Spider Light(61)



They were almost home when he said, ‘You’re a monster, Donna.’ He half turned in his seat and stared at her. ‘What makes you think I won’t tell the police?’

‘What makes you think they’d believe you?’ said Donna at once. ‘I covered my tracks very well, Don. No one suspected the truth then, and no one would suspect it now. A tragic accident, that was the verdict.’ As he hesitated, she said in a softer voice, ‘Our parents were going to separate us–you knew that. And I couldn’t bear it. So I killed them. I did it for us. For you.’


‘That’s the really monstrous part,’ said Don. ‘That’s the part I don’t think I can bear,’ and although Donna had not taken her eyes off the road she knew he was looking at her. She took one hand off the steering wheel and reached for him, but he brushed her away angrily.

‘Get off me. I can’t stand you touching me.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

When they reached the flat he went blindly into his own bedroom, and banged the door against her. Donna heard him flinging open cupboards and drawers.

It was after two a.m. when he left the flat, not speaking to her, simply walking straight through the door and slamming it behind him. Donna flew to the window and watched him walk along the road, his shoulders hunched against the thin drizzling rain that had started to fall, his head down.

She had absolutely no idea where he would go, and although once she would have followed him, tonight she did not dare. She could only hope he would come home in the morning.



He did not come home in the morning. Donna sat helplessly in the flat, jumping every time there was any sound from outside, willing the phone to ring, and staring through the window to the street below, praying that at any minute he would walk down the street.

At four o’clock she left the flat for the pretentious but expensive French bistro where she had managed to work her way up to being restaurant manager. Don would certainly be home when she got back, and the evening stint of duty would help to fill in the hours of waiting.

The bistro was not the glitziest job in the world, but Donna quite liked it. She enjoyed wearing a sharp black suit and white silk shirt, moving around the softly lit restaurant and adjoining wine bar, overseeing people who thought it part of their epicurean experience to be dealt with by a cut-glass accent. The salary Jean-Pierre paid was not immense, but it was not bad because the hours were regarded as antisocial. Donna did not mind the erratic hours, because they could often be adjusted to give her free time when she wanted it.

It was midnight before she got back to the flat. She put her key into the lock eagerly, convinced Don would be there. But the place was empty and silent, and it remained that way for three more nightmare days. It was not until the morning of the fourth day that Don appeared, a bit pale, a bit quieter than usual. Donna tried to ask him where he had been and whether he was all right, but he shrugged her off in the way he had shrugged her off after their parents’ death. She supposed he had been staying with one of the friends she did not know–the people he went to clubs and parties with.



A week later a letter addressed to D. Robards arrived. Donna opened it–not prying, just making a mistake–and saw to her horror that it was a hospital appointment card. It set out a list of day clinic sessions arranged for Don at the psychiatric department of the nearby infirmary.

Don was furious. He said she ought to have realized the letter was not for her, snatched it out of her hand and stormed out of the room. But after a time he came back, and when Donna questioned him again he shrugged and said, well yes, all right, she might as well know; there had been a bit of a drama on the night of their row. And if she really wanted the sordid details—

‘Yes, I do want them,’ said Donna, beating down a mounting fear.

‘Very well then,’ said Don. ‘Before I left the flat that night, I took the bottle of sleeping pills from your bedroom drawer—’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, so I could sleep somewhere for hours and hours. Somebody’s sofa–anywhere–I didn’t much care. I just wanted to sleep and not dream of anything—’

But he had walked along by the river, the moonlight had been reflected on the dark surface of the water, and he thought how marvellous it would be to just walk into the water and let it take you along until you merged with the moonlight. Donna would know how it was–you got hold of an idea, an image, and the next thing you knew, it had sort of taken you over.

‘No,’ said Donna bluntly. ‘I don’t know at all. What I do know is that you were very drunk that night. What actually happened?’

What had actually happened, said Don, was that as he watched the river and the moonlight, the idea of dying had started to seem immensely alluring–he did not seem to hear Donna’s half-stifled cry at this. It was a romantic image, he said. Did Donna not think there was a dark romance about dying young? Elegies and gravestones and always being young in people’s memories. He gave Donna his vivid blue stare, and she looked at him helplessly and had absolutely no idea how much to believe of all this stuff about moonlit deaths.

She asked if he had been serious about wanting to die, speaking brusquely because she was afraid of the answer, but Don said, well, no, on reflection, he did not think he had. Not really.

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