The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

4

August 2018

Shaun heads into work early the following morning. Sophie stands at the door of the cottage and watches as he disappears up the glass passageway, towards the main school building. He turns at the double doors and waves at her and then he is gone.

The grounds of the school are full of people wheeling small cases behind them, heading towards the car park at the front of the school. The residential Glee course is over, summer is coming to an end, from tomorrow the boarding-school students will start returning. Cleaners wait in the shadows to enter their vacated rooms and prepare them for the new term.

She heads back into the cottage now. It’s a pleasant house, functional. The air inside is clammy and cool with small windows grown over with ivy and wisteria branches that don’t let in much light. It still smells of other people and there’s that odd, damp bonfire smell in the hallway which seems to emanate from between the floorboards. She’s covered the floorboards over with a runner and placed a reed diffuser on the sideboard, but it still lingers. It’s going to take a while to make the cottage feel like home, but it will, she knows it will. Shaun’s children are coming the weekend after next: that will bring it to life.

Sophie turns to a box that she is halfway through unpacking when there is a knock at the door.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hi! It’s Kerryanne! The matron!’

Sophie opens the door and sees a woman with thick golden hair held back with sunglasses, bright blue eyes and a sun-burnished cleavage. She’s wearing a maxi dress and bejewelled flip-flops. She does not look like a matron.

‘Hi!’ says Sophie, reaching out to shake her hand. ‘Lovely to meet you!’

‘You, too. You must be Sophie?’

‘Correct!’

Kerryanne has a huge set of keys hanging from her hand. ‘How are you settling in?’ she says, passing the keys from one hand to the other. ‘Got everything you need?’

‘Yes!’ says Sophie. ‘Yes. Everything’s just fine. Shaun’s first day. He headed into work about ten minutes ago.’

‘Yes, I just saw him. We exchanged pleasantries! Anyway, I wanted you to take my number, in case you need anything. Obviously, my primary function is student welfare, but I’ll be keeping my eye out for you as well, I know how weird and new everything must be feeling, so please consider me to be your matron too. And if you’re missing home and need a shoulder to cry on …’

Sophie blinks, not sure if she’s being serious or not, but Kerryanne beams at her and says, ‘Just joking. But honestly, anything you need – advice about the village, about the staff, the kids, whatever. Please just text me. And I’m on the second floor of Alpha block, just …’ She crouches slightly to peer beneath an overhanging tree on the periphery of Shaun and Sophie’s garden. ‘… that window there. With the balcony. Room number 205.’ She passes Sophie a piece of paper with her details written on it in neat, schoolteachery script.

‘Is it just you?’

‘Most of the time, yeah. My daughter comes to stay sometimes, Lexie, she’s a travel blogger so she comes and goes. But mostly it’s just me. And I hear there’ll be some little ones here from time to time?’

‘Yes. Jack and Lily. Twins. They’re seven.’

‘Aw. Nice age. Right, well, any questions, anything at all, just ask. I’ve worked here for twenty years. I’ve lived in the village for nearly sixty. There’s nothing I don’t know about Upfield Common. In fact, you and Shaun should come over for a drink tonight, I can chew your ears off over a glass of wine.’

‘Oh,’ says Sophie. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’ She is about to thank her again and head back indoors, when her eye is caught by a pair of magpies taking flight from the treetops in the woodland beyond her garden. ‘Those woods?’ She gestures at them. ‘Where do they lead?’

‘Oh, you don’t want to go too far into those woods.’

Sophie throws Kerryanne a questioning look.

‘They go on for miles. You’ll get lost.’

‘Yes, but where do they come out at?’

‘Depends which direction you go in. There’s a hamlet about a mile and a half that way.’ She points to the left. ‘Upley Fold. Church, village hall, a few houses. It’s quite pretty. And if you head straight for a mile or so’ – she points ahead – ‘there’s the back end of a big house. “Dark Place”, it’s called. Empty now. It belongs to a hedge-fund manager from the Channel Islands and his very glamorous wife.’ She rolls her eyes slightly. ‘Their daughter was a student here for a while actually. Scarlett. Amazingly talented girl. But I really wouldn’t recommend trying to get there. Students head over there sometimes because there’s an old swimming pool and a tennis court, but then they can’t find their way back and there’s no signal in the woods. We even had to get the bloody police involved once.’ She rolls her eyes again.

Sophie nods. She’s feeling a bristle of excitement. In London when she needs writing inspiration, she’ll walk up to Dulwich or Blackheath and look at the grand old houses there and imagine the stories that lie within. Now she thinks of her walking stick and her compass and her water bottle and the opportunity to get some proper steps on her fitness app. The sun is hazy, it’s about twenty-two degrees, perfect walking weather. The words ‘old pool’ and ‘tennis court’ swim through her imagination. She thinks of the dryness of the air of a house abandoned throughout a long, hot summer, the bleached lawns, the dusty, cracked flagstones, the birds nesting in grimy window casements.

She smiles at Kerryanne. ‘I’ll try to resist the urge,’ she says.