In the Spider's House

by Sarah Diamond

  ‘Honestly, you’ve got the wrong idea—’ But it was token resistance only—I was getting up and backing away as I spoke. ‘If I could just explain—’

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Jeffreys.’

  There was nothing I could do but leave, heading back out through the crowded reception, deeply shaken, cursing myself over and over again for screwing up so badly. If I’d only begun in a different way, if I could only step back in time and rephrase my opening words…but I knew perfectly well there was no point thinking about it. I’d lost my chance for good. It didn’t take an author’s sensitivity to realise he’d be less than happy to get a follow-up call from me in the near future, attempting to clarify my motives.

  Remembering how his face had changed, a small, involuntary shiver ran up the back of my neck. It was as if an unexpected cloud had passed across the sun, and the world around me seemed to darken in some tiny but unmissable way. She’d been his friend and possibly his lover, I told myself, it was only natural that he’d want to protect her. I couldn’t help but wonder how Rebecca Fisher could inspire such loyalty—how anyone could describe what had happened as an appalling violation, when the rest of the world seemed to perceive it as nothing more than rough justice.

  Of course, he’d known something nobody else had, not even Maureen from the shop. As I drove, his voice came back to me along with the abandoned collar from the cupboard: Even after her little dog was killed to make her leave. Everything in his recollected tone expressed naked hatred for the others in the village—and, while it disturbed me to acknowledge it to myself, an apparently newborn hatred for me.

  My own distress embarrassed me intensely—he was only a country vet, after all. It wasn’t as if I’d just made an enemy of a Sicilian Mafia boss. Turning the radio on and up, I sought out cheerful chart tracks to flush the worry away; banal rhymes expressing slick stock emotions, bouncy music that denied the very existence of dark corners.

  CHAPTER TEN

  APPROACHED FROM WAREHAM, Ploughman’s Lane strayed off a very minor road and up a steep, fair-sized hill—driving up it, you could see nothing at the top but empty blue sky and a few chalky smudges of cloud, and the view gave you the alarming optical illusion that you were about to speed off the edge of the world. Then, when you crested it and were heading into green, leafy, picturesque depths, my own and Liz’s houses became clearly visible in the middle distance, on the left-hand side of the road—the only man-made structures the eye could see before another, gentler hill rose to cut off the view.

  As they came into sight again, I was abruptly reminded of how different my mood had been as I’d set out earlier. Then it had been all optimism, was now all uncertainty. I wished I’d never gone into Wareham at all. Suddenly, I felt a kind of craving for the comfortable certainties of Liz’s kitchen, cups of tea and reassuring chit-chat delaying solitude and worry in an empty house. But long before I’d turned into our driveway, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. The one time I really wanted to see her little powder-blue Fiat parked outside, it wasn’t there.

  My thoughts and her absence made the silence seem more oppressive than ever before. I supposed that Socks must be next door somewhere, but it felt as if there was nothing and nobody for miles around. As I got out of the car and walked towards the front door, my footsteps sounded louder than usual. In this absolute stillness, the unexpected chirruping of a single grasshopper would have made me jump.

  I let myself in. The hallway was cool and stale-smelling, as though there’d been nobody here for weeks. Deep inside, my conversation with Mr Wheeler kept repeating and repeating, caught on some nightmarish mental tape-loop—I kept listening to his side of it, trying my hardest to hear prosaic irritation. Unable to hear anything but cold loathing mixed with fury. There was something terrifying about the thought that a virtual stranger hated you that much, and there was nothing you could say or do to change their mind, that a personality you didn’t know at all might actively wish you harm. Especially when you’d told them where you lived. Of course, he’d remember—it had been Rebecca’s address, he’d been here himself. At some point in the not-so-distant past, he must have stood in this very hallway, must know the layout of this house as well as that of his own.

  I told myself I was being melodramatic, over-imaginative. He’d certainly been angry, but I had no possible reason to fear reprisals. But rational or not, my tension wasn’t going anywhere. The second it started to retreat, Mr Wheeler’s furious eyes flashed in my mind and brought it rushing straight back. I had a sudden need for a comforting, familiar voice, but I couldn’t tell Carl about this turn of events; he had no idea that I’d gone to see the vet in the first place. Checking my watch, I saw it was only one thirty and there was a good chance that Petra would be on her lunch break. I got her mobile number from the little book by the living room phone and dialled, praying she wouldn’t have absentmindedly switched it off.

  She hadn’t—I heard her answer on the fifth or sixth ring, blessedly cheerful and outgoing and herself. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Petra, it’s me,’ I said. ‘Haven’t called at a bad time, have I?’

  ‘Anna—good to hear from you! No, it’s fine, I’m free to talk. I was just having a sandwich in the office.’ I tried to imagine where she was sitting as if I could somehow transport myself there, vague background noise down the line lending details to the scene: Boots sandwiches and Diet Coke on an overcrowded desk, distant telephones and colleagues’ voices in an untidily, unglamorously open-plan office. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, ‘not bad at all. I’ve got an idea for a new novel—you were right, Dorset did inspire me.’

  ‘Congratulations, that’s terrific!’ I was worried she’d ask further and drag Rebecca Fisher into this conversation, but she didn’t—carried on with the vicarious wonderment that was the nearest she ever came to envy. ‘It must be gorgeous there now, where you’re living. The weather’s so beautiful, but it’s like an oven in this bloody office. Jim and Dan are talking about getting a petition up for better air-conditioning. Jim said you wouldn’t be allowed to keep chickens in this heat—well, not unless you were cooking them.’

  I’d rung up in the hope that she’d distract me from the morning’s events, but they were expanding to block out the light, and I realised I’d have to share them. ‘Well, it’s not that idyllic here,’ I admitted unwillingly. ‘I’ve had a nightmare morning. I went to visit this vet who lives nearby, thought he could help me with a bit of research for the book. Anyway, he got the wrong end of the stick, thought I was just being nosy—I didn’t even have a chance to explain. He sent me off with a flea in my ear.’

  The phrases and tone were all wrong, entirely misleading, but there seemed no way to accurately describe that meeting without using Edgar Allan Poe words surreal in the context of a pleasant lunchtime chat—fury, hatred, terror. Down the line, her easy incomprehension came across clearly. ‘That’s a bummer—what a paranoid git. Don’t worry about it, Anna. You can find out what you want to know from someone else, can’t you?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I bet you can. Why don’t you try the British Library? It’s supposed to have every book in the world, or something. By the way, now you’ve settled in and all, you’re going to have to invite me down soon—I really need a break from Reading.’

  ‘That’d be terrific.’ I spoke a little too gratefully; of all people in the world apart from Carl, she’d be able to distract me from this new worry, if not dispel it entirely. ‘What about this coming weekend? Tomorrow?’

  Only wild optimism could have made me even hope that she’d be free so soon—her regretful little noise down the line told me I should have known far better. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m massively busy this weekend. I’m going shopping in London with Jenny tomorrow, and then there’s a big night out planned with Jim and Louise and that lot. And—oh, Christ—next weekend it’s my eldest brother’s wedding. I can’t exactly miss that.’

&n
bsp; It was a predictable disappointment, but in this sunny, silent room, I felt it too keenly—a fortnight alone with a worry I couldn’t tell Carl anything about. ‘Well,’ I said, trying my hardest to sound amused and untroubled, ‘how about the weekend after that?’

  ‘That sounds cool—no it doesn’t, bollocks, Melanie’s party’s that Saturday, and I’ve already promised to go. Tell you what. The weekend after that, the second weekend in July. I’m definitely free then. Tell me you are, too.’

  I had a childish and momentary impulse to invent some big social occasion of my own, an impulse that, even in Reading, had been far from unknown when booking nights out with Petra—but I knew it was ridiculous, there was no point. It wouldn’t even irritate her; she’d just sympathise before deferring indefinitely. ‘I can,’ I said, ‘it’s a date. I’ll let Carl know tonight.’

  ‘And I’ll put it in my diary.’ We laughed. ‘Listen, I’ve got to run—just got an urgent email, a work email. Say hi to Carl from me, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ I said, then, with an urge to prolong this conversation, ‘I’ll give him your love. He’s still really enjoying his new job—and his new car.’

  ‘Good for him. I’ll give you a ring soon, anyway. Bye for now.’

  My tenuous link with the outside world was instantly severed. A flat, dead buzz ran on and on in my ear for several seconds before I put the phone down. Inexorably, the silence closed back in around me, and with it came the memories of Mr Wheeler snarling in a sterile consulting room, loyalty and loathing and bitterness in every line of his face. I wondered what he was doing right now, and whether he was thinking of me.

  I thought he was.

  Sometimes, worry can prevent you from concentrating on work. At other times, it can do the exact opposite, driving you to seek out anything else just to take your mind off it. Following that horrible confrontation in Wareham, it seemed that only thoughts of the novel could distract me from niggling, gnawing anxiety. And thinking about the novel was nowhere near enough. There had to be another way into this elusive central character, I told myself, and remembered what Petra had said about the British Library. In the shadows of the spare room, I sat down at the computer and began a long and superficially tedious hike through the less colourful regions of the internet.

  When Carl got home from work that evening, I was just making a start on dinner. After he’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt, he joined me in chopping and dicing and peeling at the kitchen counter.

  ‘So how’s your day been?’ he asked casually. ‘Find out any more vital facts for the book?’

  More than anything, I wanted to tell him about what had really happened, leaving out none of the raw emotion that had startled me so badly. I longed to know how he’d interpret it, whether he’d see it as a reasonable cause for alarm or as something to dismiss with a flip comment and a smile. But I knew I’d effectively gagged myself on the subject, that telling him now would create far more problems that it would solve. ‘Well, in a way,’ I said. ‘I called Petra earlier, and we were talking about it. She mentioned the British Library. When I looked it up on the net earlier, it looked like it could really help me—there’s a separate branch of it, a newspaper library that’s got copies of every paper since God knows when. It’s got to have the original news stories about Rebecca. Of course, it’s in London, but that’s not such a big deal. I thought I’d get the train down there on Monday, have a look round. I checked the times, and it’s only about four and a half hours each way.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said amiably. ‘You might find something interesting. How is Petra, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, she’s fine. Busy as ever. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited her to stay on the second weekend in July. She said she’d like to see the place for herself.’

  ‘I don’t mind at all; it’ll be good to see her again. Good for you, too. I know she’s your best mate, you must be missing her a bit.’

  A few moments of companionable peace in which I could almost forget my new anxiety existed. We stood side by side at the counter, him chopping carrots, me peeling potatoes. The radio was on quietly in the background and, beyond the window, golden summer evening was gradually fading into a rich, gory, spectacular sunset.

  ‘Seems like it’s been a bit of a social day for both of us,’ he said at last. ‘I was talking to the manager of the Poole store this afternoon—Jim Miller, you know, I’ve told you about him before. Anyway, I mentioned having him and his wife round for dinner next weekend, but I thought I’d better check with you before arranging anything specific.’

  In all honestly, I had no interest whatsoever in dinner-party small talk with strangers—the bright light of this new idea had shown my loneliness up for what it really was: boredom, restlessness, and worry that I’d never write another book in my life. But he’d greeted Petra’s visit so enthusiastically that it seemed unkind and selfish to say so; Petra was far more my friend than Carl’s. ‘I don’t mind at all,’ I said, ‘it sounds great. Invite them round whenever—it’ll be nice to meet them.’

  ‘I thought you could do with a couple of new faces.’ He smiled. ‘Jim’s wife’s a nurse in Poole Hospital. I think she’s about your age—she could probably introduce you to some more people, if you got to know her. Whoever her friends are, they’ve got to be a bit livelier than the old dears around here.’

  It wasn’t exactly age that was the issue, I knew. I wouldn’t have found Helen any easier to talk to if we’d been eighteen-year-old students sharing a house in Reading. Still. I could sense his good-natured desire to make me a part of things during the daytime, as he was himself—he’d have the office, I’d have an accessible network of friends to chat with—and, while I knew it was misguided, it was too earnest to brush irritably aside with a quick no thanks. ‘That’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ll look forward to meeting her. To meeting both of them.’

  Over dinner, my thoughts kept coming back to the newspaper library. While I was well aware it meant about as much to him as his monthly sales targets did to me, I couldn’t help mentioning it again. ‘I do hope I can find something. On Monday, I mean. There’s got to be something there that tells me a bit more about Rebecca—don’t you think?’

  ‘Well, I expect so. To be honest, I don’t know much about it.’ His serious, rather puzzled expression creased into an unexpected smile. ‘You know, it’s funny to hear you talk about her like that—you sound as if you’re on first-name terms with each other. As if she’s an old friend.’

  I laughed, but felt jolted; his words seemed to reflect some essential but subtly disturbing shift in my approach to her: she wasn’t the notorious Rebecca Fisher any more, but a woman I desperately needed to understand. ‘That’s the whole problem,’ I said. ‘I don’t know her from Adam. Not yet.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ON MONDAY I got the train to Waterloo station and then the tube. When I emerged at Colindale, the newspaper library caught my eye at once, a vast building that looked badly out of proportion with the small houses and scrubby patches of grass surrounding it. I crossed the road towards it, and went in.

  Once inside, through an odd, faint smell of chlorine, past an ancient-looking cloakroom, I followed the signs upstairs, where the library itself was a hive of near-silent activity. The internet had told me that I’d need ID, and I presented my passport to the pallid young man behind the main desk. ‘If you’d like to fill out this form…’ he said, passing one to me. I scrawled perfunctory details of name and address and phone number as he spoke again. ‘You been here before?’

  ‘It’s my first time,’ I said. ‘I’m doing some research for a novel.’

  Even here, it seemed to come out as a confession rather than a fact, but he didn’t seem surprised, or even particularly interested. ‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’

  ‘The original articles about a case.’ His expression clearly asked which one, and overcame my fear of seeming morbid. ‘The Rebecca Fisher case—you�
�ve probably heard of it. It would have been in all the papers in 1969, during the summer.’

  I finished completing the form and passed it back across the desk to him. Putting it on a stack of them, he stepped out from behind the desk. ‘Follow me,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you how to look things up in here.’

  We headed into a slightly smaller room, lined with a bafflingly endless series of leather-bound volumes. A few people sat consulting them at desks. ‘Just find the reference book from the year you want,’ he said, ‘then the name you’re after. It’ll have page and paragraph references—take a note of them. After that, just go into the room through there, and find the box of microfilm from the right month and year. Then you can load it and keep an eye on the page numbers, till…’

  It was like asking for directions, and finding them so complicated you lost track after the first few seconds. I nodded, and struggled to look as if he hadn’t lost me completely somewhere during his second sentence. At last he finished speaking. ‘Well, if you need any more help, I’ll just be at the desk,’ he said. ‘I hope you find what you’re after.’

  In the event, I did, more from trial and error than any feel for the system. Roughly an hour later, I was entering the microfilm room, hunting down the box marked July 1969 from a selection that lent new meaning to the concept of infinity. Beyond them the room was very dark, and if I’d closed my eyes, I’d have been convinced it was both completely deserted and filled with unattended machinery—tiny repetitive clicks and whizzes came from all sides, occasional discordant clacking noises that said they almost certainly shouldn’t sound like that. But I saw that nearly all of the alcoves by the microfilm machines were occupied; silent people intent on the projected, luminous pages in front of them, the noises coming as they loaded and unloaded film, and scrolled along their findings.