Fallen Angel

While he was running, he risked a glance behind him. No one was there. Angel wasn’t following him. He wasn’t worth following.

Panting, he slowed to a walk and buttoned his coat with clumsy fingers. Even if she did come after him, it wouldn’t matter. He would just walk on and on and on. It was a free country. She couldn’t stop him. He crossed the access road leading to the council flats.

‘You all right, then?’

Eddie stopped and stared. Mr Reynolds waved at him. The little builder was about to open his garage door, on which someone had recently sprayed an ornate obscenity.

Mr Reynolds hugged himself with exaggerated force, as if miming winter in a game of charades. ‘It’s bitter, isn’t it?’

Eddie opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say. Panic rose in his throat.

‘The odds are shortening for a white Christmas,’ Mr Reynolds remarked. ‘Heard it on the radio.’

The silence lengthened. Mr Reynolds’s face grew puzzled. Eddie’s limbs might be temporarily paralysed but his mind was working. First, Mr Reynolds would do anything for Angel. Second, why was he spending the coldest Sunday afternoon since last winter standing outside his garage? Conclusion: he was keeping his eyes open at Angel’s request. He was spying on Eddie.

The paralysis dissolved. Eddie broke into a run again.

‘Hey!’ he heard Mr Reynolds calling behind him. ‘Eddie, you OK?’

Eddie ran to the end of the road and turned right. He had no clear plan where he was going. The important thing was to get away. He did not want to be a part of what was happening behind that door. He did not want even to think about it. He wanted to walk and walk until tiredness overcame him.

He crossed a road. Two cars hooted at him, and one of the drivers rolled down his window and swore at him. He walked steadily on. Why was there so much traffic? It was Sunday, the day of rest. There hadn’t been all those cars when he was a child. Even ten or fifteen years ago the roads would have been far quieter. Everything changed, nothing stood still. Soon the machines would outnumber the people.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told himself. ‘It really doesn’t matter.’

The world was becoming less substantial, less well-defined. A bus rumbled down the road, overtaking him. The red colour spilled out of its outline. The bus’s shape was no longer fixed but swayed to and fro like water in a slowly swinging bucket. You could rely on nothing in this world, and what other world was there?

Eddie remembered that he had a temperature. He might be very ill. He might die. A great sadness washed over him. He had so much to give the world, if the world would only let him. If Angel would let him. His mind shied away from the thought of her.

He was surprised that he was managing to walk so far and so well. It was not that he felt weak, exactly. His legs were as strong as usual but they did not seem quite so firmly attached to the rest of his body as they normally were.

‘It’s just the flu,’ he said aloud, and the words – in blue, lower-case letters, sans serif – seemed to hang in mid-air beside him; he watched the wind muddling up the letters and whipping them away. ‘I’ll feel better in the morning.’

What if he felt worse? What if there was never any getting better?

Eddie forced himself to walk faster, as though the faster he walked the further he left these unanswerable questions behind.

The important thing was to get away. It was some time before he noticed where he was going. He crossed Haverstock Hill and zigzagged his way up to Eton Avenue. On either side were large, prosperous houses occupied by large, prosperous people. At Swiss Cottage, he hesitated, wondering whether to take the tube into town. It was too much of a decision: instead he kept walking, impelled by the fear that Angel might, after all, pursue him and by the need to keep warm. He drifted up the Finchley Road to the overground station for the North London Line. He went into the station because his legs were becoming weary and because it was starting to rain – thin, cold drops, not far removed from sleet. A westbound train clattered into the station. Eddie ran down the steps to the platform. The train was almost empty. He got on, grateful for the warmth and the seat.

At first, all went well. He closed his eyes and tried to rest. But the memory of what he had left behind in Rosington Road shouldered its way into his mind. Eddie tried to distract himself with the usual techniques – making his mind go blank; remembering Alison on the swing and in the shed at Carver’s; imagining himself as Father Christmas in a big store, with a stream of little girls queuing for the honour of sitting on his knee, a long line of pretty faces, sugar and spice and all things nice.

Today, nothing worked. As the train drew into Brondesbury Station, Eddie opened his eyes. He fancied that some of the other passengers were staring at him. Had he been talking aloud?

He stared out of the window at rows of back gardens. He was almost sure that someone was whispering about him. The words hissed above the sound of the train. He thought the whispers were coming from behind him, but he couldn’t be sure without turning his head, which would betray to the watchers that he was aware that they were watching him and that someone was talking about him.

They reached another station. The whispering stopped with the train. A handful of passengers left and another handful boarded. As soon as the train began to move, the whispering started. It was a female voice, he was sure; probably a teenage girl’s. Now he knew what to look for, he quickly found evidence to support this theory: the smell of perfume masking, but not quite concealing, the smell of sweat; and a sound which might have been a high-pitched giggle. Mandy or Sian? Of course not. They were no longer teenagers at Dale Grove Comprehensive.