by Mick Fraser
His mates backed up, unsure of how to react, but the ringleader went red with rage, pushing himself off the bar and swinging the bottle wild and high. It was times like these that being the granddaughter of a veteran police officer came in handy, as Angela stepped straight into the swing, caught Peeley’s wrist, twisted savagely so he released his grip on the bottle, and then in the same fluid motion threw her elbow back into his shocked face with such force that he went sprawling across the bar.
Angela’s boot heel crunched the broken glass on the floor as she turned towards Damo and the other lout, standing in stunned silence on either side of a smiling Gus. She glared at them with open hostility and Damo dropped the bat as though she’d pulled a gun.
“W-what the fuck was that?” he stammered.
“Beast mode,” she replied, blowing her dark bangs off her face. She noted their expressions and smiled darkly. “How was that for a show?”
“Y’KNOW, that could've gone either way,” said Gus with a grin, chucking a dozen ice cubes wrapped in a red bar towel onto the table in front of her.
Angela pressed the cold fabric against her knuckles. They didn't really hurt, but the sensation was pleasant. Peeley's mates had bundled him into a taxi, while Tabitha and her friend had gone home, relieved, to enjoy their show in private. Angela waved a hand towards the pile of glass Gus had gathered on the floor. “Look at this mess.”
Gus chuckled. “Broken glass, love. It’s a nightly occurrence.”
“It's time you got a proper bouncer.”
He sat down opposite her, resting his sweeping brush against the tabletop. “I don't need one. I've got you, and Eleanor.”
“Yeah, well Eleanor cheated on you tonight. She's not all that trustworthy. And I'm just a tiny little woman.”
“Piss off,” he grunted, grinning. “You're your granddad, through and through.”
She smiled sourly. “I just wanted a quiet drink.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Apparently not. Would have been nice though, just once.”
He sat back. “Aye, I know. I remember what day it is tomorrow, love. Hard to believe it’s been five years.”
For a long moment she was silent, staring at a nondescript point above the TV behind the bar. “Got to be more to life than this,” she sighed at last.
Gus leaned forward. “Stop drinking in back-alley dives then,” he winked. “Thanks for stepping in, though, Jelly. Mum’s the word to your grandpa, I promise.”
She tutted. “Yeah, right. He'll look at you once and you'll sing like a canary.”
“Well I do have a beautiful whistle!”
“That you do,” Angela agreed. She went to stand when a sudden dizziness gripped her and she swooned. Gus caught her and sat her back down.
“You alright?”
Her arms felt like they were burning and she rubbed them until the sensation faded away. For a moment she felt as though she had just stepped off a rollercoaster, but she swallowed down the nausea. “Yeah. Fine. It’s just getting late. I should go; I've got work tomorrow.”
“Right. Coffee waitress by day, dive-bar bouncer by night.”
“You make it sound so glamorous.”
Gus laughed. “I'll get you a cab,” he said but she stopped him, dropping his wet bar towel on the table.
“I'll walk,” she replied, standing more steadily. “Need to clear my head anyway. Not been sleeping all that well recently.”
“Right you are, Jelly. Just be careful.”
“I'm always careful,” Angela told him. “It's the rest of the universe that's always bumping into me.”
CHAPTER 2
~STRANGE BY NAME~
THERE WERE NUMBERS etched in red, spiralling rapidly down as though someone had clipped the wrong wire in a cheesy 90s cop movie. It took a moment for Angela to decide, with some relief, that there was no bomb on her bedside table; it was her alarm clock, and the digital readout was going ten to the dozen.
Groggily, she rolled over, searching the bunched blue duvet for her phone. She located it, raised it to her bleary eyes. The screen was behaving in a similar fashion to the alarm clock display, cycling through her apps in quick succession. Pushing herself up on her elbow, she shook it, then turned the screen off and back on. There was a high-pitched beep, and the screen warped, then went black. As she reached over to put it on the table, the alarm clock settled. Angela slumped back on her pillows, making a mental note to buy a new one at some point. Right now, her number one priority was forcing herself up and out of bed. It was 8:45, there were fireworks going off inside her head, and she was late for work.
She drifted into the bathroom on autopilot, peed in record time, washed her hands, splashed her face, froze. She held up her hands, turning them this way and that. In the dull December light, she would have sworn her skin was sparkling. Not glistening wet, but actually sparkling, as though she’d dipped her hands in glitter. Angela snatched up a towel and dried her fingers. By the time she was done, the sparkling had gone – if it was ever there in the first place. She shook her head, caught her reflection in the mirror as the light flashed against her necklace; a slim, faux-leather strap hung with a tarnished Saint Anthony medallion, no larger than a penny. She’d had it since the day she met her granddad, when he’d given it to her for luck. She wrinkled her nose, staring into her own dark eyes.
There were mantras, she had heard, that people repeated to themselves in the morning to increase their productivity or confidence, to boost their self-belief or convince themselves that neither were they useless, nor thought of as such by the rest of the world. Angela often asked herself a simple question, one that she really felt she should be able to answer by now, at twenty-three.
“Who are you?”
Her granddad, bless him, would answer the question on equally simple terms. He would say: “You’re Angela Strange, love. Raised, if not born.”
There was no denying that she stood out. In a foster family of average-height, pale-skinned Irish redheads, Angela was five-eight in trainers, had skin like burnished gold, black hair, and almond eyes that could have been carved from ebony. She had Indian in her, she suspected, but not as much as there was East Asian – Chinese, she would have guessed from her skin tone. She didn’t know for sure. She couldn’t know. Long ago, she had decided that she was of “unspecified Asian descent” and called time on the whole mystery. Whenever an official form required that she specify an ethnicity, she simply ticked OTHER.
She dived into the fridge, glaring sullenly at the flickering bulb until it suddenly popped. She closed the door on the darkness, grabbed a whiteboard marker pen from the draw and wrote “new bulb” directly on the fridge. Then she ate a banana while slugging orange juice from the carton. As she hurried through the living room towards the hallway the television came on behind her and she paused, eyeing it suspiciously. A pair of chirpy presenters were reading out the tabloid headlines and cracking the kind of jokes that they knew were only being received by people who were either in a hurry to get to work or had nothing better to do than watch them. Angela grabbed the remote from her pretentious little coffee table and killed the picture, but it immediately came back on. She pressed the OFF switch again and it cycled through several channels before there was a hiss and a fizz, and a narrow plume of grey smoke drifted up from behind the flat-screen. She stared at it for a long moment, coming to the swift and worrying conclusion that some faulty wiring could not simultaneously blow bulbs, fry a TV, warp a mobile phone and super-charge an alarm clock. The common denominator was her. Was it a static thing? She had read somewhere that such a thing was possible – but she had probably read it in a clickbait article she’d followed from Facebook. Maybe this hangover was just supernaturally powerful.
She sighed and checked her watch. 8:59. She now had less than sixty seconds to complete a seventeen-minute walk to the café (thus ensuring she was only an hour late), she needed a new fridge bulb, a new alarm clock, and a TV repairman. To top it
off she had to meet her granddad after work this afternoon at the cemetery. Even with no frame of reference close to hand, she knew today was Tuesday.
All the worst days were.
REACHOUT was kind of a godsend to the homeless of Templeton and the surrounding Burroughs. It had been opened by Mark Pritchard six years ago and operated as part coffee shop and part soup kitchen. For every coffee bought, a second cup was put in reserve for a person less fortunate than the buyer. When those unfortunates came by, and they did, a hot cup of coffee and a bite to eat made a hell of a difference to their day.
Angela had worked there for two years, which meant Mark had had more than long enough to adjust to the fact that she was late four days out of five. Some people might have been fired for such behaviour, but Angela joked that Mark was either a little bit in love with her, or a little bit afraid of her. In truth, she knew very well he was both, and had been for some time. It was probably mean to exploit that for the sake of hitting the snooze button three times a morning, but so far Angela’s conscience had weathered it like a trooper.
The particular outlet of ReachOut for which she worked was situated close to Templeton’s primary shopping district. Closer to Soho than Nottinghill, Templeton had significantly more than its fair share of rough-sleepers, and Mark had picked the location because it allowed him to reach and help more people, although the bidding war for the spot had apparently been rough. It was an unassuming little place, perhaps a little pretentious on the inside thanks to the artwork on the wall and constant loop of jazz on the airwaves.
When she arrived, Angela walked in through the front door as opposed to sneaking in around the back. By now she was already in trouble. There were only two customers present, a ginger-haired lad in a Burberry cap, and Valerie, a pensioner who came in every Tuesday, Wednesday on Friday on her way to Bridge Club. Mark was on the far side of the room, by the office door, polishing a table. He looked up the instant the bell dinged.
“You’re late, Ange,” he told her, somewhat redundantly. He was thirty-four, blond, blue-eyed, ridiculously handsome by all accounts, although Angela considered him more pretty than handsome. He had a wholesome look, like an Abercrombie and Fitch model.
She shrugged in response. “Yeah, well. It’s been a funny morning.”
“Aren’t they all, with you?” he said, without venom. “You missed the rush. You can make up for it by cleaning the Espresso machine.”
She looked across the counter, shifted her bag uncomfortably on her shoulder. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea...”
He slung the towel across his forearm like a continental waiter. “Ange, just because I’ve never reprimanded you for being late, doesn’t mean I never will, you know? Flexi-time is one thing, but Sarah has been here since eight, on the front lines with me – so you can clean the Espresso machine.”
“Fuck sake. Alright.”
She dropped her bag in the little office behind the counter and snatched her red and gold apron off the peg by the door. Behind her, the Espresso machine loomed. It was a beast of red chrome and white gold flourish, donated by a mysterious benefactor in the early days of ReachOut, but you’d never know it had been in use for over five years. Mark kept it immaculately clean, religiously serviced and rigorously maintained.
This made it all the more upsetting when Angela took two steps towards it, and it exploded in a fountain of sparks and foam. Fire kicked up from somewhere. Mark raced over, chivalrous as ever, grabbing the fire extinguisher from below the counter. The two customers were on their feet; the ginger lad was making a video. Angela stepped back, glancing down to see that her skin was once again glistening. She batted at it as though she was on fire, which Mark, surrounded by flame-retardant foam, misunderstood. He grabbed her wrist, assuming she was burning, and she snatched it away before he could see. When she continued to glow, she swung herself into the office and slammed the door. By the time she sat on the staff couch, her skin was back to normal.
After a few minutes Mark slowly pushed open the door and peaked in. He looked worried under his bouncy blonde hair, which kind of suited his face. “Are you okay? That was... weird.”
She laughed nervously. “Strange by name, right? I’m sorry, about the Espresso machine.”
He came in and sat down beside her. “Hey, wasn’t your fault. I’m just glad you’re alright.”
“Like I said: funny morning.”
“You want to talk about it? It’s not like we’re bustling.”
She took a deep breath, figured what the hell, and told him about her alarm clock, her phone, the TV. He listened intently, without a shred of mockery on his face.
“And it’s just been today, has it?” he asked when she was done.
“Yeah,” she replied, deciding against mentioning her recently glowing skin.
“Is it your... y’know… time of the month?”
“What a fucking blokeish thing to say,” she laughed. “No, you dickhead, it’s not. This is serious.”
He grinned, raising a placating hand. “Alright, calm down. Maybe it’s, like, a build-up of static or something. I’ve read about that happening.”
Hearing the theory from someone else sounded even more stupid. She raised a mocking eyebrow. “A build-up of static? What are you going on about?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know actually. It is weird though. Have you mentioned it to Frank yet?”
“Granddad was a cop, not a scientist. Maybe I should see a doctor.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Yeah.”
“Not going to though, are you?”
“Nope.”
Mark chuckled, shaking his head. “I dunno, Ange. Maybe it really is just down to your name.”
Angela smiled. “You haven’t forgotten I’m leaving early today, have you?”
He smiled sideways at her. “So, you get here late, and then you leave early. Boy am I lucky to have you.” She laughed, playfully slapping his shoulder, and his face softened. “No I haven’t forgotten. Sure you don’t want me to come?”
Angela held his hand. “No. You’re alright. It’s for me and granddad.”
“Okay,” he said, rising as the bell dinged. “You alright to serve? I’ll clean up the mess.”
She stood, smoothing her apron, and followed him out into the shop. The man who had just entered was short, though not the opposite of tall – he looked more like he had started out tall and had been slowly shrinking under the weight of booze, drugs and nicotine for years. He was wrung out, his eyes rheumy and sunken, his skin fallow, almost waxy. He was wearing a Parka coat that had once been navy-blue but was now streaked with so many different shades of grime it looked almost like military fatigues. He didn’t bother sitting down, didn’t even glance around the room; he went straight for the counter, watery little eyes locked on Angela. What she at first took to be anger, she soon realised was closer to terror.
“I knew I’d seen you before!” the man snarled through yellow, broken teeth. His voice was shaking, and beads of sweat clung to his cold, clammy skin. “You’re her! You’re her! They’re looking for you!”
Angela started at the bile in his voice.
“Do you know this guy?” Mark asked her.
She frowned at him. He had an uncanny knack of coming to her rescue, whether she needed it or not. She focused on the terrified homeless man instead. He wasn’t a regular, but the burning look in his eyes made it clear that he knew Angela, even if she didn’t know him.
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so, no.”
“Yeah, you’re the one,” said the stranger, his voice trembling. “They been askin’ round the shelters...” he choked up, covering his lower mouth with his hands. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I won’t tell ’em where you are. Not even if they take my brain out. They took George’s brain out. Flipped his head open like a wheelie bin. I seen ’em.”
Angela took a step forward. “Wait,” she said softly, “start again. Who’s looking for
me?”
The man stared at her in silence, eyes wide and bright with fear, then suddenly swung away, banging through the door, shouting frantically. The bell dinged behind him as he ran out into the cold.
Angela shuddered, unsure of how to react.
“You need a minute?” Mark asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Yeah, maybe. This day keeps getting weirder.”
“Who’s looking for you?”
“Not a bloody clue. Probably the meth talking.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “Right. Sit down a minute; I’ll get you a coffee. And then work the floor today, yeah? Away from the appliances and where I can see you.”
She shrugged him off. “I don’t need a babysitter,” she snapped. Then to herself, quietly, she said, “I don’t know what I need.”
CHAPTER 3
~IN THE GREY DECEMBER LIGHT~
HAD IT BEEN any day other than Tuesday, Angela might have had to excuse herself and go home, but Tuesdays were slow and she managed to avoid anything electrical for a few hours and keep her head down. At about five to two, Mark approached her, tapping his watch. She looked up from the table she was polishing, blowing her dark bangs out of her eyes.
“You seen the time?” he asked.
“Shit. Yeah, I’ve just been getting on. Lost track.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come with you? To the crem, I mean?”
She brushed him off. “I’m sure.”
“Okay. Well, if you need a chat later...”
“Right. Cheers.”
Angela grabbed her bag and coat from the staff room and left, heading uphill in the rough direction of Westminster. The All Saints Crematorium was located in the north of Templeton, on the far side of Benjamin Park. It was a pleasant enough place, considering its purpose, peppered with Poplar trees and a handful of Sycamores. The main building was clad in white-veined black marble, positioned in the centre of the grounds and surrounded by meticulously-maintained flower beds that looked almost mocking in the dim, grey December light. It was overcast, threatening to rain, and the wind was low and chilling as Angela arrived. She made her way along the gravelled path to her foster parents’ plot, pulling her coat tightly about her. Her granddad was already there, his back to her as she approached, his head ringed by a halo of cigar smoke, long black coat and flat cap reminding her of those spy films where two grizzled old agents meet to feed the ducks and discuss the downfall of Western freedom.