In the Spider's House

by Sarah Diamond

  In the days following the break-in, I mourned them—but, at the same time, Rebecca had faded from the foreground of my concerns. Recent events had swept her away like a wave, and she’d become a tiny speck on the horizon. The tide would bring her back soon, I thought, she wouldn’t be left adrift for long. But I simply couldn’t focus on her now; whenever I tried, I saw Socks lying dead on the path, heard those seconds of breathing down the phone, recalled Carl’s incredulous horror in the kitchen.

  I’d been convinced that, in a matter of days, my fear of the house would begin to fade, but, as the week progressed, it showed no sign of doing so. I couldn’t think of anything but what had happened here and what might happen next, and claustrophobic foreboding shadowed every second of every hour of every quiet and purposeless day. When Carl had left for work, I went into Bournemouth or Wareham, trying and failing to forget what I was afraid of. And the final stages of the drive back took on the texture of nightmare, repetition only seeming to make it worse; that slow ascent to the top of the hill, dreading the split second in which the house came into view below.

  The evenings, I knew, should have been better—Carl’s presence should have provided a temporary respite from anxiety. But now I’d told him everything and hadn’t been believed, it only seemed to make things worse. Added to the burden of my fear was the towering necessity of concealing it—I saw everything I did and said reflected in his expression, a moment of wary reassurance, a flicker of fresh concern. He watched me too closely, and tried to pretend he didn’t; I struggled to act as normally as I possibly could, and tried to pretend I wasn’t doing any such thing.

  I raged at myself for feeling that desperate need to reassure him—I was right, he was wrong, I should drag Tuesday night’s argument back out kicking and screaming, and refuse to replace it till he understood the danger we faced. But something stopped me, made me conciliate where I should demand. I couldn’t bear to hear him voice his fears about me a second time. Everything he’d said before still haunted me; it made me doubt myself, somehow, even as I knew there was no reason to. So I spent my evenings walking on eggshells, as he did, edging uncertainly round a strange, dark place that neither of us fully understood.

  On Saturday, we went into Bournemouth together, and I tried to pretend I hadn’t been there twice in the past four days. We took the computer into PC World and explained to the assistant what had happened to it. The assistant said he’d look it over, and told us to come back this time next week. In Dixons, we bought the identical twins of our old stereo and DVD player, and carried them back to the car side by side. I was very aware of how passing strangers would see us—a straightforwardly happy couple, intent on enhancing a well-loved home—but any real togetherness between us had been driven into abrupt retreat. Fear could outweigh love very easily, I realised, when it was this raw. On the drive home, we talked like acquaintances beginning to realise they had nothing in common, before lapsing into the kind of silence that acknowledged the fact outright.

  When we got back, we set up our new possessions where our old ones had been. My gaze returned to the television, and I couldn’t stop myself from speaking. ‘It’s strange, don’t you think? That the burglars didn’t take that, too?’

  ‘Maybe they just didn’t have room for it in their car, who knows?’ There must have been a dubious quality to my silence—as he plugged in the DVD player, he turned, looked at me searchingly. ‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s no mystery to it, Annie. I don’t know how I can make you see that. It’s over, everything’s fine.’

  I’d intended my question to sound artless, casual—a throwaway statement that would spark doubt in his mind. My heart sank as I realised I hadn’t succeeded, that my motivation in speaking had been glaringly obvious. ‘I never said it wasn’t,’ I said unconvincingly, ‘I was just saying, that’s all.’

  If possible, that brief exchange made the tension between us even deeper—over dinner that evening, his preoccupation was palpable and unspoken, radiating from him in silent waves. So strong, and so appallingly misdirected. And I felt at once culpable and utterly helpless; an unwitting decoy, distracting Carl’s gaze while terrible things rustled in the background.

  I filled the long pauses with thoughts of Petra. In my mind, she’d begun to feel like a saviour, a lifebelt—someone who’d known me before, who could advise and understand without judging. I’d call her tomorrow, I told myself, when Carl was busy in the garden, and I was alone.

  That night, I drank more than usual, knowing it was the only way I’d be able to get to sleep before the small hours: insomnia had begun to plague me, and I turned to the only remedy at hand. When I woke up on Sunday morning, I felt heavy-limbed and headachey. It took me a second to realise I’d been woken by Carl getting out of bed; half-opening my eyes, I saw him moving towards the door slowly and quietly, obviously trying not to disturb me.

  I was going to say something sleepy and incoherent, but could think of nothing beyond the blindingly obvious—Oh, you’re awake—making me seem wakeful and jumpy and everything I didn’t want to. Closing my eyes again, I heard him leave the room. I’d been expecting his footsteps to move towards the bathroom, but, instead, they began to negotiate the stairs. There was, I thought, something oddly stealthy about the way he moved, far beyond simple consideration for a sleeping wife. As if it was very important to him that I didn’t hear.

  The second I thought that, it seemed to infect me, too. I sat up as quietly as I could, trying not to make the mattress creak as I leaned across the bed to check the clock. Eight thirty a.m., I saw—we normally both lay in for at least another hour on Sundays. And all the time, I was tracing those distant footsteps to the bottom of the stairs, through the hallway, into the living room where I lost the trail completely.

  A long silence. Then, a handful of muffled words that I couldn’t make out at all. He was on the phone, I realised; another pause extended before he started talking again, more volubly. I was sitting bolt upright now. While the exact words he spoke were blurred to incomprehensibility, I could sense a tone running through them like a strong current: unease, enforced secrecy. It somehow chilled me to recognise that. I was reminded too strongly of how I must have sounded last weekend, talking to Petra while he mowed the lawn outside.

  My hangover was gone without a trace and I felt exquisitely, appallingly alert. I desperately wanted to know what he was saying, but couldn’t possibly go to eavesdrop at the top of the stairs; everything in his tone said that part of him was listening out for the slightest noise. Before I’d come to any conscious decision, I was inching out of bed and across the carpet, reaching the phone on the dressing-table, lifting the receiver with infinite care.

  I found it only too easy to imagine him hearing the tiny inevitable click down the line, but his voice clearly told me that he hadn’t. There was no sudden wariness, just the quiet, watchful worry I’d already heard. I’d picked the extension up mid-word, and listened to him talking with my heart in my mouth.

  ‘—so, obviously, I’m pretty worried. It’s been going on for weeks now. I thought it’d get better, but since the break-in it’s got a million times worse. After she told me all that crazy stuff, that night, it was like she closed herself off from me completely. I couldn’t believe what she said, like I told you, it really freaked me out. She can’t even see how irrational it is; she’s acting as if she can, but she’s not fooling me at all…she’s still terrified about all that, and trying to pretend she’s not. Pretending she’s all right now, and she’s forgotten all about it, and it’s so bloody obvious that she hasn’t…’

  Dismay crawled over my skin on a thousand tiny legs. I heard him pause for a second to take a breath. Then, a second voice came down the line, freezing me where I stood. It was Petra.

  ‘It was the same when she phoned me last Sunday. She was really scared, I could tell, talking about some threatening phone call. It just sounded like a wrong number to me, and I said so. She said she felt better now she’d talked t
o me, and she could see I was right—but I could tell she didn’t mean that at all, she was just saying it. She honestly thinks that vet’s out to get her, told me all about it when I came to visit…does that make any kind of sense to you?’

  ‘None at all. That’s exactly why I’m worried.’

  Another pause—the world seemed to be contracting around me, becoming tighter and hotter and more claustrophobic every second. ‘Look, I’m really sorry to bother you, Petra, but I can’t imagine her talking to anyone else about this. I’d say you’re just about the only person she still trusts. If she gets in touch and tells you anything else, you’ll let me know, won’t you? Christ, you know I don’t want to spy on her, but she’s just not talking to me, and I don’t know what’s going on in her mind. I don’t know what to do for the best, right now.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell you if she says anything to me. Let me know, too, if anything else happens. I really hope she’s okay, Carl. You don’t know what it was like for her, before…’

  ‘I can guess. She’s told me about it.’ In my mind’s eye, I could see his pale, set face, the sudden hunted look crossing it as he checked the time. ‘Listen, I’m going to have to go. I’m sorry about waking you up. But there wasn’t any other time to call without her overhearing—’

  ‘Don’t worry. If you’d phoned four hours ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’m worried about her myself, now. Listen, take care, and—’

  I realised their conversation would end in a matter of seconds, and he’d be coming straight upstairs. Hanging up as quietly as I could, I returned to the bed as silently as I’d left it. I pressed half my face into the pillow, pulling the duvet up to conceal the other half. And, as I squeezed my eyes shut, I heard his footsteps on the stairs again; my imagination showed me every detail of his entrance, the flicker of reassurance in his eyes as he saw I was still dead to the world. He climbed into bed beside me, and lay down.

  He was so close to me, his skin brushed mine. I felt as if we were separated by a mile or more. I could feel no hatred or even antagonism for my husband or best friend, no matter how hard I tried—I knew they both had my very best interests at heart, and knew that I couldn’t blame either of them for thinking what they did. It seemed to make it worse that I couldn’t muster any anger or bitterness, leaving me with nothing but a turmoil that was mine alone.

  And I was alone. Absolutely. I knew for a fact that I couldn’t call Petra and tell her what I really felt, not now. My terror would reach her through a half-trained translator—Carl’s phone call would colour any natural response she might have, he’d prejudiced her verdict like a careless editorial. Everything I said would come across as the ravings of an unbalanced mind; a stolen folder, a murdered cat, a campaign of terror against me that nobody else could see.

  I lay there, and pretended to sleep. Actually trying to sleep was out of the question. The world was full of Sunday-morning inertia, the cool, shadowy rooms and drawn curtains around and below me waiting for sunlight to snap them into life. But it felt as if the house, too, was only pretending to be asleep; the atmosphere was not that of exhaustion, but of an animal preparing to spring.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  SINCE THE BREAK-IN, I’d started to think it couldn’t possibly get any worse when I was alone in the house. On Monday morning, however, it did. The conversation I’d overheard the previous morning came back to haunt me with new clarity after Carl had left for work, and as I prepared to face the day, my sense of claustrophobia was indescribable.

  You can’t go into Bournemouth again, I urged myself, it’s ridiculous. There’s no escape there; you know you’ll only have to come back. But the dissenting inner voice felt like an argument put up for form’s sake only, and had no genuine credibility. Deep down, I knew that the car journey and the interminable, aimless hours round the shops were as inevitable as night following day. I didn’t just want to get out of the house, I needed to.

  I was making myself a cup of tea in the kitchen prior to leaving when the knock came at the back door, taking me by surprise. ‘Hello, dear,’ Liz said amiably, ‘not interrupting anything, am I?’

  In the depth of my isolation, I’d virtually forgotten about her, and it came as an extraordinary relief to see her smiling on the doorstep; to realise that I wasn’t entirely alone here after all, that I still retained one true ally. ‘God, no,’ I said, a little too vehemently—then, in a rush, ‘come on in. The kettle’s on.’

  ‘I just thought I’d pop by and see how you were bearing up,’ she said, sitting down. ‘I’d have come before—you know how fond I am of you, dear—but I didn’t like to intrude. I knew you’d both have so much to do here.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve sorted everything out, now,’ I said, trying my best to smile. ‘Everything’s pretty much back to normal.’

  ‘It certainly looks that way. Your workmen did a wonderful job with the windows in here—you’d never know they were broken less than a week ago.’ The kettle boiled beside me, and I made her tea and brought it over to the table. ‘So what exactly did the burglars take?’ she asked as I sat down. ‘Nothing very important to you, I hope?’

  ‘Not really. Apart from our Tiffany lamp.’ An impulse to tell her the whole truth came raging up inside me—I’d barely recognised it before the words were flooding out. ‘They took a book I had about Rebecca Fisher, as well, and my folder of notes, the one with the photograph I showed you. I kept it in the spare room, and they just broke in and stole it…’

  My voice tailed off as I watched her watching me, clearly shocked. It had been the exact reaction I’d longed to get from Carl; faced with its jarring reality, I found myself struggling to dilute it. ‘They took other strange things as well,’ I said quickly. ‘A camera and an old clock radio; neither of them were worth anything either. Still, I don’t know…it seems wrong that they’d take my folder. It seems bizarre.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ At first, her voice was quiet and awed, then I saw her deliberately trying to pull herself together. When she spoke again, it was with a new and entirely unconvincing briskness. ‘I don’t mean to worry you, Anna, but taking that folder…it doesn’t sound quite like a burglary to me, it sounds more personal than that. This is going to sound hysterical, I’m sure—but it sounds like some kind of vendetta against your research.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say; it stunned me that she’d drawn exactly the same conclusions as I had, that she saw my fears as perfectly sensible. Because she hadn’t known me as long as Carl or Petra, I’d thought, she’d be more apt to doubt me. Suddenly I realised how flawed that logic had been, the direct inversion of reality. She didn’t know anything about that fresher term, her mind was entirely unclouded by subconscious prejudice. As the only objective party, she could see the dangers that they couldn’t.

  ‘I can’t help thinking about that vet, Mr Wheeler,’ she went on, ‘and what you told me about him, how angry he was when you mentioned Rebecca. You’ll probably think I’m being ridiculous, but…you don’t think he could have had something to do with it all?’

  For the second time in as many minutes, I was dumbstruck—her suspicions vindicated my own, gave them the unmistakable seal of authenticity. When I spoke, my voice was quiet, slightly unsteady. ‘That’s exactly what I thought… I just don’t know why he’d do that. I can just about see why he might want to drive me out of the village, some kind of twisted revenge. But what on earth would he want with my folder?’

  Liz frowned. ‘Maybe he’s trying to scare you into giving up your research,’ she said at last.

  I stared at her blankly, confused. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well… I don’t know. I’m as much in the dark about all this as you are. But from what you told me…when he said you were being ghoulish and all the rest of it… I can’t imagine he’d take too kindly to the idea of you writing a book about her. I saw how close the two of them were. I know you’re not exploiting her memory, but he might not.’

  ‘I told him I
was researching it,’ I said slowly. ‘But he didn’t believe that I was—he thought it was just a lie, so I could talk to him about her. He didn’t know…’

  Then I realised how easily that could have changed. Muriel and Helen both knew, could only too plausibly have told someone who’d told him. With the best will in the world, Liz could have done so herself. When she spoke again, she put my half-formed thoughts into words. ‘It’s hard to keep a secret in a sleepy little place like this, dear. Like it or not, word tends to get out.’

  ‘But how could he know I was still researching the book?’ My confusion was absolute. ‘If he’s just trying to stop me, how’s he going to know whether he’s succeeded?’

  ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea, Anna. I only wish I could be more help.’ Again, the expression I’d most longed to see scared me badly: genuine concern for my safety, for my future here. ‘You must be worried sick…whatever does Carl make of all this?’

  ‘He doesn’t.’ I spoke bluntly, and took a deep breath—I couldn’t lie to her now, not when she understood so much of the truth. ‘He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m imagining things, that it was just a burglary. He doesn’t even think it’s important that my folder’s gone. It’s putting a real strain on things, actually. I can’t talk to him about it—he just won’t listen. Since last Tuesday, we’ve been like strangers…’

  Her surprise was obvious. I could see her trying to find a tactful way of asking further, not wanting to trespass on the private intricacies of our relationship. It occurred to me that I’d have reacted in exactly the same way myself. ‘That’s a shame,’ she said cautiously, ‘it’s not what I’d have expected at all. From the little I’ve seen of him, he seems such an understanding man—and quite devoted to you.’