‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Lots of reasons. But mainly, I think, because of finding that ring. And now all the other stuff going on.’
Liam nods. ‘It’s all a bit freaky, isn’t it?’ He taps her book against the palm of his other hand again and steps from one foot to another. He seems a little anxious. ‘I guess it’ll all become clear eventually. I wonder what they’ll uncover next. Maybe there’s someone out there, as I’m talking to you, burying another little surprise for someone to uncover.’
‘Like Easter eggs.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose they are. I just …’ He stops tapping the book and rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. ‘I just don’t get it. I don’t get any of it. If someone knows what happened to those kids, then why the hell don’t they just go to the police and tell them?’
‘Because maybe they had something to do with it?’
She sees him shudder slightly. ‘Freaks me out,’ he says. ‘Really freaks me out. Anyway …’ He appears to reset himself. ‘I’d better let you get on. I just wanted to ask you that. About Susie Beets. About the shoes.’ He taps the book one more time against his hand and then turns and heads towards the back door.
After he’s gone, Sophie goes back to her desk and sits for a while, imagining handsome Liam, alone in his room, reading her book. She tries to remember the content of the book, but can’t. She goes to her bedroom to find the packing box that has her P. J.Fox books in it. She slices through the tape and burrows through the contents until she finds the one she’s looking for: the first in the series. Perched on the edge of the bed, she flicks through the pages, skimming them with her eyes. And that’s when she sees it. The thing that’s been hovering in her subconscious since the day she arrived. She flattens the two sides of the book and she reads:
Susie opened the creaky gate and peered up and down the high street. It was just getting dark and the wet pavements were glowing warm amber in the streetlight. She pulled the sides of her furry coat together across her body and was about to head back out into the night when she saw something from the corner of her eye, in the flower bed to her left. It was a flap of cardboard, nailed to the wooden fence. In black marker, someone had scribbled the words ‘Dig Here’, with an arrow pointing downwards into the soil …
39
May 2017
Zach sits on the edge of the bed, watching Tallulah get ready to go to the pub.
‘This is fucking ridiculous,’ he says.
‘Can you stop watching me, please.’
‘I mean, for fuck’s sake. It’s not as if these people would even notice if you didn’t show up. They wouldn’t even care.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because people don’t care. Everyone goes around thinking they’re the centre of the fucking universe and that people miss them when they don’t come to things, but nobody gives a shit.’
‘So, if you didn’t turn up for football one Sunday, you think nobody would notice?’
‘That’s different. That’s a team. You need a certain number for a team. You don’t need a certain number to sit in the fucking pub.’
Tallulah doesn’t reply. She focuses instead on rearranging her earrings, exchanging the plain silver studs and hoops she normally wears for a fancy set of earrings that loop together on chains from the top of her ear down to the lobes. They’re similar to the sorts of earrings that Scarlett wears.
‘What the hell is that?’
She glances at Zach’s reflection in the mirror witheringly, but doesn’t respond. ‘Aren’t you going to give Noah his bath now?’ she says. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘I’m pretty sure that you don’t get to dictate our schedule since you’re not even going to be here.’
Tallulah rolls her eyes. ‘I can’t believe you’re making such a fuss about me leaving the house.’
‘It’s not you leaving the house that’s the issue. You leave the house all the fucking time. It’s you spending money. When we’re trying to save up.’
She turns and stares at him. ‘I told you,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to move out. I don’t want to buy a flat. I want to stay here.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not particularly interested in what you want or don’t want. This isn’t about you. It’s about Noah.’
‘Noah doesn’t want to go and live in a box on the side of an A road either. He wants to stay here. It’s lovely here. The countryside on our doorstep. There’s the nursery just cross the common. His nana. His uncle. Your mum.’
There’s a beat of silence. He narrows his eyes at her. ‘You know my mum doesn’t even think Noah is mine.’
Tallulah freezes.
‘She reckons you’re just using me for money. And you know what, when I think about it, she’s got a point. I mean, all those months when you didn’t want me anywhere near you. All those months where you just kept me at arm’s length—’