Spider Light(62)
‘I’m very pleased to hear it,’ said Donna, relaxing a little, but her mind had gone back to that night outside the club, and for the first time she recognized the emotion that had filled up the car: it had been sexual arousal, harsh and raw and unmistakable. Don had hated her that night, but he had also been violently aroused by knowing what she had done. And if he had really been serious about committing suicide–if all that rubbish about rivers and dying young had not just been a smokescreen –it had not been the discovery that his sister was a double murderer that had triggered it. It had been self-loathing at his own reaction.
Anyway, said Don, in the end he had taken most of the sleeping pills, and washed them down with half a bottle of vodka. Somebody had found him–he did not remember who–and he had been taken to A&E.
The letter Donna had opened–all right, he would believe it had been a genuine mistake–was a note about the follow-up appointments at the psychiatric day clinic. It was nothing heavy, he was not about to be committed to a mental hospital or anything like that; it was just that the doctor had thought it would be a good idea for him to talk to one of the psychiatrists for an hour or so each week. Just to sort things out in his mind.
Sort things out? What kind of things? A new nightmare rose up to confront Donna, but surely whatever else Don might do, he would never betray her. He would never say, ‘Well, actually, doctor, my sister and I screwed each other one summer, and our parents tried to separate us, so she murdered them. She murdered them for me, you see, but when I found out, it turned me on…and I don’t think I can live with any of it.’
Of course he would not say anything like that.
But Donna still had no idea if Don had genuinely meant to die that night, or if it had been one of his melodramatic gestures, or even if the whole thing had been staged with the intention of teaching her a lesson. She thought him capable of that. Knowing it, did not affect the strength of her love for him.
Afterwards he seemed oddly happier, as if the suicide attempt–whether it had been serious or not–had provided some kind of catharsis, and as if all the complex self-hatred had drained away. After a time Donna dared to trust this new mood; she began to hope that they might be Donna and Don again, within reach of that enchanted life together she had imagined for them. Don attended the pyschiatric clinic faithfully, although he said it was all a bit of a nuisance; you had to wait around for hours and the chairs were uncomfortable, and there was only the gruesome machine-coffee and tattered magazines to pass the time.
Donna said at once that she would come with him. It would be company, and she could always arrange her hours at Jean-Pierre’s to fit. Perhaps the doctors would like to talk to her as well. Had he told them he had a sister?
But Don said he preferred to go by himself, thank you. No, he had not told anyone he had a sister; they had asked about family of course, but he had not wanted a lot of fuss, so he had said he was on his own. Well, he was sorry if Donna found that hurtful, but that was the way he wanted to play it. Take it or leave it, said his tone, briefly returning to the old defiance. And while they were on the subject, would she please stop watching him all the time, as if she thought he was about to fly for the pills or a cut-throat razor. It was unnerving. He was perfectly all right now, mostly thanks to the doctor he was seeing–he was sorry if she found that hurtful as well, but it happened to be the truth. No, it was not a man who was treating him, it was a woman and she was very nice, very helpful. And now could they forget the matter.
After a while he began to go out again in the evenings, always around the same time, sometimes taking the car with or without Donna’s permission, sometimes walking. He was not especially late in returning home, and he never seemed to be the worse for drink. He did not say where he had been or who he had been with, but Donna knew it was a girl, and bitterness engulfed her all over again because she knew–positively and definitely–they had been about to regain those magical years when they had been growing up. And now some cheap little tart had ruined everything.
She began to follow him when she could–when her hours at Jean Pierre’s could be switched, and when Don did not take the car. This was not prying, it was just making sure he was all right. Because if he really had swallowed sleeping pills and vodka, he had not been just playing with the idea of a romantic death at all; he had been serious.
She was discreet and careful and she was sure he did not know what she was doing, and by dint of being patient she finally found out where he went. He went to the hospital, and he waited for an unknown female who apparently worked there.
From the safety of her car, Donna saw quite clearly the eager adoration on Don’s face, and she saw, as well, that the woman he stared at so longingly was not some doe-eyed teenager, or some breathless young girl of whom he would quickly tire. A scalding jealousy filled her entire body.
When she was sure Don was not around to see, she followed the woman a few times on her own account. From there, it was easy enough to make a vague inquiry at the busy hospital reception desk. She needed to put a name to this creature. But when she had the name the entire thing turned itself around 360 degrees, because the woman was the doctor who had treated Don on the night of the suicide bid, and whose out-patients’ clinic he had been attending ever since.
Dr Antonia Weston. A qualified pyschiatrist. Successful and clever.
Donna studied Weston as closely as she dared. She was a few years older than Donna herself–perhaps late twenties–and she had unremarkable brown hair, and an ordinary sort of figure. She did not dress very strikingly, and at first Donna could not think what Don could see in her. Don liked people and things to be unusual or rare, or to be beautiful and glossy, and Weston was not even especially good-looking. But then she began to see that the woman had a certain quality–a way of looking at people. Would you call it magnetism? Charisma? Donna did not want to call it either of these things, but she would be fair and admit that there was something indefinable about Antonia that drew you to her.