‘I’m OK,’ she says. ‘Tired. You know.’
‘Yes,’ says Dom, ‘I completely empathise with that.’
He doesn’t wear a wedding ring any more. Kim had first noticed this about six months ago. And he’s lost weight. She stares at him eagerly, willing him to say something good.
‘Kerryanne Mulligan called us about an hour ago. Her daughter saw something in the grounds of the college, from her balcony.She went to investigate and found this.’ He turns his phone towards her and shows her a photo of what looks like exactly the same cardboard sign that the head teacher’s girlfriend had found nailed to her fence the week before.
‘What?’ she asks hoarsely. ‘What was it?’
He turns his phone back to himself and swipes left on the screen before turning it back to her. She stares at the image for a moment. It’s a lumpy object in a clear bag with writing on it. It doesn’t make any sense.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘Well,’ says Dom, ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell us that.’
She places her fingertips against the screen and pulls the image open. It’s a strange metal tool, with a bent end with a U-shape cut out of it, almost like a very small garden spade. ‘I don’t know what that is. I have no idea.’
She sees a flash of disappointment pass across Dom’s face. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it’s gone to forensics, so hopefully they might have some kind of idea what it is. And in the meantime, we’re still waiting to hear back from the prints guys about the ring and the ring box, but I have to be honest, Kim, it’s not looking very optimistic there. And the handwriting analysis is back apparently, so I’ll be having a look at that first thing tomorrow. So, still lots to chew over.’
He smiles at her and she knows he’s trying to sound upbeat but she also knows that this isn’t panning out as he’d hoped it might because as much as it’s Kim whose daughter is missing, she also knows that not being able to solve this case has been deeply upsetting for Dom as well.
She musters a smile and says, ‘Thanks, Dom. Thank you for everything.’
‘I wish there was more for me to do,’ he replies. ‘There never seems to be enough for me to do. But this’, he says, tucking his phone into his pocket, ‘is better than nothing. Someone knows something and someone wants us to know what they know. So keep your ear to the ground, Kim. Keep your wits about you. If you hear anything from anyone, if anyone tells you they’ve seen something strange, let me know immediately. OK?’
He glances at her seriously and she smiles and says, ‘Sure,’ and for a moment she feels as though she might just open her mouth and add, ‘I have wine. Do you have time?’ but realises immediately that of course he doesn’t have time, that he’s in the middle of doing a job, that he has a car to drive home and a life to live, children to put to bed, and that he has done what he came here to do, and of course he doesn’t want to stay and drink wine with a tired, sad woman. So she gets to her feet too, and sees him to the door.
‘I’ll be in touch again, first thing tomorrow. Take care, Kim.’
‘Yes,’ she says, clutching the edge of the door, feeling the urgent pull of wanting to be close to another human being, wanting something more than just her and Noah and this house and all these unanswered questions, before closing the door behind him and immediately forcing her fist into her mouth to hold back her tears.
36
May 2017
Spring wends its way towards summer in a haze of tedious college days and dull nights spent wedged next to Zach on the sofa, the baby monitor blinking on the table at their side. Noah gets to the stage where his head is too big for his body and they joke about how he looks like a bobble-head and have to prop his huge cranium up with cushions when he falls asleep in the back of the car.
The apartment on the Reigate ring road falls through when the bank refuses them a mortgage and Zach goes back to his spreadsheets and his bank statements with an air of dark resentment. It seems that buying a property is the only thing that matters to him now, that being a home-owner at nineteen is some kind of badge of honour that will make him feel like a winner. They’ve taken tohaving sex on Wednesday afternoons when Zach gets home early, Kim is at work, Ryan is at school and Noah is having his daily nap. It’s the same every time, a practised series of movements that ends, within roughly ten minutes, with Zach orgasming silently with his face pressed into a pillow and Tallulah running on tiptoe to the bathroom afterwards and staring at herself in the mirror wondering who the naked, empty-eyed girl with blotchy breasts looking back at her is. But she also feels a sense of relief, a sense that it is done, that now she has a week in which her body is her own.
The weeks tick by and the days grow longer. Summer exams beckon and Tallulah spends more of her time at home revising and less sitting on the sofa with Zach, who stalks in and out of their bedroom when she’s studying, finding stupid excuses to distract her.
At college, she sees Scarlett nearly every day and they have learned how to ignore each other to the point where Tallulah can sometimes believe that maybe none of it ever happened, that it was all a dream. Scarlett’s friends had never accepted her as part of Scarlett’s life in the first place and happily accept that she is no longer there. They wave at her if they pass on campus, they say, ‘Hi, Lules,’ and Tallulah says hi back. But in the canteen at lunchtime, Tallulah sits with the kids from her Social Care course, or on her own. She and Scarlett have not spoken a word to each other since the Sunday morning when Tallulah arrived to find her with her ex-boyfriend’s teeth marks on her neck. Scarlett sent plaintive WhatsApps and Snaps for a few days, but Tallulah simply deleted them all immediately and then blocked her.
But it doesn’t matter how much time passes or how efficiently they have been able to pretend that they don’t know each other, the feeling of wanting Scarlett is still as raw, as red, as real as it was when they were together. Tallulah aches, physically, when she thinks about the feel of Scarlett’s hand on hers under the table at their secret old-lady cake shop. About those Sunday mornings. When she closes her eyes, she gets flashbacks to the smell of the scented candle in Scarlett’s bedroom, the heat of Scarlett’s mouth on her skin, the flush of her flesh that stayed for hours after she got home. And she wants it all back. But she can’t have it because Tallulah is a mother, she has a child and she has responsibilities and she cannot hand any of that over to the care of someone who doesn’t see that it is wrong to let your ex give you love bites while your current love is on a bike coming to see you. She owes it to Noah to give him stable foundations, and Scarlett is lots of things, but she is not stable.
But then, one sunny Tuesday morning, as Tallulah pushes Noah to the pond in his buggy with a small plastic bag of dry bread slices tucked into the hood of the pram, she sees a familiar figure across the common. Scarlett is at college all day on Tuesdays. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be across the common, staring right at Tallulah.
Tallulah panics. For a moment she thinks she might just turn Noah’s buggy 180 degrees and head home, but Scarlett’s pace has picked up and she is heading straight towards her now, and Tallulah can see her brow is furrowed in confusion, her gaze oscillating between Tallulah and the buggy.
Tallulah lets her head drop into her chest, takes a deep breath and walks to meet Scarlett in the middle of the common.
‘Oh my God, is he yours?’
Tallulah nods. ‘Yes. This is Noah. He’s mine.’
Scarlett stares at her in disbelief. Then she crouches and reaches into the buggy and for a moment Tallulah’s heart starts to race; she thinks maybe Scarlett is going to snatch him, pinch him, hurt him. She pulls the buggy towards herself, but Scarlett is merely greeting Noah.
‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she says, rubbing the backs of her fingers against Noah’s cheek. Noah stares at her, wide-eyed but not disturbed. Scarlett’s gaze tips up to Tallulah. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘He’s so beautiful.’