Spider Light(3)
Richard had always teased her about her appalling sense of direction; he had usually made some comment about the Bermuda triangle, or quoted the old Chesterton poem about the night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. But then he would reach for the map and study it with the intensity that was so much part of him, after which he would patiently and clearly point out the right route and send Antonia the sideways smile that made his eyes look like a faun’s. It had been five years since Antonia sat in a car with Richard, and it was something she would never do again.
She stopped mid-journey to top up with petrol and have a cup of tea–it was annoying to find it took ten minutes to talk herself into leaving the safety of the car to enter the big motorway service station. I’ll master this wretched thing, said Antonia silently, I will, I’ll turn on the car radio for the rest of the journey or put on some music–yes, that’s a good idea.
Before starting off again she rummaged in the glove compartment for a tape. There was a bad moment when she realized that some of Richard’s favourite tapes were still here, but she pushed them determinedly to the back and sorted through the others to find something sane and soothing. There was some old pop stuff, which would be lively but might remind her too much of the past. Was it No?l Coward who said, ‘Strange how potent cheap music is?’ Ah, here was Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Exactly right. Hay-making and merry peasants and whatnot.
Beethoven had just reached the ‘Shepherd Song’ and Antonia thought she was about forty miles short of her destination, when a vague suspicion began to tap against her mind and send a faint trickle of fear down her spine.
She was being followed.
At first she dismissed the idea; there were enough cars on the road to mistake one for another, and there were dozens of dark blue hatchbacks of that particular make.
She watched the car carefully in the driving mirror, and saw that it stayed with her, not overtaking or quite catching up, but persistently there. I’m seeing demons, thought Antonia. There’s nothing in the least sinister about this, just two people going in the same direction.
Without realizing she had planned it, she swung off the motorway at the next exit, indicating at the last possible moment, and then took several turnings at random. They took her deep into the heart of completely unknown countryside and into a bewilderment of lanes, out of which she would probably never find her way, so it really would be Beachy Head by way of Birmingham. But getting lost would be worth it if it proved to her stupid neurotic imagination that no one was following her.
It would prove it, of course. The man who had once driven a dark blue car–the man who had ruined her life–could not possibly be tailing her along these quiet roads. He was dead, and had been dead for more than five years. There could not possibly be any mistake about it. And she did not believe in ghosts–at least, she did not believe in ghosts who took to the road in blue hatchbacks, and whizzed along England’s motorways in pursuit of their prey.
She glanced in the driving mirror again, fully prepared to see a clear stretch of road behind her, and panic gripped her. The car was still there–still keeping well back, but definitely there. Was it the same car? Yes, she thought it was. She briefly considered pulling onto the grass verge and seeing what happened. Would the driver go straight past? (Giving some kind of sinister, you-are-marked-for-death signal as he went…? Oh, don’t be ridiculous!)
Still, if he did drive past she could try to see his face. Yes, but what if there wasn’t a face at all? What if there was only something out of a late-night, slash-and-gore film? A grinning skull, a corpse-face?
It had not been a corpse-face that first night in the tiny recovery room off A&E. It had been an attractive, although rather weak face, young and desperately unhappy. Antonia could still remember how the unhappiness had filled the small room, and how the young man in the bed had shrugged away from the doctors in the classic but always heart-breaking gesture of repudiation. Face turned to the wall in the silent signal that said, I don’t want to be part of this painful world any longer. At first he had turned away from Antonia, who had been the on-call psychiatrist that night. She had been dozing in the duty room on the first floor when her pager went, and she had paused long enough to dash cold water onto her face, slip into her shoes and pull on a sweater before going quickly through the corridors of the hospital.
Straightforward overdose, they said resignedly. Stuffed himself chockful of sleeping pills–something prescribed by a GP–then downed the best part of a bottle of vodka. Poor boy. Or stupid sod, depending on your point of view. Whichever he was, he had been found near the riverbank, and an early-morning dog-walker had realized he was a bit more than just drunk, and had called the paramedics. Oh yes, he had been pumped clean, although he was still a bit drowsy and still very withdrawn. Yes, they had a name–Robards. Don Robards. They were giving him fifteen-minute obs and someone was trying to find out about family–there had not been any identification on him. But in the meantime he was stable, pretty much over the worst, and Dr Weston was welcome to him from here on.
The boy in the bed looked impossibly young. He had thick fair hair that would normally fall in a glossy thatch over his forehead; at the moment it was damp and matted from the sickness.
‘Hi,’ Antonia had said softly, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m Doctor Weston–Antonia Weston. I’m the on-call psychiatrist, and your doctors thought we might have a talk to see if I can help you.’