Holly’s not ready to go home, so Jane, with a sideways look, suggests some of the back-alley streets where they searched for Peter. Holly agrees, the dread of finding him there among the lost far surpassed by the dread of not finding him at all. She tries Jack’s phone again, first calling and then, when it goes straight to voicemail, using the GPS app. Still nothing.
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.