“I’m not being funny,” Martin said, “but I honestly don’t have a phobia.”
“Do mother in laws count?” Krish said.
Martin was glad of the second belly laugh.
7
9:10 a.m
Sue dabbed her eyes with a piece of kitchen roll. How could he? She didn’t think it was too much to ask to not have the fear of God put into her every time she stepped into the office. She kept picturing the way the spider had crawled over his hand, those eight legs moving smooth as syrup against Martin’s colourless palm. She felt sick. She poured a glass of water and took a gulp. Her knees ached from the cold weather. She was sick of this place, and most of all she missed Derek. He would’ve made Martin put that damn spider outside. Derek always got rid of them for her. She missed that. Now she spent every September living in fear, hoping her cat, Misty, would kill and eat them before she saw them.
She felt like one was on her right now. It wasn’t though. She checked every corner of the room one more time. No, she was safe. She filled the kettle with water and switched it on. With a sense of satisfaction, she noticed that all of the coffee she’d made that morning had been drunk. Well, she wouldn’t clean out the mess. No, she wouldn’t. When she opened the fridge door to get the milk, she considered taking out the chocolate éclair and eating it now, before lunch. No, she shouldn’t. She grabbed the bottle of milk, noticing Martin’s carton of almond milk nestled in between a litre bottle of coke and a squeezy container of barbecue sauce. Her first thought was, Why would anyone bring barbecue sauce to work? Then she thought to herself, No one apart from Martin used the almond milk. No one.
The kettle boiled.
8
9:30 a.m
Helen settled back down at her computer after volunteering to call the biochem department. She could still hear Martin and Krish’s laughter ringing in her ears. She knew what they thought—that she was a big baby for still being afraid of the dark. Only kids were afraid of the dark, weren’t they? She was a pathetic loser.
She hadn’t even told them why she was afraid of the dark and the years of therapy she’d received to figure it out herself. She hadn’t told them that she was on edge even now, watching the rain hitting the window. Something about that sound made her chest tighten. It was as though she were a screw slowly being tightened. What happened if the screw kept going and going deeper into a cavity? Would it snap eventually? Would it bore straight through, leaving behind a gaping wound?
Helen didn’t call biochem right away because she needed time to calm down. It was then that the message box popped up in the bottom right corner of her computer screen. She enlarged it.
Martin: Sorry bout before, babe. Just shits and giggles, u know. U OK?
Helen: Totally fine. Still think you should get shut of that spider though.
Martin: LOL. Hag feet will just have to put up with it. If it was anyone but her…
Helen: I know…
Martin: Was Penny late again today?
Helen: Yeh. 15 mins. And there’s a toothpaste stain on her top.
Martin: She’s been piling it on too. Fit to fat.
Helen sent him a roll-eyes emoji. Martin sent back a gif of an overweight man stuck in a chair. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. On the other side of the room, Krish lifted his head from his hunched position over the keyboard, and Penny glanced in her direction. Even though neither of them could see the chat box, she minimised it. Then she picked up the phone to call biochem and pushed thoughts of the rain out of her mind. She completely forgot all about the chat box.
9
10:10 a.m
Krish braced himself as Helen walked over to their team. She was about to give one of her motivational speeches, he could feel it. Sue, on his right, was sniffing pointedly every few minutes. No, he hadn’t asked her if she was all right because he didn’t want to get into it. The way he saw it, she deserved to be taken down a peg. She didn’t do any proper work for a start.
He might have been more supportive if Penny had been upset about the spider because at least Penny kept her head down and did her work.
He pulled his gaze away from the computer and waited for Helen to speak. She had one hand on her hip while hovering a few feet away from his desk. Whenever he looked at Helen, he always thought of that phrase “a bulldog chewing a thistle.” He’d first heard it from a teacher at his primary school, and it’d always stuck with him.
“Biochem can’t move,” Helen said. She waited as though expecting a reaction from them. No one blinked. “We could try a Wednesday evening. The students won’t like it, but it’s free for them.”
“What about invigilators though?” Krish asked. “Can we get them to do an evening? Won’t we have to pay them double?”
“We might have to invigilate ourselves,” Helen said.
Sue scoffed. “Not a chance.”
“It’s rare, but it’s part of the job description,” Helen said.
For once, Krish wanted Sue to win this one. His evenings were all booked up, and he had to be careful not to antagonise his wife, Jas. He’d been walking on a knife’s edge for a while now, and it only took one misstep to unbalance the whole thing.
“Krish?”
Helen was staring at him, her wideset blue eyes piercing under the fluorescent lights.
“Sorry?” he mumbled.
“Can you search for a venue?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Penny, once Krish has a venue, you can start adding students to the timetable. With Sue’s help.”
“Okay,” Penny said.
“Great.” Helen smiled brightly. “Maybe we’ll make it out on time after all.”
As Helen walked back to her desk, Krish heard Sue mutter under her breath. “I can’t stand that stuck-up cow.”
10
11:34 a.m
The rain drummed against the roof. Strong gusts rattled the old windows and whistled through the doors. There was a scraaatch-scraaatch sound of a tree branch scraping against the glass. It put Penny’s teeth on edge as she tried to concentrate on her work. After incorrectly inputting the same student three times, she decided to take an early break and go to the kitchen to get her sandwich. Ham and cheese. She didn’t even want it anymore, but she wasn’t venturing out in this weather for anything else. Though she had already picked up the spare pass that morning and could at least let herself back in if she did go out. She glanced out of the window. Today was not the day for lunch out.
On the way to the kitchen, she heard Martin’s loud voice booming out from his office. He had a call on speakerphone for some reason. She figured he liked to spin in his chair while he was on the phone, like a little boy playing at being boss. She thought of him sitting in his leather chair in front of that dark wooden desk—so different to their standard white desks—with the spider crawling over his hands. It wasn’t the spider that made her blood run cold. It was him. She hurried into the kitchen, glad for the quiet. It was always a relief to be away from people, to bask in the delicious feeling of being alone. But it lasted less than a minute. Krish bustled in, whistling a song she didn’t recognise, rudely interrupting her moment.