Page 20 of Breaking the Dark

And then finally, Malcolm leaves.

Twelve years ago

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

The girl waits and watches from the other side of the pier until Madame Ophelia emerges from her booth at the end of the day. The older woman pulls the door closed behind her, locks it up with a padlock, and tucks the key into her canvas shoulder bag.

Ophelia walks very slowly, which the girl finds frustrating as she herself is a fast walker. The woman and her shadow thread lugubriously through the backstreets of town, toward the shopping center, the evening light growing dark gold as the sun sets. The girl sees a friend she recognizes across the street and turns her head away before the other girl catches sight of her and tries to waylay her for a chat.

Ophelia stops outside an old-fashioned shoe shop on the high street. A young man is outside the shop locking up the doors. He turns when he sees Ophelia and smiles. She smiles too and gives him a brief embrace, then waits while he rolls down the electric shutters, clips the keys to a ring that hangs from his belt loop.

“What do you want for your dinner?” she hears Ophelia ask.

She stares at the young man afresh. Ophelia’s son.

He’s tall and lanky; his hair is long and hangs greasily on both sides of a pale, slightly beaky face. And then it hits her. She recognizes him. His name is Arthur. She went to school with him, he was two years above her, and he was the weirdest kid in the whole world. Had a brain the size of a planet, knew everything. It was said that he had the highest IQ in the county. Everyone expected him to leave school and go to Oxford or Cambridge and invent things and change the world. But clearly that wasn’t the case. She feels a stab of sadness for him. He looks as stuck as she is, managing a cheap shoe shop in Portsmouth, living at home with his mum, all the crazy, untapped potential going to waste.

Ophelia and Arthur walk together without hurry. They stop at a Premier corner shop and come out with two blue plastic bags of shopping. They trundle on.

After a few minutes they come to a halt outside a small redbrick terraced house just off the main road, and Ophelia opens the front door with a key from her handbag. A cat sits in the doorway. Ophelia says hello to it.

The door closes behind them and the girl exhales.

Arthur looks lonely.

Arthur looks lost.

Arthur looks in need of a girlfriend.

SEVEN

ACCORDING TO AMBER, Lark has guitar lessons on Tuesdays at five and Fox plays rugby on Wednesdays. On Fridays they both go to boxing classes at their local gym. Jessica relays this information over the phone to Malcolm, who says, “Boxing. Send me to boxing. And I thought of a name. I will be Sly McNeil. What do you think?”

Jessica ponders whether perhaps she made a mistake. “What’s wrong with Malcolm Powder?”

“They’ll google me, won’t they? And I can’t have them coming across my real online being. I’ve made a Snap account and everything. Insta. The works. And I’m bleaching my hair.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it transcends class. Y’know? You can be anyone with bleached hair. You’re just the kid with bleached hair.”

“Great. Whatever.”

“And I’m going to say I’m new in the city, just come in from Saint Louis.”

“How are they going to believe that with your accent?”

Malcolm pauses and then responds in a perfect flyover state accent. “I will talk like this, Jessica. That is how.”

Jessica can’t help but laugh. “Well, Malcolm, you are a surprising boy.”

“I told you, didn’t I? I told you.”

The following morning is the day of Julius’s return and the last time that Jessica needs to feed Speckles. She is fond of the cat now and finds reassurance in the fact that the brainless fur ball inspires soft feelings within her, almost, she might say, maternal feelings. She sits for the last time on the floor of Julius’s apartment and strokes the cat, listening to the hum of his purr, until the hum of his purr merges with the hum of her phone in her jeans pocket.

She pulls it out and sees Luke’s name on her screen.

She gathers herself and swipes reply.