‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘No. Really. It was fine. I ended it. It had been going on for too long. I wasn’t in love with him. But, you know, in so many ways he made me happy. He kept me safe. And now it’s just me. And it’s all a bit of a car crash really. I’m a bit ADHD, so I kind of need someone calm around me. Someone to remind me how to behave. Liam was really good like that.’ She sighs. ‘I miss him.’
‘Can’t you get back together?’
Scarlett shakes her head. ‘No. I did the right thing. I cut him free.’ She pauses. ‘What about you?’
Tallulah looks at her questioningly.
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘yeah. Kind of. We split up a year ago but we got back together. Just after New Year.’
‘What made you decide to get back together with him?’
Tallulah starts to speak and then stops. Words to describe her son, her motherhood, her real life, sit on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spilled. But she cannot bring herself to do it. Once those words are out of her mouth, she will be Tallulah the teenage mum, not Tallulah from the bus.
‘I don’t know,’ she replies after a moment. ‘I’m starting to think maybe it was a mistake.’
Scarlett raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh shit.’
‘Yeah. I know. He’s changed since we were last together. He’s more …’ She scrolls through a dozen adjectives in her mind before finding the right one. ‘Controlling.’
Scarlett draws in her breath, audibly, and shakes her head. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh no. No, no, no. Controlling men. They’re the worst. You need to get out of that. You need to get out of that fast.’
Tallulah turns to the window, not saying what she should be saying, that it’s not that simple, that he lives with her, that they have a baby together.
‘Yes,’ she murmurs. ‘You’re right.’
‘Who was that girl? At the bus stop this morning?’
Zach is lying on their double bed in his work clothes. He’s still supposed to be at work and makes her jump.
‘God, Zach.’ She puts her hand to her heart. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Had a headache,’ he says. ‘Asked to leave early.’
She squints at him. ‘Couldn’t you have just taken some pills?’
‘Didn’t have any on me.’ He sits up and wraps his arms around his knees. ‘Was it the girl?’ he says. ‘The one in the photo on your phone. From the Christmas party?’
‘Yes. She lives near here.’
‘Thought you said she’d left college.’
She blinks. How did he remember her telling him that? ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘She left. She was just going into town.’
He nods. ‘She seemed quite touchy-feely.’
She shrugs.
‘Seems strange,’ he continues. ‘A girl you barely know, yet you have selfies with her on your phone and then she’s cuddling up to you at the bus stop like she’s your best friend.’
‘She’s just that sort of person,’ Tallulah says, unzipping her rucksack and taking out her assignment folder. Noah’s napping in her mum’s room and she’d planned to use the quiet hour to get some homework done. ‘A bit intense, you know?’
‘Where does she live then? This intense girl?’
‘No idea,’ she replies. The last syllable catches on a gulp. ‘Somewhere round here. That’s all I know.’