The Night She Disappeared

Thirty-four-year-old mystery writer Sophie and her older boyfriend Shaun have just moved to the country: He has been hired as the new lead teacher at Maypole House, a school for wayward kids of wealthy parents. Sophie thinks of it as “A school for failures” (10).

Shaun used to work at a big public school in London, but took the job at Maypole because his ex-wife Pippa sent their twins to an expensive private school and Shaun is expected to pay half the cost. Shaun and Sophie had only been dating six months when Shaun invited her to move in with him in the country. Her first instinct was to say no, but she talked herself into it, imagining the country will be the perfect place for writing. Also, deep down, she recognizes that she will soon be 35 and maybe it’s a good idea to settle down with someone.

As Sophie walks around Maypole’s beautiful campus, her eyes are caught by something nailed to the fence: a cardboard sign that reads, “Dig here” (15). She has seen the words before, but she can’t remember where.

Kim is worried. She takes Noah and heads for Zach’s mom Megs’s house, but Megs and her husband Simon aren’t worried that Tallulah and Zach are missing. Still, Megs calls Nick, the bartender at the pub where Tallulah and Zach were. Nick tells Megs that they left the pub in a car with a young woman named Scarlett. Megs is nonchalant about the kids being late.

Scarlett wishes she and Megs could be closer, but Megs doesn’t like Tallulah and Zach being together. When Noah was born, Megs “backed off completely for a while, barely visiting Noah and acting like a distracted aunt when she did” (18).

Back at home, Kim rifles through Tallulah’s things. She finds Scarlett’s number in a stack of papers and sends her a text. Scarlett calls Kim back, tells her that Tallulah and Zach were drunk and took a cab home. Scarlett calls Tallulah “Lula” (20). Scarlett tells Kim that she didn’t know Tallulah very well—she didn’t even know that Tallulah had a son. When Kim hangs up, her son Ryan suggests going to Scarlett’s house, a manor house called Dark Place.

Sophie is getting ready for a visit from Shaun’s twins Jack and Lily, who are coming in two weeks. Kerryanne, the matron of Maypole, pays a visit. Sophie asks Kerryanne where she might take the twins for some entertainment, and Kerryanne invites her and Shaun over for drinks.

When Sophie asks about the thick woods at the end of the school, Kerryanne warns her not to go too far into them because they are tangled and dark: “You’ll get lost” (25.) Nearby, there is a small country village called Upley Fold; in it is a big ancient house called Dark Place that has been empty for the last year. The owner is a very wealthy hedge fund manager; his daughter Scarlett was a student at Maypole. There’s an old pool and tennis court that the kids at Maypole sometimes go to, but they often get lost and the police have to find them. Sophie finds this exciting. She thinks a place like that might inspire her writing.

At Manton College, where Tallulah is studying to become a social worker, she watches fellow student Scarlett Jacques with interest. Scarlett is tall, with blue hair and a tiny rainbow on her cheek. She is dressed in high top sneakers and shorts, and wears bulky jewelry. Tallulah is fascinated by the beautiful, eccentric Scarlett and the entourage of friends who swarm around her. Tallulah thinks she is just average looking; she is constantly worried about her saggy, post-baby stomach, and sometimes her breasts still leak milk. As Tallulah stares at Scarlett, Scarlett turns around and notices. Tallulah sees the slightest trace of a smile on Scarlett’s lips.

Kim and Ryan make their way to Upley Fold the day after Tallulah and Zach go missing. When they arrive at the giant house, they are speechless. According to Google, Dark Place was built in 1642, with additions made in 1721. It is a place where murder, corrupt power, and darkness ruled.

As they walk toward the house, a young man greets them and calls for his mom Joss. When Kim introduces herself to her and asks about Tallulah, Joss has no idea who she’s talking about. She’s never heard of Tallulah or Lula. Kim explains that Scarlett said Tallulah had been there and begins to cry. Joss leads Kim and Ryan to the pool; Scarlett, who is in the pool, repeats the same story she’d told Kim on the phone: Tallulah was sick, she and Zach called a cab, and that was the last Scarlett saw of them.

Kim wants to know why, if Scarlett didn’t know Tallulah, she would go to Scarlett’s house, but Scarlett explains that they know each other from school. Kim notices a tattoo on Scarlett’s foot—two small letters that she can’t quite make out.

Desperate, Kim asks for security footage of the night. Joss becomes evasive and the mood changes. Joss says she will have someone else look at it and if they see anything, they will call her.

Sophie comes from an athletic, outdoorsy family, so she takes a walk through the woods, despite Kerryanne’s warning. When Sophie gets out the other side, she sees a beautiful old mansion, uncared for as if abandoned. She wonders why a hedge fund manager, his beautiful wife, and his two children are gone. Where did they go? Why would they leave such a magnificent house behind to decay?

Tallulah is always tired. She goes to college and takes care of her son with her mom’s help. Tallulah and Zach had been together for three years, but when she got pregnant, he dumped her. Recently, though, he’s been trying to get back together, though Tallulah isn’t that interested. Kim urges her daughter to call him. She tells Tallulah he’s a nice kid and wonders why her daughter is hesitant.

Tallulah is waiting for the bus when Scarlett appears and strikes up a conversation. When the bus comes, Tallulah hopes Scarlett will sit with her, but Scarlett sees a friend in the back of the bus and goes to sit there.

Kim is afraid that something terrible happened to her daughter and Zach—maybe they had to walk through the woods after the cab didn’t show. She knows there was no cab because she checked with local cab companies and no taxi had ever been called.

Kim and Ryan spend two hours looking for Zach and Tallulah in the woods. They find nothing. When they emerge on the Maypole House campus, Kim remembers that Scarlett mentioned another party guest: Lexie, the daughter of Matron Kerryanne Mulligan. Kerryanne buzzes Kim and Ryan up, and Kim asks Lexie whether she saw anything related to Tallulah and Zach. But Lexie doesn’t know much: She tells Kim the evening began with everyone at the Swan and Ducks pub and ended after everyone went swimming in the pool at Dark Place. After Lexie left, the only people still there were Scarlett, Mimi, Tallulah, and Zach.

Kerryanne asks Kim whether Zach might have harmed Tallulah. Kim has wondered the same thing. The night before, Kim had found an engagement ring in Zach’s pocket—she had expected Tallulah would come home that night engaged to Zach. Kim would have been thrilled, but now she considers how Tallulah resisted getting back together with Zach and how she flinched when Zach touched her. What if Zach had proposed and Tallulah said no? Would he have hurt her?

Sophie and Shaun arrive at Kerryanne’s for drinks. Kerryanne is interested in Sophie’s writing. Sophie says she writes detective novels that Scandinavians love. Kerryanne’s daughter Lexie has ordered one of Sophie’s books already. Kerryanne tells Sophie if she wants an idea for a book, she can tell her a story about missing people and police looking for them, “Trawling through the woods” (54).

Sophie, whose pen name is PJ Fox, will soon be going to Denmark for a crime festival. She has a long itinerary, including a television interview. She sits down to work on her manuscript but can’t write. Instead, she searches the internet for “Maypole House” and “missing person” and finds an article about Tallulah and Zach. She also reads about a vigil and a burial that Kim held. Sophie feels “raw emotion pass through” her (57) when she pictures Tallulah’s mom mourning her daughter.