Flights of Angels

by Victoria Connelly

  ‘Ouch!’ Kristen and Claudie shut their eyes simultaneously, and opened them slowly to adjust to the room.

  ‘Mr Woo?’ Claudie whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mr Woo,’ Claudie repeated, ‘he’s one of the angels.’

  ‘Oh!’ Kristen said, scrutinising Claudie’s face with worry.

  ‘Are you there?’ she asked.

  ‘Is anybody there!’ Kristen giggled.

  ‘Kris!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘He might not be there, you see,’ Claudie said. ‘But it was his turn for night-duty the last time I came here.’

  ‘Claudie?’ It was Bert.

  ‘Bert! Hi!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, removing his hat to give his head a scratch.

  ‘I’ve bought Kristen with me, Bert.’

  ‘I can see that, but what for? What are you doing?’

  ‘I wanted to prove to her that you’re real.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ Bert said, his voice rather serious for such a small man, Claudie thought.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, think about what you’re doing.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Kristen asked, focusing on the spot of the desk Claudie was looking at.

  ‘Bert’s telling me off for being drunk.’

  ‘Claudie,’ Bert began, ‘this isn’t right. You’re not supposed to tell anyone about us. It’s one of the rules.’

  ‘Not even Kristen?’

  ‘Not even Kristen. There’s no point. She can’t see us, anyway.’

  ‘But maybe if you picked something up? Moved something?

  ‘Claudie, you’ll get the whole flight into trouble if you carry on like this, and you’ll know where that will lead to.’

  ‘I know,’ Claudie sighed, ‘filing for eternity.’

  ‘Claudes? What are you talking about?’ Kristen asked, sounding puzzled and tired.

  ‘Wait a sec, Kris,’ Claudie pleaded. ‘Please, Bert. Can’t you just grab that pen or something?’

  ‘I’ve already said-’

  ‘Please!’ Claudie gave him a heart-felt look. ‘You’d be my favourite angel in the whole world. I’d love you even more than Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life.’

  Bert blushed at the compliment, knowing that was high praise indeed coming from Claudie.

  ‘As long as you promise not to tell anyone?’ Bert said.

  ‘I promise!’

  ‘And that you’ll go home straight away?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘All right. What do you want me to do?’

  Claudie pointed to her favourite Parker pen. ‘Just pick that pen up and bring it to me.’

  ‘What’s he doing, Claudes?’ Kristen asked.

  ‘He’s going to pick that pen up over there. So don’t miss it.’

  Claudie watched at Bert braced himself. In proportion to his size, it was rather a large item to move, but it was light and he managed it without too much trouble.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Claudie all but shouted as Bert held the pen out to Claudie.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Kristen admitted.

  ‘It was Bert!’

  ‘It was the wine.’

  ‘No, Kris - Bert moved it. He’s one of the angels.’

  ‘I’m going home, Claudes. Come on.’

  ‘But, Kris?’

  Kristen got up from the chair and stumbled across the room. Claudie turned to Bert for some words of advice.

  ‘Go home, Claudie. We’ll pretend this never happened. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. Night, Albert.’

  How the two of them staggered home, they’d never know, but as soon as they got in the door, Kristen grabbed Claudie.

  ‘Listen, Claudes. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’

  ‘Really? God, this is turning out to be a night and a half.’

  Kristen smiled at her. ‘I’ve won a trip to Paris, and I want you to go with me.’

  Claudie stood dumbfounded for a moment. ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘No.’ Kristen shook her head.

  ‘And you want me to go with you?’

  ‘Who else?’

  Claudie couldn’t very well say Jimmy in the circumstances, could she? ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘You’ll come with me, then?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ She gave her a big hug. ‘And don’t worry, Kris. We’ll have a fantastic time - just you and me. And when we get back, Jimmy will be begging to have you home.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Of course he will. Now, come on. It’s time for bed.’

  Claudie made sure Kristen had all she needed before tucking her up into her bed. She felt hot and tired and decided to throw herself under the shower before going to sleep.

  By the time she climbed into bed, Kristen was sound asleep. It was going to be funny sharing a bed again, and Claudie only prayed that neither of them would reach over and become amorous.

  Kristen had stayed overnight before. When Claudie’s mother had left Whitby shortly after the funeral, Kristen had camped out on the sofa bed. She’d been a real sweetheart. Claudie hadn’t wanted to be on her own but hadn’t wanted to share her bedroom, knowing that she’d be lying awake half the night.

  Now, she smiled down at the sleeping Kristen, noticing that her hand was clasping a magazine. Prizing it from her fingers, she saw that it was one of Angela’s bridal magazines. How had Kristen come to have it?

  She looked down at what Kristen had been reading, but the pages were so wet with tears that they looked like multi-coloured waves. She placed it on the floor next to the bed, switched the light out and kissed Kristen goodnight.

  Lying in the soft darkness of the bedroom, Claudie felt her body fill with the weight of grief. It was like a heavy-metal drink which dispersed around your body, and there was no telling when it would hit you. Night-time was the worst, though. There were no distractions in the dark. Even Kristen’s soft breathing was of little comfort. What she needed was a pair of arms around her. Luke’s arms. His big bare bear-hug: that’s what she needed. A real nose-squasher.

  For a moment, she thought about their wedding day. It had been one of those sultry summer days that don’t often visit North Yorkshire, giving all the women a rare opportunity to wear light summer dresses. Claudie could still see the scene in the church. It had been like viewing a great herbaceous border with all the pinks, purples, yellows and blues on display.

  And then there’d been Luke. He’d looked so handsome in his dark tuxedo, just like a movie star. Claudie had gasped at her first sight of him as she’d walked down the aisle on Jimmy’s arm. This was the man who lived in fleece all year round and whose idea of getting dressed up was to make sure there was no mud on his boots.

  ‘You look like Cary Grant,’ she’d whispered to him at the reception.

  He’d grinned and shaken his head. Either he hadn’t believed her or he’d had no idea who Cary Grant was. But then he’d whispered back, ‘And you look like Audrey Hepburn in that dress.’

  Claudie had beamed. He might not have known Audrey Hepburn from Katherine Hepburn, but he knew how to pay a compliment when it counted.

  A hot tear slide down Claudie’s face as she remembered. They’d had so little time to love each other, so little time to collect memories together. She thought of the wedding album and how she’d have loved to have pored over it with Luke in the years to come but how that joy had been denied her.

  ‘Remember your Uncle Hugh dancing with Kristen and the way he kept trying to look down her dress!’ she might have said.

  ‘And when Daniel belched in the middle of his best man’s speech!’ Luke would have joked.

  Who would Claudie remember these things with now? Lying in the dark, she felt like the only person in the world left to remember Luke. Nobody else had remembered, had they? There’d not been a single phone call or word of support today, and Claudie hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. It was Luke’s birthday. Bu
t what did a birthday become when you were no longer alive? And how could those left behind possibly pass by that day again without remembering?

  Claudie turned over onto her side, her tear dying on the pillow underneath, and, in a voice barely above a whisper, she said, ‘Happy birthday, Luke.’

  Chapter 29

  Simon had decided that Saturday mornings were kind of an odd time when you were on your own. You didn’t have anyone to plan the weekend with, nobody to go shopping with, and no partner to get excited about visiting. It was a strange, hang-around- the-washing-machine kind of time. A well-I’d-better-pick-my-socks-up-off-the- bathroom-floor-because-nobody-else-is-going-to-do-it time. At least when Felicity had been there, there’d been somebody to talk to. Her constant griping was, at least, company.

  Simon walked from room to room, too restless to stay in one for longer than a few minutes. The whole weekend stretched out before him like an enormous blank canvas, with no promise of shape or colour, and certainly no opportunity for him to get his brush out.

  He shook his head at his crudely extended metaphor. He was going mad cooped up in the house by himself all day, every day. He had to get out. It was about time he took control of his life once more.

  And that’s when he’d decided to call round on Claudie. It would just be a casual thing: a just-happened-to-be-in-the-neighbourhood-and-wondered-if-I-could-spend-the-day-gazing-at-your-beautiful-face kind of call.

  He was out of the door in less than five minutes, and down by the harbour in fifteen. He paused outside the supermarket for a few moments, wondering if he should nip in and grab a bunch of flowers. Was that terribly old-fashioned? Was he out of date? Or did women still go for that sort of thing?

  He tried to imagine it from Claudie’s point of view. She’d be pottering around the house, Judy Garland book open on a coffee table, and some old film playing on TV. Suddenly there’d be a knocking at her door. She’d go to open it and there, broad as daylight, sporting a crescent moon grin, would be Kristen’s friend, what’s-his-name? The one who’d tried to steal her book and hadn’t had a single interesting thing to say when she’d been forced to walk home with him. And he’d got a ridiculous bunch of flowers with him. What exactly did he want?

  Simon shook his head. The whole thing was a terrible idea. He should just hang around the harbour for a while. The early May sunshine had brought the crowds out. He might even spot Jimmy out in the boat with the first of the year’s tourists.

  ‘Good heavens!’

  Kristen’s voice startled Claudie out of a very deep sleep, and it took a few minutes to work out why her best friend was in bed with her.

  ‘Kris?’

  ‘Don’t you have curtains in this bedroom?’

  ‘Of course I do, and they’re lined too.’

  ‘Then why is it so bright in here?’ Kristen groaned.

  Claudie struggled up onto one elbow and blinked hard. ‘Try two bottles of wine and hardly any sleep.’

  Kristen groaned. ‘God, I feel terrible. My head feels like a granite boulder.’

  ‘We’ve hardly slept. It must have been after five when we got back from the office.’

  ‘And what’s the time now?’

  Claudie peered round at her alarm clock. ‘Eleven.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  Claudie rubbed her eyes. They felt heavy and sore and in need of at least another four hours’ sleep. ‘At least we don’t have to get up for anything,’ she said, her head sinking back into her pillow.

  No sooner were the words out of Claudie’s mouth than there was a knock at the front door.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she sighed.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kristen sat up, dramatically clinging to the duvet to her chest as if she was having an illicit affair and was about to be caught.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s probably just the postman with something that won’t go through the letterbox. Like an envelope.’

  ‘It’s Jimmy. I just know it.’

  ‘It won’t be Jimmy. Just relax.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Go back to sleep. I am.’

  ‘What? You’re not going to answer the door?’

  ‘Like this? You’ve got to be joking.’ Claudie ruffled her hair which felt like a hedge which had been slept in by several restless hedgehogs.

  There was another series of knocks at the door.

  ‘Please, Claudes! You’ve got to answer it.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘Me? I don’t want Jimmy seeing me like this. Anyway - it’s your door.’

  ‘All right.’ Claudie grabbed her robe in resignation, and walked down the hall. She stopped short of the kitchen, peering round the door and looking at the silhouetted form behind the frosted glass. It wasn’t the postman. And it wasn’t Jimmy either. It was Simon.

  What was he doing here? What could he possibly want? He had never been in her home before so he couldn’t have left anything behind. She stood, her feet fixed to the floor as if they’d been stapled. What could she do?

  ‘Claudes? Who is it?’ Kristen’s voice called through.

  Claudie ran back through to the bedroom.

  ‘It’s Simon!’

  ‘Simon? What’s he doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Why didn’t you answer the door?’

  Claudie bit her lip. ‘Because I look a mess.’

  ‘You’re blushing!’ Kristen said, grey eyes watchful as she sat upright in bed, suddenly very awake.

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Yes you are! And very prettily too.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Claudie flopped down on the chair by her dressing table and picked up her hairbrush.

  ‘You should have answered the door, Claudes.’

  Claudie stared at her reflection. She was blushing. How ridiculous. ‘I have no idea why he was here,’ she said, more to herself than to Kristen.

  ‘And you won’t know now, will you?’

  Claudie shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t suppose I will.’

  ‘He likes you,’ Kristen smiled. ‘He probably just wanted to say hello.’

  Claudie suddenly felt very guilty, but she was still rather annoyed at Kristen for having taken it upon herself to set her up with her ex. Although Kristen had maintained that the dinner had been perfectly innocent, Claudie knew how her friend worked.

  It had always seemed rather strange that she’d never met Simon before. In a town as small as Whitby, where gossip spread quicker than warm butter, it was rare not to get the chance to vet your best friend’s beau. Whilst Kristen had been dating Simon, she’d tried to get Claudie and Luke to make up a foursome on several occasions, but Luke had never been into that idea at all. ‘I’m not sharing you with anyone,’ he used to say, which had always made Claudie swell with pride.

  So she’d never got to meet Simon the saint: the man who’d sounded so perfect but had failed to make Kristen swoon. They’d had a few dates where they’d talked endlessly but rarely kissed. Kristen had always said that he was more like a brother than a potential lover. No, Kristen had only ever had one love, and that was Jimmy.

  Claudie watched as Kristen threw the bedcovers back. Despite the profusion of red hair and the determined face, Kristen looked so vulnerable as she sat with her bare legs sticking out from beneath her oversized T-shirt. If Jimmy could see her like that, he wouldn’t be able to refuse her anything, Claudie thought.

  ‘Mind if I have a shower?’ Kristen asked.

  ‘’Course not. Towels are in the airing cupboard.’

  Claudie dragged the hairbrush through her hair. Through the mirror, she could see the unmade bed. A bed so obviously slept in by two. She listened as the shower hissed into action and, for a moment, she could almost believe that it was Luke in there.

  Somewhere between the supermarket and the harbour, Simon had decided to visit Claudie after all, minus the bunch of flowers. He had absolutely nothing to lose. Except his pride. And he’d felt sure she’d been i
n. In fact, he had almost been able to make out an indistinct figure at the kitchen door in a long red robe. Or had it been his over-active imagination?

  Perhaps she’d been there and had recognised him? How awful if she hadn’t wanted to answer the door to him. Or what if she’d had a man in there? That could explain her wearing a robe at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  He’d walked all the way home, wishing he hadn’t tried to add any colour to his blank canvas of a weekend.

  Chapter 30

  ‘You’ve got to stop worrying, Kris,’ Claudie said as she made a light lunch. ‘We’re going to have a fantastic time in Paris, when we get back, Jimmy will be begging to have you home.’

  Kristen gave a weak smile.

  ‘You should really be going with Jimmy, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Kristen admitted, ‘but it wouldn’t be right to be somewhere so beautiful with a man who doesn’t love you.’

  ‘Kris! Stop it!’ Claudie said in a hands-on-hips manner. ‘Jimmy loves you. How many times do you need to be told that?’

  ‘If he loves me, why doesn’t he want to marry me?’

  ‘Marriage doesn’t guarantee a happy ever after,’ Claudie said, passing Kristen a cheese and Marmite bap.

  ‘I know,’ Kristen said, sighing the words out hopelessly, ‘but it would make me feel so much better.’

  Claudie knew what she meant. When Luke had proposed to her, Claudie had felt her whole body fill with warmth even though they’d been on a particularly windy shoulder of a mountain in the Lake District. It was the symbolism of the thing. The fact that somebody wanted to spend the rest of their lives with you, and that they wanted to show the rest of the world that too.

  ‘Do you believe in fate?’ Claudie suddenly asked.

  Kristen’s forehead wrinkled. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Because it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I mean, I often wonder how it all happened, you know? How I started off in a small French town and ended up as a widow in Whitby? It sounds like the plot of a ridiculous play, don’t you think? A farce, even, with banging doors, and too many characters and a plot that isn’t really funny.’