A few seconds later her phone buzzes again. This time she picks it up and says, ‘Sorry, I should probably get this.’
Zach’s message says:
Chloe isn’t yr problem. Tell her to call the Samaritans. I need you. Noah needs you.
She pauses for a moment before replying.
I’ll be here as long as it takes. Might stay the night. Please don’t message me again.
Her phone starts to ring the moment she locks the screen again. She declines the call and puts the phone on silent. Adrenaline pumps through her, sickeningly. She breathes in hard to bring her heart back to normal.
‘Trouble?’ Scarlett asks.
‘No,’ she replies. ‘It’s nothing.’
She glances up at the huge clock on the wall again. It says five fifty-one.
‘Rum o’clock?’ she says, tipping an eyebrow at Scarlett.
‘Hell yeah,’ says Scarlett, leaping to her feet and heading to the cabinet. ‘Hell yeah.’
Tallulah wakes the following day in the custard-yellow light of the early-morning sun filtered through thick cream curtains. Her phone tells her that it is seven fifteen. On the pillow to her left is one of Scarlett’s feet; soft white skin, perfect toenails painted black, done by a professional, belying the rough-and-ready image she tries so hard to portray. Tallulah stares at the toenails, imagines her at the fancy nail place near Manton Station with the pink walls and the glittery cushions, her phone in her hand, her feet extended in a leather chair towards a masked girl from Vietnam.
Tallulah has never had a manicure or a pedicure. She would feel too embarrassed.
Her hangover starts to leak into her system as she pulls herself up to sitting. She checks the messages on her phone. Thirteen from Zach. She doesn’t bother reading them. One from her mum, sent at 2 a.m.
Just checking in. Hope all’s OK with Chloe. Zach told me you were sleeping over. All good with Noah, Love you, Mum.
She slowly unpeels herself from the heavy down of Scarlett’s duvet and slides off her huge king-size bed, her feet landing on soft sheepskin. Scarlett’s head is buried under the bottom end of the duvet, just a small tuft of blue hair visible. A memory blasts through Tallulah’s head, her fingers in that mop of blue, her lips on those lips, Scarlett’s hand …
She shakes her head, hard. Really hard.
No, she thinks. No, no, no.
That hadn’t happened.
Her mind is playing tricks on her.
She glances at Scarlett again, at the shape of her, upside down, under the duvet. Why is she upside down?
Then she remembers, she remembers pushing Scarlett’s hand away last night, pulling away from her lips, taking her hand from her hair, saying the words, ‘No, that’s not who I am.’
Scarlett had pulled back and looked her hard in the eye and said, ‘Well, then, who the hell are you, Tallulah from the bus?’
And Tallulah had shaken her head and said, ‘I’m just me.’
Scarlett had put a finger against her narrow lips, run it across the place where Tallulah’s own lips had just rested, sighed and said, ‘Ah, well. There you go. Timing is everything.’
Tallulah didn’t know what she’d meant by that. But she knew that she’d asked Scarlett to call her a taxi, that she wanted to go home, and that Scarlett had said, ‘Don’t be stupid, it’s two in the morning, stay.’ She’d pressed her hand against her heart and said, ‘We’ll sleep top to toe. OK?’
Now Tallulah sighs and tiptoes from the room, picking up her jeans and her phone.
In the white marble bathroom, she messages her mum.
Just woken up. All good. I’ll be home in half an hour. How’s Noah?
Her mother replies immediately.