Mr Williams phoned the police himself, but the whole district had been affected by the storm and it was likely to be some time before they got there. Meanwhile, what if the old lady was lying there injured? Or sick? He talked it over with a Mrs Harrison who lived in the next house along, and they decided the only sensible course would be to break in without waiting for the police.
He fetched his tool-kit and eased open one of the downstairs windows. Once inside, he opened the front door for Mrs Harrison and together they searched the house. It smelled musty and very damp, he reported afterwards. The carpets were soaked, but on the whole the house gave the impression of having been well cared for. The bed had been used, the blankets thrown back, and there were clothes draped over the back of a chair.
It was not until they were downstairs again that he realised what he had taken to be a broom cupboard door in fact led down to a cellar. Probably this was the only house in the whole of that road which had a cellar, but then it was also the oldest.
The electricity was off over the whole area, but he had a torch in his tool-kit. He went down the steps to take a look. Almost immediately he was back, his face ashen.
‘We’d best wait for the police, I think.’
‘She’s dead,’ Mrs Harrison guessed. She had thought as much all along. They didn’t last for ever, these old folk.
It was not until later that he felt up to describing what he had seen. In the cellar he had found a foot or more of water, some of which had obviously come through a broken skylight: they discovered afterwards it opened just above ground level at the side of the house, next to the lean-to coal bunker. The old lady was lying in the water in her nightdress, spreadeagled. Two large jellyfish were feeding on her, one covering her throat and chest, the other over a leg. The side of her face had already been eaten.
Newspapers differed in their reports concerning the size of the killer jellyfish: a foot to eighteen inches in diameter was the general view, although a couple said the larger ones were at least two feet. One paper gave some space to a rumour that Fleetwood fishermen had spotted half a dozen which were at least a yard and a half across. They were speckled pink and red, and swimming just below the surface.
The story which really caught the headlines came from the Isle of Wight, and the jellyfish in that case was no bigger than a small frisbee. About eight inches, the police said.
The victim was seven-year-old Andrew who had slipped out of the house early one morning and gone down to the paddling pool to meet his friends. His mother was not too sure how long he’d been out: she’d been busy with the baby and hadn’t noticed him leaving. When she did discover he was no longer in the house, she sent his older sister to look for him.
No, she’d not been too worried. Everyone knew him in the neighbourhood and it wasn’t likely he’d gone far.
The storm the previous night had been particularly severe and caused a great deal of damage. Deckchairs had broken loose from the rope holding them stacked against a wall; windows had smashed; tiles had crashed down from the rooftops; shop blinds were ripped; and the whole length of the promenade was covered in debris which the sea had thrown up — plastic containers, polythene wrappings, fragments of timber, dabs of tar, ice cream tubs, and seaweed.
In the paddling pool, too.
Andrew must have wondered why it was so filthy that morning, although it did not stop him going in. He wore his wellingtons — his mother said she’d warned him several times about broken glass — although he must have stooped down to splash the water, or perhaps to play with the wooden deckchair spar which was still floating there after he was discovered.
His friends, twin brothers who were in his class at school, found him already dead, drifting on his back in the shallow water. They were still gazing at him nervously when his sister arrived.
‘I knew he was dead ’cos o’ the way his eyes stared at me,’ she explained afterwards. ‘I mean, they were really dead eyes like you see on the horror videos, an’ this jellyfish was on his neck, an’ it was just like the videos.’
The jellyfish remained cosily attached to the boy’s neck even after police had rescued his body from the paddling pool and laid it out on the paving stones of the promenade. One of the beach refuse collectors eventually took it off and put it in the incinerator.
‘Well, why not?’ he said defensively when they questioned him about it afterwards. ‘Once these things get a taste for human blood, what else can you do with ’em? You wouldn’t throw ’em back in the sea — or would you?’
11
Bleary-eyed, Tim opened the fridge door and peered inside. No milk. All that had happened over the past few days had left him too shattered even to swear. The thought of making do with black coffee floated through his mind, but he rejected it. His stomach felt queasy and his mouth tasted foul. He pulled on his old jeans and a sweater, then wandered down to the shops at the end of the road.
Most of the night he’d spent lying awake, going over it all in his mind, still unable to grasp it. OK, he’d known their marriage had been going wrong, and he’d not been exactly faithful himself, but he couldn’t get over what she’d told him. Quite calmly, too. No histrionics; no recriminations.
‘I want a divorce,’ she said in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. She might have been ordering a taxi, the way she said it. ‘Don’t argue, please, Tim. You know it’s the sensible thing.’
‘Do I hell!’he’d exploded.
Why she’d chosen that moment to tell him, he just couldn’t understand. They’d lost each other over the past weeks and months, he admitted it; they’d become like strangers. He’d noticed it with their phone calls too: at one time they’d been bursting with things to say, but that had given way to long silences as they tried to make conversation. Then there were the subjects he skirted around, knowing his opinions only offended her — at least since she’d got herself involved with that crowd at Totnes. It hadn’t always been like that.
The trouble was, she’d convinced him it could all be put right again. From the moment she’d picked him up at the station and driven him to that Devon holiday flat, she’d seemed to be taking their marriage in hand. They’d made love the way they always used to after a period apart. Not only once either; once had never been enough. They were coming back to each other, he’d imagined. That was the impression she’d given; it was what he’d wanted, too.
‘One of those quickie divorces would be best,’ she’d stated coolly, always practical. ‘No need to drag it out contesting anything — agreed?’
No, he did not bloody agree. He was hurt, bewildered, unsure how to handle the situation. If this was what she’d intended, why had she led him on that evening?
That bloody jellyfish must be at the root of it, he felt sure. Probably she was still suffering from shock. First the cat, terrifying enough, and then that poor woman in the shop who’d died on the way to hospital. That session at the police station afterwards hadn’t helped, either, when they’d had to explain to a suspicious detective-sergeant why they had put the jellyfish in their bucket in the first place. She’d made no accusations, either then or later, but it was obvious she blamed him for it all.
But no, she rejected that explanation and insisted she’d been planning to tell him all along.
‘Tell me what, for Chrissake?’
‘I want a divorce, Tim,’ she’d repeated gently. ‘Don’t make it worse for yourself. Please.’