The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Jewell, Lisa. The Night She Disappeared. Penguin Random House, 2021.

The Night She Disappeared follows the interrelated stories of three women: Kim (whose daughter is missing), Tallulah (the missing daughter), and Sophie (a writer who moves into their neighborhood). The novel uses the present tense and a third-person point of view, shifting its focus between the three characters on a chapter-by-chapter basis, with a few disruptions to this pattern. Each storyline unfolds chronologically, but over different stretches of time. This means that much of the novel is non-linear, alternating back and forth until the stories eventually converge, concluding at the same point in time.

In Part One, Kim tries to find out what has happened to her teenage daughter Tallulah, who is missing along with her boyfriend Zach. They attended an impromptu party at the house of Tallulah’s friend Scarlett, but Kim cannot trace them any further. She has never heard of Scarlett before, or the grand mansion where she lives. One year on from the disappearance, Sophie arrives in the area, where her boyfriend is the new head teacher at an elite boarding school. Sophie becomes obsessed with the mystery after discovering an anonymous clue, which leads her to a missing ring that had belonged to Zach. The third strand of the narrative covers the months leading up to the couple’s disappearance. As a young but happy single mother dividing her time between her baby and college work, Tallulah lets Zach back into her life against her better judgment. She finds Scarlett fascinating, and Scarlett in turn takes an interest in Tallulah.

In Part Two, Scarlett shows Tallulah the entrance to a secret tunnel beneath her house. Zach becomes increasingly bossy and cruel towards Tallulah, who begins having an affair with Scarlett. A year passes by for Kim, who is grateful when Sophie discovers the ring, and the police recommence their investigations. Scarlett’s house is now empty, and no one knows where the family are. Sophie talks to the school’s previous headteacher, whose husband also went missing the year before. The school matron’s daughter comes across another anonymous tip-off, this time leading to a metal tool. No one knows what it is, but the reader will recognize it as the lever that opens the tunnel entrance at Scarlett’s house.

In Part Three, Scarlett tells Tallulah about her affair with the headteacher’s husband, who had raped her. Tallulah and Zach go to the pub. Tallulah knows that Zach is planning to propose, and she hopes that after a firm rejection he will finally give up on her. Sophie realizes that whoever is leaving the clues is taking inspiration from a book that she wrote years ago. Lexie (the matron’s daughter) and Liam (a teacher, and Scarlett’s ex-boyfriend) have both read the book, and both of them were at Scarlett’s house on the night that Tallulah and Zach disappeared. Sophie finds an online video in which Scarlett’s friend Mimi (who was also present) promises to make revelations. An angry response to this video leads Kim and Sophie to Scarlett, who is using a false online identity. In a painting by Scarlett, Sophie identifies the lever and its function.

At the start of Part Four, Zach and Tallulah are still at the pub, when Scarlett and her rowdy friends disrupt their date. Instead of helping Tallulah to break up with Zach, Scarlett invites them back to her house for a party. Later, at Scarlett’s house, Tallulah tells Zach that she is in love with Scarlett. Zach threatens to take their son away from her, at which Scarlett appears wielding a statuette, and kills him with a blow to the head. Scarlett’s mother helps the girls to get Zach into the tunnel, then she drugs Tallulah and hides her down there with him. The present-day chapters stick with Sophie rather than Kim, as the police retrieve Zach’s remains from the tunnel.

As well as continuing the narratives of Tallulah, Sophie and Kim, Part Five features police interviews with Liam, Lexie and Mimi. Scarlett and her mother smuggle Tallulah to Guernsey, and later onto a boat. They set sail incognito, keeping Tallulah bound and drugged below deck. Meanwhile, Mimi admits that she overheard enough at the party to suspect Scarlett’s guilt, but kept quiet until deciding to tell Lexie. Instead of informing the police, Lexie revived the investigation by planting the ring (which Mimi had taken from the crime scene) for Sophie to find. From photos that Scarlett has posted on the internet, the police are able to trace the boat, and bring Tallulah home. The epilogue reveals that Liam killed the headteacher’s husband. He later destroyed the evidence, but refused to do the same for Scarlett. The reader can infer that he also directed police to the lever, thereby completing his revenge on the girl he had once loved.