it just feels nice and easy.