when I felt a touch on my shoulder. I jumped so wildly I almost dropped Petra, and swung round accusingly to find Jack Grant, standing so close behind me that my shoulder touched his bare chest as I turned. We both took an involuntary step back, me nearly tripping over a stool.
He was naked from the waist up and had plainly been asleep, judging by his rumpled hair, and he bellowed something, pointing at the door, but I shook my head, and he came close, cupping his hands around my ear.
“What’s happening? I could hear the din from the stables.”
“I have no idea!” I yelled back. “I was asleep—maybe one of the girls touched something—I can’t get it to turn off.”
“Can I try?” he shouted, and I felt like laughing in his face. Could he? I would kiss him if he succeeded. I shoved the tablet at him, almost aggressively.
“Be my guest!”
He tried to turn the tablet on and then realized, as I had, that it was out of power. Then he went to the utility room and opened up a cupboard there, the one where the Wi-Fi router was kept, along with the electricity meter. I’m not completely sure what he did in there, I was too busy comforting an increasingly distraught Petra, but all of a sudden everything went pitch-black, and the sound stopped with an abruptness that was disorienting. I found my ears were ringing with the aftermath.
In the silence, I could hear Ellie’s panicked gasping sobs and Maddie rocking back and forth.
Petra, in my arms, stopped crying, and I felt her little body go stiff with surprise. Then she let out a gurgling laugh.
“Night night!” she said.
Then there was a click, and the lights came back on—less brightly this time, and fewer of them.
“There,” Jack said. He came back through, wiping his forehead, the dogs padding in his wake, suddenly calm again. “It’s gone back to default settings now. Bloody hell. Okay.”
There was sweat on his forehead in spite of the chill in the air, and when he sat down at the kitchen counter, the tablet in his hands, I could see his hands were shaking.
Mine, as I set Petra beside Maddie, were trembling too.
Jack plugged the tablet in and now he put it down to wait until it had enough charge to turn on.
“Th-thank you,” I said shakily. Ellie was still sobbing in the hallway. “Ellie, there’s no need to cry, sweetie. It’s okay now. Look . . . um . . .” I crossed the kitchen and began rummaging in the cupboards. “Look . . . here we are, have a jammie dodger. You too, Maddie.”
“We’ve brushed our teeth,” Maddie said blankly, and I suppressed a hysterical laugh. Fuck teeth, was what I wanted to say, but I managed to bite it back.
“I think just this once, it’ll be okay. We’ve all had a shock. Sugar is good for shock.”
“Aye, it’s true,” Jack said, rather solemnly. “Back in the old day they’d make you drink sweet tea, but since I don’t really like sugar in my tea, I’ll have a jammie dodger too, thanks, Rowan.”
“See?” I handed one to Jack and bit into one myself. “It’s fine.” I spoke around the crumbs. “Here you go, Maddie.”
She took it, warily, and then shoved it in her own mouth as if I were about to take it away again.
Ellie ate hers more slowly.
“Mine!” Petra shouted, holding up her arms. I gave a mental shrug. I wasn’t going to win any prizes for child nutrition, but I no longer gave a fuck about that. Breaking one in half, I gave her a piece of biscuit too, and then threw a chunk to each of the dogs for good measure.
“Okay, we’re up and running again,” Jack said, as Petra began joyfully stuffing the biscuit into her mouth. For a minute I didn’t realize what he meant, and then I saw that he was holding the tablet, the screen casting a glow onto his face. “I’ve got the app open. Try your PIN first.”
I took the tablet from him, selected my username from the little drop-down menu, and put in the PIN Sandra had given me for the home-management app.
You are locked out, flashed up on the screen, and then when I tapped the little i button next to the message, Sorry, you have entered your Happy number incorrectly too many times and are now locked out. Please enter an admin password to override this, or wait 4 hours.