Page 31 of A Cornish Love Story
It was against the steady echoes of our footsteps that a shrill mobile blared. We all stopped, taking out our phones, but it was Ethan who slipped his fingers away from mine to answer.
‘Hello?’ He frowned. There was a pause and he said, ‘No, I haven’t seen her all evening.’ Another gap, then, ‘I’m out with friends. I haven’t seen her since after school, and …’ His jaw clenched as the other person spoke. ‘What party? I don’t know anything about … I’m on my way home now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’ He hung up and jammed his mobile in his pocket.
‘OK?’ I said.
He shook his head tightly. ‘Sarah’s gone AWOL.’
‘That was your mum?’ Kira asked.
‘Dad,’ Ethan said miserably. ‘He’s going apeshit. Sarah was supposed to be grounded, but she snuck out and apparently there’s this wild party, so we have to go and get her.’
I squeezed his hand. ‘Why you?’
‘I’m her big brother.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s my jobto keep her out of trouble, and I’m failing.’
‘It’s not your job.’ I was indignant. ‘It’s theirs, surely? Your mum and dad’s.’
‘Try telling Dad that,’ he said quietly, and the last glimmers of triumph I’d had, from breaking into an abandoned house with my friends, from being so close to Ethan all night, faded as we made our way solemnly into Alperwick. Ethan was tense and silent beside me, his hand gripping mine a little too tightly.
Chapter Thirteen
Now
‘What is Panic Room Mode?’ I put my hand on the front door handle and gave it another futile tug. But I’d seen the film. Jodie Foster didn’t have a particularly great time. ‘Why is the whole housein Panic Room Mode?’
Some of Ethan’s hair was standing on end, because he’d been worrying at it constantly for the last two minutes, and his cheeks had blanched to the colour of the path I knew was outside, but could no longer see. He peered at the Sparks panel, then his phone.
‘What’s going on, Ethan?’ There was a fluttering in my chest, but I tried to ignore it. This was fine. It was just a weird blip.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, Idoknow, some of it.’
‘You knowsomeof what’s happening with the house you built?’
‘Shush a minute,’ he said distractedly.
I inhaled through my nose, and let it out slowly, like a whoopee cushion deflating. The house was deathly quiet, and the spacious, elegant hall looked strange, with the windows dark and the lights on. The sunset was probably spectacular, but we couldn’t see it.
I walked over to the study, as if I might find some kind of answer in there. Ethan was still tapping away, working between the wall panel and his mobile. After an indeterminate amount of time, when I thought I was in danger of fidgeting myself to death, he let out an emphatic ‘Fuck!’ and the fluttering in my chest intensified.
‘What is it?’ I went back into the hall.
He looked up at me. ‘When you said there was an emergency, you activated the Panic Room feature, which essentially shuts the house down and stops anyone from getting inside.’
‘I sort of got that, but there has to be some kind of mechanism, a way the house will open up again. What if there was a fire? What if an intruder had got in and … and was coming after us?’ I swallowed heavily, and Ethan took a step towards me.
‘Ordinarily, the moment Panic Room Mode is activated, the local authorities would be notified. But because nobody has bought this house yet, it’s still set up as a show home, so that loop hasn’t been closed.’
‘Right. So … what? Nobody’s coming, but there must be some kind of override. Some way of turning off Sparks and unlocking the door. The house can’t be so modern that it stops you from turning a key in a lock.’
Ethan ran his hand through his hair again, tugging at the strands, and a little thread of my patience snapped. I gripped his forearm, pulling it away. ‘Your hair is too nice for you to yank it all out.’
He gave me a bleak look.
‘Your override?’ I prompted.
‘It seems my override has been … overridden,’ he said quietly.
‘What?’
