24
Hanging Around With Jane
Bryony didn’t open her eyes until she was absolutely certain she was dead; and to her surprise found that she wasn’t.
“Bryony?”
Jane’s voice was shrill with anguish. Bryony looked round and saw her stepmother hanging upside down beside her.
No. Jane wasn’t upside down. But Bryony was; dangling upside down in a mesh of sticky ropes.
“What happened? Where are we?”
“I’ve no idea,” confessed Jane. “Last thing I remember I was being picked up by that horrible bird. What was it? And those awful creatures back there?”
Bryony knew all this was going to take some explaining, but did the best she could. “They’re evil wizards and witches, and they’ve come here to claim Wychetts’ power and cause global famine and destruction.”
“What?”
“And a worldwide shortage of ice cream.”
Jane stared blankly at Bryony for several seconds. Then burst into tears.
“I know.” Bryony nodded sympathetically. “Even mint-choc-chip.”
Jane sobbed harder.
“But don’t worry,” said Bryony, trying to placate her stepmother. “I think we’ve managed to escape from them.”
“But what about Edwin? He’s still in there. My poor little boy. My poor, darling little boy…”
“And my dad,” Bryony reminded her. “Don’t forget him.”
“Oh don’t worry,” hissed Jane. “I won’t forget your father. How could I, after all the misery he’s caused me and my poor little boy?”
“It’s not his fault. Well, not all of it.”
“So whose fault is it?”
Bryony took a deep breath. This was going to hurt.
“Mine,” she admitted with a grimace. “I made all those things go wrong when Mr Dawes came to visit. I wanted to get rid of the house so I wouldn’t have to stay in this stinky hovel with you and Edwin, so I could go to America and live with my mum. My real mum.”
“Do you think that would be for the best?” Jane raised a ginger eyebrow. “Your mother might be too busy to look after you right now.”
“Of course she’s busy.” Bryony wasn’t sure what Jane was driving at. “She’s got a special high flying job. But she’d find time for me. I’m her daughter, her only child, the most important thing in her entire world.”
“Perhaps you’re not any more,” said Jane. “Perhaps now she might have someone else who’s more important.”
“No way!” Bryony laughed at such an idea. “She might have boyfriends and that, but I’m the only special person there is. And I always will be.”
“I don’t mean a boyfriend.” Jane bit her lip, as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
“So what do you mean?” asked Bryony.
Jane looked away. “I think you should ask your father, darling.”
“I’m not your darling,” spat Bryony. “And if anything’s happened with Mum, how come Dad hasn’t told me?”
“He knows how important your mother is to you.” Jane looked at Bryony again. “He doesn’t want to break your heart.”
Bryony felt her cheeks burning. It might be because she was hanging upside down and all the blood was rushing to her head; or it might be because deep down inside she realised Jane might be right.
Why would Mum suddenly stop writing? Why had Dad refused to talk about her? Something had changed; Bryony had sensed it for a while now.
And then there was Mum’s letter to Dad, and those words that didn’t make sense:
I was wondering if you have told her yet?
From above them came a soft scrambling sound.
“What’s that?” Jane’s ginger head jerked upwards.
“It’s Dad,” said Bryony, more from hope than expectation. “I’ll ask him about Mum. He’ll tell me if anything’s happened to her.” Then she shouted as hard as she could. “Dad! Dad, I’m down here!”
There was no response to her calls. Bryony twisted her neck and peered up into the gloom. She thought she saw a dark shape moving, but it didn’t look like her father: too squat, too bulbous, and with far too many legs...
“I don’t think that’s Dad,” she whispered, looking nervously at Jane.
Jane gulped. “Then what is it?”
Bryony peered up again, but the dark shape had vanished. “Perhaps it wasn’t anything. Just a trick of the light.”
Then Bryony looked Jane again, and saw something monstrous hanging in the air next to her stepmother’s head.
It was like the giant creature she had summoned from the toilet, only bigger. And uglier. Much, much uglier…
And then, despite all her best efforts at maintaining self-control, Bryony just couldn’t help herself.
“Spider!” she cried. “Giant spi-der!”
Jane looked round, and started screaming. The spider just hung there, leering greedily at them with eight beady eyes. Bryony now knew what the sticky, ropey thing was that had broken their fall.
It was a web. And they were trapped like flies. Flies to be eaten!
The spider reached out a thick, hairy leg. Jane screamed again, even louder than before. Bryony joined in, but both were helpless, their arms and legs fused to the sticky strands of web.
The spider came closer to Bryony, so close that she could see the hungry expression on its mean little face. She’d never realised that spiders could actually look hungry; but then she’d never been this close to one before. She saw its drooling mandibles twitch, and felt her skin prickle where the tip of its leg brushed against her arm.
Bryony wailed. “He’s going to eat me!”
“Oh no he won’t.” Snapping out of her petrified stupor, Jane managed to free one arm from the sticky web.
“Leave my stepdaughter alone,” she yelled, slapping the spider’s abdomen with the back of her hand. “Leave her alone, do you hear me?”
Jane’s efforts had little effect, so she slipped off a sandal and used that to help get her message through. “I said leave her alone! LEAVE… HER… ALONE!”
The last slap seemed to do the trick. As if deciding these two particular flies were too much trouble, the spider made a scuttled retreat back up the web.
“You beat it,” said Bryony, smiling at Jane. Then she felt a strange vibration coursing through the web, and looked up to see that the spider was chewing through the strands attached to its victims.
There was a twang as the first web strand broke. And then another. And another...
And suddenly Bryony and Jane were falling again.