Page 69 of Breaking the Dark

Her customers are addicted to them, but still there’s only so far Polly can go before she gets caught out. She’s constantly watching her back, living in a state of adrenaline-fueled paranoia. Panic every time someone DMs her with too many technical questions. Panic every time the phone rings with an unknown number, or the doorbell goes. She hadn’t thought about any of this when she started out three years ago. All she’d wanted to do was get her hands on Ophelia’s recipe, get her to show her how to make that magic cream, and then give it to people, watch their faces when they see how beautiful they look.

Now Polly has money. She and Arthur rent a small house in Farnham, a newbuild on a pretty estate within walking distance to town. She has designer things. She has two Havanese dogs. She has influence. She has Arthur. She is looking at a pony. She hasn’t decided about the pony yet, it’s a lot of time and she doesn’t have much time, her life is busy and buzzy. Her inboxes are full. People talk to her as if she’s powerful, important. Followers get overexcited when she replies to their messages. They tell her she’s beautiful. They are invested in her. They notice when she buys new things. They love her.

She’s poised, Polly knows, poised for great things.

But there’s this obstacle in her way.

The product itself is the obstacle.

She manages to forget about that sometimes, when John and Ophelia turn up in their little van with the boxes of pretty stock. For whole hours at a time she can believe it’s just face cream and that she is just a normal businesswoman. When she’s smiling into the camera for her followers, she can believe that she is just a bright-eyed girl from Portsmouth with big dreams, living her best life. In those moments, she forgets entirely about the things that are in these little pots of cream, about all of the darkness that is the backdrop to the whole operation.

She cannot rely on John and Ophelia forever, cannot forever keep them hostage to her whims. John is getting old; his bloodlust is diminishing. Ophelia is getting even older; her life force is evaporating. Polly has their son, but her hold over them grows weaker every day. Perhaps worse, her market is self-limiting because of the nature of the product. She will never take over the world selling to the world from behind secretive, closed doors. Polly needs to find the next thing, the thing that will take her out of the shadows and propel her into the spotlight. She just has to work out what it’s going to be.

Polly beams into the camera, her professionally whitened teeth gleaming on the screen in front of her. “There,” she says to her followers. “Look. Can you see that? My skin is perfect now. Literally perfect.”

TWENTY-FIVE

JESSICA AWAKENS ON a sofa. She sits up and stares around the room, which feels both strange and familiar. She’s in some kind of cottage, or, like, a farmhouse maybe. Shabby but kind of charming. Rose-print wallpaper. Twee watercolors. A view through a window of trees and rolling grounds. Then she jumps slightly at the sound of a voice coming from across the room. She turns and sees a woman. She has shiny dark hair with bangs, and wears an oversized turtleneck sweater over leggings and sheepskin slippers. In her hand is a big mug.

Debra, she thinks. She knows her. But who is she?

“Good morning, Jessica,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

Jessica considers the question for a moment and then realizes that she feels absolutely magnificent. “I feel great,” she says. “I feel…”

“Perfect?”

“Yeah,” says Jessica. “Yeah. Perfect. What…what time is it?”

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock. On Saturday.”

“Saturday? And yesterday was…”

“Friday. Yes, that’s correct.”

Jessica feels something about Friday slipping and sliding around her consciousness. Wasn’t something supposed to be happening? Wasn’t she supposed to be talking to someone? She feels the strange, faint outline of another place: a cozy room with a bed in it, another room across a courtyard filled with ladies drinking tea from pots and eating cakes off stands. It’s her hotel. But she feels like she was there a very, very long time ago; it’s like a distant memory. “Is it still October?”

“Yes. It’s still October. You got here last night.”

“It feels like longer.”

“Yes. It will feel like longer.”

“How do I know you?”

“You’re a friend of Belle’s.”

Belle, thinks Jessica. Belle. She knows who Belle is. She’s the pretty girl. The one in bed upstairs. She feels a warm feeling when she thinks of Belle. But then something dark flashes through her mind and she shudders. The sound of breaking glass. A woman’s voice in her ear. A hand, hard over her mouth. Blackness. Darkness. But as quickly as the shadow falls, it passes and she is back, right here in the moment, basking in the glow of a perfect, sunny Saturday.

Jessica sees Debra glance down at the hem of her jeans, which are mud and blood encrusted and ripped on one leg. Another image flashes through her mind: a sky full of stars, a dog at her heel, the pain of torn flesh, a ramshackle farmhouse.

“What happened?” she asks.

“Oh, just a misunderstanding with one of the pups. But you’ve healed amazingly quickly. Almost miraculous really, almost as if there never was any damage at all. Apart from your lovely jeans. But not to worry, I can get you a change of clothes.”

Jessica smiles at Debra. “That would be amazing.”

Debra passes her the big mug. “Here,” she says. “A nice cup of tea.”

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