Tallulah shakes her head. ‘No, just fancied looking at the art. Someone said it was really good.’
Mimi looks at her curiously for a moment. Then she pulls her heels together, straightens up and says, ‘Anyway, time to get on. And if you see Scarlett around your neck of the woods, tell her to stop being a fucking dick and get in touch, will you?’
Tallulah smiles. ‘I will,’ she says. ‘I promise.’
After that, Tallulah looks for Scarlett every time she leaves the house. She knows that Scarlett’s boyfriend, Liam, is a student at Maypole House, so it’s more than possible that Scarlett would be in the village from time to time. Every now and then Tallulah flicks through her photo roll to get to the picture of her and Scarlett at the Christmas party and tries to remember the way she’d felt that night, the person she was when she was under the red-hot glow of Scarlett’s attention. She googles Scarlett’s name from time to time too, idly, just in case she’s ended up in the newspapers somehow. She doesn’t know where Scarlett lives, just that it’s somewhere walking distance from the village, which could be anywhere; there are at least three hamlets near Upfield Commonand the roads between are peppered with private driveways leading to the sorts of big houses that Tallulah imagines Scarlett to live in.
And then one day, during the last week of January, Tallulah sees Scarlett getting out of the passenger seat of a Smart car parked outside the Co-op on the high street of the village.
She’s wearing what look like pyjamas, with her fake fur coat over the top. Her hair is straggly and she’s wearing beaten-up trainers over fluffy socks. In the driver’s seat of the car, Tallulah sees a young man. He’s staring at his phone and there’s the dull thud of music emanating from the car. A moment later Scarlett emerges with a carrier bag and jumps back into the Smart car. The boy in the driver’s seat looks at her briefly, turns his phone off and drives the car towards the road that goes to Manton.
Tallulah stands, watching it disappear as though it might carry some clue as to its final destination. Then she remembers something. Her mum had mentioned a few days ago that she’d seen Keziah, one of Tallulah’s best friends from primary school, working at the Co-op. Tallulah hasn’t seen Keziah for months; last time was when she was just starting to show in her pregnancy and Keziah had put her hand to Tallulah’s bump and made a sound as if she was about to faint because she was so overawed by it.
Keziah’s behind one of the tills when Tallulah walks in a moment later. Her face lights up when she sees her. ‘Lula!’ she says. ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’
Tallulah smiles and shrugs. ‘Tend to do big shops now,’ she says, ‘with the car. Easier with all the nappies and formula, you know.’
Keziah smiles warmly at her. ‘How’s the bubba?’
‘Oh. He’s amazing,’ she replies.
‘Into everything, I bet.’
‘Not yet. He’s too young for that. But he’s mellow anyway, you know. He’s a little Buddha.’
‘At home with your mum?’
‘Well, yeah, my mum. And Zach.’
‘Oh,’ says Keziah. ‘I thought you two had …?’
‘Yeah, we did. And then we got back together again. Around New Year.’
Keziah beams at her. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘that’s amazing! I’m so pleased. You two were made for each other.’
Tallulah smiles tightly. ‘It’s nice,’ she says, ‘nice for Noah. And nice to have another pair of hands. You know.’
‘You look really different,’ says Keziah.
‘Do I?’
‘Yeah, you look, kind of, I dunno, really grown up. Really pretty.’
‘Oh,’ says Tallulah. ‘Thank you.’
‘You should come out one night. With me and the girls.’
‘Yes. I’d like that.’ She’s not sure she would like it. She’s always thought there was a reason why she hadn’t stayed in touch with her friends from primary school but has never been quite sure what that reason might be – something deep-seated and subconscious, something that even now makes her feel strange when contemplating the idea of a reunion.
‘That girl’, she says, ‘who just came in wearing pyjamas? Do you know who she is?’
‘The skanky one, you mean?’
Tallulah shakes her head slightly, trying to align the way she sees Scarlett with the way someone else might see her and then she says, ‘Yeah. The one with the furry coat.’
‘Yeah. That’s the girl who lives in Dark Place.’
‘Dark Place?’