‘Yeah, you know, that big old house in Upley Fold?’
She shakes her head.
‘You must know it,’ Keziah says. ‘It’s like the biggest house in the area.’
Tallulah shakes her head again and then says, ‘What did she buy?’
Keziah scoffs a little. ‘Why d’you want to know that?’
‘I dunno. She’s just … I kind of know her from college and she left really mysteriously, no one knows why, and I’m just being nosy, I guess.’
‘She bought rum, rolling tobacco and tampons.’ Keziah rolls her eyes. ‘Such a skank,’ she says.
‘Did she say anything?’
‘You’re kidding me, right? As if someone likeherwould make conversation with the checkout girl at the Co-op.’ She tuts and then her eyes drift across Tallulah’s shoulder to a customer waiting to be served. ‘Better go,’ she says. ‘Love to the bubba. Bring him in next time, so I can see him. Yeah?’
Tallulah smiles. ‘I will. Promise.’
She walks home slowly, googling Dark Place on her phone with one thumb as she goes. A Wiki page comes up for what looks like a house out of a fairy tale or a ghost story; her eyes scan the text and she catches fragments of a story about coffee plantations andSpanish flu and assassination attempts and people having their eyes pecked out by crows. She wonders why the house isn’t famous or open to the public, how a place like that could just be a family home, the place that Scarlett lives, where she is headed right now with her tobacco and her rum and her packet of tampons.
Curiosity suddenly swamps her and she crouches down to feel through her rucksack for her college planner. She flicks it open to the back page and scans the contacts listed there until her finger hits Scarlett’s name. Before she can change her mind she words an email:
Hi, Scarlett, this is Tallulah from the bus, just checking in, hope you’re OK. See you around, luv T.
She presses send before she changes her mind, puts her planner back in her bag and heads home to her baby.
18
June 2017
Kim calls DI McCoy at eight o’clock on Monday morning. He answers within a few rings.
‘DI McCoy.’
‘Oh. Hi. Sorry to call so early. It’s Kim Knox. From Upfield Common? I wondered if you had an update about my daughter, Tallulah Murray?’
‘Ah, yes, hi, Kim.’ She can hear him flipping through papers in the background. ‘Sorry. We’ve not got anything to report right now, I’m afraid. We’ve been over to the house in Upley Fold; we’ve spoken to the family there. But there were no leads as a result of that. We’re heading into the village right now, a couple of my officers are going into the pub, the, er’ – more paperworkbeing flipped – ‘Swan & Ducks, to talk to the manager there, see if they can shed any light.’
‘But the woods,’ says Kim, ‘are you going to send anyone into the woods, because, you know, it’s still possible they’re in there somewhere. That they decided to walk back when they couldn’t get a taxi, and that something … they might have fallen into an old well or something or …’ She draws in her breath. She can hardly bear to bring herself to say what she’s about to say, but she has to, because it’s relevant, it’s important. ‘Maybe they had a fight,’ she says. The words all tumble out on top of each other. ‘Scarlett’s friend, Mimi, she told me she saw them having an argument, at Scarlett’s house. Apparently, Zach was being a bit physical with Tallulah. Had her by the – by the wrists.’
She hears DI McCoy fall still. The papers stop ruffling. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘And that sort of physical aspect? Was there a lot of evidence of that between them? From what you could see at home? I got the impression from our chat on Sunday that they were quite lovey-dovey.’
There it is again.Lovey-dovey.The same expression Nick at the pub had used yesterday to describe them.
She sighs. ‘Well, the thing is, he is. Zach is lovey-dovey. He’s the romantic one. Tallulah, I often felt, was just putting up with it. That she’d rather be left alone. But no, I never saw anything physical between them.’
‘Never heard anything behind closed doors?’
‘Nope. Nothing like that. I mean, Zach has a quick temper sometimes. But never with Tallulah. Never with the baby.’
‘So what …’ DI McCoy begins, and Kim can hear the creak of a chair as he moves position, ‘what do you think might havebrought about the row Tallulah’s friend said she saw them having on Friday night?’
Kim’s mind goes back to the engagement ring in Zach’s jacket pocket, the conversation Ryan recalls having with Zach about the idea of him proposing to Tallulah. It feels like such an intimate thing to share with a stranger, as though she’s giving away a bit of Zach’s heart. But she has to tell the detective – it might, as she can’t stop thinking, be the key to everything.
‘On Friday morning,’ she begins hesitatingly, ‘I found something in Zach’s jacket pocket. A ring. Looked like an engagement ring. A diamond in a gold band. And my son, Ryan, says that Zach had mentioned something vague about proposing to Tallulah. And yesterday I was talking to the barman at the Swan & Ducks and he said that Zach and Tallulah had been drinking champagne that night before they hooked up with Scarlett and her gang. And it’s possible, you know, that he asked her. And she might have …’ She swallows. ‘She might have said no.’
There’s a slight pause and then DI McCoy says, ‘And you think Zach might have responded negatively to this?’