The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
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 realises, 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 on to 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 colouring. 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.’
‘You’re so lucky,’ Scarlett will reply. ‘Imagine being me for just a minute and having to make do with this,’ and she’ll tug at her damaged hair and make noises of disgust and Tallulah will say, ‘But it doesn’t matter. It’s just hair. You’re still the most beautiful girl in any room you’re in. And you know it.’
‘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 per cent. 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.