Spider Light (19 page)

She picked up the torch and retraced her steps along the underground rooms and back up the stone steps. It was still only twenty
minutes to three. By three o’clock she was back at the cottage, careful to park the car exactly where it had been parked all morning so it did not look as if it had been driven anywhere. She looked out of the kitchen window, and saw that Don was in the same place, sprawled on the grass, either listening to the Walkman, or asleep. Donna went into her bedroom; the curtains were drawn against the afternoon sunshine. She rumpled the bed so it would look as if she had been lying down with her headache.

At quarter past four she went downstairs, and saw it was clouding over. By half past it was starting to rain, and Don came in from the garden. They had a cup of tea, and by five o’clock they began to wonder what had happened to their parents, and what they had better do about looking for them.

‘Was it just for that–for a bizarre fuck–that I did what I did that day at Twygrist?’

In the enclosed confines of the car parked outside the night club, Donna’s angry words lay on the air like acid, and the car seemed to seethe with violent emotions.

‘Was it just for a bizarre fuck…’ ‘Don’t pretend. You know perfectly well what I did…What I did…WHAT I DID…’ The words seemed to burn into the darkness, and the echoes sizzled and spun around Donna’s head, along with the knowledge that he had not known, that if only she had not said that…

But horrified comprehension flared in Don’s eyes, in a voice of such loathing that Donna flinched, he said, ‘Oh Christ, Donna, you killed them, didn’t you? You shut them into that room. You’re a murderess.’

He turned away from her, slumping down in the passenger seat, not looking at anything, and after a moment Donna switched on the car’s ignition.

They were almost home when he said, ‘You’re a monster, Donna.’ He half turned in his seat and stared at her. ‘What makes you think I won’t tell the police?’

‘What makes you think they’d believe you?’ said Donna at once. ‘I covered my tracks very well, Don. No one suspected the truth then, and no one would suspect it now. A tragic accident, that was the verdict.’ As he hesitated, she said in a softer voice, ‘Our parents were going to separate us–you knew that. And I couldn’t bear it. So I killed them. I did it for us. For you.’

‘That’s the really monstrous part,’ said Don. ‘That’s the part I don’t think I can bear,’ and although Donna had not taken her eyes off the road she knew he was looking at her. She took one hand off the steering wheel and reached for him, but he brushed her away angrily.

‘Get off me. I can’t stand you touching me.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

When they reached the flat he went blindly into his own bedroom, and banged the door against her. Donna heard him flinging open cupboards and drawers.

It was after two a.m. when he left the flat, not speaking to her, simply walking straight through the door and slamming it behind him. Donna flew to the window and watched him walk along the road, his shoulders hunched against the thin drizzling rain that had started to fall, his head down.

She had absolutely no idea where he would go, and although once she would have followed him, tonight she did not dare. She could only hope he would come home in the morning.

He did not come home in the morning. Donna sat helplessly in the flat, jumping every time there was any sound from outside, willing the phone to ring, and staring through the window to the street below, praying that at any minute he would walk down the street.

At four o’clock she left the flat for the pretentious but expensive French bistro where she had managed to work her way up
to being restaurant manager. Don would certainly be home when she got back, and the evening stint of duty would help to fill in the hours of waiting.

The bistro was not the glitziest job in the world, but Donna quite liked it. She enjoyed wearing a sharp black suit and white silk shirt, moving around the softly lit restaurant and adjoining wine bar, overseeing people who thought it part of their epicurean experience to be dealt with by a cut-glass accent. The salary Jean-Pierre paid was not immense, but it was not bad because the hours were regarded as antisocial. Donna did not mind the erratic hours, because they could often be adjusted to give her free time when she wanted it.

It was midnight before she got back to the flat. She put her key into the lock eagerly, convinced Don would be there. But the place was empty and silent, and it remained that way for three more nightmare days. It was not until the morning of the fourth day that Don appeared, a bit pale, a bit quieter than usual. Donna tried to ask him where he had been and whether he was all right, but he shrugged her off in the way he had shrugged her off after their parents’ death. She supposed he had been staying with one of the friends she did not know–the people he went to clubs and parties with.

A week later a letter addressed to D. Robards arrived. Donna opened it–not prying, just making a mistake–and saw to her horror that it was a hospital appointment card. It set out a list of day clinic sessions arranged for Don at the psychiatric department of the nearby infirmary.

Don was furious. He said she ought to have realized the letter was not for her, snatched it out of her hand and stormed out of the room. But after a time he came back, and when Donna questioned him again he shrugged and said, well yes, all right, she might as well know; there had been a bit of a drama on the night of their row. And if she really wanted the sordid details—

‘Yes, I do want them,’ said Donna, beating down a mounting fear.

‘Very well then,’ said Don. ‘Before I left the flat that night, I took the bottle of sleeping pills from your bedroom drawer—’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, so I could sleep somewhere for hours and hours. Somebody’s sofa–anywhere–I didn’t much care. I just wanted to sleep and not dream of anything—’

But he had walked along by the river, the moonlight had been reflected on the dark surface of the water, and he thought how marvellous it would be to just walk into the water and let it take you along until you merged with the moonlight. Donna would know how it was–you got hold of an idea, an image, and the next thing you knew, it had sort of taken you over.

‘No,’ said Donna bluntly. ‘I don’t know at all. What I do know is that you were very drunk that night. What actually happened?’

What had actually happened, said Don, was that as he watched the river and the moonlight, the idea of dying had started to seem immensely alluring–he did not seem to hear Donna’s half-stifled cry at this. It was a romantic image, he said. Did Donna not think there was a dark romance about dying young? Elegies and gravestones and always being young in people’s memories. He gave Donna his vivid blue stare, and she looked at him helplessly and had absolutely no idea how much to believe of all this stuff about moonlit deaths.

She asked if he had been serious about wanting to die, speaking brusquely because she was afraid of the answer, but Don said, well, no, on reflection, he did not think he had. Not really.

‘I’m very pleased to hear it,’ said Donna, relaxing a little, but her mind had gone back to that night outside the club, and for the first time she recognized the emotion that had filled up the car: it had been sexual arousal, harsh and raw and unmistakable. Don had hated her that night, but he had also been violently aroused by knowing what she had done. And if he had really been serious about committing suicide–if all that rubbish about rivers and dying young had not just been a smokescreen
–it had not been the discovery that his sister was a double murderer that had triggered it. It had been self-loathing at his own reaction.

Anyway, said Don, in the end he had taken most of the sleeping pills, and washed them down with half a bottle of vodka. Somebody had found him–he did not remember who–and he had been taken to A&E.

The letter Donna had opened–all right, he would believe it had been a genuine mistake–was a note about the follow-up appointments at the psychiatric day clinic. It was nothing heavy, he was not about to be committed to a mental hospital or anything like that; it was just that the doctor had thought it would be a good idea for him to talk to one of the psychiatrists for an hour or so each week. Just to sort things out in his mind.

Sort things out? What kind of things? A new nightmare rose up to confront Donna, but surely whatever else Don might do, he would never betray her. He would never say, ‘Well, actually, doctor, my sister and I screwed each other one summer, and our parents tried to separate us, so she murdered them. She murdered them for me, you see, but when I found out, it turned me on…and I don’t think I can live with any of it.’

Of
course
he would not say anything like that.

But Donna still had no idea if Don had genuinely meant to die that night, or if it had been one of his melodramatic gestures, or even if the whole thing had been staged with the intention of teaching her a lesson. She thought him capable of that. Knowing it, did not affect the strength of her love for him.

Afterwards he seemed oddly happier, as if the suicide attempt–whether it had been serious or not–had provided some kind of catharsis, and as if all the complex self-hatred had drained away. After a time Donna dared to trust this new mood; she began to hope that they might be Donna and Don again, within reach of that enchanted life together she had imagined for them. Don attended the pyschiatric clinic faithfully, although he said it was
all a bit of a nuisance; you had to wait around for hours and the chairs were uncomfortable, and there was only the gruesome machine-coffee and tattered magazines to pass the time.

Donna said at once that she would come with him. It would be company, and she could always arrange her hours at Jean-Pierre’s to fit. Perhaps the doctors would like to talk to her as well. Had he told them he had a sister?

But Don said he preferred to go by himself, thank you. No, he had not told anyone he had a sister; they had asked about family of course, but he had not wanted a lot of fuss, so he had said he was on his own. Well, he was sorry if Donna found that hurtful, but that was the way he wanted to play it. Take it or leave it, said his tone, briefly returning to the old defiance. And while they were on the subject, would she please stop watching him all the time, as if she thought he was about to fly for the pills or a cut-throat razor. It was unnerving. He was perfectly all right now, mostly thanks to the doctor he was seeing–he was sorry if she found that hurtful as well, but it happened to be the truth. No, it was not a man who was treating him, it was a woman and she was very nice, very helpful. And now could they forget the matter.

After a while he began to go out again in the evenings, always around the same time, sometimes taking the car with or without Donna’s permission, sometimes walking. He was not especially late in returning home, and he never seemed to be the worse for drink. He did not say where he had been or who he had been with, but Donna knew it was a girl, and bitterness engulfed her all over again because she knew–positively and definitely–they had been about to regain those magical years when they had been growing up. And now some cheap little tart had ruined everything.

She began to follow him when she could–when her hours at Jean Pierre’s could be switched, and when Don did not take the car. This was not prying, it was just making sure he was all right. Because if he really had swallowed sleeping pills and vodka, he had not been just playing with the idea of a romantic death at all; he had been serious.

She was discreet and careful and she was sure he did not know what she was doing, and by dint of being patient she finally found out where he went. He went to the hospital, and he waited for an unknown female who apparently worked there.

From the safety of her car, Donna saw quite clearly the eager adoration on Don’s face, and she saw, as well, that the woman he stared at so longingly was not some doe-eyed teenager, or some breathless young girl of whom he would quickly tire. A scalding jealousy filled her entire body.

When she was sure Don was not around to see, she followed the woman a few times on her own account. From there, it was easy enough to make a vague inquiry at the busy hospital reception desk. She needed to put a name to this creature. But when she had the name the entire thing turned itself around 360 degrees, because the woman was the doctor who had treated Don on the night of the suicide bid, and whose out-patients’ clinic he had been attending ever since.

Dr Antonia Weston. A qualified pyschiatrist. Successful and clever.

Donna studied Weston as closely as she dared. She was a few years older than Donna herself–perhaps late twenties–and she had unremarkable brown hair, and an ordinary sort of figure. She did not dress very strikingly, and at first Donna could not think what Don could see in her. Don liked people and things to be unusual or rare, or to be beautiful and glossy, and Weston was not even especially good-looking. But then she began to see that the woman had a certain quality–a way of looking at people. Would you call it magnetism? Charisma? Donna did not want to call it either of these things, but she would be fair and admit that there was something indefinable about Antonia that drew you to her.

She made sure Weston did not see her, and she did not stay around to see Weston and Don actually meet or try to find out where they might go, because she could not have borne seeing them together. She supposed they met somewhere discreet–some
tucked-away bar or restaurant, because of Don being Dr Weston’s patient. But whatever they did and wherever they met, this doctor, this Antonia Weston, had snatched Don away from Donna.

Bitch.
Bitch.
It did not matter if she was all the sex goddesses of the world rolled into one or if she looked like the back end of a bus; she would be a far more formidable foe than some adoring little eighteen-year-old.

So did this bitch return Don’s feelings? Or was it the other way around: was she leading him on, secretly amused at the age difference, boasting to her friends that she had a toy boy? Getting a kick out of having an affair with a patient, seeing herself as a femme fatale…

Fatale. It was a good word. Things always sounded more dramatic in French. And it was a fatale situation all right, in fact it might be very bloody fatale indeed for Antonia Weston if she did not take her claws out of Donna’s beautiful boy.

Donna began to consider what to do about Dr Antonia Weston.