From the kitchen, a glass-panelled door led out on to the fire escape. Glancing out, Sue noticed a ginger cat on one of the steps, approaching the old galvanised bucket inquisitively. She opened the door.
‘Away from there!’ she scolded. ‘Shoo! Shoo!’
The cat retreated down a step or two, then turned to gaze at her with disapproval.
‘Off you go!’ Sue insisted. She took a pace towards it. ‘Ssssh!’
The cat fled, and Sue went back into the kitchen, leaving the door open in order to get rid of the smell of frying. She washed the plates and was putting them in the rack to drain when she heard a sudden clatter outside. She swung around in time to see the enamel bowl rolling and bouncing down the steps. The bucket had tipped over and the cat, one paw outstretched, was about to investigate its contents.
‘No!’ Sue yelled.
It was too late. Before she could even grasp what was happening, the ginger cat let out a strangled screech which jarred right through her. It turned and shot past her legs, through the kitchen and into the front room. Draped over its neck and back like a cloak was the speckled pink jellyfish.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, hardly even daring to believe what her eyes were telling her, Sue went after the cat. It was rushing around the room, jumping on to the sofa, then over the back, then crawling underneath, mewing pathetically as it emerged once more having failed to brush that thing away from itself. For a few moments it cowered on the hearthrug.
She took a step towards it. Luckily she’d been wearing the rubber gloves again for the washing-up; if only she could get hold of the jellyfish. One more step… The cat backed away; then it turned, scrambled over the armchair, and sprang towards the window which she had opened earlier.
The gap at the bottom was no more than about four inches, but that was enough for the cat to squeeze through. Sue got there as it landed on the crumbling stucco of the front portico below. In two more jumps it was down on the steps; then, with another terrible screech, it dashed crazily along the road, swerving, doubling back and then on again as though possessed, with the jellyfish still firmly wrapped around it.
Sue threw open the flat door, descended the stairs two at a time, and ran out after it. Somehow she had to do something to help — yet what? It all seemed too improbable. Tim had warned her and she’d hardly believed him; now she’d witnessed it herself she realised he had been speaking the truth after all.
But he’d managed to pull the jellyfish away from his hand, hadn’t he? Which meant it could be done.
The cat had disappeared down a side road. She hurried on. At the corner she stopped; there was no sign of it anywhere. Opposite was Mrs Wakeham’s dowdy little shop, the words ‘General Stores’ hardly readable on its faded paintwork. The door stood open and she could hear Mrs Wakeham’s voice.
‘Oh, you poor little thing, have the children been teasing you, then? Never mind, I’ll take if off. Just keep still a mo’. Isn’t it naughty of them tying a — oh!’
The sudden note of fear was unmistakable. Sue sprinted across the road and burst into the shop.
‘No, Mrs Wakeham — don’t touch it!’ she screamed.
Horror-stricken, Mrs Wakeham was emitting a series of low, inarticulate moans as she stared at the pink jellyfish she held in her hands. Her eyes were bulging with terror. On the counter in front of her lay the ginger cat, stretched out and obviously dead, its neck naked and raw.
‘Keep calm now, Mrs Wakeham.’ Sue forced herself to speak quietly, although she was shaking all over. ‘Let me take it… slowly… ’
But Mrs Wakeham was not listening. Suddenly stirring herself out of her trance, she cried out at the top of her voice and attempted to fling the jellyfish across the shop in disgust.
It clung to her. Although she managed to free one hand, it settled on the other, snugly embracing her wrist. Again she screamed, shaking her arm violently to rid herself of it, but it did not move. It seemed to have grown on her like a new, gleaming skin.
‘Mrs Wakeham, please,’ Sue repeated. ‘Hold yourself still and I’ll be able to get it off.’
‘What… what is it?’ She was whimpering like a child, her lip quivering. She gazed, stupefied, at her wrist. ‘Take it away. Oh, I don’t like it.’
‘Steady now,’ Sue instructed. ‘Steady…’
Despite her rubber gloves, Sue was quaking as she grasped the jellyfish in both hands and slowly peeled it off. Skin and flesh came with it, although the poor woman didn’t seem to feel anything; probably her arm was paralysed by now, just as Tim’s had been. Keeping the jellyfish at arm’s length, Sue backed away from the counter, uncertain what she should do with it.
The tentacles wrapped themselves around her fingers… probing… seeking a way through the thin rubber. At any moment they might succeed in piercing it, and in that case…
Sue threw the jellyfish down on the worn floorboards and began to stamp on it furiously with the heel of her boot, knowing that somehow she had to destroy it. She’d no choice: that glistening pink-and-red creature was evil and must not be allowed to live. Yet her foot merely slid over the tough gristle without making any impression on it.
Desperately, she searched around in the shop for some sort of weapon. The best she could find was a long knife, but to use it would mean she’d have to crouch down within reach of those tentacles. She hesitated, but the sight of poor Mrs Wakeham helped her make up her mind. Such a nice woman she was, never doing any harm to anyone, yet now she lay in a dead faint on the floor behind the counter, her wrist bleeding profusely.
Sue gripped the knife. The jellyfish hadn’t moved. Its ruby star seemed to mock her, challenging her to do her worst. She aimed for it with her first blows, stabbing into it with all her strength. The point of the blade went straight through, sticking into the old wooden floorboards, but she tugged it out in order to drive it once more into the centre of that jelly-gristle.
‘Don’t like that, do you?’ she demanded through clenched teeth, her heart full of mixed hatred and fear. ‘Can see you don’t.’
The outer fringes of the jellyfish began to twist and curl, sending shivers of apprehension right through her. She drew the knife across the whole width of that speckled pink medallion; but the more she attacked it, the more violent became its convulsions.
‘Sue, love! What on earth are you doing?’
Tim’s voice behind her. She dropped the knife and turned to bury her face against his jacket. ‘It won’t die!’ she sobbed in sheer relief that he’d come back. ‘Oh, Tim, I can’t get it to die.’
He put his arm around her, holding her tight. ‘But what’s been going on?’
‘Mrs Wakeham…’ She struggled to regain control of herself. ‘It’s… killed… Mrs Wake… ham…’
At first Tim seemed unbearably slow in understanding what she was trying to say. Then he saw Mrs Wakeham’s body and stooped to feel for a pulse. She was still alive, he said, but before anything else they should try to stop the bleeding. Miraculously, he knew exactly what to do; under his instruction, she tied his handkerchief around Mrs Wakeham’s arm to make a tourniquet, pushed the stick of a washing-up mop through the knot, and twisted it.
‘I’ll phone for an ambulance,’ he said, standing up. ‘I imagine there’s a phone in the back?’
She nodded, remaining on her knees beside the poor woman and attempting to make her comfortable, though she was still unconscious, her face deathly pale. On the other side of the counter — Sue couldn’t keep the thought out of her mind — lay the fragments of the jellyfish she’d cut up, the largest of them pinned to the floorboards by the knife she had dropped, and all of them still pulsating the last time she had looked.