‘No. I mean, they’re at yours, aren’t they?’
‘No, they went to the pub last night, no sign of them now and they’re not answering their phones. I thought maybe they might have come back to yours to crash.’
‘No, love, no. Just me and Simon here. Do you want to come in? We’re just out in the garden. We can try calling them again?’
In Megs’s back garden, Kim lowers Noah down on the grass next to a push-along plastic toy that he attempts to pull himself up on to. Megs takes out her phone and presses in her son’s number. Megs’s husband Simon nods at Kim curtly and then turns back to his newspaper. Kim’s always had a horrible feeling that Simon finds her attractive and that his offhand manner is his way of dealing with how uncomfortable this makes him feel.
Megs scowls and ends the call. ‘Straight through to voicemail,’ she says. ‘Let me call Nick.’
Kim throws her a questioning look.
‘You know, the barman from the Ducks? Hold on.’ She prods the screen of her phone with blue acrylic nails. ‘Nick, love, it’s Megs. How are you? How’s your mum? Good. Good. Listen, were you working last night? You didn’t happen to see Zach in there, did you?’
Kim watches Megs nod a lot, listens to her making receptive noises. She pulls a lump of earth from Noah’s hand just as he’s about to press it into his mouth and waits patiently.
Finally Megs ends the call. ‘Apparently,’ she says, ‘Zach and Tallulah went off after the pub to someone’s house, someone Tallulah knows from college.’
‘Yeah, I know that. But any idea who?’
‘Scarlett someone. And a couple of others. Nick seemed to think they were heading out of the village. They went in a car.’
‘Scarlett?’
‘Yes. Nick said she’s one of the posh kids from the Maypole.’
Kim nods. She’s never heard of a Scarlett. But then Tallulah doesn’t really talk much to her about college. Once she’s home, Noah is pretty much the only topic of conversation in the house.
‘Anything else?’ she asks, pulling Noah onto her lap.
‘That’s all he had, I’m afraid.’ Megs smiles at Noah and stretches her arms out towards him, but he curls himself closer to Kim and she sees Megs’s smile falter. ‘Should we be worried, do you think?’
Kim shrugs. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘Have you tried calling Tallulah’s friends?’
‘I don’t have any numbers for them. They’re all on her phone.’
Megs sighs and leans back into her chair. ‘It’s strange,’ she says. ‘If it wasn’t for the baby, I’d just assume they were sleeping something off somewhere, you know, they’re so young, and God knows the things I got up to at their age. But they’re both so devoted, aren’t they, to Noah. It just seems a bit …’
‘I know.’ Kim nods. ‘It does.’
Kim wishes that she and Megs were closer, but Megs never seemed to believe in Zach and Tallulah as a couple and then after Noah was born she backed off completely for a while, barely visiting Noah and acting like a distracted aunt when she did. And now she’s missed her moment with Noah, who recognises her but doesn’t know that she’s important.
‘Anyway,’ Kim says. ‘I’ll go and do some research into this Scarlett girl. See what I can dig up. But hopefully, I won’t need to. Hopefully, they’ll be home by the time I get back, looking sheepish.’
Megs smiles. ‘You know what,’ she says, brightly, in a tone of voice that suggests that really she just wants to get back to relaxing in the garden in the sun, that she really isn’t in the mood for worry, ‘I bet you anything they are.’
In Tallulah’s room, Kim rifles through the contents of her schoolbag. Tallulah is studying Social Care; she wants to be a social worker. Most of her coursework is done at home and she only has to go into college three times a week. Kim watches her at the bus stop from the front window sometimes, her fresh-faced baby in her casual college gear, her hair tied back, clutching a folder to her chest. Nobody would ever guess that she has a child of her own at home, she looks so young.
Kim finds a planner in the bag and flicks through it. It’s full of Tallulah’s dense, somewhat inelegant handwriting – she’d started off left-handed and forced herself to learn to write with her right hand to fit in when she was at primary school. There’s no point looking for phone numbers – no one writes down phone numbers any more – but maybe Scarlett’s name will appear on a class list or some such.
And there it is, glued down and folded up on the back inside cover of the planner: ‘Student Contacts’. Kim scans it quickly, her finger coming to rest on the name ‘Scarlett Jacques: Student Event Planning Committee’.
And there’s her email address.
Kim immediately starts to type a message:
Scarlett. This is Tallulah Murray’s mum, Kim. Tallulah hasn’t come home since going out last night and isn’tanswering her phone and I wondered if you had any idea where she might be? A friend said she was with someone called Scarlett. Please call me on this number as soon as possible. Many thanks.