The Night She Disappeared

One of the primary themes of this novel is class—something much more codified and cemented in England than in the US. This important theme is woven throughout the text in subtle yet meaningful ways. Tallulah, Zack, and others in their orbit are lower-middle class—they don’t have access to the privileges of the upper class, like the Maypole students. In a class above everyone are Scarlett and her extremely wealthy family. Scarlett's riches make her attractive and unlikeable; insecure about his social standing, Zach negatively characterizes Scarlett as a snob, and Tallulah’s friend Chloe Minter doesn’t hide her snide disgust for Scarlett’s power over her friends.

Even Tallulah has a problem with regular wealth. She stereotypes the rich Maypole kids as attention-seeking: “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 local rich-kid hair” (27). Similarly, she dismisses Maypole as a school for “rich kids with drug abuse problems” (27). However, even Tallulah can’t help but admire Scarlett’s over-the-top lifestyle. She is seduced and tantalized by Scarlett’s family money and fantasizes about the “hamlets near Upfield Common [with] private driveways leading to the sorts of big houses that […] Scarlett must live in” (102).

Scarlett’s enormous wealth puts her family outside of reality—and almost above the law. The novel condemns not just the extravagant lifestyle this kind of money affords but also the way it cuts Scarlett’s family off from empathy and encourages cold, calculating, and selfish behavior. For Scarlett, this means using the people around her and manipulating them for attention. More chillingly, for her mother Joss, this means brushing Zach’s murder under the rug and kidnapping and drugging Tallulah without remorse. In the novel, wealthy people lack scruples and ethical standards in their own lives. Only Scarlett, by finally confessing, shows the possibility of redemption.