The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

27

February 2017

Tallulah gets home thirty seconds after Zach.

He’s sitting on the bottom step, unlacing his trainers, a towel draped around his neck, his hair shiny with sweat. He looks at her strangely.

‘Hi,’ says Tallulah casually.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Just for a cycle,’ she replies.

He narrows his eyes at her. ‘On a bike?’

She laughs drily. ‘Yes. Of course on a bike. What else?’

‘You haven’t got a bike.’

‘Borrowed Mum’s.’

‘But what about Noah?’

‘What about Noah?’

‘You left him?’

‘Yeah. I left him with Mum. She told me to go out and get some exercise. I had a headache.’

He pulls off his second trainer and lays it next to the first. ‘Where’d you go?’

‘Just around,’ she says, unzipping her coat and taking it off. She hangs it up then calls out for her mum.

‘In here.’

She follows her mum’s voice into the living room where she’s sitting on the sofa with Noah on her lap.

She takes Noah from her mum and spins him round, then kisses him noisily on his cheek and hugs him to her. ‘How’s my gorgeous boy?’ she says. ‘How’s my gorgeous, gorgeous boy?’ The feel of him in her arms after her time at Scarlett’s house is indescribably relieving. Her skin still crawls with the damp memory of the walls of the tunnel underneath Scarlett’s house and she’s been rubbing imaginary cobwebs off her face, out of her hair, ever since she climbed out of the hole and back into the daylight.

‘Isn’t it the coolest thing ever?’ Scarlett had said, her eyes shining in the light from her phone.

Tallulah had smiled nervously and rubbed at the bare skin on her forearms and said, ‘It’s so spooky.’

‘Yes, but just think,’ Scarlett had continued, ‘we might be the first people to have been down there for like, three hundred, four hundred years. The last people who set foot down there would have been wearing, like, wimples. Talking Shakespearian.’

‘Have you walked to the other end?’

‘Fuck. No.’ Scarlett shook her head hard. ‘God knows what’s down there. A fucking Demogorgon!’ She shuddered and pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands.

Tallulah shuddered too, and put her hands into the soft coat of Toby who stood panting lightly beside her.

Then Scarlett put her hand into Toby’s fur and her fingers found Tallulah’s and laced themselves around them and Tallulah’s breath caught at the sensation. She glanced up and saw Scarlett staring at her, a soft smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Tallulah had left a few moments later and cycled hard all the way home, trying to purge the darkness of the tunnel, the feel of Scarlett’s fingers entwined around hers and the slightly nauseating jolt of energy she’d felt pass between them that suggested something so far beyond herself or the person she perceived herself to be that it felt almost like a wound.

Now she sits Noah on her knee and rests her lips against the crown of his head, relishing the smell of his scalp, the feeling of being home. Her mum says, ‘Did you have a nice ride?’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘It was good to get out.’

Zach walks in.

‘How was the football?’ Tallulah asks, wanting to move away from the topic of her bicycle ride.

‘Great,’ he says, sitting down heavily next to her and placing his hand around the back of her neck. ‘We thrashed them. Four–nil.’ He smells of the pitch, of men, of fresh sweat. She’s suddenly repulsed by his proximity, the feel of his hand against her skin, his very precise male odours. ‘Aren’t you going to shower?’

‘Do I smell?’ He lifts his arm and sniffs his own armpits.

She forces a smile and says, ‘Of course you don’t. You’re covered in other people’s sweat though.’

He returns her smile and gives the back of her neck a small squeeze before getting to his feet. ‘Message received and understood,’ he says.

As he leaves the room and they listen to the sound of his bare feet heading up the stairs, Tallulah’s mum turns to Tallulah and says, ‘He’s a good boy. He really is. I’m so glad you’ve let him back into your life.’

Tallulah smiles tightly. She thinks, You didn’t see the look he gave me just now on the stairs. You don’t know how he looks at me when you’re not in the room; the way his voice sets hard like stone, his eyes bore through me like lasers. You really don’t know.

Scarlett is waiting at the bus stop on Monday morning.

‘Morning T from the B,’ she says, sliding along the bench a little to make room for her. ‘Happy Monday. You look tired.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Tallulah replies. ‘Are you going back to college?’

‘Hell, no,’ says Scarlett. ‘I’m here to see you.’

Tallulah’s eyes widen. ‘Why?’

Scarlett loops her arm through Tallulah’s and rests her head against her shoulder. ‘Because I missed you.’

Tallulah laughs drily. ‘Right,’ she says, casting her eyes across the street, towards her house, imagining eyes upon her and this blue-haired girl with her head on her shoulder.

Scarlett lifts her head and pulls her arm back, stuffing her hand into the pocket of her furry coat. She narrows her eyes at Tallulah and says, ‘Do you like me?’

Tallulah laughs again. ‘Of course I like you.’

‘But do you, you know, like like me.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Scarlett sighs and blows out her cheeks. ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘I’m just so fucking bored. So fucking bored.’

‘Why don’t you come back to college?’

‘Never,’ she replies.

‘But why? I’ve seen your work. You’re so talented. What happened? Why did you leave?’

Scarlett sighs, drops her head and then raises it again. ‘Oh, you know, just stuff.’

They both turn at the sound of the bus approaching from the other side of the village.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Scarlett says, getting to her feet. ‘Keep you company.’

Tallulah glances across the common again, towards her house. She feels very strongly that she’s being watched.

On the bus, they take the back seat. Scarlett squeezes close to Tallulah, who has the window seat. She keeps up a running, slightly hyperactive commentary about the scenery, about a smell on the bus (toenail cheese), about how much she likes Tallulah’s trainers (they were £19.99 from New Look), about how bored she is, how she misses her brother, hates her mother, wishes she had bigger breasts, wishes she had bigger teeth, a bigger nose, wishes she lived in London, hates her voice, misses making art, wants a puppy, wants a Sunday roast with all the trimmings. And Tallulah nods and smiles and thinks, Why are you telling me all this? Why are you sitting so close?

Finally, as they cross the roundabout and draw closer to town, Scarlett stops talking and turns to look from the window on the other side of the bus. Tallulah waits a few beats before saying anything. Scarlett’s like a cat, the sort that lets you tickle their stomach for quite some time before suddenly scratching you and running away.

She gently touches her arm and she says, ‘Are you OK?’

Scarlett shrugs and Tallulah notices a film of tears come to her eyes.

‘Oh, you know,’ she says, her voice cracking slightly. ‘Just your typical level-two fucked-up rich girl having a stupid crisis. Just ignore me. It’s best.’

‘What happened with your boyfriend?’ Tallulah asks, wondering if maybe Scarlett has a broken heart. ‘The one who’s at the Maypole?’

Scarlett shakes her head. ‘We finished,’ she said. ‘Just before Christmas.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘No. Really. It was fine. I ended it. It had been going on for too long. I wasn’t in love with him. But, you know, in so many ways he made me happy. He kept me safe. And now it’s just me. And it’s all a bit of a car crash really. I’m a bit ADHD, so I kind of need someone calm around me. Someone to remind me how to behave. Liam was really good like that.’ She sighs. ‘I miss him.’

‘Can’t you get back together?’

Scarlett shakes her head. ‘No. I did the right thing. I cut him free.’ She pauses. ‘What about you?’

Tallulah looks at her questioningly.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘yeah. Kind of. We split up a year ago but we got back together. Just after New Year.’

‘What made you decide to get back together with him?’

Tallulah starts to speak and then stops. Words to describe her son, her motherhood, her real life, sit on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spilled. But she cannot bring herself to do it. Once those words are out of her mouth, she will be Tallulah the teenage mum, not Tallulah from the bus.

‘I don’t know,’ she replies after a moment. ‘I’m starting to think maybe it was a mistake.’

Scarlett raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Yeah. I know. He’s changed since we were last together. He’s more …’ She scrolls through a dozen adjectives in her mind before finding the right one. ‘Controlling.’

Scarlett draws in her breath, audibly, and shakes her head. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh no. No, no, no. Controlling men. They’re the worst. You need to get out of that. You need to get out of that fast.’

Tallulah turns to the window, not saying what she should be saying, that it’s not that simple, that he lives with her, that they have a baby together.

‘Yes,’ she murmurs. ‘You’re right.’

‘Who was that girl? At the bus stop this morning?’

Zach is lying on their double bed in his work clothes. He’s still supposed to be at work and makes her jump.

‘God, Zach.’ She puts her hand to her heart. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Had a headache,’ he says. ‘Asked to leave early.’

She squints at him. ‘Couldn’t you have just taken some pills?’

‘Didn’t have any on me.’ He sits up and wraps his arms around his knees. ‘Was it the girl?’ he says. ‘The one in the photo on your phone. From the Christmas party?’

‘Yes. She lives near here.’

‘Thought you said she’d left college.’

She blinks. How did he remember her telling him that? ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘She left. She was just going into town.’

He nods. ‘She seemed quite touchy-feely.’

She shrugs.

‘Seems strange,’ he continues. ‘A girl you barely know, yet you have selfies with her on your phone and then she’s cuddling up to you at the bus stop like she’s your best friend.’

‘She’s just that sort of person,’ Tallulah says, unzipping her rucksack and taking out her assignment folder. Noah’s napping in her mum’s room and she’d planned to use the quiet hour to get some homework done. ‘A bit intense, you know?’

‘Where does she live then? This intense girl?’

‘No idea,’ she replies. The last syllable catches on a gulp. ‘Somewhere round here. That’s all I know.’

He nods, then slowly pulls himself off the bed. He takes a couple of steps towards her and then draws himself up tall. He looks down into her eyes and hooks a finger under her chin, tipping her face up towards him. His eyes trace circles across all of her. ‘You’re different,’ he says.

She pushes his finger away from her chin and turns away. ‘No I’m not.’

He pulls her back hard, by her arm. ‘Don’t walk away from me. I’m trying to talk to you.’

Her head rocks back slightly at the force of his words. ‘I’ve got college work to do. I haven’t got time for this.’

‘This?’ he says. ‘You mean us. You haven’t got time for us.’

‘No,’ she says, feeling her heart pump hard, ‘I haven’t got time for us. I’ve got time for Noah. I’ve got time for college. And that’s it. I don’t have time for us. You’re right.’

There is an immediate and profound silence. Zach shifts from one foot to the other. ‘What are you trying to say, Lula?’

‘I’m not trying to say anything. You said I don’t have time for us and I’m agreeing with you. I don’t have time. There’s never time.’

‘But – if you really wanted this to work, you’d find the time. So what’s the deal? Do you want this to work? Or not? Because I’ve got a job, Lula. I actually work to bring money into this family. Every day. And I’m hands on with Noah, twenty-four-seven. But yeah, funny thing, I’ve still got time for you. For us. So why haven’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘I don’t know.’

There’s a beat of silence and then Zach sighs and pulls her towards him, pulls her so hard that she feels her rib cage bend under the pressure, her lungs contract, her breath stop halfway up her throat.