Spoilers and Plot Summary for The Night She Disappeared

Have you read The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell? Need a summary of that time-jumping plot? A list of characters? Want to discuss the ending of The Night She Disappeared? Come check out my Spoilers and Plot Summary for The Night She Disappeared!

Spoilers and Plot Summary for the Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

Below is a list of characters, a plot summary and my spoilers for The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell. To help you find what you need in this post, here is a list of the different sections – feel free to click on the one you need OR just read the whole post if you like. Since a time-jumping plot line can be confusing, I have separated the plot summaries into 2017 and 2018. Check my post out and then let’s discuss!

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List of Characters in the Night She Disappeared

Plot Summary for the events of 2017, the past plot line of The Night She Disappeared

Plot Summary for the events of 2018, the present plot line of The Night She Disappeared

Epilogue for the Night She Disappeared

Spoiler Discussion and Questions for The Night She Disappeared

List of Characters in The Night She Disappeared

Kim – 39 year old mother of Tallulah and grandmother of Noah.

Tallulah – Kim’s nineteen year old daughter and mother of baby Noah.

Noah – Tallulah’s baby

Zach – Tallulah’s on-and-off boyfriend and Noah’s father

Ryan – Kim’s son and Tallulah’s brother

Sophie – mystery writer who has just moved from London to live in the country near the Maypole School.

Shaun – Sophie’s partner and the new head teacher at Maypole School.

Scarlett – former Maypole School student and friend of Tallulah from college. Tallulah and Zach were at her house before they disappeared.

Joss – Scarlett’s mother

Rex – Scarlett’s brother

Kerryanne – Matron at Maypole House. Mother of Lexie.

Mimi – friend of Scarlett who was at Scarlett’s house the night Tallulah and Zach disappeared.

Lexie – daughter of Kerryanne. A travel blogger who was also at Scarlett’s that night.

Liam – was at Scarlett’s house with Tallulah and Zach. He now teaches at Maypole.

Ruby – a friend of Scarlett

Chloe– Tallulah’s childhood friend 

Jacinta – former head of Maypole School

Guy – Jacinta’s husband. She thinks he left her and ran off, but he was actually killed by Liam after Scarlett said she attacked him.

Nick – owner of the Swan & Ducks, the local pub and the place Tallulah and Zach were the night they vanished. Kim started working there after the disappearance.

Megs – Zach’s mother

Plot Summary for the events of 2017 in The Night She Disappeared

Kim is babysitting her grandson Noah. Her teenage daughter, Tallulah, recently resumed her relationship with Zach, the baby’s father, and the two of them went to their local pub for an evening our. Tallulah texts and says they’ve run into some of her college friends and are going over to their place for an hour. But Tallulah never comes home. 

Kim and Zach’s mom try to reach their children and find out that the two of them left the pub with a girl named Scarlett. Kim reaches Scarlett, who says that Tallulah and Zach left her house, “Dark Place,” at 3 am to get a cab home.  Kim also talks to Lexie, Kerryanne’s daughter, who was also there that night.  Kim suspected Zach was going to propose to Tallulah and wonders if she turned him down and he got violent. She decides to call the police.

Kim talks to Mimi, Scarlett’s friend, who says that Tallulah and Zach seemed to be fighting before they disappeared. Kim then speaks to Nick, the bartender at the pub, who says he thinks the Maypole kids that Tallulah met up with were into drugs. She speaks to Tallulah’s friend Chloe, who says there was something “off” about Scarlett. Kim also learns that Tallulah lied to her back in February, saying she was sleeping over with Chloe when she wasn’t.

Backstory on Tallulah and Scarlett

Tallulah had been feeling annoyed by Zach’s constant presence in her life. One day when Zach was finally out of the house, she told her mom she was going to Chloe’s and biked to Dark Place. Scarlett showed her the secret tunnel and she confided in Scarlett about her souring feelings toward Zach.

Tallulah asked Scarlett not to tell anyone about their relationship. Scarlett became more obsessed with Tallulah and got Tallulah’s initials tattooed on her ankle. Zach talked to Tallulah about getting a flat together and she started to feel more and more trapped. Tallulah started a relationship with Scarlett and lied to Zach and her mother so she can sneak out and meet Scarlett at Dark Place.

Tallulah wanted to tell Scarlett about Noah and to tell Zach about Scarlett. But one day when she got to Dark House, she found that Scarlett had obviously been fooling around with Liam, her ex.

Tallulah stopped speaking to Scarlett after that, but ran into her one day when she was out with Noah. Scarlett is entranced with Noah. Tallulah told Scarlett that if Zach found out about their secret relationship, he’d kill her. Tallulah then told Zach she wanted to break up with him but he menacingly he told her he wasn’t going anywhere.

Tallulah promised Scarlett that she was going to leave Zach. Scarlett confides in her that, when she was a student at Maypole, she had an affair with Jacinta’s husband. She broke it off but he wanted to leave his wife for her and one day snuck up on her in the woods and raped her.

Tallulah found the engagement ring that Zach intended to give her. She told Scarlett that he was definitely going to propose. That she wished he would disappear.

What happened to Zach and Tallulah?

Scarlett and her friends joined Zach and Tallulah at the pub. Scarlett invited them to a pool party at her house. Tallulah, suddenly feeling worried about confronting Zach, wanted to go home but Zach insisted they go to Dark Place. There, Tallulah tells Zach about her relationship with Scarlett. He’s upset and said he’ll take Noah away. Scarlett hits Zach in the back of the head, killing him. Scarlett’s mother Joss comes in and tells them they need to hide Zach in the secret tunnel under the house. Joss also drugs Tallulah, who wakes up in the tunnel with Zach’s body. Tallulah wants to go to the police but Joss tells Tallulah she’ll be arrested and never get to see her son. Joss smuggles Tallulah out of the country with her son’s girlfriend’s ID and keeps her drugged and a prisoner.

Plot Summary for the events of 2018 in The Night She Disappeared

Sophie and her partner Shaun have arrived at Maypole House, part of a boarding school where Shaun has taken a teaching job. Their new cottage backs up into some woods. Sophie, a mystery writer, is a little nervous to leave London. Her relationship with Shaun, a divorced dad of two, is still new.

Outside their cottage, Sophie finds a piece of cardboard nailed to a fence with an arrow and the words “Dig Here” on it.

Sophie and Shaun have drinks with Kerryanne, who warns her about wandering in the woods and mentions a local missing persons case from the prior year. Sophie searches online and finds an article about the missing teens, Tallulah and Zach. She rides her bike up to Dark Place, the now-abandoned house where the couple was last seen on the night they disappeared. She goes home and decides to dig where the arrow points, finding a box with an engagement ring inside. 

At a party at Maypole, Sophie meets Shaun’s new colleagues, including Liam, a young teacher who was at Scarlett’s house the night the couple disappeared.

Sophie takes the ring she found to the jewelry store stamped on the case. The jeweler tells her it was bought by Zach. Shocked, Sophie shows the ring to Kim.

Sophie asks Liam to show her around the woods. She researches the Dark Place and finds that it was rumored to have an escape tunnel that runs from the Dark Place to Maypole School. Liam tells Sophie that he was in love with Scarlett and they were together for over a year, until she told him she just wanted to be friends. He said at the pool party he felt there was a strange vibe between Zach and Tallulah.

Kim calls the police and tells them about the ring that Sophie found. The police arrive to look at the sign in the woods but it has vanished.

Kim thinks it’s strange and suspicious that Scarlett and her family and Scarlett’s friend Mimi all seemed to go into hiding after Tallulah and Zach vanished. She suggests the police talk to Liam.

Sophie goes to talk to Jacinta, the former head of Maypole House. Jacinta who points out that everyone at Dark Place the night Tallulah and Zach disappeared was associated with the school. She tells Sophie about the tunnel and that rumor had it that Scarlett and Tallulah were involved. She says Liam was also in love with Scarlett and that Scarlett’s family was “awful.” Jacinta also mentions her husband Guy, who’d confessed to an affair and then run off one day and never come back.

Zach’s mom Megs calls Kim and they discuss the engagement ring that Sophie found. Megs suggests that perhaps Zach wasn’t Noah’s father, upsetting Kim.

Kerryanne tells Sophie that there is another “dig here” sign, spotted by her daughter Lexie. The police dig and find a metal tool, a lever.

Sophie realizes the “dig here” signs are from her own book. She finds Scarlett’s friend Mimi’s social media where Mimi mentions a traumatic event the year before.

Kim and Sophie decide to team up and investigate.

Sophie and Kim find social media accounts for Scarlett, Lexie and Ruby. They confront Lexie, who says she doesn’t follow Scarlett on social media but that her mom has her Instagram password. They see a copy of Sophie’s book in her room. Sophie goes to talk to Liam and sees some of Scarlett’s artwork. One painting includes images of a secret room and a metal lever. 

Sophie confronts Lexie who admits she knows who buried the ring.

The police find the hidden tunnel in the Dark House and report that there are human remains in the tunnel. Kim comes to expect the worst.

Mimi, in an interview with the police, says that she suspected that Scarlett and Tallulah were in a relationship. She claims that the night Tallulah disappeared, she was fighting with Zach, then shouting at Scarlett. When Mimi left the house that night, she found the engagement ring and took it with her. Later, Lexie told Mimi that Scarlett and her mother and brother were in hiding, and Mimi gave the ring to Lexie.

Liam, in an interview with the police, says that he has never seen the metal lever that was buried in the woods.

Lexie, in an interview with police, admits she knew where Scarlett was and suspected she had something to do with Tallulah and Zach’s disappearance. She says when found out that Sophie was coming to Maypole, she ordered her books, and read the part about someone burying an object in the garden. She says this gave her the idea to bury the ring, but claims to have never seen the lever before.

Tallulah is rescued from the house where Scarlett’s family has been keeping her drugged and imprisoned. She is reunited with her mother and Noah.

Sophie, traveling in Europe for work, gets a text from Kim that Tallulah has been found. In a media interview, she talks about the case and resolves to leave both Maypole House and her relationship with Shaun.

Scarlett confesses to Zach’s murder but says she was defending Tallulah from him.

Epilogue for The Night She Disappeared

Liam is at Dark Place. He walks around, remembering the day Scarlett summoned him after she’d been raped. He remembers realizing that Scarlett’s rapist was Guy Croft, Jacinta’s husband. He beat Guy to death and he and Scarlett hid Guy’s body in the tunnel. A year after Zach’s death, Scarlett called again and asked Liam to get rid of both Guy’s and Zach’s body for her, and then dispose of the lever to the tunnel. Liam does go down into the tunnel and set Guy’s body on fire, but because he feels used by Scarlett and angry about her dumping him for Tallulah, he decides to leave Zach’s body where it is. He decides to keep the lever.

Spoiler Discussion and Questions for The Night She Disappeared

I liked The Night She Disappeared. For me, it was a story of two women, Tallulah and Sophie, trying to find their way out of relationships that weren’t right for them. To be fair, Tallulah leaves one bad relationship (with Zach) for an arguably worse one (with Scarlett). And Sophie’s partner Shaun doesn’t seem like a bad guy, but she realizes that she’s not cut out for country life and being the wife of a teacher.

I thought Scarlett was a complex and interesting character. Her parents seem very narcissistic, and Jacinta called that entire family a “gang of narcissists.” Scarlett uses people (Ruby, Mimi, Lexie, Tallulah, and especially Liam) to get what she wants. She lets her mother imprison Tallulah when she probably could have summoned help.But as a rape victim and the child of narcissistic parents, she’s also sympathetic, unless she wasn’t telling the truth about what happened with Guy.

Were you surprised that Tallulah was alive? I wasn’t, because Lisa Jewell had similar plot line in two other books, one about a girl held prisoner, and another in which a character was missing but just hiding. She seems to like plots where people are missing and found, and I’m all for that!

Did you like the jumpy timeline? I often don’t like those, but this worked for me. For some reason I could keep it all straight.

Did you think it was weird that Sophie didn’t realize the “Dig Here” sign was from her OWN BOOK? I mean, she hadn’t written that many books.

Other questions? Comments? Thoughts? Leave a comment and be sure to subscribe to comments so you can see other people’s replies!

Want to see a full list of my spoiler discussion posts? Come over to The Armchair Book Club!