“So who do you think left the picture of your mother?” Jenna asked quietly. She was walking at their rear. Jack glanced back at her and shrugged.
“At first, I thought it was obvious. Her. Rosemary. But now I'm not so sure. She swore she didn't put the pictures there, and why would she lie if she did? We'd already committed to coming in with her. We'd have committed to it even if she told us about the dogs.”
“She was just being cautious,” Jenna said. “I guess there was always a chance we'd never meet them.”
“A chance, yeah.”
Emily must have heard them chatting, because she turned and walked backward for a while, training her torch and the camera lens on them. Jack gave her a thumbs-up, and Jenna laughed and waved.
“The intrepid explorers venture deeper into unknown territory…” Emily whispered into the microphone, hurrying on ahead until she walked beside Sparky. He gave her a goofy grin and started making faces at the camera, obviously enjoying the attention.
“So if it wasn't Rosemary, then who?” Jenna asked. “Bit of a coincidence.”
“A lot of one,” Jack agreed. The tunnel was wider here, and he and Jenna started walking side by side. It was easier to talk that way, and he enjoyed making eye contact with her. She was a good friend. “I dunno, I feel a bit…”
“I know,” Jenna said. “You know your mum's alive, but Sparky and Lucy-Anne are walking into the dark.”
“That's one way of putting it.” Jack smiled and reached out, squeezing Jenna's shoulder. She surprised him by leaning in quickly and giving him a strong hug, then going on ahead.
“Your turn to bring up the rear,” she said. “The quiet we've left behind gets heavy after a while.”
“I've got big shoulders.”
They went on, and Jack discovered that Jenna was right. Before him was subdued chatter, the sound of shoes scraping the floor and clothes brushing against the walls. Behind him…nothing but darkness and silence. They both took on weight very quickly.
He thought a little about what Lucy-Anne had said before the dogs attacked, about dreaming it. Strange, but she was a strange girl. Back when they'd still been sleeping together, she'd frequently woken up with a start, always claiming to not remember the nightmares that had woken her. She'd suffered more than all of them, he supposed, being left on her own in that big, empty house. She must have a head full of nightmares.
The tunnel ended in another room, smaller than the basement where the dogs had attacked. From here Rosemary led them through a series of small chambers and connecting tunnels, and here and there they passed through tumbled walls, crawling and squirming their way through narrow gaps. Beyond, they entered a place that kept its origins a mystery: tunnel or cave? It was difficult to decide, and Jack spent half an hour trying to make out which was the case. The place had an uneven floor and fissures across its walls and ceiling, but here and there he was sure he could make out tool marks.
Sparky's shout startled him from his contemplation.
“Hey, you lot! I'm bloody starving! Rosemary says there's a place up ahead where we can stop for lunch.”
At the mention of food, Jack's stomach rumbled. The fact that he was still hungry after what they had been through, he saw as a good sign. Need to go moment by moment, he thought. The past has gone. The future is waiting. It's the here and now that matters most.