the night she disappeared lisa jewell synopsis

But as she approaches him, the moonlight catches the curve of his cheek and she sees his eyes light up at the sight of her, hears his breath catch with relief that someone has come, and sees his arms reach up to her. Kim goes upstairs to Noah’s cot, her heart heavy with the prospect of another hour of rocking and soothing and sighing and whispering in the dark while the moon hangs out there in the balmy midsummer sky, which still holds pale smudges of daylight, and the house creaks emptily and other people sit in pubs. Then, as she’s typing a reply, another message follows immediately. Mum, there’s some ppl here from college, they asked us back to theirs. Noah’s crying has kicked in properly now and Kim sighs and gets to her feet.Īs she does so her phone buzzes with a text message. They split up while Tallulah was pregnant and got back together again about six months ago with Zach pledging to be the best dad in the world. It’s the first time they’ve been out as a couple since before Noah was born. She slipped Zach a twenty-pound note as they were leaving and told them to have fun. They’ve gone to the very pub that Kim would normally be sitting in tonight.

Noah sleeps between them in Tallulah’s double bed and Kim puts in her earplugs and plays some white noise on her smartphone and is generally saved from the nighttime cacophony of Noah’s sleeplessness.īut tonight Zach has taken Tallulah out on what they’re calling a “date night,” which sounds strangely middle-aged for a pair of nineteen-year-olds. But he does not like to sleep and Kim finds this darkly stressful.Īt the moment Tallulah and Noah live here with Kim, alongside Zach, Noah’s father.

The night she disappeared lisa jewell synopsis