‘Most of the time, yeah. My daughter comes to stay sometimes, Lexie, she’s a travel blogger so she comes and goes. But mostly it’s just me. And I hear there’ll be some little ones here from time to time?’
‘Yes. Jack and Lily. Twins. They’re seven.’
‘Aw. Nice age. Right, well, any questions, anything at all, just ask. I’ve worked here for twenty years. I’ve lived in the village for nearly sixty. There’s nothing I don’t know about Upfield Common. In fact, you and Shaun should come over for a drink tonight, I can chew your ears off over a glass of wine.’
‘Oh,’ says Sophie. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’ She is about to thank her again and head back indoors, when her eye is caught by a pair of magpies taking flight from the treetops in the woodland beyond her garden. ‘Those woods?’ She gestures at them. ‘Where do they lead?’
‘Oh, you don’t want to go too far into those woods.’
Sophie throws Kerryanne a questioning look.
‘They go on for miles. You’ll get lost.’
‘Yes, but where do they come out at?’
‘Depends which direction you go in. There’s a hamlet about a mile and a half that way.’ She points to the left. ‘Upley Fold. Church, village hall, a few houses. It’s quite pretty. And if you head straight for a mile or so’ – she points ahead – ‘there’s the back end of a big house. “Dark Place”, it’s called. Empty now. It belongs to a hedge-fund manager from the Channel Islands and his very glamorous wife.’ She rolls her eyes slightly. ‘Their daughter was a student here for a while actually. Scarlett. Amazingly talented girl. But I really wouldn’t recommend trying to get there. Students head over there sometimes because there’s an old swimming pool and a tennis court, but then they can’t find their way back and there’s no signal in the woods. We even had to get the bloody police involved once.’ She rolls her eyes again.
Sophie nods. She’s feeling a bristle of excitement. In London when she needs writing inspiration, she’ll walk up to Dulwich or Blackheath and look at the grand old houses there and imagine the stories that lie within. Now she thinks of her walking stick and her compass and her water bottle and the opportunity to get some proper steps on her fitness app. The sun is hazy, it’s about twenty-two degrees, perfect walking weather. The words ‘old pool’ and ‘tennis court’ swim through her imagination. She thinks of the dryness of the air of a house abandoned throughout a long, hot summer, the bleached lawns, the dusty, cracked flagstones, the birds nesting in grimy window casements.
She smiles at Kerryanne. ‘I’ll try to resist the urge,’ she says.
5
September 2016
Scarlett Jacques is standing next to Tallulah in the queue at the canteen. She is five foot ten, thin as a stick, her bleached hair is dyed pale blue and gathered on top of her head in a bundle and someone has drawn a tiny rainbow on her cheekbone. She’s wearing a man’s hoodie, with sleeves that come to her knuckles, and a pair of oversized jersey shorts, with high-top trainers. Her fingers are covered with heavyweight rings and her fingernails are painted green. She hovers over the miniature cereal boxes, her fingers dancing across their spines until they land, decisively, on Rice Krispies. She grabs it and adds it to her tray, next to a carton of chocolate soya milk and an apple.
Tallulah watches her head to the till. Her people are already gravitating towards her, following in her wake, ensuring that theywill find space next to her once she has decided where she will sit. Tallulah picks up a ham sandwich and an orange juice and pays for them. She sits at a table close to Scarlett’s.
Scarlett sits with her long legs stretched out, her huge high-top trainers resting on the chair opposite her, her shins still boasting a silky summer tan. She opens the chocolate soya milk and pours it on to her Rice Krispies, then lowers her face to the bowl and shovels them into her mouth with a spoon. At one point she spills chocolate milk down her chin and wipes it away with the cuff of her hoodie. She’s with the kids she always hangs around with. Tallulah doesn’t know their names. Scarlett and her clique all used to go to the posh school in Tallulah’s village, Maypole House, which has a reputation for being for thick rich kids or rich kids with behavioural issues or rich kids with ADHD or rich kids with drug-abuse problems. They screech around the village in their convertible Mini Clubmans, stalk into the local pubs with their fake IDs and their loud voices and their rich-kid hair. In the Co-op you could hear them before you saw them, calling to each other across the aisles about how there was no fresh mozzarella, then talking across the heads of the village teenagers manning the tills as if they didn’t even exist.
Now a small group of them has, for some unknown reason, ended up at the local FE college in Manton, the nearest town. Most of them are in their first year of a Fine Art Diploma. A couple of them are studying fashion. They clearly all come from families that had expected them to end up in good universities and instead had ended up at Manton College of Further Education and consequently there is a defensiveness about them.
Tallulah puts a hand to her belly. The flesh there is still so loose and blubbery. It’s been nearly three months since she gave birth, but it feels like half her insides are still made of baby. She just stopped breastfeeding a week ago and her breasts still leak sometimes and she keeps pads inside her bra. She switches on her phone and looks at the photo of Noah on her home screen. Her stomach flips, a mixture of unbearable love and fear. For three months she and Noah have been inseparable; her first day at college last week was the first time she’d left him for longer than a few minutes. Now he is half an hour away from her, a bus ride, six and a half miles away, and her arms feel weightless, her breasts feel heavy. She texts her mum.All OK?
Her mum replies immediately.Just got back from looking at the ducks. All good.
At the next table, Scarlett has zoned out from talking to her clique and is staring at her phone in a way that suggests she’s not really looking at anything. She rolls the apple on the tray round and round with the fingers of her spare hand. Her face, in profile, is interesting; there is a bump in her nose, a slight curve to her chin. Her mouth is a thin line. But still she is somehow pretty, prettier than any other girl at the college, even the ones with perfect noses and pillow lips. She turns and catches Tallulah staring at her. She narrows her eyes, then turns away from her, drops her feet back to the floor, picks up the apple, tucks it in the pocket of her hoodie and leaves her group of friends without saying goodbye to any of them. As she passes Tallulah she narrows her eyes again, and Tallulah imagines for a split second that she sees a smile pass across her face.
6
June 2017
Kim buckles Noah into his car seat and gives him one of his fabric books to flick through. Ryan sits in the back with him, while Kim gets into the driver’s seat and switches on her phone to put the address into Google.
‘Dark Place,’ she says as she types. ‘It’s only a mile away, I wonder why I’ve never heard of it before.’
She slots her phone into its holder, presses start, and pulls out of the quiet cul-de-sac where she has lived since she was twenty-one years old. She hums distractedly under her breath. She doesn’t want Noah to pick up on her anxiety, doesn’t want Ryan to have to deal with her mounting feelings of dread and fear.
They drive through the sun-dappled lanes that connect Upfield Common with Manton, the nearest big town. Just beforethe large roundabout that marks the end of the village, Google tells them to turn right, up a tight dog-leg. The signpost is overgrown with buddleia, but Kim can just make out the words ‘Upley Fold ½’.
It’s a single-lane road and she drives cautiously in case she meets a vehicle coming the other way. It’s nearly 4 p.m. and the sun is still high in the sky. She peers into the rear-view mirror and says to Ryan, ‘Can you put the screen down on Noah’s side? He’s in full sun.’
Ryan leans across and pulls it down. Noah points at something in his fabric book and attempts to tell Ryan what it is, but he hasn’t learned how to talk yet so Ryan just looks at the page and says, ‘Yes, piggy, that’s right. Piggy!’
Google tells her to take the next turning on the right. She cannot believe that there is actually a turning on the right, but there it is, a track with a line of meadow grass running down its centre, the hedgerows lower here so Kim can see blinding fields of rape, some cows silhouetted in the distance, a cluster of cottages. And then, after another few minutes, a pair of metal gates, a gravel driveway pointing due south, the name ‘Dark Place’ fashioned out of wrought iron, the suggestion of a turreted house in the distance. Kim turns off the engine and puts her phone into her handbag.
‘What are you going to do?’ asks Ryan.