Spider Light (10 page)

Don did not really let her down. Not really. He stammered and flushed, was sulky and truculent and tearful by turns. It was important to remember he was only fifteen, and had not the experience of life to help him deal with such a situation. Donna had not really the experience of life to deal with it either, but she would bluff her way through.

But when it came to the crunch, there was no bluff that could change her parents’ decision and there was nothing that could dilute their horror. Disgusting, said their mother, who had rushed from the bedroom to be sick in the bathroom. Perverted and disgusting and just plain wrong. How on earth were they to deal with such a situation? That was what she wanted to know.

Donna thought it a bit over the top of her mother to keep shuddering and sipping brandy, and to keep pressing a handkerchief to her lips as if she might be sick again at any minute. She glanced at Don, but he was watching their mother cry and ply the handkerchief, clutching at their father’s hands. When their father spoke, Don listened without interrupting. Donna always had a shock when her father spoke in that stern authoritative voice, although presumably it was the way he sometimes spoke to people at the office.

Standing in the sitting room of Charity Cottage, Jim Robards said in an unshakeable and severe voice this was how it was going to be, and neither Donna nor Don need argue with him: they would be separated at once. He ignored Donna’s gasp of dismay and said Don would go back to school, of course–there was only another couple of weeks of the holidays in any case–and Donna would go somewhere out of England. Perhaps to one of those places in Switzerland that had once been called finishing schools. She could study languages or cooking or train to be a model or any damn thing she liked, but she would not live in England for at least two years, was that quite clear?

‘Oh, perfectly,’ murmured Donna. ‘But you can’t absolutely make me do any of that, can you? I’m eighteen–I can do whatever I want. I can live where I want.’

‘With no money? No job?’

‘I’d manage.’ Donna did not say she would scrub floors for a living because that would sound immature and adolescent which were the last things she wanted to sound. Also, she did not think she actually would scrub floors if it came to it. So she said, ‘I could get some kind of job. In a shop or an hotel–something like that. And a flat. I could get a flat of my own.’ And Don could be with me…She did not need to look at Don to know he would be thinking the same thing.

‘You won’t do any such thing,’ said Donna’s father, still in the same cold hard voice. ‘You and your brother will live apart for as long as I can manage it.’

Live apart? Donna and Don to live apart? There are times in life when the power of a desire can be extraordinarily–almost frighteningly–strong. Donna, lying sleepless in her bed that night, knew absolutely and utterly, that she and Don would not be separated and that they were not going to live apart. Something would happen to prevent it. She did not yet know what it would be, but something would happen.

The last few days of the holiday were a nightmare.

They could not return home at once which was what their father wanted to do, because their mother had arranged for their house to be redecorated during the holiday and for the main bathroom to be refitted. There would be decorators and plumbers crawling all over the rooms, and the water would be turned off, she said. She was not going to camp out among ladders and dust sheets, even if her children had broken every law known to man and God.

So they stayed on at Charity Cottage. There were a couple of squalid conversations between Donna and her mother who tried to find out with ridiculous roundabout phrases if they might have to deal with any consequences of what had happened. ‘
You
know what I mean, Donna,’ she said, and Donna, who by that time would not have put out a hand to save her mother from drowning or being burned alive, had pretended not to know at all.

‘Well, might you be–I mean, did it—Did he manage to—’

‘Did he withdraw in time or did he come inside me?’ said Donna in a hard cold voice and was rewarded by her mother’s flush of embarrassment. Serve you right! ‘Or were you simply wondering if I’m on the pill or anything like that?’

‘Well, yes. Yes, that is what I meant.’

‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ said Donna, and went furiously out of the room. Let her mother stew over that one for the next two or three weeks! In fact she was not on the pill, and Don, poor inexperienced boy, had been much too far gone to think about the old-fashioned method of withdrawal. Donna thought they would be the unluckiest pair of lovers ever if that one encounter resulted in pregnancy.

For the last few days of their stay, their parents dragged them to various places in order to fill up the time and to avoid having to talk to each other more than absolutely necessary. They trekked out to stupid tourist centres, boring craft displays and to dull-as-ditchwater museums. It was all more tedious than Donna had imagined anything could ever be. If one of them moved more than five yards, either their mother or father
followed. It was ridiculous and unnecessary, and it showed a complete lack of understanding of the deep passion Donna and Don had shared. Probably by the laws of the land–absurd manmade laws–what they had done together was wrong. Donna could accept that.

But she could not accept that she and Don were to be split up.

Two days before they were due to leave Charity Cottage, shortly after five Don came into the kitchen, and said, ‘Where are the jackboots? They haven’t finally gone out somewhere and left us on our own, have they?’

‘No idea.’ Donna had been sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and staring out at the rain that had just started to fall. ‘D’you want some of this tea?’

‘Thanks.’ Don had been lying in the garden reading for most of the day, but the sudden rainstorm had driven him indoors a quarter of an hour ago. He took the cup and slumped moodily at other end of the kitchen table. He did not say anything else and he did not look at her. Donna felt a fresh wave of hatred against their parents who had created this painful restraint.

She said, offhandedly, that perhaps the jackboots had gone into the village, to get an evening paper. ‘They haven’t taken the car–it’s parked outside.’

‘Both of them out together, though? Leaving us alone for as long as an entire fifteen minutes?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Donna impatiently. ‘I’ve been lying down with a headache all afternoon.’

‘Perhaps they left a note. Have you looked?’

‘No, I couldn’t be bothered.’

But by six o’clock they were both sufficiently bothered to look for a note. When they failed to find one in any of the ordinary places–tacked to the fridge, or propped up on the dining table–they went into their parents’ room to see if things like jackets or wallets or handbags were gone.

‘Dad’s brown jacket’s not here,’ said Don. ‘Nor is his wallet–he always leaves it on the dressing table.’

‘No. And Ma’s handbag isn’t here either, or that blue linen thing she had on yesterday.’

‘Dad’s mobile phone’s here though.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything. He’s always forgetting it or letting it run out of charge.’ Donna sat down on the edge of the big double bed to think. ‘It doesn’t look as if they just went for a stroll along the lane, does it? It looks as if they went somewhere where they’d need money and keys and things.’

‘But wherever they are, they’ve walked,’ said Don. ‘Because the car’s still here. That means they didn’t intend to go very far.’

This was unarguable. Maria Robards had brought four pairs of expensive leather walking shoes with her, but she had never had any real intention of actually walking anywhere in them. The little post-office-cum-shop on Amberwood’s outskirts was her absolute limit, and even then she complained about blisters when she got back and wanted to plug in the foot spa she had brought with her.

‘I expect they’re just sheltering from the rain,’ said Donna at last. ‘It’s coming down in torrents.’

‘Ought we to do anything? Go out and look for them?’

‘Yes, we’d better. Let’s walk along the lane. We’ll go as far as that little shop that sells newspapers–that’s the likeliest place they went to anyway.’

‘OK.’

They put on waterproofs and hoods, and tramped along the road. The little shop was closed at this hour, but they walked all round it. There was nothing to be seen, and there was only the dismal wet splatter of the rain everywhere.

They got back to the cottage just after seven. Donna heated some tinned soup, and Don made ham rolls and coffee to go with it. They ate at the kitchen table, trying not to look at the clock on the old-fashioned mantel ticking the minutes away. It was not getting dark yet, but shadows were certainly starting to creep across the garden and the parkland that surrounded Quire
House. Twice Don said that there was most likely some perfectly ordinary explanation–a sprained ankle or something, and they must be out of reach of a phone box.

‘If so, he’s probably cursing like fury. Is there any more soup? I daresay it’s heartless of me, but I’m starving.’

They finished the soup and washed-up, and by this time it was quarter to nine. They looked at one another.

‘Police?’ said Don at last.

‘Yes, we’ll have to.’

‘Where’s the nearest station? We haven’t got to go all the way into Stockport or Chester, have we?’

‘No, there’s a little station in Amberwood. One man and a phone, probably, but they’ll know what to do.’

‘They’ll say we’re being neurotic and not to worry,’ said Don.

But the officer at the little police station did not say this at all. He took the details, and said they would make a few checks. Well, no, they would not actually mount a search–not for two adults, at least not yet–but they would get in touch with the local hospitals and so forth. You never knew. Oh yes, people did vanish for several hours and then turn up unharmed. They fell into ditches and knocked themselves out, or they broke their ankles clambering across stiles, and were stranded. Neither Donna nor Don said that their parents were not the kind of people who walked in ditches or clambered across stiles.

Donna drove back to the cottage in silence. Don leaned forward eagerly when they swung off the main road and turned along the narrow track leading to the cottage, and she realized he was hoping to see lights blazing from the windows, indicating that their parents were safely back. But Charity Cottage was still in darkness, except for the table lamp they had left burning in the little sitting room and the rather dim light over the front door.

Neither of them went to bed that night. Don fell asleep on the settee but Donna stayed awake, lying in one of the armchairs, trying not to listen to the rain that was still pattering ceaselessly
down on the roof. It would be a dreadful night to be lying injured somewhere. Half of her–more than half of her–wanted to join Don on the settee, but she did not.

The police came at nine the next morning to see if the absentees had turned up. Ah, they had not. Oh dear. They had drawn a blank with their own inquiries, they said, and so the next thing was to draw up a bit of a timetable, in order to establish who had been where at what time.

This was simple enough. The morning had been spent at the cottage. Don had taken a book and his unfinished holiday homework into the garden after breakfast, along with his Walkman. He had stayed there until lunchtime, half-heartedly writing the essay he was supposed to be working on, and listening to CDs.

All morning, was that?

Yes, and most of the afternoon. Oh, wait though, he had come in about eleven to get a drink of orange juice. Everyone had been here then.

‘I sort of mooched around doing nothing most of the morning,’ said Donna. ‘I had a bit of a headache as a matter of fact. I walked down to the little shop shortly before lunch to get some air. I got back just after twelve, I think.’

How about lunch? Had they all had lunch together?

‘No. My mother made some sandwiches about half past twelve,’ said Donna. ‘I took some out to Don in the garden.’

‘I brought the plate back in at quarter past one or thereabouts,’ said Don. ‘And got some more orange juice from the fridge. They were here then.’

‘We’re narrowing it down,’ said the sergeant, making notes. ‘And then?’

‘My headache was still quite bad,’ said Donna, frowning in an effort to report the precise details. ‘So I took a couple of paracetamol and went upstairs to lie down. That was probably about half past one. My mother said she’d bring up a cup of tea later on. But I fell asleep and when I woke up it was four o’clock and that’s when I realized they weren’t here.’

‘And neither of you heard your parents go out?’

‘No. I told you, I was asleep for most of the afternoon.’

‘And I was listening to the Walkman. I was at the far end of the garden anyway,’ said Don. ‘They might have called out to say they were going somewhere, but I don’t think I’d have heard them.’

‘No. Loud things, those Walkmans,’ said the sergeant, rather feelingly. ‘So seemingly, they went out somewhere between half past one–say, quarter to two–and four o’clock, when you came downstairs, Miss Robards?’

‘Well, I can’t absolutely swear to the minute, but it’s near enough. And Don came in from the garden when the rain started. Half past four or quarter to five.’

‘Neither of you thought it especially odd that your parents might have gone out without telling you, or leaving a note?’

‘No,’ they said together. Donna felt the same thought form in both their minds: after what happened our parents would never have gone out and left us alone. But this could not be said. Not now and not ever.

‘Could they have been mugged or anything like that?’ asked Don, suddenly sounding rather endearingly young and uncertain. ‘Or even kidnapped?’

But it appeared there were not many cases of mugging in Amberwood, and as for kidnapping…

‘Are they wealthy enough?’ asked the sergeant. ‘Not meaning to pry but—’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Donna. ‘My father’s quite successful, but we’re not in the millionaire bracket. I don’t think he’s high-profile enough for a kidnapper: he’s not a politician or a celebrity. He just imports and exports stuff.’