‘Why?’ asks Sophie. ‘Why didn’t you go home when Scarlett left?’
‘I just …’ He grimaces. ‘I didn’t know she wasn’t coming back. I thought they’d just gone away for the summer. And then it was September again and they didn’t come back. And then I thought they’d be back for Christmas, and they weren’t. Then it was 2018 and Scarlett stopped replying to my messages and my phone calls completely and I thought, well, she’s moved on. It’s over. But I liked it here. So I stayed.’
‘And the pool party,’ she asks gently, not wanting to push too hard. ‘What happened that night?’
He lifts his eyes to hers and sighs. ‘Christ. Who knows. All I know is that I have no idea why those kids were even there. The guy, Zach, I’d say he was kind of dark. I kept picking up on a weird vibe between him and the girl. At the pub, it felt like the girl really didn’t want to come back to the house; he really had to persuade her. And then, once they were there, at Scarlett’s, they just felt kind of out of place. They didn’t really want to join in. You could tell the guy was brooding about something or other. Jealous, probably.’
‘Jealous? Of what?’
Liam blinks and she sees him hold his breath. ‘Oh, God, I don’t know. The size of the house, the privilege, all of that kind of thing, I suppose. Anyway, the atmosphere was awkward. And then my friend, Lexie – she lives here too, she’s Kerryanne’s daughter?’
Sophie nods.
‘She was driving back to the school and I’d had enough by then and we offered the couple a lift back to the village, and she was like, yes, that’d be great. But he said no, we’re staying. I saw him sort of tug her back into her chair and I felt really sorry for her. And I told all this to the police at the time, obviously, and I think the girl’s mother, Kim, I think she thought there was something a bit off with him. That it might have had something to do with him. That he offed her. Then disappeared somehow. But you know, how could there be no evidence? That’s what’s always confused me. They were there, and then they weren’t. Not a drop of blood, not a sniff of death. Two whole people, just gone. It doesn’t make any sense. Does it?’
He drops his eyes to Sophie’s phone and looks again at the photo of the ring.
‘And now,’ he says, making the image larger with his fingers, ‘it’s starting all over again.’
24
February 2017
Tallulah stares down the long driveway, through the elaborate metal gates towards Scarlett’s house where it emerges from a crown of trees at the top of a small hillock. It looks like it could still be another mile away. She squeezes her bike through the narrow pedestrian gap to the side of the gates and then remounts and cycles onwards.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she’s doing it. She just feels like the walls of her life are closing in on her and she needs to find a gap just for a minute, just so she can breathe.
As she draws closer to the house she gasps quietly to herself. It’s magical, the sort of house that you have a really intense dream about and then wake up the next morning feeling sad that it’s not real.
She leans her bike against a wall and crunches across white gravel towards the front door.
For a moment she considers calling Scarlett, giving her a chance to pretend to be out or to hide. But then she looks at the time and sees it’s only an hour until Zach gets back from football and she’s made it all the way and she just really, really wants to see her. She presses the doorbell and clears her throat and touches her hair and clears her throat again and a moment later she hears a female voice, calling, ‘Coming!’ And it’s her, it’s Scarlett, and she’s getting closer to the door and she’s opening the door and Tallulah realises she has been holding her breath and as the door opens and Scarlett’s gaze takes her in there is a tiny fraction of a moment where someone should say something but nobody does and Tallulah almost says,I should go. But before the words leave her mouth Scarlett gives her head a small shake, blinks and says, ‘Oh my God. It’s Tallulah from the bus.’
A large dog ambles into view. It’s the dog from Scarlett’s self-portrait in the art block at college. It’s gigantic.
‘Hi,’ says Tallulah. ‘I’m sorry to just turn up, but I was chatting with Mimi and she said if I saw you in the village I was to say hello and tell you to get in touch and then I did see you in the village but you drove off before I could say anything and the girl in the shop, I kind of know her and she told me where you lived and I just kind of thought … I could come and pass on the message in person. Kind of.’
‘You emailed me, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, after I saw you in the village.’
‘And I didn’t reply.’
‘No. But that’s fine. Totally fine, I wasn’t expecting you to.’
‘How did you get here?’
Tallulah turns her head towards the bike. ‘I, er, cycled.’
The dog has walked past Scarlett and is now standing right next to Tallulah, panting loudly. ‘Can I …?’ she asks. ‘Can I stroke him?’
‘Of course you can. My God. Yes. He lives for being stroked by strangers. He’s a total whore.’
Tallulah presses her hand into the dog’s thick fur and smiles.
‘I remember,’ says Scarlett. ‘You like dogs. You said you wanted one. Did you get one?’
Tallulah shakes her head and crouches down to be face to face with the dog. ‘What’s his name?’ she says, scruffing under his huge jowls.