Chapter Twenty-One
I ran into my building and thundered up the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I got to the top landing, I fumbled for my key and unlocked the door with shaking hands.
“Darcy, we need to—”
I stopped. He wasn’t sitting on the sofa watching TV, and the flat was silent.
“Darcy?”
I ran into the bedroom and the bathroom, but he wasn’t in either. The only sign he’d ever been there was pile of clothes on the floor by the sofa: a pair of dark jeans, a blue polo shirt, and a pair of trainers. The exact outfit he’d been wearing that morning.
“Oh my God!”
When I’ve read the phrase “she sank to her knees” in books before, I’ve always thought it was a bit melodramatic. Nobody actually sinks to their knees; it would be too painful. But that’s exactly what I did, burying my face in my hands.
“Hayati, what’s wrong? Why all the shouting?” Mrs. Atallah’s voice came from the doorway behind me.
“Darcy’s gone.”
“He’s probably just popped to the shops. Maybe he went to buy milk or some lube?”
“No, Mrs. Atallah. He’s gone.”
As I said the words, their true meaning sank in. Mr. Darcy had disappeared, and along with him, Pride and Prejudice. No more Meryton or Pemberley. No more Mrs. Bennet or Lady Catherine de Bourgh. No more Elizabeth Bennet.
Even as I thought this, I felt Elizabeth starting to fade in my mind, her edges smudging and dissolving like a camera image sliding out of focus.
And she wasn’t just fading for me, I realized with a shudder.
The book was disappearing for everyone: the millions of Jane Austen fans around the world and every future generation to come.
One of the greatest works of literature was being lost forever, and it was all my fault.
“What have I done?” I groaned, flopping forward until I was lying face down on my rug.
“I don’t know, what have you done?” Mrs. Atallah demanded. “Did the two of you have a fight? Did you ask him to do something too kinky?”
“No! You don’t understand. Darcy was the real Mr. Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice, and I lied to him, and now he’s disappeared and the book has too. God, do you even know what Pride and Prejudice is anymore?”
“What are you talking about? Just because I was raised in Lebanon doesn’t mean I don’t know the great Jane Austen’s work, you cheeky mare.”
“Well, you’ll forget it soon,” I moaned. “Now Darcy’s faded, it’s just a matter of time before his story does, too, and then it will be like it never existed.”
“What’s this, then?”
Mrs. Atallah had stepped over me—I was still lying face down on the floor—and picked something up from the sofa. “This hasn’t disappeared, you cuckoo.”
I lifted my head. Mrs. Atallah was holding a book—a book I recognized as Nick’s mum’s copy of Pride and Prejudice.
I jumped to my feet and snatched it out of her hands.
Would the letters be disappearing, or would the pages already be blank?
But as I pulled it open, I saw there was text on the first page, lines and lines of wonderful, familiar text.
“He’s still here!” I gasped.
“Have you been drinking?”
“It’s not too late. We can still save Pride and Prejudice!” I laughed, grabbing Mrs. Atallah and hugging her. Then I stopped. “But we have to find Darcy because time’s running out.”
Mrs. Atallah squinted at me, as if working out whether to believe me or call her nephew Bilal and tell him it was a medical emergency.
“You’re telling me he’s the actual Mr. Darcy?”
“That’s right. But he’s in trouble, Mrs. Atallah, and we need to help him.”
She paused for a second longer, then gave a curt nod. “Very well. Call your friends; we’ll need backup.”
* * *
An hour later, I was sitting on my sofa with Mrs. Atallah on one side of me, Nick on the other, and a very unimpressed Bianca in the chair opposite.
“OK, so let me check that I’ve got this right,” she said. “You’re telling us that Will is Mr. Darcy and he somehow appeared out of the book you stole from Nick’s shop, although you have no idea if it was you who summoned him out or some creepy magic contained in the book itself.”
“Correct,” I said.
“And he’s been stuck here for ten days, yet until today you’ve told absolutely no one he was here—not even me, your best friend?”
I suddenly knew what it must feel like to be a defendant in the dock getting cross-examined by Bianca. “I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you but—”
“No time for that now.” Her tone was businesslike, but I could see the hurt in her eyes over my betrayal of our friendship.
“As I understand it, you didn’t tell Darcy he was a fictional character, but now he’s discovered this copy of Pride and Prejudice, no doubt worked out who he is, and done a runner. ”
“I think that’s what’s happened, yes. I was in such a rush to get to Nick’s shop earlier that I accidentally left the book on the sofa, where Darcy must have found it.”
“So, in summary, a rapidly fading fictional character is somewhere out there on the streets of London, with no money or mobile phone, and unless we find him in the next six to twelve hours, every copy of Pride and Prejudice will disappear and the book will be forgotten forever.”
“That’s about it,” Nick answered for me. “What we have to work out is where Darcy might have gone. Zoe, does he have any favorite places in London?”
“Not really,” I said. “He’s hardly left this flat and he hates the Tube, so anywhere he’s gone has probably been on foot.”
“He’s a big Love Island fan, so perhaps he’s gone to the airport to fly out to Majorca?” Mrs. Atallah offered.
“I’m not sure he fully understands the concept of air travel yet, so I doubt he’s gone there,” I said.
Bianca was leafing through the copy of Pride and Prejudice. “I seem to remember there being a reference somewhere to the Bingleys staying on Grosvenor Street and Darcy having a house in town too. So do you think he might go looking for that?”
“Maybe,” I said. “When I first met him, he did say he was trying to get to Mayfair.”
“OK, well, one of us needs to go and look around there,” Bianca said. “Is there anywhere else you can think of in London that has significance to him?”
I paused, racking my brain. Then my stomach dipped. “What if he’s trying to get to Netherfield? That was where he was before he got pulled out of the book, and where he initially kept asking to go back to.”
“But Netherfield doesn’t exist,” Mrs. Atallah said, screwing up her nose.
“We know that,” I said. “But Darcy doesn’t.”
“Where is Netherfield supposed to be?” Nick asked.
“Somewhere in Hertfordshire,” I said. “But Austen isn’t specific, so it could be anywhere in the county.”
Nick tapped his phone screen for a moment. “OK, well, it looks like trains for Hertfordshire towns go from either King’s Cross St. Pancras or Euston.”
“I’ll go to St. Pancras if someone else can go to Euston,” I said.
“I can,” Nick offered.
“In which case, I’ll go and look around Mayfair,” Bianca said. “Mrs. Atallah, can you stay here in case Darcy comes back?”
The older woman nodded, and we all stood up to leave.
“Let’s keep in contact via WhatsApp,” Bianca said as she headed toward the door.
“Will do,” I said. “And thanks for coming to help, B. I know you probably have plans tonight and—”
“It’s fine,” she snapped, cutting me off, and I felt as if I’d been punched. Bianca wasn’t just my best friend—she was all the family I had left in the world, and I’d clearly devastated her with my lies.
“I really am sorry, B. I—”
“We should get going. Every minute we waste here is apparently another minute Pride and Prejudice is in danger.” She bustled past me out of the flat, not looking back.