We rumbled along the path of the former railway, which carved through the land like an ancient riverbed. After a mile, a few buildings cropped up, their slate roofs burst open by saplings. Farther on, another stone platform surfaced. I followed Lola’s dust cloud around a wide bend to where two stretches of rusted track started, one traveling a few pointless yards into a pile of dirt, while the other curved round and disappeared into a hole in the side of a hill. The entrance was a stone arch and an iron gate, as solid as a portcullis.
A shrill whistle sounded, and Lola appeared from wherever she’d stashed the bike.
“You can’t leave the car out there,” she said.
“I don’t know if we’re staying yet.”
“It’s a lead mine, Aunt Marlene. Are you going to find a better refuge from helicopters with heat-seeking cameras?” She turned toward the portcullis with a shake of the head. “I mean, do the math.”
I did the math and calculated that I would move the car under the cover of one of the least tumbled-down outbuildings. I pulled as deep inside as I dared, wincing as the tires popped and crunched over broken debris. There were gaping holes in the slate roof that a heat camera could presumably see through, so I fixed the heat blanket over the bonnet again and emptied the sleeping bags to drape them on top. It was the best I could do, and when the kids started to get down, stumbling over half bricks and rusted nails, I diverted myself to help them. We dragged our belongings to the iron gate, where we stood in an anxious group like evacuees waiting to board a train. We just needed cardboard tags slung round our necks. Joni lumbered across the clearing to join us, standing with her arms held in front of her chest as though something might strike her at any moment. Maggie, Billy, and the Lost Boy were holding hands. Charlie stood alone, twisting his trousers into buds.
With a deep groan, the iron gate swung open, and Lola motioned us inside. I tried to usher the kids ahead, but they balked at the darkness, so I bent my head and knees and led the way into the narrow tunnel. They trailed behind me, and we stopped to let our eyes adjust. I told them to watch their heads and not trip over the railway tracks. Charlie asked why the hill didn’t fall down on our heads. He ran his hand over the stone walls and seemed reassured that it had stood here for more than 150 years, so there was no reason why it would collapse today. Joni finally shuffled in but failed to shut the gate behind her, so Lola tutted and squeezed back past us all to do it. We followed the tunnel—me stooped and awkward—toward an orange glow up ahead.
As we moved farther inside the hill, the crisp tang of minerals was overwhelmed by the pall of oil lamps. My boots crackled over sharp pebbles, and I didn’t need to check that the kids were keeping up because I could make out their crunchy footsteps bunched up behind me. Charlie gave a whimper, and I twisted my bent neck up to see a grinning skull, sprayed in glow-in-the-dark paint onto the stones, beside a slogan that declared, “Keep Calm, It’s Already Happened.” I shifted my load onto one arm and used the other to scoop Charlie along beside me. Joni brought up the rear, her wild hair silhouetted against the bright sunlight like a yeti.
A burst of tinny recorded laughter drew my attention down the tunnel, followed by a real outburst of hilarity that echoed toward us. We crept forward to a soundtrack of more laughter and a car engine. The passage expanded until I could stand upright, and then the orange glow spread out to reveal a mucky cavern, where a group of equally mucky boys were watching an old TV show on an iPad that had been hot-wired to a car battery: my car battery, I couldn’t help but notice, the one I had requisitioned.
The rippling lights illuminated half a dozen enthralled faces. The soundtrack pealed around the cavern. A quiver of anticipation ran through the rapt boys, who tensed for the opportune moment, and then shouted as one:
“Can we please stop talking about my mother’s vagina!”
I exited the tunnel into their midst. One by one, their laughing faces startled to stone, but their outburst lingered in the air, bouncing around us like a mischievous imp. Boys of various ages littered the floor. Several of the smaller ones scurried into dark recesses. The older ones gathered themselves up more deliberately, saving face. One glanced at another, the crumbs of a smile stuck to his lips, to see if his friend might be up for some rebellious smirking. But the friend looked ashen.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Jack.”
By the time they worked out who was best able to reply, Joni and our kids had materialized behind me and were blinking around the cavern. Lola strode across and flicked off the iPad, muttering under her breath about it. Most of the boys got to their feet, and I estimated that the oldest was maybe fourteen, while the youngest wasn’t much older than Charlie. There was a lot of shuffling.
“I’ll find him,” said Lola, and disappeared farther into the cavern.
I stashed our luggage on a pile of rocks against a slimy wall. When I turned, the boys dropped their eyes from my face. I glanced over them but couldn’t see the electric filament hair of the one who’d slashed my tire.
“Are you boys all right?” I asked. There was lots of nodding.
“How long have you been here?”
Some shrugging, looking at each other for confirmation: “A few days, yes, a few days.” A couple of the smaller boys shuffled forward and looked up at me with Oliver Twist eyes.
“Is anyone hurt?” Hands pointing to the back of the cavern: “Him, Harry Berman, he burnt his fingers.”
“Have you got anything to eat?” They indicated a mess of crisp packets and biscuit wrappers.
“Any proper food?” Heads shaking.
I sighed and looked around their dank home before leaning down to their height.
“Are you really all right?”
“Yeah,” said the one who’d wanted to smirk. He pulled rapidly at the end of his nose, tugging the septum between finger and thumb in a ferrety gesture. But another little boy stepped forward, and I put my hand on the back of his head, and he stepped forward again and pressed his face into my hip. His body shook against mine.
“Don’t cry, you wuss!” said the ferrety one, but no one else laughed.
A stream of white torchlight appeared in the second tunnel, bounding around the stones, followed by two sets of crunching footsteps. Lola emerged first, flanked by a youth who unfolded himself to my height, though a great, bohemian forelock of curly hair made him look even taller. He occupied that boy-man space whereby his scaffolding held up his T-shirt, but the rest of the structure was yet to be filled in. The pair crossed the cavern, his palm beneath the Lady Lola’s elbow as they stepped in time over strewn rocks and small boys, then Jack overtook his consort in two long strides and held out a hand.
“Hello, Mrs. Greene,” he said, with a firm grip and brisk nod. “I’m Jack Ingram. Sorry this place is so rubbish.” He stepped over to Joni. “And you must be Mrs. Luff.” But Joni seemed to have traded places with the teenager and was leaning, surly and pock-skinned, against the wall. She didn’t respond. Both Lola and I stepped in to bustle Jack away, though I couldn’t be sure which one of them I was trying to protect.
“Lola tells me you had a close call with the helicopter?” he said. “We thought they might be humanitarians or peacekeepers at first, but when it failed to land or show a standard—”