Page 72 of Breaking the Dark

Arthur turns back to her. “You need to deal with the stock, Pol. Get it in the car.”

She nods and gets her car key out of her bag. She goes into the garage, pings open the boot of her Audi Q3, and then fills it with the boxes. She puts the dogs on the back seat, throws on her Barbour, pulls on her Hunters. She sounds the horn for Arthur, who appears after a few seconds. He adds some boxes of paperwork to the pile in the boot, and then he straps himself into the passenger seat.

“Ready?” he says.

Polly nods and puts the car into gear, lifts the garage door with the remote, and then, just before they drive away, she selects the photograph of Clara’s little pink house that she captured a minute ago and sends it to Clara with the words Leave me alone, if you want me to leave you alone.

TWENTY-SIX

JESSICA TIPS THE uneaten popcorn down the waste disposal unit in the kitchen. Through the grimy windows, she sees the day growing dark and bruised. She thinks it must surely be near dinnertime. Shreds of things keep wafting through her thoughts, a sense of other places. She has a hotel room in the village, she knows that, but when she thinks of the hotel room she associates it with bad things, with feeling unhappy, with loneliness and dissatisfaction. She also knows that she has a home in New York, and a boyfriend named Luke who is the most beautiful man in the world. She knows all of these things, and yet they don’t feel real to her anymore. Nothing feels real apart from here and now, the moment. And the moment is just one long unending sensation of perfection and wonder. This house, her perfect body, her perfect face, Debra, food, pleasure, movies, joy. What more is there? What else matters?

Music plays in the background. It’s something Jessica vaguely remembers from her childhood, maybe from the soundtrack of a movie, she’s not sure. A harmonica, an uncertain smile. She dances as she makes herself a smoothie. She stares upward into the sparkles of the night and all she can think is Miranda. Miranda. Miranda.

At first, she wonders who Miranda is. Then she forgets to wonder.

A moment later something crashes through the music and the peace and the harmony. A doorbell chimes, loudly, insistently. The dogs on the grounds start barking crazily, and Debra peers into the kitchen and says, “Don’t worry, Jessica, we have some visitors at the front gate. You just relax.”

But Jessica can’t relax. The song she was singing has gone from her head, she can’t pick it up again. The atmosphere feels wrong. The wonder has gone. Why are the dogs barking? A memory pierces her consciousness, the dogs barking as she perches on a wall, worrying. What was she worrying about up there on the wall? A little girl? A little girl with stripy tights and a silver coat.

Her eyes drop to her belly, and she gasps.

The little girl in there.

Her baby?

Is she pregnant?

Her eyes go to the stairs and then an image of another girl is blasted like a rocket into her mind’s eye. This girl has wide eyes and lies in a small bed under a comforter. And where is she now? The feel of a window giving way under the power of Jessica’s foot, the taste of oily bile at the back of her throat, the weight of a person in her arms. And then—what?

They were on the ground. And the girl…Where is the girl?

Jessica can hear a conversation on an intercom between Debra and whoever is at the front gates. A woman’s voice: “…an anonymous call. Could we come in, please? We just need a minute of your time.”

“What’s this regarding?” Debra says stiffly.

“It’s regarding a missing person case. We’ve received an anonymous call which gives us reason to believe there may be a child being held here against her will.”

“What nonsense.”

“Well, that’s as may be, Miss Phipps, but we really do need to come in.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not going to be possible.”

“Miss Phipps, we have a warrant. I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter.”

There is a moment of silence, and then Jessica hears Debra sigh and say, “On what grounds did you get this warrant?”

“On the grounds that new information has shown us that the IP address associated with the Instagram account that Grace Partridge was in contact with before her disappearance was in this location. Now we will require you to allow us access immediately. And you will need to bring your dogs under control.”

Jessica hears the sigh of Debra’s breath on the intercom. “Fine,” she says, “but you’ll have to give me a minute or two to put the dogs away.”

Jessica gets to her feet and peers around the kitchen door into the entrance hall. She sees Debra pull on rubber boots and a big coat and head out into the grounds, and the sound of the door slamming closed behind her jolts the final shards of confusion from Jessica’s mind, and suddenly she is free. Her mind reshapes, her body hardens, and she feels her blood quicken, her senses awaken.

The girl is upstairs. She’s named Grace Partridge, and Debra is keeping her prisoner here under some kind of mind or drug control. Jessica has already tried to rescue her and been stopped somehow, she cannot remember how. And now the police are here, and Debra seems unperturbed, as if she has nothing to hide, and at this thought, Jessica’s heart lurches and she takes the steps three at a time up to Grace’s room, hurtles around the corner, and is about to fling open the bedroom door when the cat appears directly at her feet.

The ancient feline stares at her, dispassionately, with his swirling golden eyes. She tries to step over him, but he keeps putting himself in her path.

“Come on, dude,” she says. “I have something I need to do.”

---