Flights of Angels (25 page)

‘What are you doing, Claudie?’ a little voice asked her, but she didn’t answer. She wasn’t in the mood to pander to her inner voice.

‘Claudie?’ the voice came again. And it wasn’t her voice. Her eyes attempted to come out of blur mode and focussed on her jewellery box lid where Jalisa was sitting.

‘Hello!’ Jalisa said, her eyes big and bright like gemstones. ‘You okay?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘That’s not much of a welcome,’ Jalisa answered in a quietly scolding tone.

‘I mean,’ Claudie bit her lip and tried again, ‘I thought my home was out of bounds.’

‘Well, you see, it isn’t - all the time. Just
most
of the time. It’s special occasions only.’

Claudie stared at her. ‘And I’m having a special occasion now, am I?’

Jalisa blinked hard and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s all right,’ Jalisa said softly. ‘Everyone has special occasions, and what’s the point of having a flight if it can’t accommodate them?’

‘Please,’ Claudie began, ‘I don’t think I can cope with any angel philosophy tonight. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful-’

‘But you’re going to anyway?’ Jalisa suggested, and they both smiled.

‘Sorry,’ Claudie said, secretly pleased that Jalisa cared enough about her to know when she needed some company of the non-human variety.

‘That’s better,’ Jalisa said, seeing Claudie’s slight change of mood. ‘I’d hate to sit here and be ignored.’

‘I’d never ignore you,’ Claudie said, ‘it’s just I don’t feel much like talking tonight. Do you know what I mean?’

Jalisa nodded. ‘I do,’ she said, and with such conviction that Claudie felt she wanted to know more.

‘Really?’ Claudie said, suddenly aware that she hadn’t been paying enough attention to the needs of her flight. It would seem that they needed to talk too. Angelling was obviously a two-way friendship.

Jalisa sighed. ‘Only this week, back at you know where, I was let down by somebody.’

‘What - a boyfriend?’ Claudie asked.

Jalisa gave a little smile. ‘Not really. But he definitely has potential. If only he had the time.’

‘You were meant to go out together?’ Claudie looked puzzled as Jalisa nodded.

‘You still get to date, you know. It doesn’t all stop because of a little thing called death. Anyway, we weren’t talking about me. We were talking about you.’

‘I don’t remember us talking about me.’

‘Claudie!’ Jalisa reprimanded. ‘You can’t run away from this.’

‘Run away from what, exactly?’

‘
This!
This situation that you’re in.’

‘I don’t under-’

‘Don’t you dare say you don’t understand! Don’t you
dare!
’

Claudie looked down at her in surprise, and with a certain amount of admiration too. She liked Jalisa. She made a great angel forerunner, and Claudie really couldn’t think how she’d ever coped before the arrival of the flight.

‘Right,’ Jalisa began again, confident that she now had Claudie’s full co-operation, ‘we’re going to talk about this, even if it takes all night.’

‘It can’t take all night,’ Claudie sighed. ‘Kristen’s in the living room.’

‘I know. So we’d better make a start, hadn’t we?’

‘I suppose so.’ Claudie rested her head in her hands, absent-mindedly fingering her fat sausage curls.

‘Okay,’ Jalisa said, sitting back on Claudie’s jewellery box, forsaking the urge to test its lid in a quick tap-dance routine. ‘So what’s been happening?’

Claudie closed her eyes for a second, half-wishing she could shut it all away and do her best to forget about it, but Jalisa wouldn’t allow that, so she began. ‘Dr Lynton’s been going on about me reinvesting in new relationships: that it’s time to move on. And I believed him.’ Claudie’s eyes were sparkling with tears the size of Christmas baubles.

‘Claudie,’ Jalisa said quickly ‘it was never going to be easy, and you can’t blame yourself for taking his advice. It was good advice!’

‘Was it?’ Claudie didn’t sound as if she believed Jalisa. ‘Then why has it all ended so disastrously?’

‘Has it?’

‘Simon asked me out and I said yes,’ she said, making it sound as if she’d started World War III single-handedly.

‘Well, that’s
good!
What’s disastrous about that?’ Jalisa asked.

‘He had to cancel because he’s old girlfriend’s shown up.’

‘That’s not so good,’ Jalisa admitted.

‘I trusted him. And I trusted myself to go out with him.’

Jalisa gazed up at her and nodded slowly. ‘Claudie, it just hasn’t worked out
this
time. I’m sure there’s a good explanation. Simon is a good man, isn’t he? He hasn’t done this to hurt you. He’s probably as upset about it as you are. Just give it time.’

‘Time,’ Claudie said the word quietly. ‘It’s all about time, isn’t it?’

‘Yes it is, so you’ve got to be patient.’

‘I don’t think I can do patient,’ Claudie said, feeling the horrible hollowness that sometimes filled her heart.

‘Of course you can! Just don’t give up.’

Don’t give up
. Claudie wanted to write the words down on poster-sized paper just so she could tear them up. Those three simple words: so easy to say but so damned hard to put into action.

‘What is it?’ Jalisa asked, seeing Claudie’s faraway look.

Claudie shrugged. ‘I feel so numbed by everything sometimes, as if I’m not really living at all.’

‘That’s only natural,’ Jalisa said. ‘I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it does get easier, believe me. Everybody who loses someone they love goes through this.’

‘It’s hard to believe that other people feel like I’m feeling now. This pain seems so completely exclusive to me,’ Claudie said. ‘Does that make sense?’

Jalisa nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’

A light knocking on the bedroom door broke into their conversation.

‘Listen,’ Jalisa said, ‘I’d better be going. Will you be okay?’

Claudie nodded. She didn’t want to let Jalisa go but realised that she couldn’t keep her with Kristen in the house. ‘Thanks for coming, Jalisa.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘See you on Monday?’

‘You bet.’ And she was gone.

‘Claudes?’ a rather husky Kristen called from the hall.

Claudie got up and opened the door.

‘Claudes? Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘But you look terrible!’

Kristen suddenly sobbed. ‘I feel dreadful.’

‘What? Why?’

‘As if it wasn’t enough to mess my own life up, I had to go and mess yours and Simon’s too.’

‘You haven’t! What are you on about?’

Kristen’s lower lip did a great jelly wobble as she tried her best to stop crying. ‘I’m sorry, Claudes.’

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about.’ Claudie gave her a hug, because she needed one as much as Kristen did.

Kristen sniffed loudly in Claudie’s ear. ‘I think I’ll have an early night before I cause any more trouble. If that’s okay?’ she added, as if suddenly remembering that the bed wasn’t actually her own.

‘Of course it’s all right. But,’ Claudie said guardedly, ‘there’s one condition.’

Kristen looked worried for a moment, as if she was about to get a scolding. ‘What’s the condition?’

‘You don’t hog all the duvet like last night!’

After Felicity had choreographed an Oscar-worthy breakdown in the front room, Simon was forced to change his mind about throwing her out on the streets. Even as he told her she could stay, he realised he’d probably regret it, but it would also give him time to work out what to do.

He did, however, make sure she understood that, as long as she was staying, or as
short
as she was staying if he had anything to do with it, she was sleeping alone in the bedroom at the back of the house; the room she’d previously monopolised as her walk-in wardrobe.

As he’d taken her suitcase upstairs, Simon couldn’t help feeling just a little bit smug as he imagined her unpacking in the tiny room. What was that wondering phrase? What comes around goes around? He wasn’t usually a vindictive, but he was quite enjoying the feeling of power he now had and, although Felicity was her usual hard-nosed self, she did seem to be aware that Simon wasn’t prepared to take any nonsense.

He spent the rest of the evening carefully avoiding Felicity, aware of her presence yet refusing to acknowledge it fully. And then, after shouting a curt goodnight, he went to bed.

The main bedroom was at the front of the house, and the combination of street lighting and unlined curtains meant that it never got completely dark. But that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t fall asleep. He lay staring up at the ceiling trying to make out faces in the tatty old paper as if he were cloud gazing.

Even though he had it in mind to hatch some wonderful revenge, he knew in his heart of hearts that he had failed already. He should never have taken pity on Felicity, and he certainly shouldn’t have let her stay the night. But what was he meant to do? She was probably bluffing about being pregnant, but he had no way of disproving her, even if she looked as pregnant as a paintbrush.

He turned over and pushed his face deep into his pillow to muffle a pained yelp. As he lay, pleading for sleep to rescue him, he heard the bedroom door creak open. It was one of the odd jobs he was always meaning to do round the house, but now he thanked the good lord that he’d never got round to buying any WD40.

‘Simon?’

Simon lay stock still, his eyes shut in a pretence of sleep.

‘Are you awake?’ Felicity asked. ‘I can’t sleep.’

Before she even bothered to find out if he was really asleep or not, she’d whipped the bed covers back and had climbed in next to him.

‘Woah!’ Simon yelled into the semi-darkness. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m cold,’ she complained, snuggling further down into the double bed they’d once shared quite amicably. But this was not her bed any more.

‘For God’s sake!’

‘I only want a little cuddle. Come on,’ she said, moving up closer so that he could feel her long, silky legs against his. ‘You’re so cold,’ she whispered, her breath hot in his ear.

He didn’t feel especially cold; in fact he was burning up but, when he tried to push her away, she coiled her right leg around him like an amorous snake and, before he could protest again, her lips clamped his in a colossal kiss.

Her hands worked their way down his body which, rather annoyingly, was starting to come alive. But he forced his mind away from the physical as he tried to think about how she had treated Pumpkin; how she had walked out on him with his life savings, how she had the nerve to come back and expected him to pick up the shattered pieces of her life.

And, before it was too late, he found his voice.

‘Get out, Felicity -
now!
’ he bellowed. At first, she was too shocked to move but, after she realised he wasn’t likely to be persuaded, he watched as she rose up from the bedclothes, resting her body weight on her elbows and showing that she still didn’t wear anything to bed. He tried not to look. ‘Out!’

‘Don’t be such a bore, Si.’

‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

There was a moment’s pause as they stared at each other in the semi-darkness.

‘I’m not moving,’ Felicity said in a quiet voice.

Simon felt his heartbeat accelerate, but he was determined to stay in control of the situation. He wasn’t going to get involved in one of her silly little games. He was the one calling the shots now, he reminded himself.

‘Fine,’ he said, calmly getting out of bed and walking across the room. ‘I’ll sleep in the other room, then.’ And he left her alone in the bed, smiling to himself as he crossed the landing and locked the door of the smallest bedroom behind him.

If she thought, for a moment, that she could follow him into a single bed, she’d be disappointed.

‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ Kristen said, pushing a heap of pale chocolate krispies round her cereal bowl and examining the brown milk with intense eyes.

‘Do what?’ Claudie said, biting into a slice of toast.

‘Spend another day away from Jimmy.’ She sighed. ‘And another night.’

‘You miss him?’

Kristen put her bowl down and looked up at Claudie. ‘Oh, Claudie. I don’t know how you coped.’

Claudie looked down at the black and white floor of the kitchen. The black was faded and scuffed and the white was really more like grey.

‘I didn’t cope,’ she said, ‘I just existed.’ She shrugged her shoulders as she tried to remember if there was some sort of formula she could pass on to Kristen. ‘You become the most basic of creatures. You breathe and sleep. Sometimes you get the urge to eat, but not very often. You become somebody else.’ She switched her gaze from floor to ceiling. ‘It’s like there’s a little person deep inside you who takes over the controls.’

Kristen nodded as if Claudie’s words were the wisest she’d ever heard.

‘I feel so miserable without Jimmy,’ she confessed. And it’s making me more miserable because I know my situation isn’t
anything
compared to yours.’

Claudie pulled a stool up next to Kristen at the breakfast bar.

‘How do you continue?’ Kristen asked.

Claudie gave a tiny half-smile as she sat down. ‘You should never underestimate the will to live. It’s more powerful than you realise.’

They looked at each other with the kind of peace and understanding born from years of friendship.

‘But life can be such a bitch,’ Kristen said.

Claudie nodded. ‘And sometimes you feel you’re not really living at all. Those first few months after Luke died were so bleak, so black, that I felt I’d died as well but, gradually, it did start to get better - not much - but it was no longer so black. It was more like a strange kind of twilight.’ Claudie’s eyes misted over as if she were experiencing it again. ‘You can see life going on around you - just like it always did but, somehow, you’re not quite ready to be a part of it again,’ she said, remembering Gene Kelly’s words to her in the grounds of St Mary’s.

‘And it doesn’t help when you’ve got bullies for friends - who are always trying to get you to do things you don’t want to do. When I think of all the terrible things I must have said to you -’