by Lisa Jewell
She takes her gaze from the sky and directs it back at Scarlett. “I don’t know,” she says, her voice an apologetic whisper.
“Do you want me?”
She nods, but she can’t quite bring herself to say the word “yes.”
“What else do you want?”
“Noah.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. I just want… I just want to be free.”
“Yes,” says Scarlett. “Yes. Exactly. That’s exactly what you want. Of course it is. You’re nineteen. You’re beautiful. You’re good. You want to be free. And having a baby shouldn’t stop you being free. Being with me shouldn’t stop you being free. Nothing should stop you being free. The last thing you want at this point in your life is a ring on your finger. You need to cut yourself away from him. And maybe this is the perfect opportunity. Let him propose. Say no. It’s kind of un-come-back-from-able. It’s a one-way exit. Seriously. Let him do it. Say no. Then your life can begin.”
Tallulah has been nodding harder and harder as Scarlett talks. As she finishes Tallulah feels a surge of electric energy pass through every element of her being and she pushes herself toward Scarlett, presses her against the wall, and kisses her hard. After a minute she pulls back breathlessly. She stares at Scarlett, at the bright lights dancing behind her eyes, at the glazed wonder on her face, feels the heat of Scarlett’s caught breath against her skin, feels dazzled, beyond anything, beyond words, beyond imagination, by the beauty of her and thinks, I love her. I love her. I love her.
“I wish,” she says, tracing her fingers around the contours of Scarlett’s face, “I wish that Zach didn’t exist. I wish he would just, you know. Disappear.”
46
SEPTEMBER 2018
Kim watches Sophie flying around the internet, her fingertips clicking lightly across the keyboard, chasing this person called Cherry.
“Cherry,” Sophie is saying. “It’s got to be Scarlett, hasn’t it?”
Kim stares at her blankly.
“Red,” says Sophie. “They’re both red.”
“Oh God,” says Kim, realization dawning. “Of course. Shall we say something to Dom?”
Sophie sighs. “I don’t know. The police are using their own techniques to locate Scarlett and her family. Maybe we should just stick with this for a while. Keep out of their way.”
Kim nods. She feels instinctively that Sophie is right.
Sophie scrolls through the Instagram accounts of the main players again: Liam, Lexie, Mimi, Scarlett. Then she scrolls through the Instagram accounts of people who have commented on or liked anything in their Instagram accounts. She mutters the word “Cherry” repeatedly under her breath as she does so, and then suddenly she stops. “Look,” she says. “Look!”
She angles the screen toward Kim and points.
“Whose account is this?” asks Kim.
“Ruby Reynolds. Roo. One of the Scarlett Jacques clique. She still lives in the area, according to the photos, look.” She clicks on a photo of a dark-haired girl standing by a tree, wearing a battered leather jacket over a short dress. “That’s just over there, isn’t it?” Sophie gestures toward the village. “On the common?”
“Yes,” says Kim, peering closer at the photo. “Yes. Just to the left of the duck pond.”
“This was posted only ten days ago. And look.” She jabs the screen with her finger. “Someone called Cherryjack has liked it. Cherryjack. Scarlett Jacques.”
The icon is a photograph of two red cherries hanging off a stalk and a tongue poking at them. The tongue is pierced. Sophie glances at Kim. “Scarlett has a pierced tongue,” she says breathlessly. “I spotted it in another photo on Liam Bailey’s account.”
Sophie clicks on the profile picture and an account comes up. Amazingly, it’s not private. “No followers,” she says. “That’s weird.” She scroll down through the photos, faster and faster. The girl called Cherryjack appears to live on a boat. The shots are abstract: sunsets over endless ocean, the frothy tips of waves, the gleaming nub of a dolphin’s beak held in the palm of the photographer’s hand, tanned legs outstretched on cream leather with a dog’s large paw resting on her calf.
Kim peers more closely at the photo of the legs. “Can you zoom in on that?” she asks.
Sophie enlarges the image and Kim stares at it. “There,” she says. “There. On her foot, look, can you see it. That black smudge. Look.”
Sophie nods. “Is that…?”
“Yes, that’s where the tattoo was. The TM tattoo. Oh my God,” she says. “This is Scarlett. This is Scarlett Jacques! What dates are these photos from?”
Sophie scrolls quickly through them. The latest one is dated the previous day. The oldest one, just two weeks before.
Kim pulls back from the screen and exhales. Scarlett Jacques is on a boat. She’s on a boat with her dog and her phone and her perfectly pedicured feet, posting pretty pictures to Instagram. She feels a wave of hot anger pass through her and she swallows it down.
They both turn back to the screen and Sophie clicks on all Cherryjack’s images in turn. Each has a handful of likes and Sophie clicks on the profile of every user. “Recognize any of these people?” she asks Kim.
“No,” says Kim.
But then they both stop and draw in their breath hard when they scroll down to a name that is familiar to both of them.
@lexiegoes.
47
JUNE 2017
Tallulah sits at her dressing table. Zach isn’t back from work yet; he’s due in an hour. Noah is downstairs with her mum, who just sent her upstairs to get ready. “Go on,” she said. “Take some time for a proper pamper. It’s been so long since you went anywhere.”
Her end-of-year exams are done. In a few weeks’ time it will be the end of the summer term and there will be a long expanse of freedom ahead of her. And tonight Zach will propose to her and she will say no and that will hopefully, finally, draw a line underneath this teenage romance that has dragged on for far, far too long. She hears her mother singing songs to Noah downstairs and she smiles. She wants to have this house back to herself. She wants to have her room, her bed back to herself. Just her, her mother, her brother, her baby. And then somewhere, somehow, she wants to fit Scarlett into her life. She can’t quite picture it. There are gay people in Upfield Common. The male teachers from Maypole House who share a tiny cottage just past the Swan & Ducks and walk their rescue greyhound together at the weekends. Gia, a girl Tallulah went to school with and always wanted to be friends with because she was so cool, who now walks around the village hand in hand with an older woman who runs mindfulness courses in the village hall once a week. It wouldn’t be hugely controversial in the context of where Tallulah lives, but it would be hugely controversial in the context of Tallulah’s own existence. She’s not sure she could be open about it yet; she’s not sure she could cope with the second glances and the dropped jaws and the sense that she was a news story of some description. If it happened, it would have to happen so slowly that no one would really notice.
But for now, she has a night at the pub to look forward to, a night, she now realizes, that her whole future hinges on, where her destiny will pivot from one outcome to another. She sighs and untwists the wand of her mascara. She wants to look pretty, not for Zach, but for Scarlett, who will also be in the pub tonight, who said she will keep an eye on her in case things go horribly wrong, in case Zach loses his shit, in case Tallulah needs her. She layers the mascara twice onto her eyelashes and then plays with her hair. Scarlett says she envies Tallulah’s hair. Scarlett’s hair is sparse and damaged by years of continual bleaching and coloring. She takes Tallulah’s hair in her fist sometimes and runs her hand down it and says, “What is it like to have all of this? How can you bear being so beautiful?” And Tallulah just smiles and says, “Good genes, I guess. My mum’s got lovely hair. And my dad.”
“And your baby?”
“And my baby. Yes. There’s lots of good hair in my family.”
“I’m not beautiful,” she’ll reply. “My mum is beautiful. But I, unfortunately, look just like my dad.”
Tallulah once said, “Do you think I’ll ever meet your parents?” and Scarlett had nodded and said, “Of course you will.”
“Will they think I’m right for you? I mean, I guess they’re used to you being with people more like you, you know? People with money.”
“Look,” Scarlett replied. “My parents are so wrapped up in themselves and their own pathetic lives that I could bring a fucking horse home and they wouldn’t even notice. Seriously. They don’t notice anything I do. Ever. What about your mum?” she countered. “Do you think I’ll ever get to meet her?”
Tallulah nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. A hundred percent. My mum is so cool. And all she wants in the whole world is for me to be happy. So if you make me happy, she’ll like you.”
The conversation at the time had felt slightly fanciful. There seemed to be so much ground to conquer before they could reach the sunlit meadows of their happy ever after. But now it’s here. The night where everything changes.
She combs her hair into two sections and plaits it.
She chooses a light and airy muslin top that falls flatteringly over her belly and she teams it with cutoff denim shorts.
She looks at the girl in the full-length mirror.
The girl looks back at her.
She is a strong woman. A gay woman. A mother. A future social worker. She is more than she always thought she was. So much more. It starts here, Tallulah thinks, holding in her stomach, patting at the fabric of the summer smock, imagining the new life she will have on the other side of tonight, when she is free and can do what she wants. All of it starts here.
She goes downstairs to sit with Noah and her mother while she waits for Zach to get home from work.
48
SEPTEMBER 2018
Kim and Sophie head across the school grounds toward the accommodation block. Sophie has the laptop pinned beneath her arm. Kim taps in Kerryanne Mulligan’s apartment number and a female voice responds.
“Hi, Lexie. It’s me, Kim. Can I come in, do you think, just for a minute?”
“Er, yeah. Sure.”
The lock buzzes and they push open the gate and head toward the lift.
“Shall I do the talking?” Kim asks Sophie.
“Yes,” says Sophie. “Definitely. Definitely you.”
Lexie meets them at the door to her apartment. She’s barefoot in patterned leggings and a hoodie. She looks from Kim to Sophie and then questioningly back at Kim. She says, “Oh. Hi,” before holding the door open for them and leading them into the living area. The sofa is pulled out into a bed and her suitcase is on the floor by its side, with clothes spilling out of it. “Sorry,” she says. “I haven’t unpacked yet. I’m a bit of a nomad, I’m so used to living out of a suitcase, you know.” She kicks some clothes away with her bare foot and says, “Let’s sit at the breakfast bar.”
They perch themselves on the bar stools lined up in front of the kitchenette and Lexie turns to Kim and says, “Everything OK?”
Sophie throws Kim an encouraging look that she hopes conveys the fact that she is here if Kim needs backup.
“Well, no,” Kim replies, opening up her laptop. “Not really. It’s all been a bit unsettling, all this business with the signs and the things being dug up. Got me raking everything up, all the stuff that’s been racing around my head since Tallulah went, and then Sophie found a video online, posted by that girl who was there that night, Mimi. Remember Mimi?”
Lexie nods; then she says, “Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, it all feels quite blurry now. But I do remember there was another girl there.”
“Anyway, this girl, Mimi, in the video she made she seemed to know what was happening here at the school. Which is strange, as the only people who know what’s happening here are the people who actually live here. So it looks like someone in the village has been in touch with Mimi. Or maybe even been in touch with her the whole time.”
Kim pauses and Sophie sees something pass very quickly across Lexie’s face, too fleeting for her to get a grip on it.
“Anyway,” Kim continues. “That set me off thinking, so I came over to see Sophie and we’ve just been going through all the social media again, but this time from the starting point of this Mimi girl, and it led us to an Instagram account for a girl called Cherryjack.”
Kim pauses again and this time the startled look that crosses Lexie’s face is more pronounced. But the expression passes quickly and she gives her head the tiniest of shakes before nodding and saying, “Right. OK.”
“So, this appears to be Scarlett Jacques, on a boat. And look.” Kim turns the screen slightly to face Lexie. “Here, on this post, from just last month, you’ve liked it, from your account.”
Another pause follows and now the atmosphere is so thick with Lexie’s discomfort that Sophie can almost touch it.
“That is you, isn’t it? Lexiegoes? Yes?”
“Well, yes,” says Lexie. “Yes, that’s my account but I have no memory of ever liking that post. And I have no idea who this Cherryjack is. I mean, how do you even know it’s her?”
“Well,” says Kim. “First there’s the name. Cherry Jack. Scarlett Jacques. Then there’s the dog—look—not many dogs have paws that huge. And the Jacqueses had that big dog, didn’t they? And then there’s this…” She zooms in on Scarlett’s foot. “This tattoo. Which I saw with my own eyes the day after Tallulah disappeared.”
“Honestly,” Lexie cuts in. “Honestly. Kim. I don’t even follow this account. Look…” She switches on her phone and starts scrolling and touching the screen. “Look.” She turns her phone to face them. “Look, I hardly follow anyone. See? And there’s no Cherryjack here. Seriously, I don’t know why that photo was liked by my account.”
Sophie gazes at Lexie. She seems incredibly genuine, highly believable. But then, this is the same Lexie who lets her Instagram followers believe that she lives in a huge Georgian manor house, the same Lexie who told the police that she saw the second “Dig Here” sign from her terrace when she couldn’t possibly have.
“You don’t have to follow an account to like someone’s post,” Sophie says measuredly. “You just have to know it’s there.”
“Does anyone else have your log-in?” asks Kim.
Lexie shrugs. “Well, my mum does. I sometimes ask her to reply to some of my comments when I’m traveling or can’t get to them.”
“Your mum?”
“Yes.” She looks from Sophie to Kim and back again. “Well, obviously it’s not my mum.”
Sophie inhales sharply. “But your mum was friends with Scarlett, wasn’t she?”
“I guess. But there’s no way my mum would know where Scarlett is now. There’s no way she’d have found her on Instagram.”
“Why not?” Sophie asks simply.
“Because that’s just weird. Why would she still be in touch with Scarlett?”
Sophie sighs. “I don’t know,” she says. “But from what I’ve heard about Scarlett, she was a charismatic young woman. She had a lot of admirers. There was her little clique of friends. Liam. Her ex-head, Jacinta Croft, said she had a way of managing people, manipulating them. And now it looks like maybe Tallulah and Scarlett weren’t as unacquainted as Scarlett might have led everyone to believe. So it is possible that your mum’s stayed in touch. Behind the scenes.”
Lexie is already shaking her head, even before Sophie has finished talking. “Nope,” she says. “No. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Totally.”
Sophie smiles at her sadly. “Lexie,” she says. “You’re not here very much. Your mum
lives here alone nearly all the time. Who knows what she does when she’s on her own? She’s a very caring woman. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she was still in touch with Scarlett Jacques.”
Lexie doesn’t reply this time. She says, “So, what are you going to do? Are you going to ask her?”
Sophie and Kim exchange a look. Kim nods and says, “Yes. We’ll probably have a little chat with her.”
“She won’t know anything,” Lexie says. “I promise you, she won’t.”
Sophie closes her laptop then and is about to pick it up and leave when her eye is caught by something poking out from the half-disgorged contents of Lexie’s suitcase.
It’s a copy of her book.
49
JUNE 2017
“You look gorgeous,” says Zach, appearing in the kitchen a while later. “Look at you.” He grins at Kim and says, “Your daughter is properly hot,” and Kim laughs and looks at Tallulah indulgently and says, “Well, she’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Zach approaches Tallulah and kisses her gently on her cheek. Then he grabs Noah from his high chair and twirls him around the kitchen until Noah is helpless with laughter. Zach’s energy is off the scale, high-octane, almost infectious. Almost, but not quite. Tallulah forces a smile as Zach passes Noah into her arms and says, “I’m off for a shower. I won’t be long.”