Andrew Taylor - Fallen Angel

‘Drink up,’ she told him. ‘Come along, you need it. You’ve had a shock.’

The wine tasted harsh and at first he found it hard to swallow. As glass succeeded glass, however, it became easier and easier.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ Angel asked when they had finished the starter. ‘No one else knows the truth, but I want to tell you. Can I trust you?’

‘Yes.’ Angel, you can always trust me.

She stared into the candle flame. ‘If my mother had lived, everything would have been different.’

Her mother, she told Eddie, had died when she was young, and her father had married again, to a wife who hated Angel.

‘She was jealous, of course. Before she came along, my father and I had been very close. But she soon changed that. She made him hate me. Not just him, either – she worked on everyone we knew. In the end they all turned against me.’

Desperate to get away, Angel found work as an au pair, at first in Saudi Arabia and later in South America, mainly in Argentina. Then she became a nanny. Her employers had been delighted with her: she had stayed with one family for over five years. Finally, she had been overcome by a desire to come back to England.

‘It gets to you sometimes: wanting to go back to your roots, to your past. Then I met Angie Wharton. She was English, but she had been born in Argentina. Her parents emigrated there after the war. Angie wanted to come home, too. Not that she’d ever been here before.’

‘How could this be her home?’ asked Eddie owlishly. ‘If she hadn’t been here, I mean?’

‘Home is where the heart is, Eddie. Anyway, Angie was a nursery nurse – she’d trained in the States before her parents died. We thought we’d travel home together, share a flat and so on. It’s thanks to Angie that I know Mrs Hawley-Minton. Poor darling Angie.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘It was terribly sad.’ Angel’s eyes shone, and an orange candle flame flickered in each pupil. ‘It hurts to talk about it.’ She turned away and dabbed her eyes with a napkin.

‘I’m sorry,’ Eddie said, drunk enough to feel that he was somehow responsible for her sorrow. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

‘No. One can’t hide away from things. It was one of those awful, stupid tragedies. Our first night in London. We’d only been here a few hours. Oh, it was my fault. I shall always blame myself. You see, I knew that Angie was – well, to be blunt, she was a lovely person but she had a weakness for alcohol.’ Angel topped up Eddie’s glass. ‘Not like this – a glass or two over a meal. She’d go on binges and wake up the next day not knowing what had happened, where she’d been. It was terrible.’

Eddie pushed away his plate. ‘What was?’

‘It was on our first evening here,’ Angel said, her eyes huge over the rim of the wine glass. ‘Life can be so unfair sometimes. She’d been drinking on the plane. One after the other. When we got here, we found a hotel in Earl’s Court and then we had a meal. Wine with the meal, of course. And then she wanted to carry on. “I want to celebrate,” she kept saying. “I’ve come home.” Poor Angie. I just couldn’t cope. I was fagged out. So I went back to our room and went to bed. Next thing I knew it was morning and the manager was knocking on the door.’

The waiter brought their main course and showed a disposition to linger and chat.

‘That’ll be all, thank you,’ said Angel haughtily. When she and Eddie were alone again she went on, ‘I hate men like that. So pushy. Where was I?’

‘The manager knocking on the door.’

The irritation faded from Angel’s face. ‘He had a policewoman with him. Apparently Angie had gone up to the West End. Drinking steadily, of course. Somehow she managed to fall under a bus in Shaftesbury Avenue. There was a whole crowd coming out of a theatre, and people coming out of a pub, and a lot of pushing and shoving.’ Angel sighed. ‘She was killed outright.’

‘How awful.’ Eddie hesitated and then, feeling more was required, added, ‘For you as much as her.’

‘It’s always harder for those who are left behind. No one else grieved for her. And then – well, I must admit I was tempted. I mean, who would it harm if I pretended to be Angie? Without a qualification I couldn’t hope to get a decent job. It was so unfair – I knew more about the practical side of nursery nursing than she ever did, and I could easily read up the theory. And then she had this ready-made contact in Mrs Hawley-Minton, who’d never met her. So I told the police that Angie was me, and I pretended to be her.’

‘But didn’t they know her name? From her handbag, or something?’ Sensing Angel’s irritation at the interruption, he added weakly, ‘I mean, they knew the hotel where she was staying.’

‘She didn’t have any identification on her – just cash, and a card with the name of the hotel.’ Angel smiled sadly. ‘She’d left her passport and so on with me, in case they got stolen.’

‘Oh yes. I see now. But surely the passport photo –?’

‘I had an old one in mine. And physically we weren’t dissimilar.’

‘There must have been an inquest.’

‘Of course. I didn’t tell any lies. I didn’t want to. There was no need to.’

‘Didn’t they ask your father to identify the body?’

‘He’d gone to work in America years before this happened. We’d lost touch completely. He simply couldn’t be bothered with me.’ Angel leant closer. ‘The point is, Eddie, I know Angie would have wanted me to do what I did. Just as I would have wanted her to do the same if the positions had been reversed.’

‘I think you were right.’ Eddie’s voice was thick and his tongue felt a little too large for his mouth. ‘I mean, it didn’t hurt anyone.’

Briefly she patted his hand. ‘Exactly. In a way, quite the reverse: I like to think I take my job very seriously, that I’ve made a difference for a lot of children.’

‘What was your real name, then?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I gave it to Angie, and it’s buried with her. Look forward, that’s my motto. Don’t look back. After the funeral I just waited until the dust had settled, and then I wrote to Mrs Hawley-Minton. And from there everything’s gone like a dream.’ She broke off and rested her head in her hands. ‘Until now.’ Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘It’s such a shame – just as everything was going so well.’

‘I’ll talk to my mother. I’ll make her see sense.’

‘You’re a darling. But I don’t think you’ll succeed.’

‘Why not?’ He was almost shouting now and heads turned towards him.

‘Hush, keep your voice down.’

‘She wouldn’t like us both to go away. She’d be lonely.’

‘She’s jealous of us. Don’t you see? I wish I were richer – then we could get somewhere together, just you and me. As friends, I mean, just good friends. Would you like that?’

‘Yes. Oh God, yes.’

There was a long pause, filled with the noise from the rest of the restaurant.

Angel picked up the bottle. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

Eddie said, elaborately casual, ‘What sort of children do you look after? You could always bring them to the house if you wanted. For tea, I mean. Make a sort of treat for them.’

‘They often want to see where I live. But I don’t think the idea would go down very well with your mother.’

Another silence stretched between them, heavy with silent suggestions and questions. Angel refilled their glasses.

‘Drink up.’ She held up her glass and clinked it against his. ‘This may be our last chance of a celebration, so we’d better make the most of it.’

They finished that bottle before they left. By now Eddie was very drunk. Angel had to support him up the stairs. In Frith Street the fresh air made his head spin and the light seemed very bright. He vomited partly into the gutter and partly on the bonnet of a parked car.