‘Yes. And I just immediately deleted it and typed backNO. In caps lock. And then it went quiet again for a while and then one night, I guess he must have been drunk, he started bombarding me with text messages and dick pics and declarations of love and hate and everything in between. He said Mrs Croft was never athome and his son had gone to boarding school and he missed me and he couldn’t live without me. And I just deleted everything and stopped replying and then the night of the Manton Christmas party, after I met you, I just really, really couldn’t think straight any more. You’d just blown my mind and my inbox was full of all this crazy shit from Mr Croft and I just didn’t want to go anywhere near Maypole House or the village, I just wanted to stay away from everyone and everything so I finished with Liam a couple of days later and then it was Christmas and I just hunkered down with my family, kept my head down. I was going to come back to college in January. Fresh start. Clear head.
‘But then one day, in that weird bit between Christmas and New Year, I took Toby out in the woods and I had my AirPods in, it was kind of early afternoon, starting to get dark, darker still in the woods, and I was close to my house so I thought I was safe and then suddenly …’ She pauses and her gaze drops to the table. ‘Someone came up behind me and put their hand over my mouth, like this, and pulled me back and I nearly died of a fucking heart attack. And it was him, of course, it was Mr Croft, Guy. And he was smiling at me, like it was all a cute joke; he pointed at my AirPods, to take them out, tried to make out it was normal to put your hand over a teenage girl’s mouth in the woods in the dark. So I took them out and said, “What the fuck?” And he said, “I’m leaving her.” I said, “What?” He said, “I’m leaving Jacinta. There’s nothing left between us. It’s over. I’ve got a flat. Come with me.” And I kind of laughed and said, “I’m eighteen years old. I’m a student. I live with my mum. I can’t go anywhere with anyone.” I might have sounded a bit flippant, I don’t know. But seriously, it was just nuts. And then he started crying and Tobystarted whining because he always whines when people cry and that sort of made me laugh because, fuck’s sake, a grown man crying and a Saint Bernard dog whining is funny. And then he threw me this look, this look that saidShut upand he started kissing me, and it was kind of rough and desperate. And I just went into this sort of trance. I can’t explain it. I went into a trance and just did the movements. Just did the movements, like a pre-programmed doll. I just thought:Let it happen. Just let it happen.I think, in a way, that I was just stopping it from being rape because I couldn’t fucking deal with it being rape. So I just turned it into sex in my head. And afterwards—’ She stops and pulls in her breath. Tallulah can hear tears catching at the back of her throat. ‘Afterwards, he just sort of stared at me, breathlessly. He said, “I’m going now.” And I just nodded and he went and I could tell he was really freaked out because we’d just done this weird thing that was so grey, you know, so ambiguous, impossible to know where the consent was in it or even if there had been any consent. And he knew and I knew it but neither of us acknowledged it. And then he just went. And I never saw him again.’
Tallulah doesn’t know what to say. ‘God, that’s horrible. Are you OK?’
Scarlett stirs her hot chocolate and shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I felt, like, raw … exposed after. I didn’t know who I was or what I was. I kept thinking I’d wake up the next morning and I’d feel normal but I never did. I couldn’t tell my mum; I couldn’t tell anyone. I finally snapped one day, thought I was having a nervous breakdown, called Liam, begged him to come over. I was going to tell him everything. But then he got there and all I wanted to do was just climb into his arms and hold on to him and let himrock me. But every time I closed my eyes I felt Guy’s hand over my mouth; I felt him on me. Every time I looked at Toby I’d think, you were there. You were a witness. What did you see? What did you think? Did he rape me? Am I a victim? Or am I a whore …?’
Scarlett rubs tears from her face with the backs of her hands. She sighs and drops the teaspoon, picks up her hot chocolate and drinks it.
Tallulah puts her hand against her arm and says, ‘That sounds like a nightmare.’
Scarlett nods forcefully. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes. That’s exactly it. Exactly. The setting, the dusk. The unexpectedness of it. The way he disappeared afterwards. No one ever talked about him; I never heard his name mentioned. Like maybe he’d never really existed; maybe he was just a figment of my imagination. It had that quality of a really unsettling dream, one of those ones that haunts you for days afterwards, and I was lost, just totally lost until that moment a few weeks later when the doorbell rang on a Sunday morning and there you were. Tallulah from the bus, come to save me.’
She stops talking then, and Tallulah glances at her curiously. It feels, strangely, as though she has something else to share with her, as if she hasn’t quite finished offloading.
‘And that was that?’
Scarlett nods, forcefully. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘And that was that.’
It’s nearly half past four when Tallulah leaves the pub. She feels warped and out of sorts. She glances at her phone briefly to check that nobody’s been trying to get hold of her and then she puts itin her jeans pocket and starts across the common. As she does so she glances across at Maypole House. Somewhere in there, she ponders, is Jacinta Croft, the woman whose husband Scarlett had a tawdry affair with last summer. Somewhere in there is Liam Bailey, the man Scarlett cheated on with the head teacher’s husband. And here she is, Tallulah Murray, a local teenage mum having her first gay love affair, and over there – she glances at her own home – is a boy called Zach Allister who is the father of her child and somewhere else is her own father who loves his mother more than he loves his wife and children, and over there – she glances at the road out of the village – are Megs and Simon Allister, parents to five children, none of whom they know how to love properly. And overthere, beyond the village, are the woods: the shadowy half-world where Scarlett may or may not have been raped by a man old enough to be her father. And there are no answers to anything, anywhere, no clear paths through. The only thing, she ponders as she walks, the only thing that is clear and plain and simple, is Noah.
She picks up her pace as she gets closer to home, desperate to hold him in her arms. As she nears the cul-de-sac she hears the familiar rumble of the bus pulling up at the stop outside the Maypole. The doors hiss open and she sees a familiar shape climb off the bus and turn left. It’s Zach. He’s late home from work; she thought he’d be back by now. That explains why she hasn’t had any messages or missed calls from him. She picks up her pace and catches up with him. As he turns and looks at her, his face contorts slightly and she sees him stuff something into the pocket of his jacket, a small bag. She pretends not to have noticed and smiles as she approaches him. He seems so thrown by her havingalmost caught him with something that he didn’t want her to see that he has not noticed she is returning home late and from the wrong direction.
‘You’re late back,’ she says.
‘Yeah. I went into town after work. Needed a new phone charger.’
They pause to cross the road to let a car pass by. It’s Kerryanne Mulligan, the matron from the Maypole. She knows everyone and everyone knows her. She puts her hand up and waves at them from the window. They wave back. As they enter the house, Zach takes off his jacket, hangs it from a hook and goes straight through to the living room where she can hear him cooing at Noah. She quickly puts her hand inside the pocket of Zach’s coat and pulls out the bag. It’s a dark green plastic carrier bag with the wordsMason & Son Fine Jewelleryprinted on it. She peers inside and sees a small black box with the same logo printed on it in gold. She’s about to open the box when she feels someone appear in the hallway. She stuffs the bag back in the pocket and looks up. It’s her mum.
‘Are you OK, baby? You’re late back.’
She forces a smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Exam started late, overran a bit.’ She smiles again and moves away from Zach’s jacket, which now feels as though it is sending out radioactive particles that could burn her flesh, and heads into the living room where Noah is in Zach’s arms and Zach is kissing his fingers and blowing raspberries into the palm of his hand, and even though she didn’t open the box, she knows what’s in it and she feels for a moment like she can’t breathe, like someone is sitting on her chest because she knows what it means and she knows that Zachwill never ever leave her, that he is just pretending to be making plans to go. He’s playing a game with her, she realises, keeping her sweet, keeping her on side, biding his time.
Noah’s face opens up into a huge gappy smile when he sees Tallulah and he puts his arms out to her. She grabs him from Zach and tries not to flinch when Zach encircles all three of them inside his arms, trying to make a family of them, trying to make them one.
44
September 2018
The doorbell to Sophie’s cottage rings; it’s an old-fashioned doorbell, the type you don’t hear very often in these days of apps and electric chimes. It’s incredibly loud and it makes Sophie jump out of her skin every time she hears it.
Kim is standing at the front door.
‘Sorry,’ says Sophie, clutching her heart as she opens the door, ‘that bell always make me jump. Sorry. Come in.’
Kim follows Sophie into the kitchen and watches her fill the kettle at the tap. ‘I just spoke to Dom,’ she says. ‘He still hasn’t looked at the clip of the Amelia girl. It’s so frustrating. I know the police are doing everything they can, but the more time passes the slower things seem to move. I just thought, you seem to have a different view on things. I mean, you found that video of Mimi,and being a detective novelist …’ She smiles wryly. ‘I don’t know, there are just some bits and pieces that I’ve been trying to put together in my head. Flashes of stuff.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, like, you know, the day after they went missing, I went to talk to Tallulah’s college friend, her name’s Chloe, she lives just over there on the road out of the village. Church Lane. I always thought she and Tallulah were really close friends. There was one night when Tallulah even slept over with her because she thought Chloe was feeling suicidal. So she was obviously the first person I’d think of to ask. Tallulah didn’t have many friends, you know. She was so wrapped up with Noah – and with Zach too, to a certain extent. Anyway, I spoke to Chloe and she said not only were she and Tallulah not really friends any more, she also told me that Tallulah had never spent the night at her house, and that Tallulah had gone off with Scarlett Jacques at the Christmas party the year before. Yet Scarlett was so adamant that she and Tallulah hadn’t really known each other before that night. And then, just now, just before I messaged you, I remembered something. Something that didn’t really hit me at the time. I’d been to see the Jacques family the day before and Scarlett had just got out of the pool and she was sitting in a towel and I noticed, just here’ – Kim points at the side of her foot – ‘she had a tattoo and it was very clearly the initials TM.’
Sophie looks at Kim questioningly.
‘TM. Tallulah Murray. And now, you know, my head is spinning, replaying things, looking at everything from a different angle, because what if Tallulah and Scarlett were, you know, having an affair? And what if Zach had found out? And what ifit all came out that night, at Scarlett’s house. And what if—’ She stops. ‘Anyway. Things are happening. I know things are happening. The lever they found in the flower bed. I’m certain it’s got something to do with it. I know they’re trying to trace the Jacques family and I know lots and lots of things are happening, but it just feels like we’re getting so close now and I can’t push Dom any harder and I just really need someone to bounce off. There isn’t really anyone else, you know. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got friends. I’ve got my son. But I haven’t really got anyone else who might want to get sucked up into all of this with me. And I just wondered how you’d feel about maybe teaming up with me? I know that might sound a bit weird—’
‘No,’ Sophie interjects forcefully. ‘No, it doesn’t sound weird, not at all, it sounds great. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to help you but I didn’t want you to think I was being morbid or ghoulish.’
Kim smiles. ‘I would love for you to help me. I really would. And I thought it seems like you’re quite up on social media, that kind of thing? And maybe we could see what else we can find? Maybe see if we can’t get to the Jacques family before the police do?’