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  Jelvia: Not Human #3

  SPIDER

  T. E. Kessler

  Published in 2020 by Amazon Publishing

  Copyright ©T.E Kessler the author as named on the book cover.

  The author or authors assert their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author or authors of this work.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Cover work by the amazing Amanda Horan at Let’s Get

  Booked

  Editorial credit goes to Elayne Morgan at Serenity Editing

  Services, whose advice and hand-holding during the process

  of this book was much appreciated.

  PROLOGUE

  Beth Roberts hit the alarm as its shrill cry broke into her sleep. Still half-asleep, she fumbled into her clothes, scraped her hair back into a ponytail, and used the bathroom before tiptoeing down the stairs so as not to wake her parents.

  The day was still dark.

  Within twenty minutes of waking up, she arrived at the school where she worked as a cleaner. She completed her rounds—sweeping, mopping, emptying bins, cleaning the toilets, and wiping down surfaces. When she came out, the sun was up, and the day was beginning for everyone else.

  Her parents were still in bed when she returned home. Her mum would probably get up first. Her dad would no doubt sleep late; sleeping off the effects of his drinking session the night before.

  Beth made herself coffee and toast in their small kitchen and stood at the stained sink and drank it down while looking over their small back yard from the window. She washed up her breakfast things and went upstairs to shower and change for her job as a barmaid at the Dog and Gun.

  She did it all on autopilot, ignoring how tired she was. Being tired reminded her that she was still alive, at least. She didn’t know if the same was true about her sister, Lara. She’d been missing for two months. The police had combed the streets but found nothing—all they knew was that Jelvias had been lurking in the area at the time of Lara’s disappearance.

  Lara’s kidnapping had finished what was left of Beth’s already destroyed family. Their mum, Alison, had been brain-damaged in a car accident—the same accident that resulted in the death of Graham, Beth and Lara’s older brother.

  Alison went to Caring Hands, each Tuesday and Sunday, a respite where she thought she was a ‘helper’. And she was, in a way. Alison helped feed some of those who were unable to feed themselves, and fetched and carried for the staff, but she was a patient there as well. She was oblivious to their family problems, locked into a world where she was now a child inside a fifty-two year old body.

  The devastating accident had also claimed their father’s sanity. Steven had begun drinking not long after Graham’s funeral. He’d kept it together most days but since Lara’s disappearance, he’d gone off the rails. Beth was trying hard to hold the family together, but since Lara’s disappearance, the jigsaw puzzle that was her life seemed to have too many missing pieces.

  Beth still struggled to conquer the awful sense of guilt she felt for not being in the car the day it had left the road. Lara was too young to remember, but Beth could sympathise with her dad. Maybe that was why she pretended not to notice the amount he drank.

  Due to compensation awarded to them after the accident, money hadn’t been a problem. Steven took Alison, Lara, and Beth on lovely holidays, lavished gifts on them, and bought them everything they wanted. Lara had never really known her big brother or their mother before the car crash, and took the holidays and presents for granted, whereas even from a young age, Beth realised it was their dad’s way of counterbalancing them for their loss.

  Steven appeared to be coping and was protective of Beth and Lara as they grew. Any problem his daughters faced became huge in their dad’s mind—to the point where Beth and Lara had to move schools several times because their dad interfered so much. Lara, being many years younger, didn’t seem fazed but Beth soon learned not to share any of her problems with their dad. She gradually taught Lara to come to her instead of their father, telling her that Steven had enough worries with Alison.

  That had been the beginning of Beth learning to shoulder people’s worries. She was eleven.

  At thirteen, Beth realised her father was an alcoholic. She’d not known what an alcoholic was back then. Beth hadn’t even known it was a medical condition; it was just something she’d searched online when she was trying to find a way of helping her father after a particularly bad drinking session which had left him babbling about killing himself. As young as she was back then, she knew that his drinking was a symptom of his grief. She loved him, felt sorry for him, and desperately tried to shoulder his responsibilities.

  Beth decided then that she’d become a mother to Lara, a carer to Alison, and a rock to her dad. She flunked her way through school, sometimes missing it completely to look after her mother. The school didn’t notice that the letters Beth handed in when she was ‘sick’, ‘injured’, or had a ‘doctor’s/dentist’s appointment’ were all forged.

  Just before Beth’s sixteenth birthday, their compensation money dried up, and so did the holidays and treats, and Beth began skipping school to work in the local amusement arcade for cash. She left school without any qualifications and got her first real job in a cleaning firm. She scrubbed toilets in offices, but made sure Lara went to school, studied, and took every academic opportunity she could. Beth pushed Lara hard. She wanted her sister to have the future that she and Graham would never have. Beth happily handed over her wages to her father. She felt it was her sole purpose, and that it was the reasonable and right thing to do—to help the family.

  But during that time, she met Harry. He showed her that not only was there a whole world beyond her broken family but there was a life—and foolishly, Beth thought she had a chance at it.

  She and Harry had five wonderful years together, making plans for a future she was sure she would have with him. They were going to live in a big house with room enough for Alison, Steven, and Lara. They were going to be a regular family once again.

  During those five years, Beth had to endure Harry’s parents. They were standoffish and never welcoming towards her, and she always felt they didn’t believe she was good enough for their son. And maybe, deep down, she knew that was true.

  It wasn’t until after the courts served them with an eviction order that Beth had found out about her father’s debts. Blinded by her happiness with Harry, Beth had taken her eye off the ball, and realised too late that Steven hadn’t been paying the mortgage on their family home. He was also in debt to many credit card and loan companies. Clearly, he had tried to continue to fund the lifestyle that the compensation money had given them.

  They were bankrupt and would soon become homeless.

  Then she overheard a phone call.

  Steven was sitting in the back yard, empties around his feet, his mobile phone clamped against his ear. He was drunk and in one of his rages. But worse, because the caller was shouting, she could hear everything and recognised the voice as Harry’s dad’s.

  Harry’s dad was retaliating to Steven’s ranting, calling them a ‘council estate family’, and raged that Beth was holding Harry back from making something of his life.

  ‘He wanted to go to America, but changed his mind because of that girl,’ he’d yelled. The way he s
aid “that girl” had sounded like he was saying “that piece of shit”. ‘He was looking forward to it and made loads of plans—’

  ‘Oh, fuck off. She’s doing him a favour and stopping him from turning into a sour-faced, jumped-up, rich prick,’ Steven replied.

  Beth didn’t want to hear any more.

  That overheard conversation was an epiphany for her of how her life was meant to be. Browbeaten and accepting, Beth had turned around, walked back up the stairs, and made the decision for Harry.

  He was going to America. Harry had always spoken about it with excitement in the past, saying he’d send her a plane ticket so they could meet up. Each time, she’d smiled and reminded him that she couldn’t go because of Alison. Before long, he had miraculously changed his mind and said he didn’t want to go anyway. And she believed him, snuggling against him in the happy knowledge that they’d have a future together.

  She’d been foolish, but worse, she’d been selfish.

  Harry was not going to sacrifice himself for her. He was going to make something of himself, and as with Lara, Beth was going to see to it.

  She ended their relationship, never thinking that Harry would be devastated. In her head, she thought he’d be relieved. In the end, she told him she’d slept with another man. He’d been shocked and angry and had stormed off.

  In the weeks that followed, Beth and her family left their home to live in a shelter for the homeless. They moved several times before the council housed them in Brixton. Beth began working for Clean Easy, cleaning a primary school in the mornings, then, she took a job at the local pub, the Dog and Gun, where she worked currently.

  Steven’s drinking continued, but Beth still insisted she was in control.

  Then Lara went missing.

  ONE

  Beth arrived at work at the Dog and Gun thirty minutes before her shift started. It was what you’d call a ‘rough pub’, but it was close to her home—if there was a problem with her mum, it wouldn’t take her long to get back.

  She took her coat off, dropped it over a chair in the kitchen, and made herself a coffee. She took it into the bar where Colin, the manager, was reading the morning paper in an alcove by a large window. They didn’t have any customers; the pub wasn’t open for another thirty minutes.

  He looked up as he heard her approach. ‘Hi, love. Any news on Lara?’ he asked, as he did every morning.

  And like every morning, Beth shook her head and joined him in the alcove with her coffee.

  His cup was half full.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll turn up soon,’ he said, closing the newspaper he was reading.

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  Beth sipped her coffee. ‘Has the delivery been yet?’

  ‘They’re running late. I need to go to Costco later.’

  ‘I’ll make a list of the things I need,’ she said—small talk. She liked that. Beth liked Colin, but she couldn’t call him a friend. She didn’t have any friends. It wasn’t that she couldn’t make friends; she just didn’t have time for friends.

  ‘I saw your dad yesterday,’ Colin said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘How is he?’

  That was code for ‘I saw your dad wasted’.

  ‘Where did you see him?’ Beth thought back to yesterday. Sunday was her day off, and her mum would have been at a care facility, Caring Hands, for the day. Beth had a much-needed lay-in and then caught up with the housework and shopping. Her dad, she remembered, had been tinkering with her car, getting it ready for its MOT next month.

  ‘He was driving past in your car. I was waiting to pull out of the driveway and saw him almost knock a woman over in the pedestrian crossing.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I just thought you should know, that’s all.’ He reached over and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Don’t be too hard on him. It can’t be easy.’

  Yesterday, she thought, had been a good day for her dad. He’d changed the oil in her old Fiesta, replaced a lightbulb, pumped her tyres, and fiddled beneath the bonnet for hours. He even washed the car! He liked being alone and was always tinkering with her car, listening to music in the shed, or cleaning the yard; it had only come to her in the last year that it was because he could drink himself senseless in secret. He was a furtive drinker.

  ‘I suppose I’d better check the barrels in the cellar,’ Colin said, finishing his coffee. He stood up and stretched on a long, drawn-out yawn.

  ‘Col,’ she said, ignoring the eyeful of his hairy belly. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘Anytime, love.’ Colin walked away with the newspaper tucked under his arm. Beth watched him go. His wife had left him several years ago, but he’d stayed in the pub they’d managed, determined to “show the bitch that he could make it work”. And if “making it work” meant his business was known as a brothel then he’d well and truly made it.

  The owners, the Everson Pub Company, had a string of pubs that were doing fantastic business but the Dog and Gun seemed to be forgotten. It brought in a marginal profit and had to be an eyesore on the Everson books.

  Beth bent and gingerly picked up a sparkly nipple tassel from the floor with a grimace. It belonged to Old Andrea—though she wasn’t that old. In her mid-fifties, she pretended to be a lot older, telling Beth that it got her more work.

  Men were weird.

  Beth pocketed the tassel so she could give it back later. She ignored the dramas of the pub. It didn’t affect her, and the job paid reasonably well. She finished her coffee, picked up Colin’s dirty mug and, with a sigh, got up to make a start on opening the pub for the midday trade.

  After what Colin told her about seeing her dad driving drunk, she planned to nip home on her break to check on her mum. She loved her dad, but he tried her patience. If Lara wasn’t found soon, she believed he’d drink himself to death.

  ◆◆◆

  Beth found Alison standing by the washing machine with a pile of dirty clothes around her feet, crying as if her world had caved in.

  ‘Mum, what is it?’ Beth asked, circling an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘I-I c-can’t open the washing m-machine,’ she wailed.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Beth said and, stooping, opened the washing machine door. ‘There you go. Just press this button, here.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alison, wiping her eyes. She beamed at Beth. ‘You’re so clever.’

  Beth watched as her mum, once the family bread-winner and manager of Move Over—an estate agency—pushed dirty clothes into the washing machine as if she was strategising a complicated chess move.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Beth asked.

  ‘He’s mowing the lawn,’ Alison said. All traces of her tears were gone. She closed the washing machine door and looked at Beth triumphantly.

  They’d once had a lovely big garden in the house they lost to the mortgage company. Nowadays, their garden consisted of a concrete yard and a leaky lean-to that masqueraded as a shed. But Beth didn’t question her mum; it’d only confuse her.

  ‘Mum, I was going to do the washing tonight after work. Have you had lunch?’

  ‘Lunch? I don’t know.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Let’s check your diary.’ Beth led her mum over to the kitchen door where, every day, she hung a new list of things she had to do for the day. Breakfast – ticked. Shower – ticked. Prescription collected – ticked. Shop for bread and milk – ticked. Lunch – ticked. Laundry—

  A click of the front door told Beth that her father had come home.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded as soon as he stepped into the kitchen.

  He held up a bottle of fabric softener. ‘We didn’t have any.’

  Beth eyed him critically, but he wasn’t drunk, and they’d agreed that Alison could be left for short periods.

  ‘Well done, Ali, you managed to put the clothes into the washing machine!’ he said.

  Alison grinned at him, then ticked “laundry” off on her list.

  ‘I made you a sandwich, lov
e,’ Steven said over his shoulder to Beth as he placed the fabric softener into the washing machine dispenser. ‘It’s in the fridge.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Beth said and opened the fridge to find her lunch.

  ‘How’s work?’ Steven asked, watching Alison turn her attention to the pantry, where she rearranged the shelves with intense concentration.

  ‘Quiet. Monday is always quiet.’

  ‘You could do so much better than work in a back-street pub and clean grimy schools,’ he said.

  ‘The cleaning pays cash, and I like working at the pub. Colin’s a good boss.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to mention what Colin had said about seeing her dad driving while drunk yesterday, but Steven enveloped her in a spontaneous hug. He squeezed her and kissed the top of her head. ‘You’re amazing, and I do appreciate all that you do for the family,’ he said.

  The moment to speak to him about drink driving was gone as Beth hugged him back. ‘We’ll get Lara back,’ she said. ‘Petra and her team won’t give up.’

  Petra, their liaison officer, used to regularly update her on the progress made toward finding Lara. Lately, those updates had dwindled, but Beth hadn’t passed on that information to Steven. There was a lot she hid from her dad: their money problems, her tiredness, her and Lara’s argument the day before she disappeared.

  ‘You’ll be running your own pub one day,’ Steven said, letting her go and smiling down at her.

  ‘I wish!’ Laughing, she turned to the fridge and took out her lunch. She went through the archway into the lounge and sank down on the battered settee. It squeaked under her slight weight.

  It was a small house. Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a kitchen and lounge downstairs. The walls were so thin you could stand in the kitchen and have a conversation with someone taking a bath upstairs.

  She picked up the TV remote as she bit into her sandwich and flicked on a channel. The news came on showing demonstrators in London protesting about Jelvias—the protests had started this summer. At times Beth thought the world was going mad. She picked up the remote to change the channel.