‘Right,’ she said out loud. ‘Right, I’m ready then.’ A final look round the house, appallingly clean, strange. She shut the windows and the front door, picked up the basket. A spider of vast size scurried in at the kitchen door across the floor and under the dresser. ‘You win.’ Matilda stepped out carrying the basket, locked the door, put the key under the bootscraper where only a fool would leave it for any fool to find. Into the garage, into the car, start it up, drive off. ‘If you exist keep an eye on Gus. See that he is all right. Please.’ Matilda prayed without faith as she drove fast down the lane which led to the main road. A god with wings was a credible God but not in the guise of a man driving a landrover. Matilda trod hard on the accelerator. The noise of the engine failed to drown the sound in her mind of betrayed honking.

In the empty house the telephone rang to an audience of one spider.

2

SHE SWITCHED ON the car radio to drown the sound in her mind. I will not think of it. I will suppress it, forget it, bury it as I have done with other things all my life. Go away Gus, go away. She turned up the sound.

For many days now she had carried her transistor about the house and listened as she scrubbed, swept, hoovered, polished, dusted. As she worked she had heard Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, pop and pop and pop, the news. Rumours of war, violence, here, there and everywhere, only it isn’t war now, she had thought, it is Guerillas, often pronounced Gorillas, who bomb, shoot or kidnap, hijack planes and trains. An active lot these Guerillas/Gorillas, forever in the news, by no means unsympathetic, full of ideals and always on the hour every hour between quiz games or music, Woman’s Hour, Listen with Mother. the news and weather imperceptibly changing as the days passed and she startled spiders, catching them in a tumbler, putting them out of doors before destroying their webs. The weather hot, continuing hot, traffic jams on the motorways, the French industrialist kidnapped from his home, the vanished bride on her honeymoon – perhaps she had realized her error, fled – and the Matricide. The police hunt for the Matricide and the Vanished Bride followed her upstairs and down as she dusted and swept, lifting the transistor from one piece of furniture to the next.