The Night She Disappeared

by Lisa Jewell

  DM: And this boat, with Scarlett and her mother on it? Where is it exactly?

  LM: I have no idea. But I can show you the photos on her Instagram. Maybe you can work it out from that?

  DM: Yes. Please.

  DM: For the recording, Lexie Mulligan is using her smartphone to locate the photographs.

  LM: Here. This is the latest one. From a few days ago.

  DM: For the recording, the photograph in question shows a foot against a cream vinyl surface, the prow of a boat or a yacht, a dog’s paw.

  DM: We need to get forensics to examine this account. Right now.

  DM: So, Lexie. For the recording, I am showing Miss Mulligan item number DP7694, the metal lever found buried in the flower bed at Maypole House. Lexie, can you tell us what this object is?

  LM: I have no idea.

  DM: You’ve never seen this object before?

  LM: No, never.

  DM: Lexie, we’ve analyzed the second sign and compared it to a photograph of the first sign. They match exactly. It’s the same handwriting. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it, that two separate people with the same handwriting would have the idea to bury two objects in the school grounds within a few weeks of each other? So maybe you have a theory you might like to share with us about how this object ended up where it did?

  LM: Honestly. I swear. It was definitely me who buried the ring. That was my handwriting; I made that sign. But the second one was nothing to do with me. I promise.

  DM: Another thing that’s bothering me, Lexie. You claim to have seen the sign in the flower bed from your mother’s terrace. But there is no way that you would have been able to see the sign from, as you claimed at the time, the terrace of your apartment in the accommodation block. It’s set far too low down the building. So would you please tell us how you really saw the sign that night, if, as you’re telling us, you had nothing to do with placing it there?

  LM: [sighs]

  LM: I was in the garden.

  DM: Near the flower bed?

  LM: Yes. Near the flower bed.

  DM: Planting the sign?

  LM: No. Not planting the sign. I keep telling you. I did not put that sign there.

  DM: So what were you doing in the garden?

  LM: I was looking for someone.

  DM: Who?

  LM: Just one of the teachers. I saw her from the terrace and I came down to find her. And that’s when I saw the sign.

  DM: So why did you say that you’d seen it from the terrace? Why didn’t you say you were in the garden at the time?

  LM: I don’t know. I didn’t want to… I was protecting someone.

  DM: Who?

  LM: The teacher, she and I are… you know. We’ve been seeing each other. And she’s married. So it’s a bit… sensitive. I didn’t want to bring her into it. It just seemed easier to pretend I hadn’t been in the garden.

  DM: Lexie. You should know that we found Zach Allister’s body in a tunnel beneath the Jacques house this morning. And this lever was designed to open the secret tunnel where his body was found.

  LM: [audible intake of breath]

  DM: Tallulah Murray’s mobile phone was also found in the tunnel.

  LM: Oh my God.

  DM: So, Lexie, really, if you know anything about this lever, if you have any idea how it ended up buried there, in the flower bed, so close to where you were meeting your friend, or if you saw anyone else in the vicinity of the flower bed, now would be the time to tell us.

  LM: [begins to cry] I don’t know. I swear. I didn’t put that sign there. I don’t know what that metal thing is and I don’t know how it ended up being buried there. I don’t know anything at all.

  66

  AUGUST 2018

  One day, Tallulah wakes up from another deep sleep, a sleep so deep it feels like death, the sleep she now knows is brought on by something from the well-stocked shelves of Scarlett’s mother’s bathroom cabinet, and she finds herself once again in a dark, silent space, all alone, the rhythm and roll of deep, cold water oscillating through her bones.

  Through a circular window she sees the viscous cement wall of seawater. She feels her wrists bound. Her feet bound. And now she knows. She knows for sure that she is not being kept safe. That she is not being protected. She knows that everything Scarlett has told her about her father trying to corrupt the police investigation is lies and that this nightmare is about to come to the worst possible end. She knows that the only reason she is still alive is because Scarlett has made sure of it. But she also knows that Scarlett is losing control of her mother, losing control of the whole situation, and that now Tallulah is being taken to the farthest point from her own mother and her son and her home, to be dropped, dispatched, disappeared.

  67

  SEPTEMBER 2018

  Kim sits in her back garden. She can’t be indoors. Ryan is inside with Noah, distracting him.

  It’s nearly two o’clock. It’s been four hours since they found the body in the tunnel in the Jacqueses’ house. She stares at her phone, switches the screen on and off, checks and double-checks that she has a good connection, a good signal, that there is no impediment to a call from Dom.

  And then there it is. The opening note of her ringtone. She swipes to reply before the second note has even begun. “Yes.”

  “Kim, listen. We think we’ve traced the current location of the Jacques family. We’re working with Interpol on a maritime search. Because I didn’t tell you before, but we found other things in the tunnel, Kim. We found the remains of a pastry that had been laced with large amounts of Zopiclone. We found some long dark hairs. We found empty water bottles, candles, a blanket as well as Tallulah’s phone. And records from Manton airport show that the Jacqueses flew their private plane to Guernsey on June the thirtieth last year and on board were Jocelyn, Scarlett, and Rex Jacques. And Rex’s girlfriend, Seraphina Goldberg. But Seraphina claims not to have flown to Guernsey at all that summer. So, Kim, we’re looking at the possibility that the Jacques family may have taken Tallulah with them. And that they are now on board a boat, chartered by Jocelyn Jacques from Guernsey Yacht Club in late August. And that Tallulah may still be with them. Meanwhile, detectives in Guernsey are getting a warrant to enter the Jacques property there.”

  “OK,” says Kim, managing her breathing. “OK. So, what do I do now?”

  “Just sit tight, Kim. Just sit tight. We’re moving everything as fast as we possibly can. The wheels are finally turning on this thing. At long bloody last. Just sit tight.”

  68

  SEPTEMBER 2018

  Days pass. The quality of the light that reaches through the ocean outside her window changes from gray to gold to white. It becomes warmer and warmer; at night an air-conditioning unit hums overhead. Scarlett comes and goes. She brings the dog with her sometimes and Tallulah curls around his neck and breathes in the salty scent of him.

  “I’m doing things,” says Scarlett. “I’m doing things, to get us home. To get you home. This will be over soon. This will be over soon.”

  Tallulah knows that every meal she eats, every drink she drinks, is laced with something that makes her sleep, but she doesn’t care, she craves the sleep it brings, the sweet lull of it, the painlessness, the dreams. When Scarlett takes too long to bring her what she craves, she feels insane, torn into pieces, her gut sliced from side to side, her head shot through with shards of glass, and she snatches the drinks from Scarlett’s hands, drinks them so fast she almost chokes.

  And then one day, as she emerges from another dream made of lead, and forces her eyelids apart, she stares up at the honey-golden veneer of the wood above her head and she hears something she has not heard before. A steady, solid buzz, like an electric saw, like a man with a deep voice roaring, like a lorry revving its engine. It seems to circle her. She feels her eyes turning in circles, dry inside their sockets. She reaches for the water bottle that Scarlett always puts down for her at bedtime and takes a swig. The noise grows louder, more insistent. The boa
t starts to roil and rock; water slops over the neck of the bottle as she tries to screw the lid back into place. She hears something that sounds like a human voice, but strangely disembodied, as though it’s shouting underwater.

  “Scarlett!” she calls out, although she knows she cannot be heard down here in her little wood-lined casket. “Scarlett!”

  She hears the painful metallic screech of the engine grinding to a halt. The boat falls silent and now she can hear what the voices outside are saying.

  They’re saying: “This is the RAF. We are coming aboard your vessel. Please stand on the deck with your arms raised in the air.”

  And then she hears the stamp of many feet overhead, the rush of voices, of shouting, the door to her cabin being kicked open, and there are men in navy, in hats, with guns, adrenaline-pumped bodies, like mannequins that cannot be real. And they come to her and she recoils and they say, “Are you Tallulah Murray?”

  She nods.

  * * *

  Tallulah imagines that she will be able to walk after the police release her from her bindings. She imagines that the legs she hasn’t used for days and days will somehow support her as she finally leaves this tiny wooden room. But they don’t, of course. They buckle and flop like one of those little string-legged wooden puppets with a button at the base, and the policeman carries her in his arms.

  “Where are we going?” she asks in a reedy voice.

  “We’re taking you to safety, Tallulah.”

  He has an accent. She doesn’t know what it is.

  “Where are we?” she asks.

  “We’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “Am I going home?”

  “Yes. Yes, you’re going home. But first we need to get you to a hospital to be checked over. You’re in a bad state.”

  On the deck of the boat, Tallulah sees the detritus of a meal. A bowl of salad, wineglasses, paper napkins being blown about in the violent wind of the helicopter blades. The idea that while she has been kept tied up in that tiny, dark wooden room, other people have been up here eating salad and drinking wine in the sunshine is unimaginable. She sees a huddle of people at the other side of the boat. It’s Scarlett, Joss, and Rex. They turn and glance at her, then look away again quickly.

  She sees another policeman approaching the Jacqueses, pushing their arms roughly behind their backs, clamping their wrists together with metal cuffs that glint in the bright sunlight. The dog sits at their feet, his thick fur being buffeted in every direction.

  “What’s going to happen to the dog?” she asks, suddenly overcome with concern that he might be left behind.

  “He’ll come too, don’t worry about the dog.”

  She covers her eyes with her arm. The noise from the blades and the brightness of the sun are agonizing. “Where are we going?”

  “Just relax, Tallulah. Just relax.”

  Soon she is being strapped into a hoist with the policeman who rescued her and then she is hovering over the gleaming white boat and she looks down and watches the Jacques family grow smaller and smaller in their huddle on the deck.

  She sees Scarlett look up at her and mouth the words “I love you.” But she knows that the person who once loved Scarlett Jacques has gone forever.

  She closes her eyes and looks away.

  69

  SEPTEMBER 2018

  As the plane comes to a standstill on the runway, Sophie clicks open the overhead locker and pulls down her small wheely case and her jacket. At the luggage carousel she is met by her Danish publisher, a woman her age with pale red hair held in a bun, wearing a long blue bouclé coat over a floral dress. They hug briefly—they have met twice before and even got drunk together last time Sophie was in Copenhagen and shared extraordinary intimacies including details of her publisher’s extramarital affairs. But now a year on, it’s like a fresh start; once again they are author and publisher, talent and manager, cordial, warm, but not friends.

  Sophie is taken directly to a hotel with velvet chairs in sun-bleached colors and glass lifts that ascend and descend on metal poles, oversize cactus plants, and the Chainsmokers on the sound system. She opens up her suitcase on the footstool in her beautiful room and removes her toiletry bag, unzips it, and takes out her toothbrush and toothpaste.

  In the bathroom she stares at her face as she brushes her teeth; she’s been awake since 4:00 a.m., the alarm breaking into dark and worrying dreams. She’s had two hours’ sleep. She has the pallor of an early flight, but in twenty minutes she will be on her way to a conference at which she has a tight schedule of interviews and events detailed on a piece of paper handed to her by her publisher in a canvas gift bag that also includes energy bars, mineral water, and a copy of the Danish edition of her latest book.

  Her phone buzzes in her bedroom and she wanders out of the bathroom and picks it up. It’s a message from Kim.

  They’ve found her, it says simply. She’s coming home.

  Sophie blinks. She sits heavily on the end of the bed and gasps, the phone clutched to her heart. Then she finds herself suddenly, dramatically, unexpectedly, weeping.

  * * *

  “Hello, Sophie. If I may?”

  Sophie smiles encouragingly at the reader in the audience clutching the microphone that has just been passed to her by one of the team.

  “Sophie. I am a big fan of your books. There have now been six of the books of the Little Hither Green Detective Agency. Do you have another one on the way? And if so, can you give us a clue about what to expect? And if not, what is next for P. J. Fox?”

  At first she is wrong-footed by the question, but then she realizes exactly what to say. She smiles and lifts her own microphone to her mouth. “That is a very good question,” she says. “And you know what, a few weeks ago I would have been able to give you a very straightforward answer to that question. A few weeks ago I was living in southeast London, very close to Hither Green, alone, in my nice little flat, which is not dissimilar to Susie Beets’s flat, in fact. I had a boyfriend, a teacher, who I met through my job, just as Susie always meets her boyfriends. A few weeks ago I was, essentially, Susie Beets.” The audience laughs. “And the funny thing is that I didn’t even know it. Because two weeks ago I left London…” She pauses as she feels a rush of emotion pass through her. “I left London on a wing and a prayer and a sense of some invisible clock somewhere ticking away, to start a new life with my boyfriend in the countryside. I was to become the headmaster’s wife in a very expensive boarding school in a picture-perfect English village.” A murmur of laughter passes through the audience. “And I had no idea,” she continues, “no idea at all how much this was going to change everything. Because I found myself not only stranded in the countryside, a million miles from my comfort zone, unable to get back into Susie, unable to write, but also in the middle of a real-life crime. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

  A louder murmur passes through the audience. Sophie nods and recrosses her legs. She turns to her moderator and says, “Is it OK? Do we have time?” The moderator nods and says, “I am agog! Please take all the time you want.”

  “Well,” says Sophie. “It all started on the first day, when I found a cardboard sign, nailed to a fence. It had the words ‘Dig Here’ scrawled on it.”

  She pauses and looks around the audience, waiting for someone to pick up on the significance of this. The girl who asked the question gets it first. “You mean,” she says, “like in the first Hither Green book?”

  “Yes,” says Sophie. “Like in the first Hither Green book.”

  A gratifying ripple passes through the room, and Sophie carries on. “So I got a trowel,” she says. “And I dug…”

  As Sophie talks, she feels herself come together, as though she were a broken vase and now the pieces of her are being glued back into place. She knows that she cannot be in Upfield Common anymore. She knows that Shaun must leave Maypole House and get a job he loves. She knows that this was a mistake, for both of them, in so many ways, but that
it was also fate, playing out in the most extraordinary way. The way it all happened, the steps in the dance. And now Tallulah Murray, found, alive. Sophie also knows that she does not want to write another Little Hither Green Detective Agency book after the one she’s writing now, that it will be her last. That she needs to stop writing about herself and start writing about the wide world, not just one corner of it. That she is nearly thirty-five and it’s time for her to move on.

  With or without Shaun.

  She gets to the end of the story and the woman in the audience says, “And so? What happens next? What will happen to the family? To the people who took her?”

  Sophie says, “I guess I’ll find out when I get home.”

  She rests her microphone on the table and smiles as the audience claps for her.