In the Spider's House

by Sarah Diamond

  Then it came to me, in a sudden, vivid memory. The faded, middle-aged woman greeting us at the door of this house four months ago, on a windy, grey, dispiriting March afternoon.

  ‘So do you think it’s the sort of property you’d be interested in?’ she’d asked, and the question had come out with far more than an estate agent’s businesslike concern—there’d been thinly veiled urgent desperation in her voice. ‘It’s a very nice area—’

  The startlingly, almost implausibly reduced price of this house, a deal no young couple could help but jump at. The kind of offer you’d only make if you were desperate to sell as quickly as you possibly could. The kind of offer you’d only make if you needed the money from the sale to move somewhere, anywhere else…

  But Rebecca Fisher wouldn’t have needed the money at once, would have been able to move on anyway, leave the estate agent to sell the empty house at a more leisurely pace, and pass on the proceeds whenever. At the age of twenty-two, Rebecca Fisher had left prison with better than a million pounds in the bank.

  Maybe she’d spent it all by then, I told myself uneasily. For all I knew, she could have gone into a buying frenzy as soon as she was out of prison, when she found herself free again for the first time in twelve years. It happened to some Lottery winners, I knew—I’d read about it in the papers now and then, they’d been known to get through equivalent sums in a far shorter time…

  Only I couldn’t see Rebecca doing that in a million years. Practical, efficient, deeply wary Rebecca with her finely honed sense of self-preservation, only too well aware that it would be in her best interests to lead a quiet life. I struggled to imagine her spending thousands in glossy department stores, drawing discreetly curious stares from saleswomen, from other customers. Stares that would inevitably take in her face, attention that would register her age, her Northern accent. She knew only too well how the public hated her, Patricia Mackenzie had said. If she was recognised out there, it would be disastrous…

  Confusion pounded in my mind, calling into doubt something I’d taken for granted up until now—that Rebecca Fisher and Geraldine Hughes had been one and the same person. Because Patricia Mackenzie had also said something else. Of course, she’d said, she’d changed dramatically since that famous photograph of her was taken, but—And then she’d fallen silent as people only did when they realised they’d said too much, and had changed the subject at once.

  But Geraldine Hughes had looked like that photograph. Not strikingly, not so you’d spot the likeness on your own, but when you knew she was Rebecca, you could trace clear similarities between them. Small, blonde, blue-eyed, delicate-featured. Any real changes could be easily attributed to the passage of time. Who, at forty-three, really looked the same as they’d done at ten?

  Of course, she could have changed back after she was released. Maybe she’d gained weight in prison and lost it again when she was free. Maybe she’d dyed her hair in prison and let it grow back. Anything, I told myself, was possible…

  It made perfect sense. The only problem was, I didn’t believe a word. If Rebecca’s appearance had changed, she’d want to keep it changed. Even if it meant shovelling down platefuls of food she didn’t want, to keep the weight on, dying her hair an unflattering colour for the rest of her life. To a notorious figure like Rebecca Fisher, anonymity would always come first. And the threat of recognition would be the worst thing in the world.

  Rebecca was a rich woman, and didn’t look anything like her picture.

  Geraldine had needed money urgently, and did.

  Conclusion: they had nothing to do with one another.

  But that was ridiculous, impossible. If Geraldine hadn’t been Rebecca, why in God’s name had she been forced out of her home? Why had someone been so determined to get rid of her that they’d smashed her windows, issued terrible threats, killed her dog? I remembered the letter I’d found in the spare room, the fear screaming from every erratically scrawled line. She’d been frightened for her life here, had felt the danger gathering, week by week…

  And something else. If Geraldine hadn’t been Rebecca, Mr Wheeler wasn’t Rebecca’s ally, just the friend and lover of a harmless, middle-aged woman, a woman who’d somehow fallen victim to an appalling mistake. Protective of her, certainly, concerned for her, even furious on her behalf; but there was nothing sinister about any of those reactions—Carl or Petra or Liz would have behaved in exactly the same way defending me. There was no earthly reason why he’d have gone to such lengths to avenge her, no reason why I should imagine he’d be capable of that. And I remembered the missing book and the missing folder, the things that would have meant nothing to Geraldine’s boyfriend at all…

  Long-held certainties trembled around me, threatened to fall into dust as I watched; I needed answers more than I’d ever needed anything. There was, I realised, only one person who’d be able to give them, a person who had haunted my thoughts for a very long time. To get to the truth, I’d have to confront Mr Wheeler.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  IT WAS HALF PAST SIX that evening when I turned into the little car park outside the vet’s surgery in Wareham. It was at least three-quarters empty, the handful of cars spaced out like the last few chocolates in the box. One of them, I knew, would be Mr Wheeler’s. When I’d phoned up earlier under the guise of a friend, the receptionist had told me he was in today, and that he’d probably be leaving at about seven o’clock. I’d thanked her and hung up before she could ask further questions of her own, knowing I’d have to arrive considerably earlier than that; the idea of missing him by minutes was appalling.

  I parked near the main double doors, turning off the engine. The air was very hot and very still—the sunlight had taken on a rosy edge, and a sense of temporary peace hung far too heavily. A fly alighted on the dashboard. Nothing else moved. Lighting a cigarette, I took a deep drag and saw strings of smoke drift out of the open car window; there was no breeze to disrupt them, and they rose as if in a closed room.

  Watching the double doors some twenty feet away from me, I felt almost sick with apprehension. I had no idea how Mr Wheeler would react at the sight of me, whether he’d recognise me at once or not. And I might be wrong, Geraldine might have been Rebecca after all. I might have driven here only to confront an unknowable malevolence—the shadowy, snarling Mr Wheeler who’d dominated a thousand sleepless nights…

  My fears increased a little more each time the double doors opened. First a middle-aged woman emerged, then, several minutes later, a younger one. An elderly man shortly after that. Checking the dashboard clock, I saw it was ten to seven. There were only three other cars left here, now. I had a sudden and panicky conviction that the rest of the world was draining away around us; soon, there would only be one other car, and I’d know exactly who it belonged to, and I’d wait an eternity for its owner to emerge. And at that precise instant of thought, the doors swung open again, and he was there.

  While I hadn’t fully realised it up till now, part of me had been hoping against hope that the sight of him would destroy my lingering unease in a second—of course he was harmless, of course he was normal, I’d been worrying about nothing all along. The opposite was true. As I watched him walking out, I remembered his expression of cold fury more clearly, tiny details of how his face had changed in the surgery. The unpredictability of the immediate future suddenly terrified me.

  He had only to turn his head to the right to see me, but he didn’t—he headed straight past, towards the battered off-white Ford some thirty metres away. As I watched his retreating back in the rearview mirror, the impulse to just drive away was almost irresistible. I forced it back as hard as I could, reminding myself that I simply had no choice in the matter. Opening the car door felt like reaching the furthest edge of a high diving board. Getting out felt like jumping off it.

  ‘Mr Wheeler,’ I called. ‘Wait.’

  He stopped, turned. Slamming the car door behind me, I began to walk towards him. The distance between us seemed the le
ngth of a football field. I found it impossible to read his expression, and couldn’t tell whether he’d recognised me or not. The closer I got, the more convinced I became that I’d made a terrible mistake in coming here. I wanted my voice to ring out with straightforward, casual confidence, but the slight tremble in it was unmissable and infinitely telling.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me waiting for you like this. I just had to talk to you, and—’

  Seeing recognition in his eyes, I fell silent. It seemed that minutes passed before he spoke.

  ‘I know you,’ he said quietly. ‘You came to see me in May.’

  ‘I wanted to explain at the time—you’ve got to believe me—I didn’t want gory details then, and I don’t now. But I’m worried for my own safety. I’ve been getting threats at home, and it sounds like exactly the same thing that happened to Geraldine. I don’t know anyone else who can help, who knew her at all well, who knew what happened…’

  I paused to catch my breath, and still couldn’t tell what he was thinking, what he was going to say. A middle-aged woman came out of the double doors, turning and raising her hand to him en route to one of the parked cars. ‘Night, Colin,’ she called.

  ‘Night, Lucy.’ He spoke distractedly, then turned back to me. I watched his face, alert to the tiniest change of expression as the woman started her engine behind us. ‘So what do you want me to tell you?’ he asked at last. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Relief hit me like a physical blow. There was no anger in his voice at all, I realised; he sounded like he looked, curious and slightly concerned. ‘My husband and I bought Geraldine’s house, a few months ago,’ I said quietly. ‘When we first heard the village gossip about Rebecca Fisher, I thought the whole Fisher case would make a great basis for a novel—I am a writer, I wasn’t lying to you, I’ve had one book published. I started researching the case, finding out more. That’s why I wanted to talk to you in May.

  ‘Since then, some pretty frightening things have been happening. We’ve had silent phone calls at home. The house was broken into. All the ground floor windows were smashed. And a cat I was sort of looking after—I found it dead in our garden. To be honest, I really don’t understand what’s going on. I just keep remembering Geraldine. Everything that happened to her.’

  His eyes were cautious, kind, slightly guilty. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I misjudged you. Perhaps I’m a little overprotective about Geraldine, but with the best will in the world, I can’t help that. When she was going through that nightmare, I’m quite convinced I was the only friend she had in the area. When I think about how little her neighbours cared…’

  His voice tailed off, and he shook his head before looking at me with some embarrassment. ‘I overreacted badly when you came to see me before. I felt very awkward about it, after you’d gone. I even thought I’d call on you to apologise, but when I finally reached your house, I changed my mind. It dawned on me that you might consider it very odd…that you’d probably have forgotten all about our little quarrel, by then.’

  So that was what he’d really been thinking when I’d seen him outside. His smile was slightly sheepish before he went on. ‘If you’re experiencing the same things Geraldine did, I’m very sorry. I can only assume there’s some maniac in that village. Geraldine Hughes and Rebecca Fisher have nothing whatsoever to do with each other—I’d be prepared to swear it under oath.’

  I spoke quietly. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘But why did you wait for me?’ he asked. ‘Why did you want to talk to me? I’m a competent vet, if I say so myself, but I’m no bodyguard. Surely you’d be better off speaking to the police?’

  ‘They don’t understand the full story. If it comes to that, nor do I.’ I paused for a moment, watching his expression carefully. ‘I really want to talk to Geraldine,’ I said. ‘I think if I heard her side of the story, it might all start to make sense.’

  In a split second, he was defensive again. ‘I can’t give you her number.’

  ‘I understand that. I wouldn’t expect you to,’ I said at once. ‘I just wondered if you’d give her mine. If you’re still in touch with her.’

  He nodded. ‘I am.’

  ‘Then, next time you speak to her, could you explain the situation? Tell her what I’ve told you, and ask her to phone me. The number hasn’t changed; she’ll know it,’ I said. ‘If she doesn’t want to talk to me—well, that’s her decision. But I’d be more than grateful if she did.’

  ‘Well,’ he said cautiously, ‘I can certainly do that. To be on the safe side, though, I’d better take the number again.’

  ‘I’ll write it down.’ I fished a biro and a crumpled old receipt out of my handbag and scribbled quickly, leaning on my knee, jotting my name down beside the number. ‘Thank you,’ I said, handing it to him. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘It’s quite all right. Again, I’m sorry I was so short with you before.’ He got his wallet out of his pocket, folded the receipt into it. ‘I’ll pass this on to Geraldine when I speak to her next. That’ll almost certainly be over the next few days.’

  I murmured thanks again, and this strange little interview was at an end; there was a slightly stilted, embarrassed quality to our goodbyes. I watched him unlock his car and get in, before walking back across the car park towards my own. In the silence, my footsteps sounded hollow and flat before his engine spluttered into life and drowned them out. As he drove past me, he raised a hand in grave, barely smiling farewell. I raised mine back, and stood and watched the car till it had vanished from sight.

  I drove home through Wareham’s town centre. The time had just passed seven o’clock, and the streets around me were deserted. They’d taken on a mysterious and slightly sinister edge; a frozen tableau of dummies in a dress-shop window, a single crisp packet blowing lazily along the pavement like tumbleweed. Everything I saw found a distant echo in my own mind: emptiness, and wrongness, and an overwhelming sense of ambiguity.

  It was bewildering to feel something as familiar as my fear of Mr Wheeler simply disappear. It was like coming home and finding that home had vanished without a trace; standing and staring at the blank patch of land where it had been with an expression of cartoonish bewilderment. I had no doubt that I’d just been told the truth. Everything in the vet’s eyes and voice had had the unmistakable ring of honesty but, deep down, part of me couldn’t help wishing I could believe in the lies again. Without them, recent events drained of any kind of rhyme or reason, and there was nothing but a jumbled heap of memories thrown haphazardly together, entirely senseless.

  Turning onto Ploughman’s Lane, I began the slow ascent to the top of the hill. I was too preoccupied to fear reaching it, and the prospect didn’t even register. It was only on the way down that I realised it hadn’t done. I parked and let myself in with a mind full of unanswered questions, made a start on dinner and thought about everything.

  Carl got home about half an hour after I did. If he noticed my palpable preoccupation, he didn’t comment on it, and I was far too lost in my own thoughts to analyse the subtle nuances of tone and expression. For once, that night, the too-long silences in front of the television didn’t affect me in the slightest, and the tense atmosphere washed off me like water off a stone. More than anything, I wanted to tell him about the events of that day, but knew it was impossible. He wouldn’t grasp their reality, never mind their importance. I’d only be able to share it all with him when I knew the full story myself. In the shadows of the living room, I found myself praying that Geraldine would call me, and soon.

  Over the next couple of days, I couldn’t remember ever feeling more restless. Far from travelling into Bournemouth for no reason, I’d become deeply unwilling to leave the house at all. I was terrified that the all-important call would come when I was out, and that Geraldine wouldn’t bother to ring back. When I had to go out for groceries or cigarettes, the first thing I did on my return was to check the answering machine, alert for a Northern-accented voice that n
ever came. And, as I focused on the telephone, I was reminded of those silent calls all over again; remembered that Mr Wheeler hadn’t made them, that I had no idea who might have been breathing down the line.

  On Thursday afternoon, I was making myself lunch in the kitchen when the ringing tone began, almost stopping my heart. It could be Carl, I warned myself, but I was well aware that he never phoned at this time of day, and that he was very much a creature of habit. I picked up the receiver with my heart in my mouth. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh, hello. Can I speak to Anna Jeffreys, please?’

  It was the voice I’d been expecting—I’d first heard it over four months ago, and recognised it at once. ‘Speaking,’ I said, then, knowing the answer perfectly well, ‘is that Miss Hughes?’

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘But please, call me Geraldine.’

  She hadn’t extended that invitation in March, I remembered. It seemed to summarise a subtle change in her whole manner—how harassed she’d sounded before, rushing through inessential small talk like scenery on the way to an urgent appointment. There was none of that, now; her slight Northern accent sounded chatty and conversational, implying all the time in the world to discuss things. ‘I gave Colin Wheeler a ring last night,’ she said. ‘He told me about you.’

  ‘Well, it’s good to hear from you,’ I said quickly. ‘If I can ask, what exactly did he say?’

  ‘Oh, all about you being threatened. That you had your windows broken, your cat killed, silent phone calls. Almost exactly what happened to me there. It came as such a shock, that it was still going on.’ A small, nervous, entirely humourless laugh that belonged to her previous demeanour, recalling tiny details of it that I’d thought I’d forgotten. ‘I think that house must be jinxed. There’s no other explanation for it, that I can see.’