‘Hurry!’ she shouted to the twins. ‘We’ve still got time!’
Grabbing Sophia’s hand again, she began to drag them both along, breaking into a sprint. Miraculously, the hideous, rampant creatures would back off and allow them to pass whenever they were approached. And so the thing that finally stopped them in their tracks, at the end of the street, was not a spider at all, but a human obstruction: a man. DCI Capes, standing at the corner, who seized Rachel in a rugby tackle and brought her to the ground, while DC Pilbeam wrested the knife from her grasp.
‘It’s all right,’ one of them was saying. ‘Calm down. It’s all right now. Everybody’s safe.’
They held her like that, pinning her to the asphalt, until her breathing had subsided into a calmer, more regular rhythm, the dinning of the burglar alarms had faded away, the spiders had retreated to their subterranean home and Rachel realized that, apart from the sobbing of Grace and Sophia, the world was now empty and silent.
19
Alison was not thinking about anything in particular. She sat in the armchair at the bay window, watching the sunlight throw elaborate shadows across the curlicued red-and-yellow patterns of the old-fashioned carpet. It was odd how well she remembered this carpet, given that she hadn’t seen it for more than twelve years. The house itself hadn’t changed much. Beverley hadn’t changed much, for that matter — except for Number 11, Needless Alley, which, it turned out, had been shorn of its leafy aviary, and was now home to a prosperous, well-dressed family, who had tidied up the garden and fitted a new front door and repainted the window frames. What had become of Phoebe? Nobody seemed to know.
Rachel’s grandmother seemed cheerful enough on the surface — could not have been more delighted, really, to welcome Alison and Rachel back to her home, even if was just for a day — but there was no escaping the fact that her husband’s absence now filled every room, settled everywhere like a film of dust, in a way that his presence never had. Gran herself, under the strain of this absence, had almost buckled, become wraith-like. She passed through doorways, from kitchen to living room, from bathroom to landing, as silently as a ghost. Even now, as Alison sat in the sunshine daydreaming, she did not even notice that Gran had entered the room, and quietly settled herself on the sofa. Not until she heard her say:
‘Rachel was telling me that your mum’s had a stroke of luck.’
Startled, Alison turned round. ‘That’s right.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well …’ After telling so many people, so many times, over the last few weeks, Alison still found the story hard to believe. ‘She was coming home on the bus one afternoon, just like any other day, when the phone rang, and it was this woman she’d been on TV with. Danielle Perry. She’s a sort of singer, actress … I don’t know what you’d call her really.’
‘I know who you mean,’ said Gran. ‘She’s ever so pretty.’
‘And she said she wanted to record one of Mum’s songs. The one she’d heard her sing in the jungle when they did that show together. “Sink and Swim”. So that’s what she’s done. And it’s selling really well. In the charts and everything.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said Gran. ‘Will she make some money out of it?’
‘Yeah, she already has. Quite a bit in fact.’
‘Everybody deserves a bit of luck now and again. Jim used to do the Lottery, you know. Every week. He never won a thing.’ She was looking at the chair in which Alison was sitting, but it was as if she didn’t see her at all. ‘I can picture him now, sitting right there, crossing out the numbers. That was his favourite chair. His favourite spot.’
Alison started to get up. ‘You can sit here if you want, Mrs —’
‘No, don’t be silly. You stay where you’re comfortable. Enjoy the sunshine. Best time of the day to sit there.’
She was perched on the edge of the sofa, clutching a mug with ‘World’s Best Gran’ written on it, a Christmas present from Rachel long years ago.
‘In the mornings, too. Always sitting there, he was, when I came down. He was waiting for the paper boy, you see.’
Alison nodded, and smiled. She didn’t know what to say.
‘That was how the day used to start,’ said Gran. ‘I’d come down. Put the kettle on. Make the tea.’
She smiled, faintly. The recollection seemed to warm her.
‘Then the paper would come. He’d get it first. I’d make some breakfast, get him his cereal. Then we’d have it in the kitchen together.
‘Then he’d go on his computer. He loved his computer. That was the best thing he ever bought. He’d do the letters, and the bills, whatever needed doing.
‘I’d stay downstairs, while he was doing that. Start the crossword.
‘Middle of the morning, we’d have another cup of tea. Together. In here. That was his chair, the one you’re in. Then I’d go out to the shops.
‘We had lunch in the kitchen. Just soup, normally. Tomato for me, mushroom for him. He’d put the radio on. Always wanted to hear the news at one o’clock.
‘Then if the weather was good, we’d go out in the garden. He was proud of the garden. We never had a gardener, never had anyone to help. Right to the end, we’d do it ourselves. Trim the borders and keep the hedge tidy.
‘Then he’d come inside for a sit-down. That chair where you are now. He always knew where to catch the sunshine.
‘I’d want to watch television later on. Quiz shows and things. He didn’t like them so much, so he’d go back upstairs, on his computer. We weren’t in the same room, but I always knew he was here, always knew he was in the house.
‘Dinner at six. We never had it much later than that. Neither of us liked fancy food. Fried mushrooms were his favourite, he’d like anything with them. Just mushrooms on toast, we’d have sometimes.
‘We never agreed what to watch on television. He liked the news, current affairs, anything political. I liked plays and comedy programmes, something to make you laugh, but they don’t make such good ones any more, do they?
‘He had a whisky at night, just before he went to bed. There was no harm in it. He only ever had the one. It helped him sleep.
‘He went to bed early. Always in bed before eleven. He’d put the radio on, not very loud. I think he just liked to listen to the voices. I’d be down here. Still trying to finish the crossword, probably. I couldn’t hear anything from upstairs, but it was enough. It was enough just to know he was there.’
She fell silent. Hunched over her mug, she wasn’t crying, but she looked frail, and tired. The afternoon sunlight fell upon her face, finding wrinkles, illuminating the folds of skin at her throat.
Alison stood up and walked over to her. She put her arms around her, felt the brittleness of her bones beneath her jumper, leaned in, saw the whiteness of her scalp through the thinning, frost-coloured hair. She kissed the top of her head, a gentle, lingering kiss.
‘Rachel was calling for you,’ Gran said. ‘I think she needs your help.’
*
Rachel was sitting at the top of the plum tree, her face tilted towards the sun, enjoying the warmth of its rays upon her face. She loved sitting amidst the branches of this tree — had loved it ever since she was a child — with its view over the neighbouring gardens, the tidy patchwork of suburban life laid out beneath her, and in the distance, the monumental, greyish-cream towers of the Minster.
She looked down when Alison approached and said:
‘About time too. Where’ve you been?’
‘Chatting to your gran. Are you all right up there?’
‘Very comfortable actually.’
‘You’re not supposed to exert yourself.’