Page 52 of Breaking the Dark

Jessica looks upward into the sky, which is a soft, creamy blue. “Yeah,” she agrees. “It is.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Oh, just going to do some research.”

He nods dismissively and says, “Listen, I don’t suppose you’re free tonight, are you? Me and the wife, we’re, well…in all honesty, we’re going through a bit of a rough patch, and she’s gone to stay at her mum’s and I’m not very good with my own company. You know. It’d be nice to have someone to share the evening with.”

He has the grace to flush slightly as he speaks, and Jessica considers him through narrowed eyes. “You literally just told me two nights ago that you were happily married. What happened?”

“Well, I’d only just met you, I wasn’t going to come straight out and tell you all my personal problems, was I?”

Jessica pushes out her bottom lip and concedes his point with a nod. “I guess,” she says, still nodding, trying to play nice. “But yeah, listen, I’m not really here for that kind of a thing, you know? There’s a lot going on in my life right now and I need to keep my decks well and truly…” She describes a straight line with the edge of her hand. “But thank you, Gavin. I’ll see you around.”

She throws him what she really hopes is a kind smile, but she is also aware that kind smiles aren’t a part of her physical repertoire, and sure enough Gavin’s face drops, and he says, “You didn’t have to be so patronizing. I was only trying to be friendly.”

Jessica breathes in hard, holding back the urge to really show him patronizing, acutely aware of Gavin’s slumped shoulders, his mop, his bucket, his scruffy tracksuit, his tiny, punctured ego deflating on the sidewalk behind her as she walks away from him.

Fifteen minutes out of the village, just a short walk from Sebastian’s house, Jessica finds the tall rusty gate and the sign naming THE OLD FARMHOUSE that she’d seen on Street View earlier. There’s a button next to the gate and she considers for a moment that she could just press it, see what sort of welcome she gets as an unexpected visitor, but her instincts tell her that the welcome would not be warm, so she follows the wall of the grounds for a while as it turns a corner into a tiny lane. About a quarter mile up this stretch of the perimeter she sees a section of the wall built lower to accommodate a bowed-over tree. It’s low enough for her to clear it in a way that would get the locals talking if anybody saw her doing it, and she is about to gear herself up for the maneuver, to engage the engines, pull on the invisible throttle that lives inside her, when she remembers what else may currently be living inside her and her hand instinctively goes to her stomach.

Should she, she wonders, not be doing this anymore? Is it up there with drinking alcohol and going on roller coasters as a thing that a newly pregnant lady should not be doing?

It is not advisable to engage your super-powers in the first trimester.

She feels quite sure that Google does not have an answer to this particular conundrum, and so she again has to trust her instincts, and her instincts tell her that this wall is not that high and that a really fit person could probably manage it without super-powers, and thus so can she. She hooks the toe of her boot into a nick in the surface, pushes up to where she can grab the top of the wall with both hands, and then pulls herself up until she’s crouching like a large raptor ready to take flight. A second later she lands, soft, limber, strong, on the grass on the other side. And that is when she hears it. The terrible sound of a pack of dogs approaching.

They appear through the overgrown grass as a blur of fur and flesh and teeth and gums and she turns and grabs hold of the branches of the nearest tree, pulls herself as high as she can get, and stares down into their open jaws, adrenaline ripping through her veins, pumping through her head till her eyeballs throb.

“Oh my God, shit,” she says to herself, her hand held to her thumping heart. “Down, boys. Just back the hell off.”

But the more she talks to them the louder they bark, the higher their lips creep up their gums, the more their gigantic bat ears lie flat against their gigantic heads. And then suddenly, as quickly as the noise began, it stops, and a girl appears behind the dogs, making strange clicky sounds with her tongue against her teeth. The six dogs swarm around her, panting loudly, wet tongues lolling from frothy lips.

The girl is wearing an oversized military-style coat with metal buttons, and a red knitted hat with a bobble on it. She peers up into the branches of the tree and smiles widely at Jessica.

“Hi!” she says. “Who are you?”

Jessica peers down at her. “My name’s Jessica. What the hell are those things?”

“They’re dogs.”

“No, I mean what breed? They look like wolves.”

“No. They are Belgian Malinois.”

“Fancy,” says Jessica. “Am I safe to come down now?”

“Of course. Here.” She moves toward her. “Do you need a hand?”

“No,” says Jessica, navigating the branches until she is low enough to jump. “I’m good.”

The girl stares at her, a small smile playing on her mouth, then puts out a hand. “Belle. Nice to meet you.”

Jessica’s heart jumps. This is her. This is perfect Belle. Except she doesn’t look perfect, she just looks…normal.

Jessica takes her hand. “Nice to meet you too.”

The girl smiles coolly at her. “So…what brings you over my wall?”

“I, er…well, it’s kind of crazy, but I’m researching a novel and I saw this place on a map and thought it looked kind of cool. Sorry. I didn’t know anyone lived here.”

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