Page 41 of Breaking the Dark

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

Arthur appears at the door of the small, terraced house looking apprehensive and vaguely terrified. He glances up and down the street and then back at Polly before hissing at her, “Come in. Quick!”

Arthur’s father has a hospital appointment. His mother is at work on the pier. Arthur has taken the afternoon off work. They have exactly two and a half hours before Arthur’s father returns, and Arthur is clearly not comfortable with this plan.

“Calm down,” says Polly. “I am allowed to come into your house. There’s no law against it.”

“I know,” says Arthur, running his hands anxiously through his lank hair. “I just don’t want anyone to see though. In case they say anything.”

Polly rolls her eyes and steps into the house. She glances around. It’s basic, early eighties: pine-clad walls, watercolor landscapes, a patterned carpet running up the stairs, an arched entrance into a brown kitchen down three steps at the back of the house, dimpled glass windows onto a garden. A cat sits on the bottom step and stares at her.

“Who’s this?”

“That’s Mr. Smith.”

He’s a raggedy-looking cat, bony and scrawny.

“He looks very old.”

“He is very old. My mother’s had him for a long time.”

Polly’s gaze falls upon a framed family photograph on the anaglypta-clad wall. A tall man with black hair and thick-framed glasses, a small woman with a blond pixie cut and chunky jewelry, and three small girls in brightly colored clothes. She throws Arthur a questioning look.

“It’s not our house,” he says, awkwardly. “The people who own it are living abroad for a year and they have two guinea pigs that they didn’t want to take with them. So we’re house-sitting for them. Just until Christmas. Then we have to go.”

“Go? Where are you going to go?”

Arthur shrugs. “I don’t know. Back to the chalet park, I guess.”

And as he says this she remembers. “Which chalet park?”

“Spring Dene?”

A shiver passes through her. “Spring Dene?” she repeats. “The one up on Eastney Beach?”

“Yes. We lived there for about three years. Do you know it?”

She does know it. A gone-to-seed holiday park, the small wooden houses now turned over to long-term renters. “Yes. I had a boyfriend who used to score weed there. I think I might have even seen you there, a few times.”

“I don’t remember,” he replies, nervously, as though it was a test.

“No. But I do.”

The chill sits in the base of her spine. She remembers the dealers’ chalet. She remembers them talking about the guy next door—not Arthur, but his dad. They said he was a nonce. They said he was a weirdo. They said people went into that chalet and never came out. Strange noises. Comings and goings. A bad vibe.

She smiles brightly to dislodge the uncomfortable thoughts from her consciousness. “Will you show me around?”

“Er, yeah. Sure. But can I…get you a drink? I have champagne. Or not actually champagne, some kind of fizzy thing, I put it in the freezer, about an hour ago, it should be nice and—”

She touches his face gently with her hand. “Show me around first, then we can have the fizzy thing.”

“Right. Yes. Come through.”

He leads her into the living room: tired and frumpy, saggy chintz sofas, shiny mahogany coffee table, a milky-white-and-gold overhead light fitting, beige carpeting, fake flowers, a dining table covered with a tablecloth printed with country scenes.

“And here’s the conservatory….”

He slides a door at the back of the house onto a tiny stuck-on plasticky sunroom with floral upholstered bamboo furniture in it. It overlooks a small, graveled garden featuring a birdbath in the middle. On one side of the room is a large pet cage filled with tunnels and terraces and toys.