been down beneath for over a month, but still she searched for news of her mother's death.
Harry made it his duty to keep tabs on what was going on aboveground, and every day one of the lost kids
would return from an excur-sion with a newspaper, bought or nicked. Harry read them, then left them
stacked beside one of the storage cupboards, ready to be used to light the occasional fire they had when the
tunnels grew cold. Jazz had been looking through these papers, and nobody had interrupted her. They all
knew what she was searching for.
So far, nothing.
No mention of the Uncles in their black BMWs. No re-ports of the bloody death scene in their house,
no stories about the dead mother and the missing daughter who was yet to be found. Nothing. A blank, as
though what had happened was so far below the normal surface of things that no-body knew.
"Someone has to know," Jazz said. Cadge was sitting be-side her, as usual, watching as she scanned
the discarded copy of the Times she'd picked up from the station platform. "Someone has to know
something."
"From what you said, lots of people know stuff," he said. "Just that the ones that know don't wanna
tell the papers."
She turned another page and read some more old news. Everything here described events happening
in another world, and she could not find it in herself to care about an-other rise in inflation, a minor royal's
indiscretion with a pop star, or the latest record-breaking celebrity divorce set-dement. None of that
mattered. None of it ever had. Her mother had told her that, and it was her mother who mat-tered, and
between these pages of cold dark print there was nothing concerning her mother.
Up there, her mother's murderers still walked free.
She had burned with the injustice of things since spying that initial smear of blood on her mother's
bedroom door handle. But now, for the first time, Jazz's thoughts were clouded with revenge.
They celebrated that evening with hot dogs cooked over an open fire, while Harry Fowler relayed a
tale of his time as a gentleman. Exaggerated and ridiculous —travels in Africa, hunting tigers in India, and
carrying out expeditions to find the Yeti in the Himalayas—but the kids were all entertained, and Jazz found
herself caught up in the banter and enjoy-ment.
But that night she dreamed of her mother, as an idea rather than a real person. In her dream, Harry
sat her down one day and broke a terrible truth. Jazz girl, pet, you've been down here with us forever,
he said. You were born down here and you'll die down here. The upside is just where we go to hunt
tigers.
She woke up with a start and cried in the dark, vowing to never let the memory of her mother fade
away.
****
Three days after her first nick, Jazz went back up with Cadge, Stevie, and Hattie.
"Money's all good and nice, pets," Harry said, "but our United Kingdom needs plenty more besides.
There's stuff money can't buy, but luckily it's not just pockets our hands can worm their way into."
Everyone listened, but he was speaking to only Jazz.
They caught the Tube to Covent Garden and parted company before the station exit. Stevie and
Hattie went their separate ways, and Jazz watched Stevie disappear quickly into the crowds. For someone
so striking, he hid well. She wanted to say good-bye, wish him luck, touch his hand, and try to catch a smile
from him. But during the en-tire Tube journey, he had sat opposite her and stared over her head through the
dark window. Never once had his eyes flickered down to meet her own. And in his feigned disinter-est, she
wondered whether there was something to find.
Time will tell. Her mother had said that, using it as a full stop after telling her stories about the
Uncles, and other people, and what the future might hold for her. Time will tell. And it certainly had.
Cadge went with Jazz, and the two of them browsed shop windows, chatted, and laughed, keeping
one eye on the time. There was a place to be and a time to be there, and everything was leading up to that.
Cadge seemed even more ebullient than ever. Once or twice he touched Jazz's hand, blushing and
looking away as he laughed at something she said. He carried an outwardly cheeky confidence, all bluster
and defiance, but it was obvi-ous that there was a deeper side to him that was both vulner-able and
delicate. In the beginning, his attentions had made her feel awkward, but now she was flattered. Still, she
did her best to temper her response. She liked Cadge
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