Flights of Angels (27 page)

When Claudie got back from lunch, Kristen got up from her desk to go.

‘You okay?’ Claudie asked her.

‘I’m fine. I’m just going to pop home and get some things. I’m beginning to run out of undies.’

‘Won’t Jimmy be in?’

‘No. He usually goes out around lunchtime for a quick pint.’

Claudie gave her a smile. ‘Will you be all right?’

‘Of course I will,’ Kristen said, but the expression on her face didn’t echo the sentiment of her words.

Claudie looked down at where the angels were playing cards together in the most amicable group scene she’d ever witnessed.

‘Don’t you think Kristen should have her own flight of angels?’

The angels looked up and, smiling, all shook their heads.

‘Why not?’ Claudie asked.

‘Because if we were sent out to everyone who suffers a break-up, there wouldn’t be enough of us to go round,’ Jalisa explained. ‘Besides, before we’re sent out, the client has been given a few months in which to deal with their problems in their own time. It’s only if this time elapses, and the problems still aren’t sorted that we step in.’ Jalisa did a little flourish.

‘So Kristen isn’t-’

‘Kristen hasn’t suffered enough by half,’ Lily said.

‘I see,’ Claudie said. ‘That’s rough, isn’t it?’

‘I think you have saying:
that’s life
?’ Mr Woo said.

Claudie nodded. So, she thought, by that reasoning, she
had
suffered. She was deemed angel-worthy. That was pretty bad, wasn’t it? She hadn’t been able to cope on her own.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Jalisa said, breaking away from the group, ‘and you mustn’t think like that.’

‘But it’s not normal, is it?’

‘What isn’t normal?’

‘To need help.’ Claudie was feeling weighed down with her own self-doubt again. She hated that feeling. It was almost as bad as the actual grief.

‘Not normal?’ Bert abandoned his cards and stood up. ‘Are you trying to do us out of a job?’

‘Yes!’ Mary added. ‘What on earth would we do all day if we didn’t have people to help?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ Claudie said honestly.

‘Exactly!’ Mary said. ‘There’s no fun sitting around doing nothing for eternity.’

Claudie giggled. ‘Then how do you explain what you’re doing now?’

‘This isn’t
nothing
,’ Lily said, coming to the defence of her sister. ‘We’re keeping you company.’

‘And making you laugh,’ Bert said, pulling a very silly face.

‘And entertaining you,’ Jalisa said doing a quick Ann Miller tap dance. ‘Why? Are you not happy with us?’

‘It’s not that! No! I love you all.’

‘I can feel a
but
coming any minute now,’ Mary said.

‘It’s just I know so little about what you do and why you’re here.’

‘Ask away, then,’ Jalisa said encouragingly. ‘Although I must warn you that-’

‘I know! There’s a lot of classified information.’

Jalisa nodded. ‘Sorry.’

Claudie sighed and looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Are there famous angels?’ she asked. ‘Does anyone get Marilyn Monroe, for instance?’ Claudie smiled, wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to have a mini Gene Kelly or Judy Garland on her desk, and if she could put a request in.

‘There are famous angels, yes,’ Jalisa said somewhat guardedly, ‘but they’re not very popular. They still carry complexes over from their lifetime of fame, and it can be very hard for clients to cope with them. Believe me, a pigmy prima donna is the last thing you want on your desk.’

‘You’re better off with us,’ Bert said.

‘I’m sure I am,’ Claudie agreed with a nod.

‘Why?’ Jalisa asked. ‘You weren’t thinking of trading us in, were you?’

‘Gracious, no! Why would I do that? I didn’t even know I could!’

‘Not advisable,’ Mr Woo said.

‘Better the angel you know?’ Claudie joked.

‘Absolutely!’ Bert laughed.

‘So,’ Claudie said, another question surfacing, ‘does everybody become an angel?’

‘Oh, no!’ Jalisa said. ‘This is the crème de la crème job. Most of us are just admin staff. You wouldn’t
believe
the paperwork involved in death. On the other side, I mean.’

Claudie sighed. She could very well imagine, and it would be just her luck to spend her eternity typing letters and filing.

‘And you all enjoy it?’

‘Of course!’ They all chorused.

‘Do you get paid?’

They looked perplexed for a moment.

‘Not as such,’ Bert said.

‘There are other rewards,’ Mr Woo said.

‘Like?’ Claudie said.

‘That’s classified information,’ Jalisa said, shaking her head.

‘You mean I have to wait until I die to find out?’

Jalisa nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Is it worth the wait?’ Claudie asked. Lily and Mary giggled, and Mr Woo blushed.

‘Like anything worth having,’ Jalisa said, ‘it’s definitely worth the wait!’

Kristen entered Lantern Yard with nervous footsteps. She had her keys in her pocket but her fingers just couldn’t get a grip on them because she was shaking so much. She noticed that the bin had been put out, a job that was usually left to her, and that the plants had been watered too. So, she thought, he could manage without her.

Taking a deep breath, she placed the key in the lock and opened the door, but she didn’t cry her usual hello. She sneaked inside and quietly pushed the door closed behind her instead of kicking it with her foot.

The first thing she noticed was the big pile of dishes in the sink. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the unwashed plates coated with the peculiar sauce from microwavable dishes: the stuff that set like cement unless washed immediately, and secretly, she was a little pleased that he might actually have noticed how well she used to look after him.

She walked into the living room and was relieved to spot Jimmy’s tartan slippers in the middle of the carpet: a sure sign that he was out. That meant she could pack her things and be out of the cottage without disturbance.

Moving through to the bedroom, she reached under the bed for her sports bag and began to empty the drawers of their contents. Knickers, bras, socks, tights, gloves, hats, scarves. She stopped for a moment as her hand alighted on a pink scarf and its matching hat. Jimmy had bought them for her. They were horrible really; in that girly pearly pink that she hated so much but which men always assumed women liked. The hat had clashed horribly with her red hair, but Jimmy had insisted she wore it whenever it was cold.

‘You look like a fifties pin up,’ he’d once assured her with a kiss. But Kristen couldn’t imagine even Betty Grable making this hat look good. Nevertheless, she put it in the bag.

Next stop was the dressing table. It wasn’t a proper dressing table though, just a drawerless table picked up at a car boot sale, but it housed Kristen’s two large jewellery boxes and a host of lotions and potions. She chose a few bottles and slung them into the bag.

She was just about to make a start on the wardrobe when she heard the front door open and close.

‘Kris?’

She bit her lip. She’d left her key in the door. What a stupid thing to do. If she hadn’t have left it there, she might have been able to sneak out again, but she was trapped in the bedroom now.

‘Kris?’

She turned to face the door and saw Jimmy standing there, his hair ruffled by the wind. He had oil down the front of his shirt and there was a button missing but Kristen curbed her maternal instincts and turned back to the wardrobe to pack.

‘What are you doing?’ Jimmy asked, his voice unusually quiet.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to be long.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

Kristen grabbed a few skirts from their hangers and stuffed them into her bag. There wasn’t time to be neat.

‘Kris?’ The tone of his voice made her stop for a second. ‘This is silly.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is.’ And she began packing again.

‘Listen,’ he said.

Kristen was listening. She was listening for the words she’d so longed for but had almost given up on hearing. Almost any words Jimmy said to her now would do.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

Except those words.

‘That’s the trouble,’ Kristen said, ‘you never know what to say.’ She blinked back the tears as she continued to stuff her bag to bursting point. It was time to go.

‘No, Kris - listen-’

‘No!’ Kristen rolled her shoulder away from his hand. If she let it stay, she would lose her resolve for sure. She walked to the door, willing him to say something: to plead with her a little bit more. To say he’d been an idiot. Or just to tell her to stay.

‘Kris?’

She took the key out of the door and paused for a moment. Waiting. But he didn’t say another word.

Simon was glad Felicity had gone out. It gave him the chance to think about things, and, as Kristen had so succinctly pointed out, he was in serious need of the time.

He flopped down on the sofa, forgetting any notion of actually getting any work done today. He’d have to make up for it later otherwise he’d been in serious trouble in that department as well.

It was hard to believe that, just a week ago he’d thought himself the luckiest man alive: to finally be making progress in his chosen career, to have won the trip to Paris, and to have met Claudie. So why had fate thrown a Felicity-shaped spanner into the works?

He shook his head in dismay. He’d been sucked into the vortex again; the vortex that was Felicity Maddox, and, if he didn’t take charge of things soon, he was in grave danger of being spat out. It had happened before.

Way back at the beginning of their relationship, they’d had a little tiff. Well, it was a little tiff as far as Simon was concerned. He couldn’t even remember what it was about now, but Felicity had gone all histrionic on him. He could still see her now, her eyes spurting tears, her voice hard and cold as diamond.

She’d left too. No dramatic scene was complete without a throwing clothes in a suitcase finale. And he’d been happy to leave her to it.

Then what had happened? He wracked his brains. Her mother had called him. Yes, that was it. Marjorie Maddox had rung to say how distraught her daughter was and what was he going to do about it? She’d barked at him down the phone. He could still remember how terrified he’d been and how he’d thanked his lucky stars that he wasn’t one of the unfortunate girl guides she regularly marched around the county.

Mrs Maddox had then dropped Felicity off the next day and Felicity had acted as if nothing had happened. Pretty much as she was behaving now in fact. But, this time, they’d had slightly more than a little tiff and, this time, Simon wasn’t going to sit back and take it.

It was then that an idea occurred to him. If he was going to do something, he might as well do it in style. Felicity Maddox had screwed him up good and proper. She’d walked away with not only his worldly goods, but his heart too. That, he thought, was what you got for being a nice guy. Well, he wasn’t putting up with that again. What was that wonderful line of Lady Macbeth’s? “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t.” That’s what he was going to do. He’d had enough of being a flower. It was time to become a snake.

He got up and went through to the kitchen. Next to the telephone lay a little blue book stuffed with numbers. He picked it up and flicked through the tatty pages and, picking up the telephone, he dialled, giving a casual little whistle as he waited for somebody to pick up.

‘Hello? Mrs Maddox? Yes, it’s me - Simon. No. Nothing’s wrong. Well,’ he paused, ‘that’s not quite true. No, don’t be alarmed. She’s fine. It’s just there’s something I think you should know.’

Tears in the toilet were an almost weekly occurrence at Bartholomew and Simpson but, with the workforce consisting mostly of young women playing the dating game, it was hardly a surprising fact. That’s why someone had come up with the idea of providing a box of extra strong tissues, and it was into one of these tissues that Kristen was blowing her nose after returning to work with her overloaded sports bag.

‘He did try to stop you from leaving though, didn’t he?’ Claudie asked, stroking Kristen’s hair gently.

‘Not really!’ Kristen sobbed.

‘But you know what he’s like - he’s not the talking type, is he?’

Kristen shook her head. ‘Would it be so hard for him to say he loved me? Would it?’

Claudie’s eyes widened in sympathy. She didn’t dare think of the number of times Luke had told her he loved her. It was almost a part of his everyday vocabulary. But not every man was like that, and Jimmy Stanton was as strong and silent as a pint of Yorkshire bitter. ‘Jimmy’s just so-’

‘Don’t give me that strong and silent bullshit!’

Claudie bit her lip. That was exactly what she’d been about to say. ‘But he
is!
And isn’t that part of why you fell for him in the first place?’

Kristen nodded before trumpeting into her tissue, a sound which ricocheted around the tiled toilet walls.

Claudie sighed. Kristen was looking at her as if she held the answer to all her prayers, but what could she say? She was no agony aunt. She couldn’t even sort out her own problems. Weren’t her angels testimony to that?

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ she said, suddenly taking charge. ‘We’ll go home after work and sort your things out. I’ve been dying to get my hands on your clothes for ages.’

‘What do you mean?’ Kristen blew her nose again.

‘I mean I want you to help me with my wardrobe. There’s nothing in it except black and grey. I sometimes feel like a character from a Checkov play.’

‘Well,’ Kristen dabbed her eyes and looked at Claudie, ‘you
could
do with brightening up a bit.’

‘Especially with Paris coming up.’

Kristen nodded. ‘Yes. You’ve got to look your best in Paris.’

Claudie grinned. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep Kristen’s spirits up, but she was going to give it her best shot.

When Felicity arrived back, she found Simon chopping vegetables in the kitchen.