Angel Avenue

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  The first thing I need to do is get myself a cuppa so I head to the kitchen.

  I take two cups of steaming tea into the living room and sit next to him. He takes his mug from me and we sip. He clears his throat, “So, what happened?”

  “Well…”

  I describe everything, in great detail, from how I felt to what I presumed might also be the case. When I stop talking so fast my mouth actually has started to hurt, he butts in.

  “Jules, listen. I hope you don’t mind but I did some checking up on him.”

  “And?” I am sceptical. Perhaps I should be mad he used his connections to go over my head, but I also need to know if there is more…

  “He’s been married five years.”

  I shake my head. I made the assumption he was merely engaged, when he was actually married! It hurts again, but Warrick takes my hand.

  “Don’t give him another tear, Jules. Listen, there is something else…”

  Warrick’s eyes look dark and menacing. He doesn’t want to tell me the next part but something in him cannot help but do so. He needs to.

  “Tell me,” I entreat him coldly.

  “He’s Laurie Matthews now, but he was John Flanagan. He changed his name after he fled Northern Ireland, so that leads me to believe he was involved in gangs… or something even heavier perhaps. I doubt he told his wife what she was getting herself involved in. Penny’s the daughter of a local pharmaceutical tycoon and for some reason, soon after they wed, an application Laurie filed for bankruptcy was revoked. If you ask me, Laurie’s a special kind of fella. One I’d like to lock up.”

  “No!” I stand and pace between the sofa and the coffee table.

  “After you said he plays at the Adelphi, I asked my mate on the door if he knew of Laurie and he said, ‘Oh, the guy with the gambling habit?’”

  I hold my hands at my cheeks. He even had a story about his name. He’s probably a real con artist!

  “Why didn’t you tell me before I put myself through having to see him again?”

  He places his cup down on the table and sits back, ruffling his curls. “Do you want me to be honest?”

  God yes, yes I do! “Yep.”

  “I thought you needed to go, even though I hated it. To get over it, you know. Make it real. Speak to him face to face. Make sure you could lay the ghost to rest properly, if you know what I mean.”

  He waits pensively for an answer but I just stare at him.

  Why is he so efficient and perfect in every way? Thoughtful. Generous, and heartfelt. I decide to take the bull by the horns. So much has already transpired this evening and there may be only one thing for it. Take a risk. Ask him something I know he doesn’t want to answer.

  “Why were you single for so long? I know I am not the only one who’s been lonely,” I insist, raising my eyebrows.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  He turns his eyes on mine and puts his hands together. He looks serious.

  “Yes, I really do want to know. I do.”

  “Sit down then.”

  I don’t hesitate but I have to fight hard not to stare at his body and in particular his hands. I want them on me again. I have grown to know his face so well now. His moles. His stubble. His Roman nose and pouting lips. I look Anglo-Saxon whereas he has something of the Gaul about him. A French accent and he’d be devastating. He’s dark and has a certain furrow in his face, from difficult times, or misspent contemplation. His expression reveals he used up a lot of time wishing he had done things differently, at some point in his life. Something tells me that the pigment in his skin is from fatigue and hibernation rather than age.

  “This is maybe gonna sound weird,” he begins.

  “I don’t care about anything you did. I love you, all of you, I only care how you got here with me,” I try to soothe him.

  “Five years ago, I saw a man get killed on the Upper Avenue. At the time, my marriage was broken. She’d left me. I was an addict and I got caught. I’d been suspended from work. I never got over the trafficking case. I just saw that man’s body thrown and it made me realise I should try to do better.”

  “That’s not weird,” I tell him, stroking his hair.

  “What I was like afterwards was,” he chuckles.

  “Okay…?”

  “I got off the stuff, only because I was too numb to live anymore. I weaned off in hospital. When I woke up, or rather became aware again, I felt different. I saw everything differently.”

  “I have read about this sort of thing,” I reassure him, and he smiles so his eyes brighten. I wink and encourage, “So, you just decided no more entanglements?”

  “When Anna walked out on me, I slept around. It made me feel sick with myself. Maybe in some way I wanted to show her what she was missing.”

  His face is contorted in anguish, his lips pulled tight and his eyes strained.

  “Oh,” I manage to mumble.

  “I am not explaining myself well.”

  I stand and walk to the fireplace. That’s not easy to accept. I say the first thing that comes into my mind.

  “Are you, you know, I–” my voice wavers. I think he knows what I am getting at.

  He moves up behind me, throws my hair over one shoulder and kisses the nape of my neck.

  “I had myself checked. Thankfully, no STDs. I always used a condom.”

  “What you’re telling me still hurts.”

  “I know. I don’t want your forgiveness. Or your pity. I know the things I did were wrong. I saw bad things and it’s a mindset that’s hard to break free of, that world I mean.”

  None of it is easy for me to accept. He was this whole other person before he met me. It frightens me.

  “Laurie gave me Chlamydia.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, oh…” He tightens his arms around me. “I want to punch his lights out. I hate him so much, Jules.”

  His stubble brushes my skin as he continues caressing my neck. I love the way he kisses me. I turn and wrap my arms around him, staring into his eyes to beckon, “Tell me the worst of it.”

  I fear what he’s been through may break my heart again, but I am willing to fall this time. I love him so much.

  “The worst of it?” he repeats.

  I nod and wait for him to unleash his woes on me. He pulls me close and holds me so my head is buried against his chest.

  “You’d better sit down, Julie. Or better still, we could get in bed and snuggle while I do?”

  I nod and link my fingers through his, leading him there. I want him wrapped all around me while he tells me his story.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Warrick

  “When you start out as a copper, it’s all petty robberies, domestic disputes, pounding the pavements. I got ahead because I led and enforced. Showed gumption or whatever. Got me promoted. Then it was RTAs and DOAs and the odd natural disaster to contend with.

  “So eventually I was detective, narcotics. That’s when it started getting heavy. Seeing overdoses in young mothers or fathers. There were busts, waiting on corners to catch a deal or even, making undercover purchases of our own. Houses full of children and yet, more rooms full of drugs. Needles hanging out of kids, fifteen or sixteen, sometimes younger. Some dead. It got to me. Anna was a good wife, she held me up. She knew and understood but we were a young married couple and we didn’t know how things would change, how I would change.

  “I used to be sensitive, you know. Mum and Dad gave me an idyllic upbringing. I never wanted for anything. Always knew I had them both to catch me when I fell. Then Mum died and I was wrecked for months. That was the first step to me becoming hardened. I’d not had any time to prepare for her loss.

  “It was nine years ago this trafficking thing came up and I was asked whether I might go undercover. First off I said no but eventually I couldn’t keep ignoring the call. Too many others had tried and failed. I was at a point in my life then where my wife was busy with a baby, my mother was dead, my dad was heartbroken. I just
thought about doing something to keep me busy, keep my head straight.

  “Then, I had to change myself. I had to morph into Mark Thorne, a different person. A pusher and a pimp, or so I declared myself. My girls were undercovers, so were my so-called dealers. We were after details of young girls being brought over from Eastern Europe. It was imperative we had the source otherwise it would continue, via other UK cities. There was so much at stake.

  “I once slept with one of the actual pimp’s girls to prove myself and it broke me. Literally, it physically and mentally broke me. I loved Anna but, maybe, I needed the job more than her. Somehow, life took me along for the ride. I can’t fathom my actions, even now. I wouldn’t make the same choices again.

  “When the case got resolved, after my soul was literally dead and buried beneath Mark Thorne, I told Anna what had happened. We struggled for a long time. We tried to get past it. Couldn’t. She left me. I didn’t blame her. Then I turned to drugs and women. Knew how to get them, didn’t I? Both of them. I was lost in the abyss, in the quagmire of evil.

  “The worst thing about my job, the worst thing I ever saw, was a screaming baby left in its cot by a comatose, drug-addicted mother too doped up to care. Needles everywhere. Foils. Bongs. Lines. Got to thinking Joe was better off without me too because I had become no better.

  “I gave up on everything, swallowed by guilt and pain. I felt like the world was testing me, hated me even, and I felt it was all unfair. I felt it was all not worth it. Started to wonder what was the point anymore. Got suspended from work when they found speed in my system. They were good to me really, understanding even, after everything I had been through. Eventually they quietly gave me a good redundancy package.

  “When you look back on a period of your life like that, it all seems like a blip. A bad dream. You know? Foggy. A dark place. When you emerge cleansed or wiped clean of the mess, you convince yourself that other person mustn’t have really been you. You tell yourself it was a guise, dealing with extraordinary circumstances in difficult times.

  “Maybe that’s why I was different after I got clean. I wanted to help people. Save them. Guide them. I revoked all material wants. Didn’t care anymore about what hair gel I bought or going to the gym. Didn’t want women. Didn’t want to go back to anything I was before.

  “So, there you are.”

  Jules turns to me, naked and ravishing, tears falling from her eyes, revealing, “I think my dad was an addict.”

  I grab her so tight in my arms and she cries like never before, blubbing and wailing.

  “That’s where you’re better than me Julianne. You never gave up.”

  After she stops crying, I make love to her like there’s no tomorrow. I kiss her body, every single inch of it, while she moans for me to be inside her. I make her see that I appreciate everything she is, was, and will be. Making love to her is the closest thing to heaven I have ever known.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Jules

  Half-term flew by, unfortunately, and yesterday I went back to work. My colleagues must have sensed something because they were all asking me what I seem so happy about. I brushed them off. I wasn’t going to tell them that I spent a whole week with Warrick lodged inside me.

  I am tired after a day riddled with the usual workday challenges but we have a date. We reach the front door of his ex-wife’s house and I take a deep breath when Warrick rings the bell. We’re welcomed in by Anna’s husband Jake, who’s much bigger than Warrick and fierce looking. I decide he must be a copper too and have my suspicions confirmed. He’s an armed police officer I discover, but he’s so polite, taking my hand and congratulating me on managing children for a living.

  What I really want is a look at Anna. Since Warrick and I are now definitely sleeping together, almost living together even, there can be no mistaking what is going on so he’s already spoken to Joe to explain I am his new girlfriend.

  When Anna pops her head through the hallway door to greet us, I see her face pale instantaneously. She jumps back out of the doorway and shouts with a screech, “Hi!”

  If she feels awkward and unsteady, she is not the only one. Her voice betrays her fears. She might have hoped I wouldn’t look like this and wouldn’t make her feel shit. I wouldn’t want me to look like this if I were her either.

  I guess she must be gathering herself in the kitchen but she eventually comes through to join us all in the hall and shakes my hand. She glances at me only vaguely.

  “Great to meet you Julianne.”

  “Jules, please. When you get called Miss Simonovich all week long, you appreciate informality.” I aim to break the ice but she only grimaces.

  “Oh,” she replies.

  I can see why Warrick would have been attracted to her in the beginning. She’s stylish and feminine, not tomboyish like me. Her hair is cut in an elfin crop and she has a pretty face. Kind of inoffensive. I imagine anyone who meets her immediately feels at ease in her presence.

  “Joe, come on, your dad’s here!” she shouts up the stairs, and I spot she is wringing a tablecloth in her hands. She’s anxious.

  “Coming!”

  Warrick takes my hand and smiles. I’d almost forgotten he was even in the building with me. I feel reassured beyond belief with him there by my side.

  The ten year old steams down the stairs and barges through us all, lurching for the front door, shouting, “Starving! C’mon!”

  He wants to clear off as quickly as we do and avoid the embarrassing silence.

  “Have him back by nine, Rick?” Anna asks, still wringing the cloth.

  “Always do.”

  We leave and begin walking down the street, heading to the Upper Avenue for dinner at a café bar I haven’t been to in ages. It’s been extended into two buildings and is thriving, like a lot of other places round here.

  I notice Joe is a clone of Warrick and he bounces along the street at his father’s side, excitedly telling him about football practice and going up to Year Six next year.

  Warrick jokes that he might end up being taught by me one day and Joe replies, “Better be on my best behaviour then!”

  The boys laugh as though they are sharing some private joke.

  “What are you keeping from me, you bad boys?”

  Warrick clears his throat and reveals, “St. Clare’s has apparently got a reputation for its pretty girls.”

  Joe grosses out and pretends to vomit, while Warrick laughs like a goat. I get a kiss on the cheek and his verification, “I think we know it’s true.”

  “Don’t make me puke, Dad! Not even eaten yet! Err.”

  Warrick ruffles his hand through his son’s matching mop of hair and drags the boy against his side.

  “Joe, meet Jules, Jules, meet Joe, the heartthrob. He’s had two girlfriends already!”

  We continue walking the pavements and Joe flushes bright red.

  “Two! Wow!” I grin at the boy. “Well, you can now say you also got to take Miss Simonovich to dinner. If you tell Mr Platt ‒ who I used to work with by the way ‒ you’ll become revered.”

  Warrick told me the name of Joe’s teacher and we shared a few jokes at Mr Platt’s expense. He was one of the many I turned down before he left St. Clare’s for a nicer life with the juniors.

  Joe smirks and looks at his dad, “What’s revered?”

  “You’ll have to forgive Jules and her vocab. She strings sentences together in her sleep!” We all laugh, high on the excitement of the night’s festivities and he explains, “Street cred, or kudos, son!”

  I offer my apologies to Warrick with my eyes and he winks.

  “Sorry, I may start talking about history a lot too. It drives your dad nuts.”

  I get a reassuring wink from the mini-Warrick and he slaps his dad’s arm playfully, running on ahead to avoid a backlash.

  Warrick responds by chasing after him and I let the boys have their rare, obviously cherished, time together. I feel very lucky to be part of this.

  We e
at voraciously. The café bar serves the greatest burgers in the world, stacked with bacon, gruyere cheese, beer-battered onion rings and gherkins. Rustic chips and salad garnish on the side. I am in heaven.

  We’re tucking into chocolate fudge cake for afters and I am sharing a pot of tea with Warrick, when Joe asks me, “Can you hear these women behind me?”

  “Why?” I ask like we’re spies. I shall say zis only once.

  “I think they are a book club.” His eyebrows raise and Warrick chuckles.

  I shuffle my chair closer to him, which I do with ease because we’re at a circular table. We sit listening and I nod with my arms folded and my lips pursed.

  “No, he was an absolute bastard. Not a hero at all,” one woman says.

  “She said bar steward,” I mumble in Joe’s direction.

  “Course,” he winks.

  “He was misunderstood. I thought he was drop dead gorgeous, the way he chased her and left flowers everywhere she went!”

  “Flowers are only material! Give me a man who uses his words instead, any day,” another indiscriminate voice declares.

  “Words are the way. Hear that Warrick?” I nod in Joe’s direction and the boy sniggers. I hear my lover tut. He has been buying me flowers every day since we got together.

  “Heroes aren’t what they used to be,” the first woman says.

  To that, they all clink their glasses in a resounding, “Hell yes!”

  I laugh while looking down at my lap and Joe asks me, “Do you know what book they were talking about?”

  I whisper, “Unfortunately I do, Joe.”

  “Can I read it?” he says hopefully.

  “Nope,” is the firm response from Warrick, who’s now sat up straight with his arms folded in staunch resolve.

  “Actually, I brought along something for you. Some reading you are allowed, I believe.”

  In my bag, I retrieve a copy of Just William and hand it over. It’s one of those things I saw in a charity shop when I wasn’t really looking and thought it would come in handy one day. He looks it over like it’s something foreign.