‘Tidy up,’ had been Vivienne’s words. He’d said the same to Nellie. The command covered a myriad of actions, which could be masked by euphemism and translation. George looked skyward as he headed away from the flat, leaving the two girls watching some vampire series on Netflix. George knew what he had to do. It wasn’t so much what Vivienne had said herself, but what Fabian had told him before he boarded a privately chartered helicopter up here to Cumbria, without telling his mother. The time for playing two masters was coming to an end, and George had some serious decisions to make. Both of his keepers wanted the same thing – to save the family name – but only one knew the truth, and the extent of what they were asking him to do. The other remained in innocent bliss, and George felt as though that could be his last bargaining chip. If he was compromised, then he had at least that to fall back on. It would come at a price, because he was the one up to his neck in it, but the authorities loved a snitch, and that’s what he was prepared to do, should he need to.

Things were so much simpler when Bart was alive. He parked the irony at the back of his mind.

Conversations whirred in his head. Bart’s words to him, then Vivienne’s calls late at night, and more recently, Fabian’s demands and worries, bothering his mind like iron mosquitos, never quitting, weaving such a web that was now so big, no one caught in it had any way of escaping.

His phone rang and he looked at the number. It was a landline and he answered, ready to ditch this latest phone once it was used, and replace it. There were only five people who were aware of this number: Fabian, the two girls, Nellie and Vivienne.

‘Hello.’

‘George, I don’t know what to do, I can’t breathe, I’m in police custody, they won’t let me go, I’ve been arrested!’

It was Nellie.

‘Nellie, slow down, breathe. Jesus Christ. Slowly.’

‘I’ve only got a minute, I can’t… I can’t…’

‘Nellie, don’t tell anyone who you called, do you hear me?’

‘What do I do?’

‘Hold your nerve, calm down. I will sort it,’ he said, lying to her. How the hell he’d unpick her from this particular predicament, given her lack of resolve and what she might give away, he had no clue. She hung up, out of time.

The dragline of the web had just got that much tighter and stickier, with similar properties to high grade alloy steel wrapping its long thin strands around his neck. He loosened his collar. He imagined a disgusting flash vision of a spider spinning dense protein out of its swollen abdomen.