Page 36 of Breaking the Dark

“Of course I’m real. Here, you can pinch me.”

She pulls up the sleeve of her silver coat and offers out her arm.

Jessica closes her eyes. “No. For God’s sake, no, I don’t want to pinch you. I just want to know what the hell is going on. I think maybe I’m going crazy. I probably am.”

The group of foreign men is preparing to leave. Jessica turns and watches them pulling on jackets and coats and once they are close enough to her, she calls over to them and says, “Hey, do you see that child?”

They glance over at the girl and then back at her. The oldest one nods and then they move on.

Jessica shakes her head hard, sure that there is something lodged in her brain that she could get free if she tried hard enough. She squeezes her eyes shut and when she opens them the child is gone. Jessica sees her outside, walking alone through the dark morning gloom, the shiny fabric of her coat gleaming iridescent under the streetlights and the pale moonbeams.

Twelve years ago

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

Arthur looks thrown at the prospect of ordering a drink in the glitzy bar where he and Polly have met for drinks.

“Er,” he says, his eyes frantically trawling the cocktail list. “Er.”

Polly smiles at the handsome barman, who glances from shabby Arthur to shiny Polly and clearly wonders what the pair are doing together.

“Tequila sunrise,” Arthur says decisively a moment later.

“Really?” asks Polly, laughing a little and exchanging another conspiratorial look with the barman.

“Yes,” says Arthur. “It’s my mum’s favorite. I remember her telling me that once.”

Polly sparks with delight at Arthur inadvertently taking the conversation exactly where she wants it. “Tell me about your mum and dad.”

“Oh. Nothing much to tell. My dad is American. He followed my mum over here for lurve.” He blushes as the inane word leaves his mouth. “And my mum is a clairvoyant. She works on the pier, doing tarot and whatnot. That’s it really. How about you?”

“Oh, right. Well, my mum is a lazy slag, and my dad is dead. And I have a seventeen-year-old brother who never leaves his room apart from to score weed.”

“Oh.” Arthur looks momentarily frozen with surprise. “That’s…”

Polly shrugs nonchalantly, as though she is used to carrying the world’s weight on her back. “It is what it is. I’m moving on. I’m an entrepreneur. At least, I want to be an entrepreneur.”

“Oh,” says Arthur. “Wow. That’s great. What sort of business are you thinking of going into?”

“Beauty,” she says, decisively. “I’m doing nails at the moment. But I want more. Much more. I’m looking into new products. New ways of making people look perfect.” She leaves a moment of silence to let her words sing.

“Perfect?”

“Yes, perfect…. You know, Arthur, you should go to uni. Get a proper job. Get out of here. Then you could really help support your family. Much more than just working in a shitty shoe shop.”

Arthur flinches at the slight. “I’m the manager. I don’t just work there.”

“Yeah. But still. You’re clever. You could do more. I can see it in you….”

She sees a flush of pride pass across his face and she knows that she’s bringing him round. “It’s…just…my parents. I can’t leave them.”

“Why?” she says plainly. “Is there something wrong with them?”

“No. Not quite. They’re just…we’re close knit. We always have been. Really, really tight knit. I’m their only kid. My mum—she waited a long time to have me. A really, really long time. And my dad. He has some mental health issues. They sacrificed a lot to have me and if I wasn’t here, I sometimes feel like they’d fall apart.”

Polly resists the urge to tut and sigh. The patheticness of it! Grown people who can’t live without their child! Instead she puts on a sympathetic smile and nods gravely, as if she fully understands. “So where did you tell them you were going tonight?”

“I told them I was seeing friends from school.”