He nods, but his eyes stay on hers, as though waiting for her to betray some kind of deceit.
A group of social science students leaves at that moment. Tallulah barely knows them, but they glance over at her curiously. One of them raises a hand tentatively. She raises a hand back.
‘Who are they?’
‘Just people from my course,’ she says. Then she looks at her phone. ‘Bus comes in six minutes. We should go.’
He looks for a moment as if he’s not going to follow her, his eyes still resting on the group of students across the road.
‘Come on,’ she says.
He slowly takes his gaze from them and catches up with her.
‘I wish you didn’t have to do this,’ he says after a slightly ponderous silence.
‘What?’
‘College. I wish I earned enough money so that I could just take care of you and Noah, so you wouldn’t need to get a job.’
She inhales and then breathes out slowly. ‘I want to take care of Noah, too,’ she says. ‘I want to help pay for him. I want a career.’
‘Yeah, but, Lules – a social worker. Do you know how draining that will be? How hard? The hours you’ll have to work? The stuff you’ll bring home with you? Wouldn’t you rather just get, like, a shop job or something? Something easy? Something local?’
She stops and turns and looks at him. ‘Zach,’ she says, ‘I’ve got three A levels. Why would I want to get a shop job?’
‘It would just be easier,’ he says. ‘And you’d be closer to home.’
‘Manton’s not exactly the other side of the world,’ she says.
‘No, but I hate it when we’re both so far away from Noah during the week. It’s not good for him.’
‘But he’s got my mum!’ she says with exasperation.
‘I know. But it would be better for him to be with us. Wouldn’t it?’
‘He loves my mum.’
Zach stops walking then and pulls Tallulah towards him, his hands tight around her forearms. She glances at him and sees that cold metallic look in his grey eyes. ‘I just …’ The glint in his eyes fades. ‘I just want it to be us, the three of us, always. That’s all.’
She pulls her arms from his grip and starts walking faster. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I can hear the bus coming, quick, we need to run.’
They jump on the bus just as it’s about to close its doors and sit for a moment, breathing heavily. Tallulah stares from the window, rubbing the soft skin on her forearms, still smarting from Zach’s grip.
The following Sunday, when Zach goes to play football, Tallulah asks her mum if it’s OK if she goes out for a while.
‘Of course, baby. Of course. Going to watch Zach play?’
‘No.’ She shrugs. ‘No, just fancy some fresh air, might pop by Chloe’s.’
She won’t pop by Chloe’s. She and Chloe have barely spoken since the night of the Christmas party when she abandoned her to hang out with Scarlett.
‘Can I borrow your bike?’
‘Of course you can,’ says her mum. ‘But be careful, won’t you? And wear a helmet.’
Tallulah kisses Noah and her mother goodbye, then lugs her mother’s bike out of the side return and on to the road. Tallulah hasn’t ridden a bike since she was about thirteen. She’s not altogether comfortable on two wheels, but she has no alternative.
After a slightly wobbly start, she sets off towards the common and then on to the road out to Manton. Just before she gets to the roundabout, she turns right, up a tiny one-track turning, towards the hamlet of Upley Fold, towards Dark Place.