Naked Angels - Judi James

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you’ll just have to be better,’ she whispered.

      Then all the egg and all the tears and all the snot seemed to well up and ooze in Evangeline’s throat at once, so that she didn’t know if she wanted to cry or be sick, and she choked and hiccuped but she could suddenly neither breathe nor see.

      Her grandmother stood up.

      ‘No tears at the table,’ was what Evangeline thought she heard her say. Maybe she was scared she’d make a mess on the white linen tablecloth.

      The fog came down the following night and it stayed for a week or more, rolling mournfully around the house and making the sunsets look as though the whole sky was on fire.

      When Evangeline stood on the back porch in the evening the sea’s voice was muffled, though its smell was sharper than ever. It smelt of decay, despite all the salt. She imagined it heaving with dead fish, wood from sunken boats, empty quahog shells and a gull’s corpse that floated on the tide with one filmy eye turned towards the sky that it could no longer soar about in.

      The fog was so heavy her hair got wet just standing there and she had to dry it by the fire when she got inside again.

      She was going to look for her parents once the fog lifted. There was no doubt about it, Grandma Klippel was wrong and the sea was wrong. Nobody went away like that. Nobody left little girls alone, it just didn’t happen. Someone had made a terrible mistake and it was up to her to sort things out. Maybe her teachers could help if she could just get back to her school. Or a policeman. Darius had always taught her to go to the police if she ever got lost while she was out.

      She didn’t go to her own school any more. Grandma Klippel said it was too far away and sent her to a small private place a mile up the coast instead. She missed her friends – even Ewan Raw-meat Goodman. The new kids acted almost as though they’d been told not to speak to her. Her grandmother had her booked in under a different name, too. Evangeline Cooper – it had been her grandmother’s surname before she’d married Mr Klippel, the owner of the local bank. Walter Klippel had died so long ago there were no pictures of him in the house, just a chair Evangeline’s grandmother never used because he’d sat in it a lot.

      Then one night, when the fog was at its thickest, Evangeline heard a noise like a dog howling and she knew it had to be Patrick. The waiting was over; they’d come back at last. She felt mad with her parents as well as pleased they were back. She opened her window full out and the howling grew louder, and even though it sounded as though it came from miles away – from another country, almost – she just knew he was telling her they were on their way and she would not have to wait much longer.

      Excited to the point where she was leaping on the spot, she decided to go down and meet them. Pulling a big warm jumper on over her nightgown and an old pair of boots onto her feet Evangeline ran out of her room and down the landing, yelling to her grandma as she went.

       ‘They’re here! Grandma Klippel, they’re here, they’re outside somewhere, I heard them, I heard Patrick howling, they’re here!’

      Everything was right all of a sudden. The world stopped tipping crooked and straightened out at last. She didn’t care who she woke with her shouting, she was just relieved that the waiting was over. Her legs worked like pistons and she took off down the stairs without once needing to grip on to the banister.

      ‘They’re here, I heard them!’ Opening the front door was a problem but it was her time at last and she knew she was on a roll, so the catches slipped back without too much fumbling and then the cold wet air hit her face and made her laugh with relief.

      ‘Patrick! Mommy! Daddy! Lincoln!’ She knew they’d never left her really and she was too pleased to be mad with them for disappearing like that.

      ‘Evangeline!’ So she’d woken her grandmother after all. ‘Evangeline!’ The old girl could holler louder than she’d thought. Her voice had a high, rasping quality that made it more like a scream than just a yell.

      Evangeline took off down the sand flats, towards the sound of Patrick’s howls, her brown frizzed hair streaming out behind her like a banner.

      ‘Evangeline!’ She wished her grandmother would be quiet so she could hear the dog instead. She’d forgotten where the sound was coming from and she couldn’t see further than a few feet in the fog.

      The sand was wet and sucked at her feet. She ran until her legs were tired and then she ran some more with them aching. Her feet got heavy with the sand and then suddenly they were heavy with water. She stopped. ‘Patrick!’

      There was water on her legs. It hit the top of her boots and then – colder even than ice – it fell inside the boots with a rush.

      ‘Oh my.’ It was all she could think of to say and it came out in one word, like a sigh. She looked back, but there was no back any more, it had all gone in the fog. The smell of the sea overwhelmed her and the hiss of the surf was all around. Her bones began to ache from the cold but she wasn’t scared yet.

      Yoo-hoo!’ she hollered, so Darius would know it was her, and at that moment there was a sharp tugging at her legs as the cross-current came to take her away.

      It was the chauffeur who snatched her back, as naked as nature intended, because Grandma Klippel had not given him the option of dressing after she tipped him out of his bed. The man had plunged into the surf like an athlete and wrenched Evangeline up just as the boots were being pulled off her legs by the current.

      She popped straight up like a cork from a bottle, unable to differentiate between dark and light and the sea and the shore. He carried her off roughly, hurting her arms.

      Her grandmother was waiting on the dunes, her hair as wild as the marsh grass. Her teeth were missing. She carried a storm-torch in her hands and she shone it full into Evangeline’s face.

      ‘What in God’s name were you up to, child?’ Her voice sounded spitty and stretched out and thin with anger and concern.

      ‘I heard them, Grandma, they’re coming back. I went to look for them in case they missed me.’ ‘You heard them?’

      Evangeline was suddenly short of air. ‘I heard Patrick, Grandma, he’s barking out there somewhere in the dark. I think he smelt me, you know. He used to be a hunting hound and he can smell…’

      Her grandmother dropped the torch suddenly and seized Evangeline’s face in her white hands. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen to what you heard.’

      There was a noise, a noise somewhere out at sea. A lonely noise. The noise Evangeline had taken for Patrick’s howls.

      ‘It was a foghorn,’ Grandma Klippel said angrily, ‘just a foghorn. They’re not coming back. Now why won’t you believe me?’ Her voice sounded like the sea’s voice; whispery and tired and dull. ‘Evangeline, I told you you had to be good,’ she said, sadly. ‘I thought you understood.’

      The chauffeur shook water off himself like a dog and droplets flew out from his body.

      On the slow walk back to the house Evangeline looked out across the beach. ‘I know you’re out there somewhere, waiting for me,’ she whispered to her parents under her breath, ‘I know you’re just lost, that’s all. I’ll be good and I know I’ll find you, don’t worry. I promise.’

       5

       Budapest 1981

      The first metro train of the morning rattled slowly out of the terminal at Vorosmarty ter, waking the boy up. His nose was running and his bones felt as though they had been cemented in the night. Andreas was dead. It was the first thought of the day every day. It came followed closely by self-pity and then, as he woke properly, by unbearable, crushing guilt. The guilt was like a large balloon in his chest that got inflated every morning. What had he done? Why was he alive? He had no right,

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