Tallulah nods.
Scarlett nods too and says, ‘I’ve seen you around. What course are you on?’
‘Social Care. First year.’
‘Ah, so you’re new too?’
‘Yeah. A few weeks in. How about you?’ asks Tallulah, although she knows exactly which course Scarlett’s on.
‘Fine Art. First year.’
‘That’s cool,’ says Tallulah and then wishes she hadn’t saidcool.
‘Well, yeah, it’s shit, really. I mean, Iwantedto go to art school in London but my parents wouldn’t let me. Because of all the travelling. And I said, well, then rent me a little flat. And they said no way, and then I didn’t get a good enough grade in my Art A level to get into any of the good colleges anyway, not because I’m not good at art, but just because I didn’t do the work I needed to do, story of my life, and yeah. Here I am.’
They both turn at the distinctive rumble of the old-fashioned green bus that services the area as it appears on the far side of the common.
‘Do you live round here then?’ asks Tallulah.
‘No. Well, kind of. About two miles away. But I spent the night with my boyfriend. He’s at Maypole.’ She shrugs in the direction of the imposing old manor house across the common.
‘Are you allowed to sleep over there?’
‘Nope. Most definitely not. But I have a “special” relationship with the matron there. She loves me. And I’m kind of friends with her daughter, too, so she turns a blind eye.’
The bus approaches and they get to their feet. Tallulah doesn’t know what happens now. Will they sit together? Will they continue to talk?
But the decision is taken from her. Scarlett sees a friend at the back of the bus and strides away from Tallulah, throwing her school bag down on the seat and then herself, her voice travelling loudly, almost gratingly, down the aisle to the front of the bus where Tallulah sits alone. But when Tallulah turns, just once, to look at Scarlett, she finds Scarlett looking straight back at her.
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 lastnight. 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.’