The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

9

June 2017

Kim strips off her clothes and gets into the shower, quickly, before the water has run warm. The whole episode at Scarlett’s house has left her feeling filthy and exhausted. She pictures Scarlett’s mother standing at her front door with her big panting dog, watching them pushing Noah’s buggy awkwardly down the gravel pathway and on to the drive.

‘I’d offer you a lift,’ she’d called out, ‘but I’ve had a few drinks! So sorry!’

Kim’s car was like an oven by the time they returned to it and Noah was now tired and hungry and screamed all the way from the bottom of the driveway to the parking space outside Kim’s house, whereupon he immediately fell asleep. Ryan is sitting out in the car with him now.

In the shower she can taste the salt of her own sweat as water passes down her face.

Every few seconds she peers through the gap in the shower curtain at her phone which she’s left perched on the sink, balanced against the toothbrush mug, looking to see if she’s missed a call or a message.

After showering she gets into clean shorts and a fresh bra and top. Everything she was wearing earlier is damp and dank and heading for the laundry basket. She glances at her phone again. Still nothing.

Fear grips her gut again; it comes and goes in waves. She sits on the edge of her bed and thinks about the woods behind Scarlett’s house. She tries to imagine Zach and Tallulah, waiting in the dark for a taxi that didn’t come, giving up after a while and one of them saying, ‘Those woods take us back to Upfield. We could try cutting through there.’ It had been a warm night; it might even have sounded appealing, and maybe they thought the fresh air would help clear Tallulah’s head.

Kim calls Megs. ‘Would you mind’, she says, ‘if I dropped Noah with you for a while? I think I know where Zach and Tallulah might be and I’d like to go and have a look.’

There’s a pause, then Megs says, ‘So they’re not back yet?’

Kim closes her eyes. It’s different with sons, she knows that. But still, she’s frustrated by Megs’s lack of concern. She pictures her just as she’d left her this morning, stretched out in her back garden with her edgy husband, enjoying not having any responsibilities, any agenda.

‘No,’ she says. ‘They’re not. And none of the local taxi firms has a record of picking them up from their friend’s house last night. So I have a theory that they might be lost in the woods behind the college. I want to go and have a look.’

‘Oh,’ says Megs. ‘Right.’ Then, ‘Seems unlikely. I mean, it’s almost five o’clock. That would mean they’d been in those woods since last night. Surely no one could get lost in there for that long?’

‘Well, maybe they had an accident? Fell down a … I don’t know, an old well or something. Anyway. I’ll be over with Noah in a bit. See you soon.’

She ends the call without waiting to hear what else Megs might have to say.

Kim and Ryan spend two hours scouring the woods but there is no sign of them. No wells. No holes. No traps. No dropped clues. Nothing. As they pass the accommodation block in the grounds of Maypole House afterwards, Kim glances up at the windows. She remembers Scarlett telling them that Kerryanne Mulligan’s daughter had been with them the night before; Lexie, she said her name was. She and Ryan head for the security gate and ring on a buzzer that says ‘Residence Manager’.

A woman replies.

‘Oh, hi. Is that Kerryanne?’

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘Hi, this is Kim Knox. I live across the common. I think my mum used to look after your mum when she was at Springdale?’

‘Yes, yes. I know you. And I remember your mum. She used to bring Jamaican ginger loaf to my mum’s room when I came to visit her for tea. Paula, wasn’t it?’

Kim smiles at the sound of her mother’s name. ‘Yes! That’s right. And your mum was called Vanda?’

‘Yes! That’s right. Well remembered. How are you? Do you want to come in?’

‘Er, yes, thank you. I’ve got my son with me.’

‘Lovely,’ says Kerryanne. ‘Second floor, room 205.’

There’s the smell of cooking in Kerryanne’s flat, something steaming on a hob. A younger woman sits on the L-shaped sofa facing a terrace that overlooks the woods that Kim has just been trawling for her daughter and her boyfriend.

‘Come in!’ says Kerryanne. ‘Come in. This is my daughter, Lexie, she’s staying with me for a few days. Lexie, this is Kim, she’s the daughter of one of Nana’s carers from Springdale. And your mum. Is she …?’

Kim shakes her head. ‘No. No, she died two years ago.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. She must have been very young?’

‘Sixty-two,’ she says.

‘Oh no. Oh dear. Not that much older than me. I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes, well. And your mother? Is she …?’

‘Four years ago. But she was eighty-eight. So, you know, I can’t complain. But she loved your mum. She really did.’

They smile sadly at each other for a minute thinking of their poor dead mothers, then Kerryanne rallies and says, ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’

‘Well,’ says Kim, ‘actually, it was Lexie I wanted to talk to.’

Lexie turns at the sound of her name and says, ‘Oh?’

Lexie is a pretty young woman, with mahogany hair cut into a bob with a blunt fringe, large black-framed reading glasses, skinny jeans and an artfully scruffy T-shirt.

‘You were at Scarlett’s house last night?’

‘Yes!’ she answers brightly. ‘How did you know?’

‘Well, because my daughter was there too. Tallulah? And her boyfriend Zach? And the thing is that Tallulah and Zach haven’t come home. And apparently they left there at three a.m. We’ve just been in the woods at the back.’ Kim gestures through the glass sliding door. ‘I thought maybe they’d got lost coming back, but no sign of them. And I know you left early, but I just wondered if you noticed anything. Knew anything. Saw anything. Because I’m running out of ideas here!’ She’s been trying to keep her voice on an even keel, keep her tone normal, but her words begin to crack apart as she reaches her conclusion and then she finds that she is crying. Kerryanne rushes to the kitchen to find her a tissue and Lexie looks at her with genuine concern.

‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. How horrible. You must be so worried.’

Kim nods and takes the tissue from Kerryanne, holds it to her cheeks.

‘I mean,’ she says, ‘I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure they just, you know, kids, they just …’ But she peters off because she’s not sure of any such thing. The only thing she’s sure of is that Tallulah would never leave Noah deliberately and that something terrible must have happened to her.

Kerryanne leads Kim and Ryan to the large sofa and invites them to sit down.

‘Honestly,’ Lexie begins, ‘I wish there was something I could tell you. But there really isn’t. I was at the pub, the Swan & Ducks, with an old school friend. There was this group in there, a young group, late teens, early twenties, and they were being quite rowdy. I recognised one of them, Scarlett. She used to be a student here. We’ve always been quite friendly. So I went to say hello and before I knew it I was being dragged into their little group and it felt a bit weird because obviously I’m quite a bit older than them. Plus I was sober. And they were not.’

‘And was Tallulah there then?’

‘Yes, she was there. She was sitting with a boy – her boyfriend, I think?’

Kim nods.

‘They seemed a bit quiet at first. I noticed that. And then Scarlett got a load of shots for the table and then another and everyone got even noisier and noisier and then it was closing time and they were all talking about walking back to Scarlett’s house through the woods, and I thought that was just an accident waiting to happen. So I offered to drive them there.’

‘All of them?’

‘No, not all of them, just five of them. It was a bit of a squeeze and not entirely legal, but I still thought it was safer than them all walking through the woods off their heads.’

‘And what happened when you got back there?’

‘Well, it was so warm last night, as you know, and the lights were all on in their pool, and they all just stripped off and jumped in.’

‘Including Tallulah?’

‘Yeah. She jumped in in her top and pants. She looked kind of self-conscious.’

‘Well, yes, she’s carrying a little baby weight still.’

‘She has a baby?’ Lexie looks surprised.

‘Yes. Noah; he’s one.’

‘Gosh, she looks so young.’

‘She is.’ Kim holds down another burst of tears and forces a smile. ‘So, they all jumped in the pool. And then what?’

‘Well, I kind of – at this point I felt like I needed to supervise. I mean, Scarlett’s mum was somewhere indoors, sleeping, I think, and I realised I was the only sober person at the party so I needed to keep an eye on everyone. I ended up staying until about one. By that time everyone was out of the pool and there was a bit of …’ She looks at Kim quickly from the corner of her eye. ‘… weed. A bit of vodka. Music. But it had calmed down a bit. Tallulah and her boyfriend went indoors. Then Mimi went indoors. So I decided to head back. This guy Liam cadged a lift back with me, because he works here at the school. And that was that.’

‘Liam?’ Kim asks cagily. ‘Who is Liam?’

‘He’s a teaching assistant here. He lives in the apartment above us. He used to go out with Scarlett but they’re still friends.’

‘Is he, I mean, is he …’ Kim can’t find the worlds.

Lexie shakes her head. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘no. God, no, you don’t need to worry about Liam. He’s the nicest guy in the world. Honestly.’

Kim nods, circumspectly. Then she says, ‘and was there anything, last night – beneath the surface? Did you get the feeling that there was anything untoward going on?’

Lexie turns out her bottom lip and shakes her head slowly. ‘No.’

‘And when you left, who was still there?’

‘Tallulah. Her boyfriend. Scarlett and Mimi.’

‘Well,’ says Kim, already starting to get to her feet. ‘Thank you so much, Lexie. I really appreciate your time, and thank you so much for going back with them all last night, for keeping them safe. Drunk kids in swimming pools. Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘No,’ says Lexie. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Well, thank you. And this Liam. Do you think it’d be worth talking to him? Might he have any idea?’

‘I doubt it,’ Lexie replies apologetically. ‘He wouldn’t have seen much more than I did.’

Kim looks at the time on her phone. It’s nearly six o’clock. She turns to Kerryanne. ‘Do you think I should call the police?’ she asks softly. ‘It’s been fifteen hours. What would you do?’

Kerryanne sighs. ‘Well, it’s different for me, in loco parentis and all that, I’d move quite quickly if someone went missing from school. And in fact they have and I called out search and rescue within a few hours. But as a mother?’ She pauses. ‘I don’t know. I mean Tallulah and Zach are technically adults. They’d been drinking, taking drugs; sounds like they’ve got responsibilities beyond those of normal teenagers. I’d be tempted to look at the bigger picture. I mean, is it possible they’ve just run away? In a mad moment of spontaneity?’

Kim closes her eyes and measures her response. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No. Definitely not.’

‘And between them, as a couple? I mean, was there anything afoot? Maybe they had a row? Maybe something happened?’

And there it is, the thing that’s been gnawing away inside Kim’s head all day long: the little box she’d found in Zach’s jacket pocket the day before when she was looking for the spare door keys she’d lent him. The box with the ring in it with the small but very clear diamond set on a golden band. She’d been expecting them to come back from the pub last night engaged. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it; they were so young and she wasn’t convinced that Tallulah was entirely committed to Zach. But she’d been ready for it, ready to look amazed and delighted and to hug them both to her and tell them she was thrilled and to take a photo and text it to Tallulah’s dad and put it on Facebook and all of that. She’d been ready for it. Even if she thought it was wrong. Because that’s what you did. Wasn’t it? When you had a baby. When you had a man who loved you. You got married.

But then Kim thinks of how long it had taken Tallulah to agree to get back together with Zach after Noah was born. She thinks of how Tallulah shrugs Zach’s touch from her shoulder, from her arm, the roll of her eyes behind his back sometimes. She’s been meaning to start a conversation with Tallulah for a few weeks, just to check in, to make sure she’s still happy that she took Zach back. But she hasn’t. And then they’d planned this night out together and Kim saw it as a sign that things were getting better between them. And then she’d found the ring.

So what, she wonders, if Zach had asked Tallulah to marry him and Tallulah had said no? Because Zach is a good boy, but he has a temper. She’s seen it flare from time to time when he’s watching sport on the TV or when he drops something and hurts himself or someone cuts him up when he’s driving.

How might a rejection of his marriage proposal have triggered that temper? How might he have responded?