Spider Light by Sarah Rayne
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My grateful thanks are due to Craig Ferguson and his National Trust colleagues at Nether Alderley Mill in Cheshire, who were so very helpful when I was researching this book.
The time I spent at the beautifully maintained Mill was immensely valuable in the writing of Spider Light, and Craig and his team gave generously and enthusiastically of their time and knowledge.
The layout and atmosphere of Twygrist are unashamedly based on Nether Alderley Mill, but there the similarity ends. Nether Alderley has almost certainly never been the setting for the strange and often macabre events that take place within the walls of Twygrist.
Sarah Rayne
2005
CHAPTER ONE
After five years away from the world, the first thing to strike Antonia Weston about her return to it was the noise. She had forgotten how loudly and how energetically people talked, and how shops and eating-places were filled with intrusive music. It was, it seemed, dangerously easy to believe you had kept up-to-date, but when it came to it, you might as well have been living on the moon.
Even something as simple as entering the restaurant where she had arranged to meet Jonathan Saxon was a culture shock. Antonia managed not to flinch from what felt like a wall of sound, and to avoid staring at the people at other tables. But just as she had forgotten how loud the world was, she had also forgotten how fashions could change for ordinary people. Not startlingly, not drastically–not in the way of celebrities or TV stars–but more subtly. Had these sleek svelte girls, who were having their lunch and who probably worked in management consultancy or PR or in the still bewildering world of the internet, always dressed in dark, almost masculine suits, and worn their hair quite so casually?
One thing she had not forgotten, though, was Jonathan’s habit of opening a door with an impatient rush, so that people looked up from whatever they were doing or saying to see who had come in. It was a trick Antonia remembered him using at meetings, deliberately arriving late and then switching on a beam of crude masculine energy at the exact right moment. It had always annoyed Antonia and it annoyed her now, especially since at least six people in the restaurant were responding exactly as if somebody had tugged an invisible string. (All right, so it was an effective trick. That did not make it any less irritating.)
‘I’m sorry about the tumult in here,’ said Jonathan, sitting down and studying Antonia intently. ‘I expect it’s a bit shrill for you. But I wasn’t expecting you until next week, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else that was easy to get to.’
‘Change of date at the last minute,’ said Antonia offhandedly. She studied the menu and, with sudden anger, said, ‘I don’t know what to order.’
‘Poached salmon?’
‘Oh God, fresh salmon. I’d forgotten there was such a thing in the world. Yes, please.’
‘And a glass of wine with it? Chablis?’
‘I–no, I’d better not.’
‘You used to like wine,’ said Jonathan, raising an eyebrow. ‘Or are you frightened of the consequences?’
‘I’m frightened of sliding under the table. You try not having a drink for the best part of five years and see how strong your head is.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said equably, and ordered mineral water for her and a carafe of wine for himself.
When the food came he ate with swift economy. This was something Antonia had forgotten about him. For all his tricks and deliberately created effects, his movements were always oddly pleasing. Feline. No, make that wolfish. This was the man who was rumoured to have systematically slept his way through medical school and to have continued the process when he became head of psychiatric medicine at the big teaching hospital where he and Antonia had first met.
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you’d want to get right away for a while. That’s why I wrote to you. And someone at the hospital mentioned a cottage that’s available for a few months–it’s somewhere in Cheshire.’
It would be one of his women who had mentioned it. Saxon’s string puppets, someone had once called them: he pulls the strings and they dance to his music.
‘It’s apparently a very quiet place,’ the man who pulled the strings was saying. ‘And the rent’s quite reasonable.’ He passed over a folded sheet of paper. ‘That’s the address and the letting agent’s phone number. It might give you a breathing space until you decide what to do next.’
‘I haven’t the least idea what I’m going to do next,’ said Antonia, and before he could weigh in with some kind of sympathy offer, she said, ‘I do know you can’t re-employ me. That the hospital can’t, I mean.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. We all are. But it would be a great shame to waste all your training. You could consider teaching or writing.’
‘Both presumably being available to a struck-off doctor of psychiatric medicine.’ This did not just come out angrily, it came out savagely.
‘Writing’s one of the great levellers,’ said Jonathan, not missing a beat. ‘Nobody gives a tuppenny damn about the private life of a writer. But if you’re that sensitive, change your name.’ He refilled his glass, and Antonia forked up another mouthful of the beautifully fresh salmon which now tasted like sawdust.