The Night She Disappeared

Tallulah wakes up feeling groggy and realizes she is tied up. Scarlett calls Joss, who explains that they have to hide Tallulah, implying that it was Tallulah who killed Zach. Tallulah is too drugged to know what the truth is, but some part of her knows it was Scarlett. Joss tells Tallulah that they are taking a private plane to their boat. If Tallulah goes home she will be arrested. The police are watching them, so Tallulah has to pretend she is Scarlett’s brother’s girlfriend. Joss promises they will have her back home soon.

In his police interview with Dom, Liam explains his history with Scarlett. When Dom about the strange tool in the painting, Liam says it’s a knife. Dom shows Liam the actual tool and asks him if he knows what it is. Liam has no idea.

As Joss and Scarlett pack for the trip, Scarlett tells Tallulah that the police are hunting for her and that her mom is putting together a legal team: “A few more weeks and we’ll be able to go home. Just let us look after you for now. Just lets us keep you safe” (370). Scarlett’s father is trying to corrupt the police investigation.

Tallulah doesn’t care about the police. She just wants to get back to her mom and her son. Joss bundles Tallulah up; Tallulah is never quite conscious: She “is in a netherworld where things happen but she forgets them almost immediately” (370). Tallulah tells herself that she’s done everything wrong. She tries to hang on so she can get back to her mom and Noah.

Lexie tells the police that Scarlett told her they were leaving on the boat to escape her abusive father, though Lexie never believed it. She now thinks Scarlett had something to do with Zach and Tallulah’s disappearance and they are hiding out on the boat to get away from the police. Lexie admits that she made the sign and buried the ring but claims she had nothing to do with the strange tool. She lied about where she saw the second sign because when she spotted it, she was with her lover—a married teacher. She refuses to say who the teacher is.

Tallulah wakes up. She looks out at the gray ocean all around her. Her hands and feet are tied. Suddenly, she knows that everything they’ve been telling her is a lie. She is not being kept safe. Scarlett is slowly losing the fight with her mom to keep Tallulah alive. Tallulah feels doomed to be “taken to the farthest point from her own mother and her son and her home, to be dropped, dispatched, disappeared” (378).

Kim is waiting for news when Dom calls: They’ve located the yacht. Working with Interpol, they traced the flight that Scarlett and her family took to their boat. Most importantly, they believe that Scarlett and her family have Tallulah.

Tallulah knows that every bit of food that Scarlett brings her is laced with a sedative. Every time Scarlett is late with it, Tallulah goes into painful withdrawal. One day, she hears something that sounds like an electric saw. The engines of the boat grind to a halt. From above she hears a loudspeaker, ordering Scarlett and her mom and brother to stand on deck with their arms raised. Several men enter Tallulah’s room to take her to safety. As they go up on deck, Tallulah sees napkins and comfortable chairs, wine glasses, and a lovely salad. She is incensed that while she was kept locked up below deck they were actually enjoying themselves. Scarlett mouths the words, “I love you,” but Tallulah turns away, indifferent—“the person who once loved Scarlett Jacques has gone forever” (283).

Sophie is on a promotional tour when Kim texts her that Tallulah has been found. When someone in the audience asks Sophie what’s next, she opens up about betraying herself by giving up London to move to the country. She describes becoming her private investigator character and the crime she solved. And as she speaks, she realizes that must return to London with or without Shaun. She wants to “start writing about the wide world, not just one corner of it” (387).

A newspaper article in The Times explains that Tallulah was kidnapped by three members of the wealthy Jacques family for a year, and that the remains of her boyfriend were found in a tunnel beneath their mansion. Tallulah was hospitalized to recover from the drug the Jacques family had been giving her. All three members of the family were arrested.

Kim, Noah, Ryan, and Tallulah’s dad are getting ready to fly to the army base hospital where Tallulah is being taken. Kim thinks of Megs, who has never called.

Joss first told police she had no idea where Zach was and that she and the children were enjoying a gap year on the yacht. When they told Joss they’d found Zach’s body in the tunnel, her story changed, and she blamed his death on Tallulah. Scarlett went along with this for a little while, but then confessed the truth. She explained that Zach had threatened to take Noah away from Tallulah.

Liam is walking around Dark Place. It smells like blood and death. He remembers when Scarlett called him, desperate: “When she needed him, he came to life, like a marionette taken out of a box” (393). She told him she’d been raped, but she wouldn’t tell him who raped her. Liam took the job at Maypole House to stay close to Scarlett. One day, Liam saw Guy Croft walk to Dark Place. Scarlett told Guy him to leave, but Guy pushed his way into her house. She screamed. Liam raced over, pulled Guy off her, and beat him to death.

There was a time Liam would have done anything for Scarlett. Even now, he’s at Dark Place because she called him. She told him what happened that night at the party and asked him to get the lever—it’s buried where he killed Guy. Scarlett begged him to get rid of everything and make it okay for her to come back, telling him that her mom is crazy: “She’s gone mad and she’s drugging me, and I’m scared I’m going to die out here” (396).

Liam finds the lever, opens the tunnel, and goes inside. He pours gasoline on Guy Croft’s body and sets it on fire. He realizes that Scarlett only uses people, himself included. Angrily, he admits that she has ruined his life. Just when he was about to go back to his father’s farm, she called him back. After he killed Guy Croft, he and Scarlett made love in a way that made him cry. Now he has nothing. Liam decides not to get rid of Zach’s body as he promised. He puts the lever in his back pocket and leaves.