Fallen Angel

‘Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry. But I took her back home last night. Back to her mummy and daddy.’

He stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I knew you’d be upset. I knew you’d hate having to say goodbye to her.’ She paused. ‘And she wouldn’t want to leave you.’

Eddie felt his eyes filling with tears. ‘She could have stayed with us.’

‘No, she couldn’t. Not for ever and ever. There would have been all sorts of difficulties as she grew older.’

Eddie turned his face towards the wall and said nothing.

‘Think about it.’

Eddie sniffed. Then a new problem occurred to him. ‘What happens if she tells her parents about us, and they tell the police?’

‘What can she say? All she’s seen is our faces. She doesn’t know where the house is, or what the outside looks like. She only saw the basement. Besides, the police aren’t going to try too hard. Chantal’s back home, safe and sound. No harm done, is there?’

‘I still wish I could have said goodbye.’

‘It made sense to do it this way. We didn’t want tears before bedtime, did we?’

‘Maybe she could come and stay with us again?’

Angel sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘No. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But perhaps we can find someone else to come and stay.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know yet. But no one who lives in Knightsbridge. The police look for patterns, you see. They try to pinpoint the recurring features.’

For Katy, they travelled up to Nottingham and rented a flat there for three months. Katy was an unwanted child who escaped from her foster parents at every opportunity and wandered the streets and in and out of shops.

‘Looking for love,’ Angel commented. ‘It’s so terribly sad.’

Suki, their third little girl, had a stud in her nose and a crucifix dangling from one ear; she belonged to some travellers camping in the Forest of Dean. Angel said that the mother was a drug addict; certainly Suki smelled terribly, and when they washed her for the first time the bath water turned almost black. (This was the occasion when Suki bit Eddie’s hand and screamed like a train.)

‘Some parents shouldn’t be trusted with children,’ Angel used to say. ‘They need to be taught a lesson.’

She repeated this so often, in so many ways and with such force, that Eddie thought it might amount to part of a pattern, albeit one invisible to the police.

On Sunday the first of December, after Lucy’s bath, Angel spent the rest of the morning reading to her in the basement. At least, that was what Angel said she was doing. Eddie was both hurt and angry. Angel had never been possessive with the others: she and Eddie had shared the fun.

To make matters worse, he wasn’t sure what Angel was really doing down there. The soundproofing made eavesdropping impossible. After a while, Eddie unlocked the back door and went into the garden.

It was much colder today. The damp, raw air hurt his throat. He could not be bothered to fetch a coat. He walked warily down to the long, double-glazed window of the basement. As he had feared, the curtains were drawn. The disappointment brought tears into his eyes. His skin was burning hot. He leant his forehead against the cool glass.

The movement brought his head closer to the side of the window. There was a half-inch gap between the frame and the side of the curtains.

Scarcely daring to breathe, he knelt down on the concrete path and peered through the gap. At first he saw nothing but carpet and bare, white wall. He shifted his position. Part of the Victorian armchair slid into his range of vision. Lucy was sitting there. All he could see was her feet and ankles, Mickey Mouse slippers and pale-green tights, projecting from the seat. She was not moving. He wondered if she were sleeping. She had seemed very tired in the bath, perhaps because of the medication.

At that moment Angel came into view, still wearing her white robe. Round her neck was a long, purple scarf, like a broad, shiny ribbon with tassels on the end. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. As Eddie watched, she raised her arms towards the ceiling. Eddie licked dry lips. What he could see through the gap, the cross section of the basement, seemed only marginally connected with reality; it belonged in a dream.

Angel moved out of sight. Eddie panicked. She might have seen him at the window. In a moment the back door would open and she would catch him peeping. I just came out for a breath of fresh air. He straightened up quickly and glanced around. There was enough wind to stir the trees at the bottom of the garden and in Carver’s beyond. The leafless branches made a black tracery, through which he glimpsed Mrs Reynolds on her balcony. Eddie shivered as he walked back to the house.

Mrs Reynolds watches me, I watch Angel: who watches Mrs Reynolds? Must be God.

Eddie giggled, imagining God following Mrs Reynolds’s movements through a pair of field glasses from some vantage point in the sky. According to Mr Reynolds, his wife had become a born-again Christian since Jenny Wren had sent herself into a coma.

‘It’s a comfort to her,’ Mr Reynolds had said. ‘Not really my cup of tea, but never mind.’

Eddie opened the back door and went inside. The warmth of the kitchen enveloped him but he could not stop shivering. He went into the hall. The basement door was still closed. He pressed his ear against one of the panels. All he heard was his own breathing, which seemed unnaturally loud.

Clinging to the banister, he climbed the stairs and rummaged in the bathroom cupboard until he found the thermometer. He perched uncomfortably on the side of the bath while he took his temperature. It’s not fair. Why won’t she let me in the basement too? He took the thermometer out of his mouth. His temperature was over 102 degrees. He felt strangely proud of this achievement: he must be really ill. He deserved special treatment.

He found some paracetamol in the cupboard, took two tablets out of the bottle and snapped them in half. He poured water into a green plastic beaker which he had had since he was a child. The flowing water so fascinated him that he let it flood over the rim of the beaker and trickle over his fingers. At last he swallowed the tablets and went into his bedroom to lie down.

Alternately hot and cold, he lay fully clothed under the duvet. He thought how nice it would be if Angel and Lucy brought him a hot-water bottle and a cooling drink. They could sit with him for a while, and perhaps Angel would read a story. Nobody cares about me. He stared at the picture of the little girl which his father had given his mother all those years ago. Very nice, Stanley. If you like that sort of thing. A little later he heard his parents talking: dead voices from the big front bedroom; perhaps they were not really dead after all – perhaps they were watching him now.

Eddie drifted in and out of sleep. Just before three in the afternoon he woke to find his mouth dry and his body wet with sweat. He dragged himself out of bed and stood swaying and shivering in the bedroom. I need some tea, a nice cup of tea.

He found his glasses and went slowly downstairs. To his surprise, he heard voices in the kitchen. He pushed open the door. Lucy was sitting at the table eating a boiled egg. Angel was now dressed in jeans and jersey; her hair was tied back in a ponytail. As Eddie staggered into the room, he heard Lucy saying, ‘Mummy always cuts my toast into soldiers, but Daddy doesn’t bother.’

She stopped talking as soon as she saw Eddie. Angel and Lucy stared at Eddie. Two’s company, three’s none.

‘What are you doing in the kitchen?’ Eddie said, his voice rising in pitch. ‘It’s against the rules.’

‘The rules aren’t written in stone. Circumstances alter cases.’ Angel stroked Lucy’s dark head. ‘And this is a very special little circumstance.’

‘But they never come in the kitchen.’

‘That’s enough, Eddie. How are you feeling?’

Thrown off balance, he stared at her.

‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘How did you know I’m ill?’

‘You should try looking at yourself in the mirror,’ Angel said, not unkindly.

‘I think it’s flu.’

‘I doubt it: probably just a virus. You need paracetamol and lots of fluids.’

Eddie sat down at the table. Lucy looked at him, her spoon halfway to her mouth, and to his delight she smiled.

‘Finish your egg, dear,’ Angel said. ‘It’s getting cold.’

‘I don’t want any more.’