Scarlett’s eyes stay on her for a moment, assessing her. Then she smiles and says, ‘Come on. This way.’
They wend their way through the house, through snugs and piano rooms and boot rooms and hallways and studies and dining roomsand sitting rooms and drawing rooms until they reach a small door set into the corner of what Scarlett refers to as the ‘Tudor wing’. The room is small and contains just a black lacquered desk, a brass standard lamp with a red velvet shade and a piece of modern art hanging from an ancient timbered wall. The door is wooden and has a latch opening.
‘So,’ says Scarlett, opening up the door and peering upwards. ‘This is the staircase to the turret room.’ She moves out of the way so that Tallulah can see. It’s a set of spiral stone stairs, very small, very narrow. They look like the sort of stairs tourists queue to go up in cathedrals and such.
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘wow.’
‘Well, yeah, but that’s not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is this.’
Scarlett falls to her knees and pulls a strange tool from the back pocket of her jeans. It’s ancient-looking, slightly rusted, has a long handle with a kind of flat foot on the bottom which she inserts into the underside of the first step and then uses to lever away the stone from its setting. She carefully removes the piece of stone and sets it behind her. A cold draught blows through the hole and Tallulah shivers slightly.
‘I found this book,’ Scarlett is saying as she slides her hand into the open hole in the staircase. ‘A history of this house. And there was something in there about a secret tunnel. Like an escape tunnel. This wing was built during the English Civil War in 1643 and the architect was asked to include a secret tunnel in case the inhabitants needed to hide or run away. And’ – her face contorts as she tries to get hold of something inside the hole – ‘the plans were destroyed in a fire that burned down half of the building. Infact, that’s why it became called Dark Place, because of the black circle that surrounded it after the fire, all the charred wood.
‘So the house was abandoned and empty for nearly seventy years until a really cool young couple from London bought it, probably equivalent to hipsters of today, wanted a doer-upper, something with a bit of character. And they were the ones who attached the Georgian wing. It was seen as super super modern at the time, no one could quite believe their eyes; it was the talk of the village. Anyway, this couple had no idea where the tunnel was and spent years trying to find it and moved back to London when they were old without ever finding it and by the 1800s everyone just thought it was a myth. That it had never existed.
‘And then early in 2017, a young woman called Scarlett Jacques, who had nothing to do all day because she’d left college under a cloud and was depressed and incredibly bored, decided to make it her mission to find the tunnel. And finally, after many many days, she had a brainwave. What if?’ She pants slightly as she pulls hard at something in the hole, suddenly lifting the entire stone panel, removing it and putting it next to the first piece of stone. ‘What if,’ she continues, ‘the architect decided that the best place for an underground staircase was at the base of an overground staircase? And what if that weird metal thing that’s been hanging off a hook in the woodstore since the day we moved in, what if that might be the key to open the base.’ She leans back and brushes some hair from her face. ‘And lo and behold,’ she says to Tallulah, waving her arm across the opening, ‘she was fucking right.’
Tallulah’s mouth is hanging open. She stares into the hole and then up at Scarlett. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispers. The dog has beensnuffling at the pieces of stone and now passes Tallulah to peer down the hole, sniffing the air loudly.
‘Want to come and have a look inside?’ says Scarlett, turning on the flashlight on her phone.
‘Erm, I’m not sure. I really need to get back. And I’m arachnophobic. Like, seriously. Full-blown panic attacks.’
‘Just come and see the room at the bottom of the steps. There’re no spiders there, I promise. It’s really cool. Come.’
An image passes through her subconscious, an image of her in a spider-filled tunnel, looking up at Scarlett, who cackles maniacally whilst pulling the stone cover back into place.
Tallulah told no one she was coming here. There’s nobody else in the house. All that’s here is her mother’s bike which Scarlett could easily dispose of. She could seal Tallulah up down there and no one would ever hear her and no one would ever know.
She thinks of Scarlett’s self-portrait in the art block at Manton, the cake knife with the blood on it, the handgun, the fresh beating heart on the plate, and she wonders about this girl whom she barely knows. Who is Scarlett Jacques?Whatis she?
But then she looks at Scarlett and sees the cool girl from college, the girl that everyone wants to be, and she’s looking back at Tallulah with a playful smile, saying, ‘Come on. I’m not going to eat you,’ and she follows her into the hole, her hands grasping on to damp brick walls as the steps lead downwards.
25
July 2017
June turns to July. Noah turns from twelve to thirteen months. Kim gives up her part-time job at the estate agency up the road. Ryan cancels his first parentless holiday to Rhodes. On the calendar on the kitchen wall, Kim sees her handwriting in the square for 17 July: ‘Last day term, Tallulah’. She weeps.
The police had finally got permission to search the Jacques house but they found nothing untoward and it turned out that the Jacqueses’ security system hadn’t been armed that night, that all the cameras were off. ‘My fault entirely,’ Joss Jacques said. ‘I never follow instructions properly. Drives Martin insane.’
Shortly afterwards, Scarlett and her family flew out to their house in the Channel Islands and never came back.
Towards the end of July, Kim cancels her August holiday to Portugal, to the cute little family friendly resort with the crèche that she and Tallulah had pored over pictures of, imagining Noah there, making new friends, maybe toddling by then, splashing in the baby pool with inflatable arm bands, a zip-up swimming costume and a sun hat. The lady on the phone is incredibly understanding when Kim explains her circumstances and grants her a full refund. Kim cries for half an hour afterwards.
Kim’s ex-husband, Jim, comes and goes; he stays for a few nights, as long as he can get off work, as long as his mother will let him leave her, and then he goes back to Glasgow again. In a way Kim would prefer it if he didn’t come at all. He brings nothing to the situation, no reassurance, no practical assistance, just extra food to buy and cups of tea to make and bedsheets to wash.
In early August he comes again and the moment he walks into the house, Kim knows that something’s up with him. He looks washed-out and tense.
‘I just saw that woman,’ he says, dropping his jacket and his bag onto the floor in the hallway. ‘The mother.’
‘Megs?’
‘Yeah. Whatever her name is. Do you know what she said to me?’
Kim lowers her eyes. She has tried her hardest to avoid Megs and Simon ever since the day of the police search. She crosses streets when she sees them, turns and walks out of shops. ‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘No, tell me.’
‘She said that she thinks Tallulah and Zach have eloped. Gone off for a nice extended honeymoon. She said, “It was all too much for them, having that baby so young. I can’t say I’m surprised.”’