Page 94 of Breaking the Dark

She throws open the passenger door and then turns in her seat to throw open the back door too. She’s in her shiny gray C5, freshly valeted so it smells like a summer meadow. They look uncertain, but then they see Polly in her oversized sunglasses, her carefully applied makeup, her Dyson Airwrapped hair, and she hits them with her biggest, loveliest smile.

“Oh my God, girls! It’s so good to meet you! Get in. Get in. Wow!”

They do as they’re told, as Polly knew they would. She has spent over a year getting them to trust her, after all.

Polly takes all the back roads, to avoid cameras, and an hour later they arrive at the house. The girls are chatty and breathless. Polly can almost smell the adrenaline on them. They are excited and terrified in equal measure, and they are right to be.

When they pull up in front of the house, Polly can see that they are disappointed. It’s not what they were expecting, but there hasn’t been time to renovate and when they get indoors, Polly will show the girls the plans “Peach” has for the house that will replace this one, the house that will be 80 percent glass with a two-level indoor pool and waterfall, a home cinema, six en suite bedrooms, a circular kitchen that’s eighty feet across.

The girls squeal when they see Debra’s dogs and fall to their knees to greet them. The dogs jump and lick and wag, and Polly says, “They’ll be your friends forever!” but does not tell them that with one small command, those six dogs would rip them all limb from limb.

One of the girls looks up at Polly. “Where is she?” she asks, brightly.

Polly gives her a quizzical look.

“Peach. Is she here?”

Polly smiles. “Not at the moment. No. But she should be here soon. In the meantime, you girls must be hungry.”

She looks up at Ophelia, who is watching the girls with a sad glint in her eye.

“This is Debra,” she says. “Debra is the custodian of the house. She’s here to look after you all, feed you, keep you safe and cozy. Debra, this is Grace, Audrey, and Amina.”

Ophelia fixes a welcoming smile onto her face as the three girls turn to look at her. “Hello, girls,” she says. “You must be hungry. Anyone want some spaghetti? I’ve made a Bolognese sauce. But I have pesto too, if any of you are vegetarian.”

The girls get to their feet and cluster around Ophelia, drawn to her by her maternal warmth, the warmth that Polly does not exude and does not possess. Ophelia pours them drinks and tells them where to put their things, and Polly sits at the kitchen table and watches them carefully, checks for signs of nerves or regrets, checks that none of them will think better of their decision and try to persuade the others to leave.

But the girls look happy and relaxed. They join her at the table and Ophelia gives them cheese puffs in a bowl. They chatter about their lives. They talk about how much they hate school, and they talk about how much they love Peach.

One of the girls, Amina, takes her phone out of her pocket and looks at it, absentmindedly. Then she narrows her eyes and looks up at Polly and says, “Is there a Wi-Fi code?”

Polly smiles. “Sorry. We haven’t had the Wi-Fi installed yet.”

Amina’s face falls slightly. “Oh,” she says. “But there’s no 4G here.”

“No, we’re a bit technologically challenged here.”

“But how does Peach do her social media?”

“She goes into town.” Polly smiles tightly, wanting to move the conversation on.

“Is that where she is now? In town?”

“Maybe,” says Polly. “Probably.”

Amina nods, but Polly can feel a wave of discomfort passing through the girls. She jumps to her feet. “Hey, girls,” she says. “Want to try out some new samples?”

She grabs the tote bag hanging from the door handle and reaches into it, pulls out small pots of the creams that she and Ophelia made especially for today. They decanted the cream into her old Beauty X packaging; these girls are too young to remember when she was selling her brand online. She passes the pots around and says, “Go on, try these. I swear this is the most amazing serum I have ever used. Just look…” She turns her face towards them so that they can see the poreless finish of her complexion. “I’m thirty, you know.”

She lets this sit with the girls and waits for the inevitable responses of “No way” and “I thought you were twenty” to erupt, which they do, immediately, and then she unscrews the lids of the pots and hands them around. The girls use the front cameras on their phones to apply the creams and Polly watches them, her mouth hard, praying that this stuff does what Ophelia promised her it would do.

And there it is, a few moments later, the energy in the room has changed, the girls are dreamy. Polly sees the edges of their worlds start to soften and fray. They look wide-eyed, slightly confused. The cream will make their skin look good, but it will also make them compliant and biddable. It will warp their perception of time and place. They will know that there is another life they once lived, but they won’t be able to get a grip on what exactly it was. They will start to form thoughts that unravel as quickly as they begin. They will do as they’re told and be happy all the time.

And whatever Ophelia engineered into this cream—and truly, Polly has no idea what’s in it—it will make them feel perfect. So perfect that they will never want to leave. Not even when the bad things start happening to them.

THIRTY-SEVEN

JESSICA STEPS INTO Luke’s hallway to take the rest of Frank’s call, ignoring Luke’s wide-eyed beseeching gaze as she goes.

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