Eventually one of those detectives will take a call from one of the searchers and something will etch itself on to his or her face and they will come to her car, to her window, and she will wind it down and they will say, ‘They’ve found something,’ and then she will know. She will know what has befallen her beautiful girl.
But for now, she sits, she looks, she watches and she waits.
19
September 2018
The first day of the new term has arrived at Maypole House. Shaun has been at work for days already, of course, but there’s something new and shiny about the day as she watches Shaun readying himself this sunny Monday.
The day will start with an assembly and Shaun has been writing his first day speech for days now. He’d practised it in front of Sophie last night standing at the foot of their bed in just his boxer shorts and socks, while she lay on the bed, playing the role of his audience.
‘Wonderful,’ she’d said, giving a round of applause. ‘Really wonderful. Warm, relatable, inspiring.’
‘Not too short?’
‘Not too short,’ she’d reassured, ‘perfect length. Perfect pitch. And judging by the way people reacted to you at the dinner tonight, they all love you already.’
‘You think?’
‘The affection was tangible,’ she’d said. ‘Truly.’
And it was true. She’d felt it everywhere Shaun went the night before, the feeling of genuine engagement he left in his wake, the sense that people had been uplifted by him, flattered by his attention, that he’d created a kind of buzz about the new term to come merely by being present, before he’d so much as held an assembly or read a speech.
Now Shaun has gone and Sophie is alone. The cottage is cool and quiet, her laptop is open on the kitchen table, her novel is blinking at her from the screen, her email inbox is full of work-related things that she should really be attending to, the dishwasher needs emptying and she still has boxes left to unpack, but she doesn’t do any of those things. She switches screens, opens her browser and googles ‘Liam Bailey’.’
As she’d expected, the search term brings up a hundred people who are not the correct Liam Bailey. She adds ‘Maypole House’ to the search. The school’s website appears.
She deletes ‘Maypole House’ and adds ‘Scarlett Jacques’.
No results found.
She adds the name ‘Zach Allister’ to her search for Liam.
No results found.
She sighs and leans back into her chair. How can two people go to the pub on a Friday night and never come back and nobody know what happened to them? The mystery consumes her, whole.She can feel it whispering to her through the branches of the trees in the woods, down the corridors of the college, from Liam’s balcony, across the surface of the duck pond on the common, from Kim Knox’s window facing the bus stop and the ring in its box in the back corner of her drawer.
At this thought she gets abruptly to her feet and runs up the stairs to her bedroom, wrenches open the drawer in the dressing table and pulls the box out. She brushes the dirt off the lid again with her fingertips but it’s still impossible to make out the writing printed on the top. She takes the box to the bathroom and rubs it with the wetted corner of a towel. As she does so, the blackness shifts and gold block lettering begins to appear. She rubs harder, dampens the towel again, rubs more. And there, distinctly, are the words ‘Mason & Son Fine Jewellery, Manton, Surrey’.
Her heart skips a beat.
Manton.
That’s the big town six miles from Upfield Common. The town where Tallulah went to college. Sophie wants to go there. She wants to go now. But she can’t drive. And she has no idea how one would summon a taxi to come to Upfield Common. Maybe the receptionist here could tell her but she feels strangely like she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s going to Manton. And then she thinks of the bus stop, by Tallulah’s rose bush. She grabs her bag, drops the ring box into it, strides through the school grounds and across the common towards the stop.
The bus comes half an hour later.
She takes a seat halfway down. There are only two other people on board. As the bus trundles through the country lanesand then out on to the A road towards the big roundabout, Sophie imagines Tallulah sitting here, as she is, her rucksack perched on her lap, her delicate features set pensively, the sun glittering off her nose ring, her dark hair covering half her face.
The ride into Manton takes twenty minutes. The stop on the high street is the end of the route for the bus and the driver flashes the lights on and off to encourage everyone to disembark.
Sophie puts the name of the jewellery shop into Google Maps and follows the directions to a small turning just off the main street.
It’s a tiny, ancient shop, with low-set windows that are designed to be gazed down upon. Sophie stops and admires the display for a moment before pushing open the door. Her breath catches a little; it’s exactly the type of shop she would use for one of her Little Hither Green Detective Agency books, replete with a slightly comical-looking owner behind the glass-topped display cabinet, sitting on a tall stool, reading a hardback book. He’s terribly small, with close-cropped white hair and red-framed glasses and when he glances up at her his face breaks into a smile of pure joy. ‘Good morning, madam,’ he says, ‘and how are you today?’
‘I’m very well, thank you.’
‘And how can I help you?’