The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

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 round 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 night-time 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 Babygros, 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.

On the first Sunday of February, Tallulah waits until Zach has left the house and then she heads down to the kitchen.

‘Morning, beautiful,’ says her mum, taking her head in her hands and kissing her on the crown.

‘Morning,’ she says, hugging her mum briefly and then leaning down to kiss Noah, who sits in his high chair. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, sweetie. How are you?’

She nods. ‘Good,’ she says, but even she can hear the doubt in her own voice.

‘You look tired,’ says her mum. ‘Bad night?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘No. He slept well. Only one little wake-up and Zach did his baby whisperer on him, got him back to sleep.’

She sees her mum smile indulgently. She knows that her mum sees Zach living here as kind of an experiment and that she’s watching it with optimistic interest from the sidelines.

Tallulah feels a sudden longing to open her mouth and talk, to say everything that she’s been keeping locked up inside these past few weeks. She wants to tell her mum that she’s feeling suffocated, controlled, that Zach has suggested she switches to home learning, that Zach always gives her a strange look when she gets home: his head cocks slightly to one side; he narrows his eyes, as though he suspects her of something, as though there’s something he wants to ask her but he can’t. She wants to tell her mum that Zach doesn’t like her locking the bathroom door when she’s having a bath, that he sits on the toilet by her side sometimes, playing with his phone, tapping his foot impatiently as though she’s taking too long. She wants to tell her mum that sometimes she feels like she can’t breathe, she simply cannot breathe.

But if she starts telling her mum these things, then what happens next? Her mum will take her side, the atmosphere in the house will curdle, the experiment will be a failure, Noah will grow up not living with his dad. It is only her mother’s belief in the experiment that is keeping it alive.

‘Why don’t you go and watch Zach playing football?’ her mother asks. ‘It’s a nice morning. I can take care of Noah. Go on,’ she says. ‘Think how happy it would make him if you showed up. Maybe you could even go and have a drink together after, at the Ducks?’

Tallulah smiles tightly and shakes her head. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘no. Thanks. I’m happy just hanging out here with you.’

Her mother gives her a questioning look. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ She smiles. ‘I miss just the two of us spending time together.’

‘Since Zach moved in, you mean?’

‘Yeah. I guess.’

‘You’re not …?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. No, it’s fine. He’s just a bit clingy, isn’t he?’

Her mother narrows her eyes at her. She says, ‘I suppose he is a bit. I guess with his family situation, it must be such a change for him to be here with you two, with so much love around. Maybe he’s just getting used to it?’

‘I guess,’ Tallulah says again, cutting another slice off the farmhouse loaf.

‘Do you need some space?’ her mother asks.

‘No,’ she says, dropping the bread into the toaster. ‘No. It’s fine. Just getting used to it, like you say. And he’s amazing with Noah.’ She turns to her baby and beams. ‘Isn’t he?’ she says in a high-pitched voice. ‘Isn’t your daddy amazing? Isn’t he just the best daddy in the world?’ And Noah smiles and bangs his hands down on the high-chair tray, and for a moment it is just the three of them, in the kitchen, smiling, as the sun shines on them through the window and, for a moment, Tallulah feels like all is well, all is good.

Zach is there when Tallulah walks out of college the following lunchtime. He’s waiting in the shadows of the small copse opposite the main entrance. Tallulah looks briefly at him and then at the time on her phone. It’s one fifteen. Zach should be at work now. He does midday to 8 p.m. shifts on Mondays at the building supplies yard just outside Manton.

He stands straight when he sees Tallulah approach and gestures at her with his head. As she walks she can see him casing the environment, his eyes behind her, around her, as if he’s expecting her to be with somebody else.

‘Surprise,’ he says as she crosses the street.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks, briefly allowing him to pull her to him and hug her.

‘Pulled a sickie,’ he says. ‘Well, being honest, I did actually feel a bit ill. Thought I was coming down with something. But now I feel fine. Thought I’d come and escort you home.’ He smiles and Tallulah looks into his eyes, the same eyes she’s been looking into since she was virtually a child: the grey eyes with dark lashes, the soft skin, the small dimple just next to the left-hand corner of his mouth. He’s not the best-looking boy in the world, but he’s nice-looking, his face is good and kind. But there’s something there now, something that’s set in since they were apart last year, a hard, metallic glint in his eye. He looks like a soldier back from war, a prisoner back from solitary, as though he’s seen things he can’t talk about and they’re trapped inside his skull.

‘That’s nice,’ she says, ‘thanks.’

‘Thought I might see you coming out with friends,’ he says, his gaze going back to the college entrance, to the streams of students leaving for their lunch.

She shakes her head.

‘What about that girl?’ he says. ‘You know, the one in the picture with you?’

‘What girl?’ She knows what girl and hears her own voice catch slightly on the lie.

‘The one with her arm round you. At the Christmas disco.’

‘Oh, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘Yeah. She left.’

He nods, but his eyes stay on hers, as though waiting for her to betray some kind of deceit.

A group of social science students leaves at that moment. Tallulah barely knows them, but they glance over at her curiously. One of them raises a hand tentatively. She raises a hand back.

‘Who are they?’

‘Just people from my course,’ she says. Then she looks at her phone. ‘Bus comes in six minutes. We should go.’

He looks for a moment as if he’s not going to follow her, his eyes still resting on the group of students across the road.

‘Come on,’ she says.

He slowly takes his gaze from them and catches up with her.

‘I wish you didn’t have to do this,’ he says after a slightly ponderous silence.

‘What?’

‘College. I wish I earned enough money so that I could just take care of you and Noah, so you wouldn’t need to get a job.’

She inhales and then breathes out slowly. ‘I want to take care of Noah, too,’ she says. ‘I want to help pay for him. I want a career.’

‘Yeah, but, Lules – a social worker. Do you know how draining that will be? How hard? The hours you’ll have to work? The stuff you’ll bring home with you? Wouldn’t you rather just get, like, a shop job or something? Something easy? Something local?’

She stops and turns and looks at him. ‘Zach,’ she says, ‘I’ve got three A levels. Why would I want to get a shop job?’

‘It would just be easier,’ he says. ‘And you’d be closer to home.’

‘Manton’s not exactly the other side of the world,’ she says.

‘No, but I hate it when we’re both so far away from Noah during the week. It’s not good for him.’

‘But he’s got my mum!’ she says with exasperation.

‘I know. But it would be better for him to be with us. Wouldn’t it?’

‘He loves my mum.’

Zach stops walking then and pulls Tallulah towards him, his hands tight around her forearms. She glances at him and sees that cold metallic look in his grey eyes. ‘I just …’ The glint in his eyes fades. ‘I just want it to be us, the three of us, always. That’s all.’

She pulls her arms from his grip and starts walking faster. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I can hear the bus coming, quick, we need to run.’

They jump on the bus just as it’s about to close its doors and sit for a moment, breathing heavily. Tallulah stares from the window, rubbing the soft skin on her forearms, still smarting from Zach’s grip.

The following Sunday, when Zach goes to play football, Tallulah asks her mum if it’s OK if she goes out for a while.

‘Of course, baby. Of course. Going to watch Zach play?’

‘No.’ She shrugs. ‘No, just fancy some fresh air, might pop by Chloe’s.’

She won’t pop by Chloe’s. She and Chloe have barely spoken since the night of the Christmas party when she abandoned her to hang out with Scarlett.

‘Can I borrow your bike?’

‘Of course you can,’ says her mum. ‘But be careful, won’t you? And wear a helmet.’

Tallulah kisses Noah and her mother goodbye, then lugs her mother’s bike out of the side return and on to the road. Tallulah hasn’t ridden a bike since she was about thirteen. She’s not altogether comfortable on two wheels, but she has no alternative.

After a slightly wobbly start, she sets off towards the common and then on to the road out to Manton. Just before she gets to the roundabout, she turns right, up a tiny one-track turning, towards the hamlet of Upley Fold, towards Dark Place.