Spider Light(26)

To herself she thought that even though they were financially out in the cold, at least she and Don still had each other.

There had been the tag-end of a single-premium insurance policy to cover the rest of Don’s school fees, and even if Donna had been agreeable to cashing this in for living on, the terms of the policy would not have allowed it. So Don, protesting angrily, had to go back to school.

There was just enough money for the renting and furnishing of a tiny flat for the two of them to live together. Just about enough. The unfairness of it all was a permanent ache in Donna’s throat, but once having found the flat she had taken a job, because it was necessary to have money. She had, in fact, taken several jobs, mostly of the Mayfair receptionist/dinner-parties-in-your-home kind, drifting from one to another, hating almost all of them. But her school French was quite good, and she was fluent in Spanish learnt from her mother, which was occasionally useful.

One or two former friends of her mother helped out with introductions and recommendations. ‘Dear Domina, so brave and really quite clever, she’d be so useful to your little business…Well no, no actual qualifications, but we knew the family–such a tragedy it was, so do employ her if you can.’

It was humiliating to have to depend on people’s charity in this way, but Donna put up with it because of Don and because it was necessary to have money. And if nothing else, the jobs filled in the time until Don left school and they could be together, properly and for always. Then something better would turn up. Donna and Don, golden girl and boy.

The flat felt horridly poky after their lovely house, but Donna made it as attractive as she could for when Don came home for the school holidays. She emulsioned walls and painted skirting boards and searched junk shops for nice old pieces of furniture. She furnished Don’s bedroom lovingly, putting the very best furniture in this room–a beautiful little Victorian bureau for him to store his things, and a cherrywood table to stand by the window.

She placed the bed so its head would catch the early sun, imagining Don lying in it, warm and safe and cherished, his hair on the pillow looking like spilled honey in the morning sunshine…

Exactly as it had looked in the bed at Charity Cottage on that summer’s afternoon…



Renting Charity Cottage for a month each summer had been a quirk of Donna’s mother. Rustic and rural, she had said delightedly when she first discovered the place, somewhere where they could live simply and plainly. She said this every year. ‘And usually,’ observed Don, ‘she says it just before she starts ordering food supplies from Harrods.’

‘And just after buying new outfits from Harvey Nichols,’ added Donna.

But they quite liked going to Charity Cottage, partly because it was so different from the places they normally went, and because they liked exploring the surrounding countryside. Donna had passed her driving test that summer, which meant she and Don might take the car and go off on their own sometimes. Their mother had a different project each year. So far there had been water-colour painting, a study of old churches and horse riding. One disastrous year it had been tracking down local witchcraft customs.

This year’s project was local buildings; she was going to scour the area for really interesting landmarks, and compile a proper, scholarly notebook about their histories. She would illustrate her notebook, of course–she had already asked in Harrods about the right kind of camera, because if you were going to do something you wanted to do it as well as possible.

‘Four hundred pounds for a camera and goodness knows how much else for new clothes,’ said their father, half-exasperated, half-indulgent. ‘Maria, you’ll ruin us.’ But he smiled as he said this, and Donna, looking back at this memory from the other side of that disastrous summer, thought no one could have told from his voice or his expression how very close to the truth his words must have been.

It had not seemed anything like ruin at the time, nor had it felt like the onset of tragedy. Charity Cottage, that last summer, was exactly as it always was: a bit shabby with its slightly battered furniture, and a bit basic with its old-fashioned kitchen and bathroom. Their parents always had the big bedroom at the front, overlooking the park round Quire House, and Donna and Don had a bedroom each at the back. They went for walks and drives, and cooked the evening meal on the old-fashioned cooker, after which their father usually retired to the bedroom to study reports sent by his assistant. So boring, said their mother gaily, they were supposed to be on holiday, for goodness’ sake.

But there was not, actually, a great deal to do at Charity Cottage. Donna and Don played music on the portable CD-player they had brought with them, and their father complained and said music was not what it had been in the sixties. Burt Bacharach and the Beatles and all the great musicals. Fiddler on the Roof and Hair–goodness, do you remember how shocked everyone was by Hair, Maria?

Don thought it was gross to even mention things like that, and Donna thought it embarrassing to have your parents singing ‘All You Need is Love’ all round the cottage, and trying to remember the sequence of the verses in ‘American Pie’.

But after the first week their father discovered all over again how much his children’s constant presence interrupted his study of the quarterly business review, and their mother discovered afresh how tedious it was to have to cook every night, and demanded to be taken out to dinner at the local pub, or at the very least into the nearest big town to buy good-quality prepared food. One forgot how extremely tiresome it was to peel potatoes and cut up meat, she said, while as for washing-up after every meal…