Angel Avenue
by
Sarah Michelle Lynch
Copyright © Sarah Michelle Lynch, 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. You must not circulate this book without the authority to do so.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
www.sarahmichellelynch.net
For Andrew,
we still debate that non-date…
CONTENTS PAGE
Chapter One: Jules
Chapter Two: Jules
Chapter Three: Jules
Chapter Four: Warrick
Chapter Five: Jules
Chapter Six: Jules
Chapter Seven: Jules
Chapter Eight: Warrick
Chapter Nine: Jules
Chapter Ten: Jules
Chapter Eleven: Jules
Chapter Twelve: Jules
Chapter Thirteen: Jules
Chapter Fourteen: Jules’ Past
Chapter Fifteen: Jules
Chapter Sixteen: Jules’ Past
Chapter Seventeen: Warrick
Chapter Eighteen: Jules’ Past
Chapter Nineteen: Warrick
Chapter Twenty: Warrick
Chapter Twenty-One: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Two: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Three: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Four: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Five: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Six: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Warrick
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Jules
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Jules
Chapter Thirty: Warrick
Chapter Thirty-One: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Two: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Three: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Four: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Five: Warrick
Chapter Thirty-Six: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jules
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Jules
Chapter Forty: Jules
Chapter Forty-One: Jules
Chapter Forty-Two: Warrick
Chapter Forty-Three: Jules
Chapter Forty-Four: Warrick
Chapter Forty-Five: Jules
Chapter Forty-Six: Warrick
Chapter Forty-Seven: Jules
Chapter Forty-Eight: Jules
Chapter Forty-Nine: Jules
Chapter Fifty: Jules
Epilogue: Warrick
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Also by the Author
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5)
Chapter One
Jules
It’s a dreary day but here I am, stood on my street corner, where I always stand at this time of the day on this day of the week.
How can I claim this is my corner and nobody else’s? I don’t exactly live here, on this very corner. In fact I live a ten or fifteen minute walk from this spot. I maintain it is mine because I doubt anyone else ever bothers noticing this tiny area of paved street, on which I stand every Saturday, just so I can eye up the passing trade.
In my mind, it is my own because it is the location I met Laurie, a man ‒ a ghost that haunts me and which I exorcise in a bizarre manner.
Don’t ask. People know not to ask.
I’m wearing a pretty dress, despite the gloomy weather, just because I can. I know exactly how to switch off and pretend that it’s not cold or heading towards autumn. I don’t feel a thing, not really. Not this late September day. Not any day.
The people pass me by and most do indeed take a second glance. Well, I am wearing red heels with my girly, white tea dress. My flowing brunette locks, which I left untamed today, seem not to match my ice-grey eyes. Sometimes I even catch sight of myself in the mirror and decide I am two people rolled into one. Dark and light. Yin and yang. Hard and soft.
The building I am shouldered up against was once an estate agents. It used to have a garish green sign and was reduced to a couple of lonely advertising boards in the wake of the recession. It made the street look a bit dowdy in its former guise. It now looks far more enticing as an Italian wine bar serving dipping breads, panettone, speciality coffees and gelato, plus main meals in the evening. Large panoramic windows allow the patrons inside to see all around.
I have placed myself at the brickwork corner, as always, so people don’t really see me. They pass and glance, is all. I could be wearing a swimsuit and they wouldn’t see the person beneath, the one trying to claw its way out, yet unable to find the courage to set herself free of the phantom.
The people inside the Italian sit at their shiny wooden tables and chairs, watching pedestrians and traffic pass them by, but do any of them really see anything? Do they eat to socialise, or to watch, or just to take part in the rat race of life? Is it all a blur to them? Perhaps that’s a projection of my jaded outlook.
This neck of my woods is safe and it is vibrant. I adored it once, but now there are too many memories. The Event made me hate this place, yet I require its familiarity still.
I look for what I want. What I need. I do not get distracted by the salons full of people getting ready for their BIG night out. I do not notice the frequenters of the chic coffee shop right nearby, most of whom don’t realise they are consuming a month’s worth of sugar in one sitting.
I don’t really give credence to an old lady passing by, struggling with her Zimmer frame, nor the small carton of milk threatening to slip out of the hole in the bottom of her bag. The feeling side of me notices all that, but I don’t.
I am looking for something that suits me and I don’t care how I get it. It’s Saturday and I always aim to get what I want. My own way. She can go to hell – that woman within me who feels and sees.
I am stretching my legs in front of myself to see their tanned quality against the thin sliver of light breaking through the clouds… when, bang! I notice Him. On the other side of the street, he struts out of one of the salons with his hair finely coiffured and his grey denim shirt done up all the way to the top. His cuffs are folded to the elbows and his collar is ironed flat and neat. I see the broadness of his chest and the definition of his pectorals. His skinny black jeans hug in all the right ways and I want to find out what those wide thighs might feel like between my own. He struts with the gait of an Egyptian cat and his pointed ankle boots click on the pavement. Even from where I am standing, I hear each click… clack… click. One strut after another. My tongue is dry and I realise I need to get a hold of myself before he runs away. He’s dashing off at a pace and I need… well, Him.
I trail behind and watch the slick of his luscious black hair covering his well-formed skull. He’s got something upstairs, I hope, though it really doesn’t matter. That gait is still swaggering and I feel like… like… but no, I push that away. I try to keep up but it’s not easy in the hooker shoes. I hope he’s not going far, though this busy, pulsating street does stretch for more than half a mile.
I try not to follow him too closely but when he stops to say hello to someone, I nearly bump into him from behind. I halt centimetres from his back and catch a whiff of the freshwater cologne he’s wearing. The sweet scents of salon products also cut through the air, dulling the smell of butchers shops and bakeries. I dash backwards and look in a knick-knack shop window ‒ anything to distract me and take off the heat. Out of the corner of
my eye, he’s off again and I follow closely still, noticing he’s tall. Very tall. Around six-five I think. In my killer heels, I am at least six-two so that is very pleasing to me. I have hated my height for as long as I can remember.
He dives into a coffee shop and I thank the stars. This is the perfect environment in which to capture my prey. Through the window, I check out the scene inside and notice him nod toward two male friends, then order himself a coffee to take over to them. I scan the vicinity and see a chemist nearby so I dash in. I use one of the cosmetics displays to reapply red lipstick and I take some perfume from one of the testers and spritz the air before walking into a shower of autumn musk.
I check my teeth and tussle my hair. I smile at one of the girls at the counter who is staring and I make my way back out. I really don’t care what people think.
I walk into the coffee shop and make a point of creeping across the floor, my heels announcing my arrival. I find the counter and order a skinny latte, focusing on the shiny cappuccino machine while I gather my bravado. I take a seat in a couch by the one brown-painted wall alongside the counter and I take a book from my oversized clutch, before settling in for a few minutes.
To say this place is shabby chic would be an understatement. The coffee machine may be worth as much as a small, Japanese car but the walls are crumbling, the wooden floors haven’t seen a lick of wax in decades and this seat of mine looks like something my grandma once had, a velvet settee with fraying olive upholstery. Everyone seems to love it, though.
The man who caught my eye ‒ my prey ‒ is yards away and talking loudly with his friends. They occupy a plain set of wooden table and chairs. He has a seriously sexy voice, all husky and throaty. Guttural. Like his mother told him to enunciate from the age of three and he adhered ever since. His Adam’s apple is probably as sharp as steel. The boys make small talk about drinking later that night, about girls they’ve recently pulled and about warnings from their mothers to stop wasting so much money on designer clobber. It’s all quite inane and banal but I really couldn’t care less. I just want his body.
When the banter becomes raucous, I peer over my book and check out his legs again. They are so long and well contained within those black jeans. The belt at his waist beckons me to unlock what is beneath. I am closer than I was before and I sense him glancing my way now and again too, and for the first time, I catch a very brief look into his eyes. As black as the night and yet, his skin is as cool as cotton. He turns back to his friends and they chew over some other mundane topics such as engine size or torque. I don’t know, man chat. He looks at me again. This time, I am engrossed seemingly, in the romance novel I am ‘reading’. I see he is still staring when I decide to unfold my long legs and re-cross them in his direction. I rub an ankle against a calf and his head jolts. I hear him clearing his throat. He’s captured. Ready to reel in.
I maintain my performance as a nonchalant, coffee-drinking bookworm who’s ‘so not interested’, but when his friends leave and he stays behind, I have to work hard to maintain indifference. I sense he’s plucking up the courage. He constantly takes a glance then turns away, trying to evoke some confidence perhaps. When at last I take the dregs from the bottom of my glass mug, he hops onto his feet and walks over.
“Hello, I hope you don’t think I’m being cocky, but can I get you another?”
Classic scenario. Empty glass. Hot man. Hot woman. Chance to pounce. Or is it?
“I don’t really drink coffee,” I tell him, glancing nervously up from my book.
He’s achingly gorgeous. He has beautiful eyes and such wonderful cheekbones, slit into his long, manly face with perfection. I catch sight of his wide mouth and daydream for a minute.
“Oh, okay,” he trails off disappointedly.
I fold my book closed and smile. I pretend to be enraptured by the surroundings when really I am trying not to seem affected by him.
“What I mean is exactly that, I don’t really drink coffee. But something in here caught my eye and brought me here. So, there we are. But if you want to go elsewhere…?”
He recognises the insinuation and nods slowly, a sly smile creeping across his lips. I stand and he takes a sharp intake of breath, like it’s paining him to see my height. He tentatively holds out a hand and like always, I get them every time.
An hour later and I’ve learnt his name is Ted or Teddy. I prefer Ted. We walked the length of the Avenue and made small talk about the shops shutting down or the ones opening up. My feet were screaming to escape my shoes! He offered to buy me a drink somewhere, at which point, I revealed my place was just around the corner.
We’ve been kissing on my bed for some time and I am tempted to let it go further, but I just don’t have the guts. He’s lovely and part of me wants to, but I can’t. It’s not in me to let myself get carried away.
He throws me over onto my back and we have a moment. His eyes are wide and searching mine for answers. I sense his arousal but painful flashbacks remind me of the last time I let myself go.
“I have a girlfriend.”
“I guessed that,” I say without concern.
I know it’s not the first time he’s strayed, not after overhearing his chat with his friends earlier.
“I think I like you, Jules,” he admits.
Classic. He wants to engage my sensitivities so that he might finally put his hand up my shirt. I roll on my side and ask, “Hold me for a while, will you?”
“Okay.”
He wraps an arm around me and groans a kiss against the back of my neck. It’s so obvious he’s trying to cajole me into finally putting out.
For those few moments, I imagine it’s actually Laurie’s arms around me. The imagining is why I do it – for a few quiet moments of calm. Ted is gorgeous, perhaps even potentially monogamous with the right girl, but he’s just one Saturday afternoon cuddle. That’s all.
I savour the manliness and the raw magnetism of him. His body is heavy in the mattress behind me and even through his clothes, his body heat breathes against my back. He’s beautiful, he’s very much alive and in my bed, and he’s rock hard. He could be a nice man really, but, I don’t know. The cuddling is the only reason I do this. The rest ‒ the chase, the snogging, the outfits ‒ are silly, yet necessary. I doze off easily while I recall a time before Laurie, before awareness.
When I wake at six p.m. and find Ted gone, I don’t cry for what is lost or what could have been. I smile at the Post-It note he left on my pillow saying I can’t. It’s laughable. I run a bath and plan out my evening in my head: a dash to the shops to collect some food and trashy magazines, then Strictly Come Dancing and some DVDs that do not require thought. Before I leave the house, I leave my flannelette pyjamas heating on the radiator and smile. There is comfort in loneliness sometimes and this is how I survive.
Chapter Two
Jules
Monday morning
I open the aubergine, flowery print curtains in my living room. I had to have them custom-made for these gigantic bay windows of mine and they cost me enough, so I always make an effort to open and close them, morning and night.
My home is the best in the house, covering the entire first floor. It means I get to look out over the leafy, Victorian park I live on. A disused, cast-iron gas lamp just happens to sit right outside my front window and sometimes on a rainy day or a foggy night, if I sit at the bench window with a book, I put myself in the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle or Charles Dickens, or any other of my favourite authors, and I live in their heads and their worlds for an hour or two, enjoying words I don’t have to grade, which makes a change.
The bustling commercial avenues of this area have so many offshoot, residential boulevards. They thrive on the yearly influx of university students, though the bohemian natives are numerous too. So, there are many easy targets for me to prey on. I am a woman of twenty-seven yet I get away with hitting on younger men. I guess dressing in charity shop gear makes me seem younger than what I am.
I f
eel safe here. The monotony and the crowding gives me a sense of protection. My neighbours downstairs are an artist struggling to make ends meet and an old lady who used to own this whole building. She was forced to sell up and take the rear flat when her five-bedroom house was auctioned off and converted. If I were her, I would have gotten a nice, shiny new flat in a retirement village.
The high ceilings of my rooms are somewhat of a pain. It means they are so much the harder to heat in winter, yet they offer grandeur among the standard. I hang glow in the dark stars from the ceiling in my bedroom so that at night, if I wake from a nightmare, I have something to gaze at and comfort me.
I keep tons of house plants because someone once told me they keep your oxygen levels at a healthier median and well, I just like to feel as though something is living in this flat. Even if it’s not me, something else is living. I also have hundreds of old candles everywhere, some with tapered edges and some not even used yet. It is one of my luxuries to light every one of them once in a while; my own séance of sorts, when I need it.
I buy Cath Kidston essentials and pretend like I am a homemaker when I am anything but. How would I know how to make a home when I never had one myself? It just seems like every magazine I read contains this stuff, so I buy it.
Today I am wearing a pair of smart black trousers and a white blouse with buttons in the shape of bows, plus a grey cotton belt that ties at the front. I pull on my flat Doc Martens with the multi-coloured lacing and knot them up tight. I may as well be in the sodding police force.
I grab my red overcoat and my bags and take one look back at the flat. The flowery prints, the eggshell walls and the open fire will be waiting for me when I get home. I take comfort from that. The image will keep me going throughout the day. This is my little paradise and in this flat, nothing can hurt me. I have a scooter to ride about town on but I’d get so many jeers from the kids, so I walk the mile and a half every day. It gets me some exercise, I suppose, and also enables me to follow in the footsteps of poet laureates; past blue plaques, ornate English Heritage fountains and white telephone boxes idiosyncratic of this city.
Angel Avenue Page 1
