by Annie Dalton
At this point, my angel self was going; it’s not Honesty’s fault she was born into a humungously rich family, she could still be a really worthwhile person! But a doubting voice said - if she’s got so much going for her, why the sassafras would she need me?
Honesty opened the front door and Rose headed upstairs still reading, seeming to find her way via some kind of personal radar.
Honesty dumped her school bag down in the hall. She went bounding into a front parlour where a woman with a faraway expression was playing the piano. Honesty called to her over the torrent of sound. “Hi, Mama. I’m home.”
The music stopped. “Well, hi, sweetheart!”
Honesty’s mum was exceptionally pretty, with her fair hair swept up in smooth coils. She held out her arms and Honesty walked right into them.
“How was your day, sugar?” Her mum’s voice had a smoky southern lilt, like Scarlett in that old film Gone with the Wind.
“OK, I guess. Only got a B+ in my maths test though.”
I stared at her. Only got a B+! I personally am ecstatic if I get a C!
“Never mind, sugar,” said her mum. “Everyone has off days.”
Her fingers strayed towards the piano keys, and I could tell she was dying to continue playing. “Why don’t you run and ask Cissie to gel you some milk and cookies?” she suggested.
Oh, wha-at! I thought. These people have servants!
But Honesty still hovered as if she had something on her mind. “Mama, did Papa say any more about buying a car? Every time I ask him, he says he’s thinking about it. I don’t understand what there is to think about. It’s not like we don’t have the money!”
Her mother gave a husky laugh. “Sweetheart, men are as stubborn as mules. They won’t budge unless they think it’s all their own idea. Give him a few more weeks and he’ll come round, I swear.”
“It’s not fair,” Honesty complained. “We’re the only kids in Philadelphia whose father is still stuck in the nineteenth century.”
“Honesty, that’s enough,” said her mother crisply. “Your father is the hardest-working, biggest-hearted man I know and I will not allow you to criticise him this way.”
Honesty turned bright red. “Sorry, Mama.”
Her mum’s expression instantly softened. “You run along now and get those cookies. Dinner might be late tonight.”
Honesty clomped off down the corridor, clearly annoyed at not getting her own way. I followed, sniffing the air. Mmn, vanilla and cinnamon, my all-time favourite aromas!
In the kitchen, trays of newly baked cookies were cooling by an open window. A tall black woman was helping a curly-haired little boy cut circles from leftover dough. There was a flour smudge on his nose and the tip of his tongue stuck out while he worked. I couldn’t help grinning. He looked so exactly like my little sister when she’s concentrating.
The kitchen was pretty and homey, though in a retro way obviously, with its gleaming pots and pans, an old-fashioned range and a low sink with a scrubbed wooden draining board. A corner of the kitchen was occupied by a monster refrigerator. I got the feeling fridges were like, the latest hi-tech invention.
The little boy suddenly caught sight of Honesty. His face lit up. “You’re home! I baked cookies for you, look!” He peered anxiously at the lumpy grey shapes on his baking tray. “Cissie said they’ll look better when they’re cooked, didn’t you Cissie?”
She grinned. “They’re just fine, Clem honey. You want me to finish these off for you?”
“OK,” Clem said promptly. He slipped off his chair and ran to bury his face in his sister’s stomach “I missed you, sis,” he said happily.
“Quit it, Clem,” Honesty complained. “You’re getting flour over me. Anyway, little boys don’t do baking. That’s for little girls.”
I understood exactly why Honesty was being so mean. She hadn’t got her own way about the car, so now she was taking it out on Clem. And I know it’s not very angelic, but when I saw her brother’s hurt little face, I really wanted to smack her one. Doesn’t this girl know how lucky she is? I fumed. Doesn’t she realise some kids would totally kill to be in her position?
I’m not saying I wanted to like, be Honesty, being welcomed home by a piano-playing mother, a cookie-baking maid and a cute little brother. It was my own family I wanted. My mum and my funny little sister Jade and my lovely step-dad, Des What I suddenly missed, so badly it hurt, was being human and alive.
But I couldn’t exactly criticise Honesty because when I lived on Earth I was just the same! There was always that mysterious missing ‘something’ which stopped my life being perfect; that gorgeous little skirt from Top Shop, or a must-have CD.
It’s agony seeing someone make the same mistakes you made, so I took myself off to explore the rest of the house.
The minute I was alone again, it struck me that Honesty’s house had a really unusual atmosphere, intensely sweet and peaceful.
It might sound stupid, but I felt as if the house was waiting for something. The feeling was disturbingly familiar, but though I racked my brains, I couldn’t seem to remember why.
I passed through the parlour where Honesty’s mum was still playing her deafeningly loud Beethoven or whatever. There was a vase of lilacs on the piano. I stopped to breathe in their gorgeous scent and noticed a photograph of Honesty’s parents’ wedding day. Aah, I thought. They both looked desperately young and nervous and totally head over heels in love.
There was a fancy studio portrait of an older boy that I guessed to be Honesty’s big brother. Mmn! I thought approvingly. He has definitely inherited his daddy’s good looks!
I flitted invisibly up the huge staircase and into the girls’ bedroom, where Rose sat on her bed glued to her book.
I peeped over her shoulder. What’s got her so gripped? I thought curiously. A fruity love story? A juicy diary?
But Rose’s reading material took me by surprise. It was all about ancient Egypt; ancient tombs and treasure and mummies’ curses; pure Indiana Jones. I was so impressed!
I roamed invisibly around the girls’ bedroom, nosing in cupboards and peering at shelves. I told myself that I was not snooping, but simply gathering information. Somewhere in this room was the crucial evidence that would reveal Honesty’s secret intention of breaking out of the ‘burbs and into international film stardom.
Except that it wasn’t. My search revealed-precisely nada. No tap shoes, sheet music, inspiring movie posters. And the dreary garments Honesty’s wardrobe betrayed absolutely no hint of a creative spirit trying to break free.
You’d think she’d have at least one little drop-waisted Charleston dress, I thought crossly.
I heard a metallic jangle somewhere in the house, and Honesty’s mum started talking someone. I could tell she was incredibly excited about something, because her intonation suddenly became heaps more southern.
I sighed. I had now inspected all Honesty’s worldly possessions, except for a stash of notebooks at the back of a drawer. To judge from the threats on the covers (KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF MY STUFF OR YOU’LL DIE IN AGONY. YES, ROSE BLOOMFIELD, THAT MEANS YOU!), they were Honesty’s journals and there was no way I was stooping to read someone’s secret diaries, thank you very much.
I was now officially flummoxed. I had NO idea what a real bona fide guardian angel would do next. I thought of calling the GA helpline and asking for tips, but I’d only just got here. So I settled down at a little old-fashioned bureau, dug out my fact pack and did some research.
I found out that just a few years ago the First World War was still blasting the old world to smithereens. The western world had witnessed too much horror and people simply couldn’t handle it. They didn’t want to feel guilty for surviving when so many millions had died. They didn’t want to know how cruel humans could be to each other. They wanted to forget all that and have some serious, outrageous fun. So when the Twenties arrived, everyone went crazy! Good girls hacked off their hems, painted their faces and turned into bad but go
rgeous flappers. People danced for days without sleeping, and held mad competitions like who could shove the most sticks of gum in their mouths, or swallow the most live goldfish.
In America this urgent need to party was complicated by something called the prohibition law. This meant that alcohol was basically banned. Of course this only made people all the more desperate to get hold of it.
If I shut my eyes, I could actually feel that frantic glittery Twenties spirit, surfing on a sea of darkness and chaos. I’d always imagined the Twenties as one long frothy bubble bath. I’d never thought about the deadly PODS vibes underneath the froth.
Oh, the poor things, I thought. They’re all living for the moment like beautiful butterflies. And then I thought, yeah, right, in Hollywood maybe. But I was stuck in some stodgy Philadelphia suburb with a little diary keeping rich girl who, let’s face it, was not ideal butterfly material.
I heard footsteps pounding upstairs. Honesty burst in, her face blazing with excitement. “Rose! You’ll never guess what happened. Papa just called Mama on the telephone, and—”
“And obviously you eavesdropped,” said Rose drily.
“Rose! I’m telling you the most thrilling news since the invention of moving pictures! He’s actually gone and bought—”
Rose jumped up so fast, that her little spectacles actually fell off her nose. “I don’t believe it!” she shrieked. “Papa’s bought a car!”
“He’s on his way to pick it up. He’s driving it home!”
The girls threw their arms around each other, squealing happily.
I wanted to be thrilled for them, but the strange sweet vibe was growing steadily more intense and I was getting that disturbing two-movies-at-once sensation again. Something was going to happen to someone in this family. I could feel it with every one of my angel senses.
“You have to pretend to be surprised,” Honesty was saying. “Daddy will be so disappointed if we don’t act surprised.”
”Act! I won’t have to act!” laughed Rose.
Honesty flew over to an old-fashioned gramophone with a shiny brass horn and cranked the handle.
A scratchy voice floated out of the horn. “Put another nickel in, in the Nickelodeon.” This was obviously their fave tune of the moment.
The sisters started dancing the Charleston, flouncing their skirts and showing their big white knickers. Clem and Cissie rushed in to see what on earth was going on. Honesty grabbed her brother and whirled him round the room. Rose grabbed Cissie, and instead of being annoyed, Cissie kicked up her heels and did some wicked little dance steps.
In a movie, whenever the characters get over-excited like this, something terrible always happens. But I tried to tell myself that this was real life, not Hollywood. There was no reason that the Bloomfield family couldn’t live happily ever after.
Sadly, by this time, I’d sussed that ‘happy ever after’ was not an option.
As the tragedy inched closer, I felt an invisible cosmic gateway opening. The sweetness grew unbearably beautiful and I suddenly knew when I’d felt it before. It was during my last day on Earth, as crowds of angels gathered like invisible birds to guide me back to Heaven.
Someone was going to die. I’d got here just in time to see Honesty’s old world blown to smithereens. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Chapter Four
The girls were still cracking car jokes right up to dinner time.
How Mr Bloomfield was so old-fashioned he was probably still figuring out how to hitch the new Model A Ford to the horse, or how he was so thrilled with his new toy, he’d decided to take a spin via the Rockies on his way home.
But when eight o’clock came and went and he failed to appear, the atmosphere started getting strained.
“You’d better dish up, Cissie,” said Honesty’s mum.
But no-one could manage to eat Cissie’s good roast chicken and mashed potatoes, and in the end she took the food away, shaking her head.
I found their reactions surprising. My step-dad could have been like, five hours late and no-one would have raised an eyebrow. Des is the world’s worst timekeeper. Mum used to say he operated on ‘Desmond time’. But I got the feeling that if Mr Bloomfield said he’d be back by eight then he was back.
It was dark by the time the police car drove up. Two grim-faced cops came to the door and Cissie showed them into the parlour.
The children clustered around their mother. Clem was already shivering like a puppy. He knew something terrible had happened.
They’d sent a young cop and an old cop, just like in the movies. The young guy was looking everywhere but at the Bloomfields. The old cop cleared his throat. “Mrs Grace Bloomfield, I’m sorry to have to—”
Rose burst into tears. Honesty went white and ran out of the room.
In those days, they didn’t make you take a test before they let you loose on the road. Drivers just picked up the necessary know-how as they tootled along in the traffic. Sadly, Honesty’s father never got the chance. He hit a truck ten minutes after he left the Ford garage. The cops said he died instantly.
All that night, Honesty’s mother roamed around the house, sick with grief. Once she came into the girls’ room in her nightdress and watched them as they lay sleeping and I saw tears shining in her eyes.
That was the only time I ever saw Grace Bloomfield lose control.
When she came down to breakfast next morning, she was deathly pale but totally composed. “I can get through this so long as I don’t let myself think,” I heard her tell Cissie.
“That’s right, Mizz Grace,” agreed Cissie. “You got your whole life for thinking. Right now, you got to survive.”
I’d spent the night radiating angelic vibes to everyone in the household. I believed the entire family needed heavenly support.
Later I worried that I’d got it wrong. If I’d concentrated on Honesty like I was supposed to, I might have been quicker to spot the signs. That first day when she came down to breakfast and said in a toneless voice, “Oh, great, waffles!” That wasn’t normal, but I refused to see it.
Rose had been crying so hard that her face looked as if it had been stung by swarms of bees. Clem clung on to his mama’s skirts as if he was terrified that she’d be next to disappear. But Honesty heaped her plate with ham, eggs, and hash browns, drenched her waffles with maple syrup, shovelled it all down like a zombie, and said, “See you later,” and pushed back her chair.
Rose peered at her incredulously from between her swollen eyelids. “What are you doing?”
“Going to school,” said Honesty in her new zombie voice. “Same as usual.”
Her mother put her arms around her. “That’s very brave, sugar, but you don’t have to go to school today…”
Honesty wriggled free. “I do. I’ve got a test in Geography.”
Grace stood firm. But by the end of the day, I bet she wished she’d let Honesty take her stupid test after all, because she was a complete nightmare.
When Honesty heard that her brother Lenny was coming back from medical school for the funeral, she just said loudly, “Oh, great. Now we’ve got to share the house with Lenny’s stinky socks.”
Rose said they’d have to go into town to buy clothes for the funeral and Honesty snapped, “You can dress like a Sicilian widow if you want to. It’s not like Papa’s going to care. When you’re dead you’re dead.”
It was like she’d had a total personality change. She was hardly recognisable as the sweet goofy girl who hugged her mum, yelled at her baby brother and flaunted her big knickers dancing the Charleston.
And there was another thing. When I first met Honesty, her thoughts were so easy to read that she could have been yelling through a megaphone. But suddenly she was putting out no thought waves whatsoever.
Lenny came home for the funeral and everyone else rushed to the door to meet him. They cried and hugged each other and generally behaved like human beings.
Honesty didn’t even bother to come down
stairs.
When the family met up for the evening meal, Lenny tried to put his arms around her, but she pulled away. “People die every day, you know,” she said coldly. “You don’t have to make a big production out of it.”
That night I took my mobile out of my flight bag. I got as far as punching in the GA code. Then I thought, I’ll give it until after the funeral. Then she’ll start to grieve properly and she’ll be really sad but basically OK.
Honesty’s dad must have been well respected in Philadelphia, because hundreds of people came to the funeral. I was surprised not to see members of their families, like cousins or grandparents. It was more business associates with their wives.
Grace kept glancing anxiously round the church as if someone important was missing.
I heard Lenny whisper, “Probably he’s sick.”
“Then why didn’t he call?” Grace whispered back. “He didn’t even send flowers. He’s meant to be his best friend for heaven’s sake.”
Honesty had this annoying nervous smirk on her face.
Finally Rose couldn’t stand it. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
Honesty shrugged. “I was wondering what Papa would make of being inside a church.”
Rose hissed, “You know Papa didn’t care about all that stuff.”
Honesty gave her a poisonous look. “I don’t know any such thing actually, Rose Bloomfield. Papa’s ancestors must be turning in their graves.”
She made it sound as if her father was a vampire or something. Funeral or no funeral, this girl is getting too weird, I thought uneasily.
After the funeral, Grace invited all the mourners back to the house. Everyone stood around the front parlour, making agonising small talk.
I noticed Grace was still watching the door. I heard her ask Lenny, “Did you try Jack Coltraine’s number again?”
He nodded. “There’s still no reply.”
This news seemed to worry Grace. “I’d appreciate it if you could just keep trying, will you?”
“Of course, Mama,” he said.
Jack Coltraine never did pick up the phone.
That’s because he had taken off for Havana with all Honesty’s father’s money. Next day, the family lawyer confirmed Grace’s worst suspicions. Jack had been creaming off the business profits, stashing them in safety deposit boxes in his wife’s name. In a matter of days, the Bloomfields’ lives had totally turned upside down.
