The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

68

September 2018

Days pass. The quality of the light that reaches through the ocean outside her window changes, from grey 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 boat 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 under water.

‘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, wine glasses, 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 agonising. ‘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.