At last Jane insists that they go home, and Holly is so tired she can’t argue. She wants to call Christopher, call the police, but Jane points out that it’s a scant few hours before dawn. Christopher would surely call if he had news. As for the police, Jane agrees contacting them may be wise. But she persuades Holly to wait till the morning.
“Whatever will you tell them? You’ll need a decent story, particularly once they figure out who you are, to avoid getting bogged down in foolish questions and tied up with the press. Christopher can help with that. There’s very little the police can do that he can’t, and he’s not bound by their rules and laws. He can look in ways the police simply cannot. Plus, it’s likely there’s only a skeletal staff on right now. There’s nothing they can do tonight, and neither can we,” she says. “Get some rest. You’ll need it for whatever tomorrow brings.”
But sleep won’t come. Holly’s awake, staring at the ceiling, when there’s a knock at the door and her mother comes in.
“Take this,” Jane says, handing her a mug of warm milk and a sleeping pill.
It’s a mark of how exhausted Holly is, how desperate for sleep and the oblivion it will bring, that she takes both without a word of protest. Sleep follows, deep and dreamless, as if she’d been cocooned in black velvet.
She wakes feeling hungover, her tongue thick in her mouth. Even before she’s fully conscious, images of Jack and Eden flood in, pressing against the insides of her eyelids. But when she tries to hold on to them, they disappear like shooting stars.
She opens her eyes. It’s still early enough that the sky is laced through with silver. She blinks, staggers to her feet, throws on her clothes, and stumbles to the kitchen for a cup of tea to clear the cobwebs away. She doesn’t even check the time before calling Christopher.
He answers on the first ring. He doesn’t sound at all groggy. It’s as if he’s been expecting her call.
“Hello?”
A beeping interrupts her response. It’s coming not from Christopher but from her own phone. She holds it away from her ear and studies the screen. The GPS app that tracks Jack’s phone is suddenly working. The little green circle that’s been churning every time she’s checked it has disappeared, replaced by a map of London with a pin-drop over one street.
“Holly?” Christopher says. “You there?”
For a moment she can’t talk.
“I’ve found him,” she manages to choke out.
“Where?”
Unsteadily, she reads off the address.
“Okay, sit tight. Don’t do anything until I get there,” Christopher says. “We’ll go together.” But Holly doesn’t even let him finish talking before she’s disconnected the call. With shaking hands, she dials Jack’s number. It goes straight to voicemail. Holly runs to her mother’s room and bursts in without knocking.
Jane is awake, sitting in a dressing gown on the edge of her bed, brushing her long silver hair. She takes one look at Holly and drops the brush. “What is it?”
“I’ve found him,” Holly says. She reads the address off her phone. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” Jane says. “But give me a moment.” She pulls up the map function on her own phone. “Hmmm,” she says, looking at it. “It’s in East London—rather a seedy area, I should think. Give me a moment to get dressed and I’ll come with you. And call Christopher. He can meet us there.”
But Holly can’t wait, not for Jane to dress, not to explain she’s already called, not for Christopher to arrive. She’s on fire, and if she doesn’t move, she’ll combust. She runs back to her room to find her container of serum. She grabs the first-aid kit her mother keeps in the kitchen, and at the last second throws a bottle of water and a granola bar in her bag. Jane is calling to her, is hurrying down the stairs still in her dressing gown, but Holly shouts that she’ll be taking the car and leaves without waiting for a response.
The address is about a half hour away. She follows the directions on her map app, and as she drives, the houses get more and more run down. At last the app announces that she’s arrived. She looks dubiously at the house in front of her. It’s a council flat. Red-bricked with a bit of a garden, it might have been quite cozy at one point. But now there’s a smashed window in the front, taped up with cardboard. The gate at the beginning of the walk is broken, hanging crazily askew, and instead of flowers in the yard, there are empty cans of lager.
She’s sliding out of the car when her phone rings. She glances at it, hesitates. It’s Christopher.
“I told you to wait,” he says as soon as she answers.
“It’s my son!”
“Look, I’m five minutes away. Wait for me to go in at least.”
But the idea is unbearable. “Then I should be safe—you’ll be here soon if anything goes wrong,” she says. She disconnects the call. When she reaches the flat’s door, she knocks once and waits.
No answer.
“Hello?” she calls. “Jack?”
She knocks again, more forcefully, and realizes that the door is ever so slightly ajar. Hesitantly, she pushes it open and calls inside.
“Jack?”
She waits a moment, then fumbles with her phone and dials Jack’s number. When she hears ringing, she follows the sound inside.
The first room is the kitchen. There’s a sink full of dirty dishes and a wooden table with water stains. A fly lazily buzzes near the ceiling. The room smells of stale beer, of old food and rot. An empty crisp bag is balled up on the floor.
“Jack?” Holly’s voice is no more than a whisper. Where is Christopher, damn him? Perhaps she should have waited after all. But she pushes on.
Beyond the kitchen is a tiny den, darkened by shades, and past that is where the ringing is coming from. With a deepening sense of dread, Holly steps into what must be the bedroom. Aside from a stained mattress on the floor and a dresser scarred with cigarette burns, the room is empty. There’s a bundle of blue-striped sheets piled in a corner. She pokes them with her foot, and a sour smell reaches her nostrils.
The phone rests on the corner of the mattress farthest from her. It’s Jack’s for sure—same blue case, same chip on the edge where he dropped it after practice last year. As she’s reaching for it, she notices something beneath it. It’s a photo, the type that comes from an instant camera. Gingerly, she picks it up.
It’s a picture of a boy. He’s wearing a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, and his face is turned away from the camera. It looks as if he’s asleep, asleep on blue-striped sheets, on a bed pushed against a wall like this one. She stares at the photo, her heart pounding. The photo is ever so slightly out of focus, but it’s Jack, she’s certain.
The phone has stopped ringing, but a message appears on the lock screen. It’s a new address. Below it are the words Tell no one.
Holly stares at the phone. The message disappears as the screen goes blank. She enters Jack’s passcode, but the screen doesn’t unlock and she gets an error message. Her hands are shaking—she must have entered the code wrong. She tries again and the same thing happens. Has Jack changed it? And how many chances does she have before she’s locked out?
Before she can try again, the phone rings, and Holly jumps. A message appears, asking for permission to video call. Holly accepts, and the screen fills with the image of a boy in jeans and sweatshirt, just like the photo. He’s sleeping, and once again his face is averted. But the shape of his head and the hunch of his shoulders . . . Jack.
She scans the video, looking for clues. The room has cream-colored walls. There’s a window over the bed, but Holly can’t see anything framed in it, only sky. The light is early morning, the same as it is where Holly is standing.
“Jack?” she calls. “Jack? Can you hear me? Wake up!”
Immediately the connection ends. Holly tries to call back, but the phone’s screen fades to black. She pushes the home key, tries to restart it, but a message pops up, telling her the phone is being remotely wiped.
“No,” she says, shaking it. “No, no, no.”
Within moments, the message is gone, as is Jack’s screen saver. It’s as if she’s just taken the phone out of the box.