This was the spot, wasn’t it? And yes — it was still there! She grasped Paul’s arm to point it out, triumphant that she’d found it again.
‘B-Barbara…’ His voice sounded strained; he was tense with fright. ‘B-Barbara… l-look…’
At first she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘Not that way, silly!’ she exclaimed impatiently.
But then she turned.
It was as though someone had suddenly switched on the illuminations. Scattered about the cave on either side were several round, glistening discs, some immersed in the pools of sea-water left behind by the tide, some spread over the rocks, others displayed on the cave floor. They were a pretty shade of pink, although, oddly, the light emanating from them had a yellowy-greenish tinge.
Curious, she took a step towards the nearest of them, squatting down to examine it more closely.
‘No — don’t touch it!’ Paul’s voice rose to a scream which shocked through her like an electric charge.
Shaken, she turned on him. ‘Don’t be so stupid!’ she snapped angrily. ‘You little coward!’
‘Who’s a coward?’ he shouted back, his face looking strangely sick in that light. ‘All right, touch them — I don’t care! They’re only jellyfish, that’s all!’
‘I can see —’ she began. Then the full import of what he was saying sank in. Pink jellyfish — the kind she’d heard her parents talk about. The killers. Instinctively, she moved back. ‘But the whole cave’s full of them.’
Paul’s anger melted away as rapidly as it had flared up. He came closer to her, shivering; she slipped her arm around him. The two-year age difference between them now seemed terribly important. She was responsible, she knew; she had to take the decisions.
‘How are we going to get out?’ he asked, his voice shaking.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to answer. There were at least twenty jellyfish in the cave; no, more than twenty, all spread between her and the way out. But they couldn’t move — could they? If she and Paul chose their path carefully between the jellyfish…
Yet why hadn’t she seen them before? Had they been lying there all the time and she hadn’t noticed, perhaps because they hadn’t started to glow like this? But then, why had they suddenly ‘switched on’?
Or could they move? Perhaps, as she and Paul had penetrated the cave, the jellyfish had deliberately closed in behind them, cutting off their retreat.
To trap them.
‘It’s as if they’re waiting to see what we’re going to do,’ Paul whispered, still pressing close to her. ‘As if they’re hunting us.’
‘It’s all right, Paul, we’ll get out,’ she told him soothingly. ‘They won’t bother us if we leave them alone.’
But the trouble was, she just didn’t believe it herself.
While they were scanning the beach for jellyfish that morning Tim commented on the twin tracks of children’s footsteps crossing the wet sand. He’d have photographed them, he said, if he’d had a camera with him. It was the kind of subject competition judges liked — footsteps in the sand.
Jacqui agreed with him. ‘If the light’s right.’
‘I don’t see much in it,’ said Jane bluntly. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t help us find jellyfish. How come they’re never around when we’re looking for them?’
They were all properly dressed for the job, as Tim had noted approvingly when they set out from the hotel. Jacqui had surprised him by coming down to breakfast in jodhpurs and riding boots; he’d never thought of her as a horsy type, though she was short enough to be a jockey. Jane sported Dick Whittington thigh boots over her jeans. Both girls wore gloves; they were taking no chances. Nor was he.
A contract for Jane to work as a researcher on the jellyfish documentary was one of the conditions Tim had laid down. Alan Brewer agreed to it readily enough; it seemed he’d already made enquiries about her and had a summary of her background on file. As Tim was beginning to discover, he was a man who did his homework thoroughly. Perhaps that was why, despite Jackson’s pressing invitation, he’d refused to join them at their spartan lunch.
Back at his flat, Tim had found no message from Sue on his answering machine; no messages, in fact, from anyone. Instead, the second post had brought a lawyer’s letter from Exeter asking for the name of his solicitor. It was an opening gambit, he tried to persuade himself, just to demonstrate that she was serious. He dialled the theatre, only to be told she was not available to speak to anyone. She wasn’t giving him a chance.
Then he’d called Jane to give her the news about the contract and who to ring if she was interested — which she was. Television was the great magnet, he reflected as he put the phone down again; no one could resist it. Except people like Sue, who were afraid of it. Rightly, too: it was like a great jellyfish itself, holding its victims paralysed, then treating them as so much fodder.
Which was all he was himself — not an actor any more, not in the real sense, but mere fodder for the small screen.
But Jane had no inhibitions about it. Within half an hour she was ringing him back to say it was all agreed, and he heard the excitement in her voice.
The following day she’d driven him down to Wales in his own BMW, after loading the boot with all the gear her sister had recommended for catching and transporting jellyfish specimens — shovels, reinforced shrimping nets, two vicious-looking pronged implements, and four round metal containers equipped with snap-clips to hold their lids firmly shut. To pay for it all, she’d called on him for the money, insisting airily that he’d be able to claim it back from the company.
By arrangement, they’d met up with Jacqui at the Grand Hotel where it had all started. They had dinner there, just the three of them — her PA, a tall willowy girl named Dorothea, had gone off to see a friend in the town — and she’d outlined the programme for the next couple of days.
‘The crew’s arriving tomorrow after lunch, and we’ll be shooting your introductory sequence first,’ she’d explained. ‘I’ve knocked together some sort of script which I’ll show you afterwards. It’s mainly the straightforward story of your own encounter with the jellyfish. We’re playing this a bit by ear, as it’s largely going to depend on what sort of footage the other teams can get, but Alan will be co-ordinating all that.
‘I’m in your hands.’ He’d smiled at her, thinking how much more confident she sounded now she was working on a documentary again. Yet she must have asked for the move to drama, and she’d obviously convinced somebody she could do it. Jackson, perhaps?
It had not been a very successful meal, though. The restaurant of the Grand Hotel had, as usual, laid everything on in style with little flower bowls on the tables, stiff white napkins and a hovering waiter in a black bow-tie; but the cabbage was too wet, the potatoes soggy, and the stringy meat had been doused with a thick, unpleasant gravy. They’d ordered wine, but even that tasted sour.
‘What do I do?’ Jane had asked, laying down her knife and fork with her food only half-eaten.
Jacqui had regarded her coolly. ‘Whatever you like. There isn’t all that much for you.’
She clearly considered Jane to be an interloper, a hanger-on who’d somehow managed to worm her way into the programme and now had to be tolerated.
‘Find more jellyfish, if you can,’ she added grudgingly. ‘But if you do, just tell me where they are and don’t touch them.’
‘Leave that to you?’ Thinly veiled sarcasm.
‘I take the decisions,’ Jacqui said, misunderstanding.
‘Like last time?’ Jane’s question was heavy with barbed sweetness.