Her breath released slowly in the emptiness. Back to the screen. She clicked on the symbol.
The spider filled the screen again. It was grotesque. She felt her face screwing up. But she needed to know.
She clicked on the message bit and typed, her fingers tripping over each other: “so who are you? and sorry but if you dont get rid of that spider then your dumped.”
“That’s not very nice. I heard you were properly brought up.”
“Your not very nice.”
“You don’t know that.”
“OK, you are dumped. sorry but i made a mistake. you messed me around lets call it quits.”
“Quits? I don’t think so!”
She wasn’t having any more of this. Whoever he was – and she still suspected Danny – he was horrible and she didn’t want to waste her time. She began to zap him, dragging the spider symbol towards the Phiz Dump Bin. As she pulled him towards the bin, relief swept through her. There was nothing to fear from Phiz. Getting rid of unwanted attention was this easy.
Win some, lose some. Never mind. More fish etc.
But as she reached the Dump Bin and let go, the spider span back up into the corner, where it sat, watching again. It seemed to breathe, pulsing slightly, as though it could spring at any moment. Frowning, she tried again. Maybe she’d just let go too soon. But once again, the spider refused to be dumped. Now it appeared across the whole screen again, huge, monstrous, before shrinking to its watching position in the corner.
Cat’s heart began to race again. Her armpits were damp.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, as she dragged it one more time to the Dump Bin.
This time the spider slid into the bin and did not crawl back out. Cat waited for a few seconds to be sure.
No problem. She had no idea why it had been so difficult. She’d never deleted anyone before and maybe this was a feature of Phiz. Maybe you had to try three times, so that you didn’t accidentally delete someone. Or she just hadn’t dragged it properly.
Whatever, he was gone now. If it was Danny, she’d find out sooner or later. It must be him. Who else would be so creepy?
Well, a creep, of course. And there were more creeps in the world than Danny. Maybe one of them had found her. Maybe that’s what adults were so paranoid about. Well, they were wrong: she’d got rid of him.
When she began to close down the computer, an error message came up – “The programme is not responding” – and then came code numbers. She tried again. Nothing happened. The screen was frozen. Only one solution: crash the system. She kept her finger pressed on the power button. It seemed to take a very long time to switch off, but eventually, of course, it did.
Blackness. Silence. She breathed deeply.
Cat put the laptop away and got ready for bed. With the light off, and her alarm set for the morning, she lay trying to sleep. She could not get the picture of that huge spider out of her mind. Even with her eyes closed, it was still there. Watching her.
Eventually, sleep came. But at some point during the early hours, the spider entered her dreams. She woke, wet with sweat, her heart racing.
As she reached for a glass of water, Cat McPherson told herself not to be so stupid.
Just a creep and a picture of a spider. Nothing that could possibly affect her if she didn’t let it.
But, in the dark, alone, it’s not that easy. She pulled the duvet over her head. No good. Its voiceless rustling was worse than silence. She plugged her iPod into her ears and listened to anything: she didn’t care what. As the rhythms drummed into her head, she let herself be taken away by the music, holding onto the notes.
She forced the spider guy from her mind.
And, much later, fell asleep.
CHAPTER 9
THE CANAL
CAT and Angus were walking along the canal with Polly. A thin low sun scattered through the trees that Saturday afternoon and Polly was annoyingly interested in the smells along the waterside.
“Hurry up! Stupid dog!” shouted Cat. She wanted to get back home. Too many things to do. She and Angus were supposed to walk Polly once a week, though they usually managed to get out of it. No getting out of it today, though, not with parents still in crabby mood – her mum had been phoned first thing in the morning by some journalist wanting a comment on her article and her dad was giving her the “I-told-you-so” treatment. And Cat and Angus had been subjected to the “parents-being-reasonable-and-seeming-to-tell-their-kids-everything” chat at breakfast, during which Cat had had to pretend she hadn’t overheard their conversation about it already.
It had turned into a full-blown debate, with Angus siding with their mum because she’d stood up for her beliefs and Cat feeling the need to side with her dad who was saying how terrible it was that soldiers risked their lives for their country and then found that their injuries, whether mental or not, were dismissed. And it’s really not what you need at breakfast when you’re about to go to athletics and run in some boring so-called “friendly” competition. And what competition was ever friendly? Then her mum had made her wash up, which Cat suspected was some kind of petty revenge for having sided with her dad. And to cap it all her dad had said he couldn’t take Cat to athletics as he had golf and she had to get the bus because her mum was taking Angus to buy new saxophone reeds because he had suddenly realized he had no spares.
The day had continued as lousily as it had started. She’d run badly in the unfriendly competition and had had to deal with sarky remarks from her trainer. So what with parents and trainer, plus Phiz lingering at the back of her mind, not to mention the fact that Angus kept playing air sax as though he thought he was a famous player – something to do with a concert coming up, which no one was allowed to forget – Cat was in no mood for Polly sniffing everything instead of walking properly.
A scruffy barge or houseboat or whatever they were called was moored on the near bank. The sun was behind it, blinding Cat as they approached. She didn’t know if she’d seen it before. She’d never looked that closely at the boats that came and went, and sometimes stayed, along the canal.
Cat wondered what it would be like to live on a houseboat like that. Did you live on them? She didn’t know. Maybe you just had them as places to get away from your family. Or maybe you went on trips or holidays. Where did the canal go? Glasgow? She didn’t really know that either.
The vessel didn’t look particularly well cared for, its green paint peeling and a rusty chain hanging from the small deck. The long, low cabin formed most of the length of the boat, a pot of fresh flowers sitting at one end, and a metal ladder up to the roof. Also on top of the cabin, dominating it, was a motorbike, partly covered by a tarpaulin. That was what made Cat notice the barge in the first place – you didn’t expect to see motorbikes on boats.
The tiny deck at the front was filled by a woman sitting on a chair, watching them as they approached. She had a notebook on her lap, a mug of something on the deck beside her, and a bag of crisps in her hand. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter lay beside the coffee mug.
Cat felt observed by her. The woman really was staring. Hadn’t she ever seen anyone walking a dog before?
Then the woman raised her hand, as if waving. It seemed as though she might be about to speak to them. Cat wanted to pass her as quickly as possible. She wasn’t in the mood to make pointless conversation with some stranger. Unfortunately, Polly had other ideas. The bag of crisps was to blame. Polly identified the crunchy sound and the crackling of the packet. She went and stood near the edge of the bank, wagging her tail wildly. Any moment now and saliva would be hanging from her mouth.
“Polly! Come here!”
Polly stood where she was, wagging her tail even more vigorously, suffering a sudden attack of selective deafness.
“Polly!” shouted Cat again, embarrassed.
Then the woman threw a crisp, which Polly caught. Great, thought Cat. Now we’ll never get away.
“How old is she?” asked the woman.
“Six,” said Angus.
“Labrador?”
“Yes.”
“Lovely dog. I was thinking about getting a dog. For company. Would you recommend a Labrador? Maybe a bit big on a houseboat?”
She seemed to want to talk. It must be lonely living on a boat. She looked about fifty, though it was hard to tell because she was scruffy, her straggling hair the colour of metal streaked with rust.
The woman looked … what? Fragile, Cat thought. And sad, sort of. Her long body was folded into the chair like a crumpled fan. She was thin, in body and face, her cheekbones sharp. There was a small mark on her face, the thin white line of a scar on her cheek. Maybe she had been attractive when she was younger, but it didn’t look as though she cared about that now. It must have been months since she’d seen the inside of a hair salon. And fashion was clearly not her concern.
But it was her eyes that were striking. They gleamed from a dry-skinned face. They seemed to hold the light. It was hard not to look at them, but Cat felt uncomfortable. Pierced by them.
“We should get back,” Cat said to Angus. “Come on, Polly, time to go. Nice meeting you,” she said to the woman, with a polite smile.
“Indeed,” said the woman, staring at her as though she knew how keen Cat was to get away. “Nice meeting you too. Goodbye, Polly. Maybe see you again, eh?” And she waved.
“Weirdo,” muttered Angus to Cat as they turned away.
And they carried on along the towpath.
Cat found herself thinking about the woman, wondering about different people’s lives, how they turn out. When the woman had been fourteen, as Cat was now, did she imagine that in thirty or however many years’ time she’d be living on a cramped, grotty boat with peeling paint and the silty stale smell of canal? Maybe she never wanted to settle down with a normal job, promotion, money, family. But what if she’d had other dreams?
Maybe the woman was a weirdo. Or maybe she was just sad.
Cat had a gut-wrench of fear. About her own future. She’d always been told that if she tried hard she’d be successful, have a good life. But now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe it wasn’t that easy. And besides, here she was contemplating giving up the thing she’d dreamed of.
Everyone talked about career choices. But how much choice would she really have? How much control?
She hurried along the canal after Angus and Polly, and tried to put the woman out of her mind.
CHAPTER 10
AN INSECT MAN VISITS
BIOLOGY. Not Cat’s favourite subject. And today’s lesson looked like being worse than normal. Every now and then the school got a random expert in to talk about something from the real world. This time it was an entomologist. Someone who studied insects. A weirdo, in other words.
Cat was feeling lousy that day anyway. Not the best weekend. After the Phiz incident, she’d slept badly, woken tired and gritty-eyed, which explained why she’d run badly on Saturday. Then they’d gone to see her grandparents in Fife for the night, come back on Sunday afternoon to pouring rain and so much homework to do that she’d had no time to go on Phiz. Actually, she’d tried to, late at night on Sunday, but her laptop was playing up, going slow, had to be rebooted twice before it would work properly, and then her mum had insisted on turning the wireless router off downstairs because it was bedtime.
So the weekend had been the pits from beginning to end. Monday morning had a lot to recover from. And it had been really hard to get up to go to her early morning swimming, with the house dark and damp. When her swimming coach had come to the house to collect her as usual, she’d kept him waiting for five minutes and he’d not been best pleased.
Miss Bleakney had apparently told them about this insect talk after the lesson the previous Friday, but Cat hadn’t been there because she’d had to show some new parents round. So it had come as a surprise when she’d arrived at biology on Monday morning to find this odd, nervous-looking man, with his very thin hair carefully draped over his shiny head, standing beside Miss Bleakney and taking small plastic boxes out of a crate. She was helping him, holding them up every now and then and exclaiming.
“Ooh, a dragonfly! Isn’t it stunning!”
“Yes, indeed, indeed. Odonata Anisoptera Libellula forensis, of course,” said the man, taking it from her and placing it softly on the bench.
“Of course,” agreed Miss Bleakney. As if she knew.
Some of the boys and a couple of girls were crowding round, jostling. One tried to touch one of the boxes but the little man became instantly agitated. “No, please, please, no! Don’t touch!”
“But they’re dead, aren’t they?” said Marcus.
“Oh, quite dead! Naturally, they’re quite dead. But fragile, very fragile.”
“Sit down, please, class! Rebecca, Jonathon, Neil, you too! Priya! Amrit! Amrit, for goodness’ sake!” snapped Miss Bleakney.
They obeyed, though noisily. Cat, Bethan, Emily and some others sat at the furthest possible table, their faces slightly screwed up, a little tensely, wondering what on earth was the point of this.
Ailsa came and sat at Cat’s table, squeezing in beside her. “This makes a change,” she said. “Better than Bleakney.”
“You think?” said Cat. “He looks creepy.”
“Now, class.” Miss Bleakney was clapping her hands, her long straight hair tied back severely, her white coat clean and starched, her trendy, rectangular glasses halfway down her perfect nose. “Settle down. I would like to introduce you to our special guest, Professor Bryden.
“Professor Bryden works in the National Museum of Scotland, where we visited recently. He is an expert on insects. A very distinguished entomologist. He used to go on terribly exciting expeditions to exotic places around the world, collecting insects.” It was hard to imagine this balding, shiny man in any exotic place, but there you go. Professor Bryden blinked rapidly from behind his glasses like a gecko.
“Professor Bryden is now retired from his academic career, but he works part-time at the museum.” Miss Bleakney beamed excitedly. “And now he has brought some of his insects to show you. I am sure we are going to find it fascinating and, who knows, perhaps there’s a budding entomologist among you! Please put your hands together and show your appreciation in the usual way.”
And everyone clapped loudly. Some even cheered, which flustered poor Professor Bryden. His tongue flickered in and out a few times before he started speaking.
Cat concentrated on not looking at the insects. She listened to what he had to say – after all, there’d probably be a test or an irrelevant task for homework – but she tried not to look at the creatures as Professor Bryden picked up each box and described the contents. She was glad she was sitting near the back.
The funny little man was actually not a bad speaker. He started off nervously, making what he probably thought was a joke to get them relaxed, but he hadn’t learned that his sense of humour was ancient.
Anyway, very soon, Cat sensed the class become still, listening carefully to his words. Though it pained her to admit it, he had some quite interesting things to say about insects.
Termites, for example. Those towers they built – they weren’t designed for living in, and they weren’t accidental either – they were air-conditioning systems to bring cool air down into the hot African earth. And bees – bees were amazing. Apparently, bees could count the number of wing beats their friends made and they’d know where to go to get the nectar. Bees danced for a reason. Dragonflies were interesting too – they actually stalked their rivals, he said.
Trouble was, then things changed. Professor Bryden asked if they’d like to hold an insect. A live insect. A cockroach. A Madagascan hissing cockroach. Dictyoptera Blaberidae Gromphadorhina portentosa, as he announced.
A murmur went through the room. Dizziness swam through Cat’s head. She breathed deeply, glancing at the door out of the corner of her eye. She, Emily and Bethan looked at each other, their faces screwed up. Ailsa was looking scarily keen. But
then, she was sciencey.
Professor Bryden took a large plastic box out of the crate. It was about thirty centimetres long, about the same tall and a bit less wide, with condensation on the sides. Inside was a rotten log. At first, she could see no insects, until something moved, something brown, which she hoped was a piece of bark but rather obviously wasn’t. It was also unpleasantly large. Still, as long as it stayed a long way from her, impersonating bark, this was absolutely fine.
She was aware that more than one creature was in the box.
“Cool!” said someone.
Professor Bryden smiled at these eager faces, relaxed now that he could see their interest. He continued, “So who wishes to hold one?”
CHAPTER 11
THE MADAGASCAN HISSING COCKROACH
A load of hands shot up. Not Cat’s. Nor Emily’s. Nor Bethan’s. The boys who hadn’t put their hands up straight away soon did. With the girls, it depended. It was a personality thing. Cat would normally want to join in with whatever was going on, but since she had zero desire to hold a cockroach, whether hissing or not, she stuck with the girls who stayed silent, their faces creased in distaste.
Danny’s hand went up.
Ailsa muttered, “Not Danny. That would be cruelty to animals!”
Danny looked directly at Cat. Cat returned his gaze. “Your turn next?” His words were clearly a challenge. She could see it in his eyes.
She felt her heart racing. She had a horrible feeling that this lesson was going to turn out even worse than she’d feared. She still wasn’t sure if it had been Danny on Phiz. But he knew her hatred of creepy-crawlies, and he would know very well that she didn’t want to touch one.
Everyone had to wash their hands with some special substance, to protect the cockroach from germs. What? Weren’t they the germiest creatures around? Professor Bryden was giving some explanation but Cat didn’t listen. To say that she cared nothing about the immune system of a Madagascan hissing cockroach would be the understatement of the year.
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