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“I’ll come down with you,” says Polly. “Show you how the lights work.”
At the bottom of the steps, they turn and look at each other. Polly lifts up on her tiptoes and kisses Arthur hard on the mouth.
“Brilliant,” she whispers. “You are brilliant.” Then she guides him across the room by the hand and says, “Can you feel it?”
He nods, nervously. “Yes,” he whispers.
“Isn’t it thrilling?”
He nods again and she can sense the adrenaline coursing through him.
“Here,” she says, pulling a piece of chalk from her bag and drawing a circle onto the dirt floor. “It’s right here. Touch it.”
Arthur crouches and puts his hand to the ground. He snatches it back immediately and looks at Polly with wide eyes. He nods.
A few moments later they go back up to the kitchen.
Arthur says, “Might need to do a bit of work down there. Put in a new pump. Nothing major. Shouldn’t take more than a few days.”
“And that will give the kids’ bathroom decent water pressure?”
“Oh yes, certainly. I can put an estimate together for you, get it over tomorrow?”
Sebastian nods and smiles. “Fantastic,” he says, shaking Arthur’s hand. “Thank you so much for helping to make this place great for the kids.”
He looks back and forth at Polly and Arthur, completely oblivious to the irony of what he’s just said.
FORTY
AMBER PICKS UP Jessica’s call on the third ring.
“Jessica, if you don’t have news on Fox for me I’m going to the police.”
Jessica inhales sharply. “You don’t think it’s a bit soon? He’s only been missing four hours. He’s sixteen years old. I’m not sure they’ll be taking it that seriously.”
“Well, I have to do something. I can’t just sit here like this. I feel so helpless! And I’m sorry, Jessica, but I am paying you quite a lot of money and I can’t help feeling there’s more you could be doing, quite frankly.”
Most investigations get to this point, Jessica knows, where the action isn’t fast enough for the client, who has paid their money and expects results. Jessica sighs loudly. “Yup. Agreed. And I have people on the ground who are aware that we’re looking for him. But short of traipsing the streets of Manhattan hoping for a glimpse of him, I’m not sure what you think I could be doing right now. Is there anything, Amber, anything you can give me that might help? Places he might be? People he might have been talking to?”
“No! Nothing! He’s just been…normal. Going to school. Going boxing. Sees his friends.”
Boxing. Jessica blinks. Boxing. “Can I have the address, Amber, for the boxing club?”
“Yeah, er, sure, hold on, I have it just here. There…” She reads it out to Jessica. “You think he might be there?”
“I have no idea. But it’s somewhere to start.”
“Okay, well, keep me posted.”
“And Amber? Have you heard anything from Sebastian? Since this all blew up?”
“Er, yeah. I have. He’s feeling terrible.”
“Terrible for what?”
“For letting the kids spend all their time at that farmhouse, with that Debra woman, and not checking it out. I mean, the thought of what might have happened. Those awful people. And he was saying that his ‘girlfriend’”—she imbues the word with mild poison—“had done some work for the woman who lived there.”
The mention of Sebastian’s girlfriend sends Jessica’s thoughts hurtling back to that strange feeling in Sebastian’s cellar, the feeling that was mirrored just now in the cellar at the Upside Down. She thinks of Sebastian telling her about the water pump that his girlfriend “insisted on installing,” to give his water system more pressure. But where was that water pump? There was nothing down there. Smooth floors. Pipes on the walls. Holes drilled to control the damp. But no water pump.
