by Rachel Hore
I laughed, then said gently, ‘I’m glad you’ve made it finally.’
Amber looked instantly crestfallen. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. It was really difficult.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I thought as much. Can you give me a hand with stocktaking?’
In this troubling atmosphere it was good to have something routine to do. As the light began to fade it felt less settled still, as scattered groups of children dressed as witches and ghosts and vampires began to appear, hurrying from door to door, collecting treats, their laughter ringing out across the Square.
At a quarter to six there was a cracking noise, then an angry shout, and two young lads in flapping black robes skittered past our window. Mr Broadbent from the bookshop stumbled onto the street shaking his fist, a mess of flour and egg sliding down the front of his shop window. I went out to help him clear up.
‘It gets worse every year,’ he complained. ‘And I’m damned if I’ll give them a thing. We never had this trick or treat nonsense when I was a boy. Nasty American habit.’
Tonight, just to prove I was over Ben, I’d steeled myself to go to choir practice. Afterwards, I came straight back home. It was unbearable now to go to the pub with the others and endlessly discuss the wretched questionnaire, to see Ben and pretend that nothing had happened between us. It was bad enough watching him conduct.
It was half-past eight, a night with no moon. Now the robed figures I passed in the Square on their way to Hallowe’en parties were older, more sinister-looking.
‘Want some, love?’ called out one of a trio of men who were sharing a bottle of whisky, and the others cackled suggestively.
I shook my head, never so glad to reach the sanctuary of the shop.
As I drew the curtains for bed, fireworks started exploding somewhere a couple of streets away. I watched the showers of sparks splatter the sky for some minutes before shutting them out. I could still hear distant pops and bangs as I drifted off to sleep.
I dreamed that I was walking down a tunnel of swirling psychedelic coloured light. It was warm and there was a lovely fragrance, something tantalisingly familiar, hovering just beyond recognition. A woman was singing in a rich strong voice, far away. As I walked through that swirling tunnel, the singing faded. Instead, someone gently called my name: ‘Frances, Frances.’ The tunnel widened into a great valley, aflame with sunset, but all I could hear was that voice, ‘Frances, Frances, wake up now,’ and I was swimming upwards through the sky, breaking into consciousness. ‘Frances.’ I was awake. But there was no one there.
I sat bolt upright, sensing straight away that something was wrong. The air smelled acrid and felt too warm. There was a distant rushing noise, then crackling and a sudden crash. I knew what it was even before I placed my feet on the floor. Quickly, I pulled them up again. The floorboards were hot. Fire. The shop was on fire. Then came a terrible sound of shattering glass below.
It was too dark to see much. I felt around for shoes, finding some trainers under the bed. I briefly considered pulling on clothes, but immediately rejected the idea. Some mad part of my brain started listing things I ought to save; I mollified it by catching up my bag from a chair. I touched the closed door cautiously. It was cool, so I opened it. The rushing noise intensified. Moonlight shone through Dad’s bedroom to the landing, silhouetting smoke coiling up from under the flat door. I rushed into the living room, threw up the sash window. A brief glance down and I recoiled from the heat, but not before I glimpsed the flames feathering the wall below, saw chunks of glass from the new window scattered on the pavement. I considered my options. There was only one and I hadn’t much time. I grabbed first one sofa cushion and shoved it out of the window, then the other. Scatter cushions followed.
Thankful to be wearing pyjamas rather than a nightdress, I squeezed onto the window ledge, peered out briefly to get my bearings, then closed my eyes and jumped.
I missed the cushions altogether. The pain was awful. Everything went dark. I lay there, unable to breathe. My feet hurt, my legs hurt, my lungs were sore and my eyes burned. At last I gulped air, hot, smoky air, and sat up coughing to see the shop a wall of smoke and fire. Close by me a cushion burst into flames. I gasped and wriggled away. Amazingly, though one shoe had gone, I was still clutching my bag. Something lay on the pavement amidst the smashed glass. With a sharp little pain I realised it was Dad’s lovely angel, melted into great tears of glass and lead.
Angels. Raphael. Fire brigade. There was a phone box round the corner. My brain lurched suddenly into motion. Then someone behind me said, ‘Are you all right, miss?’ It was a soft male voice with an Irish accent. ‘Don’t worry, a fire engine’s already on its way.’
I shuffled round and looked up. He was a pale young man with short hair that glinted gold in the firelight. He crouched beside me and grasped my hand. ‘Did you jump? You’ll have had a lucky escape there. Any broken bones, do you think?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ I studied my hands, which hurt, and realised I was shaking, not with the cold but with shock. The man took off his coat and fitted it around my shoulders.
‘Thank you. But I’ve got to…’ I said. I couldn’t get the words out. I struggled up, waving him away, and shuffled my shoe back on. My legs ached, they had no strength, but nothing seemed broken. ‘Look,’ I told him, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Don’t–it’s dangerous!’ he called, as I half-ran, half-hopped around to the back of the shop. Thank goodness I had the keys in my bag. Scrabbling with the locks took a moment, but I got the workshop door open. Thick black smoke poured out and I reeled back, choking, my eyes streaming.
The man appeared at my side as if from nowhere and slammed the door shut. ‘You mustn’t go in there,’ he said, with quiet authority. ‘Breathe now. That’s right.’ Coughing and crying, I fell against the wall. He waited until I recovered.
‘You can’t be going in there. But it’s all right. See? There are no flames. Only the smoke.’ Together we peered through the window into the pitch blackness. He was right. The fire hadn’t yet reached the workshop through the thick Victorian dividing wall and the modern fire door. We both heard the distant wail of a siren. I felt his hand on my arm. ‘Come on, it’ll be all right.’ And, with me half-leaning on him, we made our way back to the street where a fire engine with softly flashing lights was negotiating its way past the parked cars.
‘Thank you,’ I gasped to the young man. He smiled and let me go. I turned back to the fire engine and completely forgot about him.
‘Anyone in there, d’you know, love?’ shouted the stocky fireman who jumped down first from the truck. Others, pouring out of the cab with comic swiftness, started scaling the machine, loosening catches, pulling out hoses.
‘No. There was only me.’ I started to shake again and pulled the coat more tightly around me.
‘’Ere, miss,’ said another fireman, and he draped a blanket round me. Hoses began to jet water on the flames.
A police car arrived. All around the Square lights had come on and people were emerging from their houses or leaning out of windows. Mr Broadbent from the bookshop tapped me on the shoulder and invited me up, somewhat bizarrely, to drink cocoa at his flat. I shook my head.
‘Fran,’ said a voice I knew. I whipped round. ‘Ben.’ I’d never felt so glad to see him. He’d pulled on jeans and a sweater over his pyjama top. I hugged him and his unshaven chin grazed my cheek. We stood, arms round each other and there was no time to think about anything but the present. I was grateful for that.
The vicar and his wife joined the throng, dressed but unkempt, and then the wine-bar owner, who looked as if he hadn’t been to bed yet. A police officer made us all move further back, out of the way of the firefighters, but the fire was quickly losing the battle against the hoses and it was over in no time at all.
Two firemen sloshed through the shop to check that the flames were completely out whilst several others busied themselves with plastic tape to fence off the
building. A young policeman asked me a host of questions and filled in a form with slow, careful writing while a paramedic checked me over.
‘Please, can I go in? I need to see…’ I started, still worried about Raphael, but a fireman said, ‘Sorry, love, it’s too hot in there. And you never know, the whole place might come crashing down.’
We watched one of the men bend down to pick up some pieces of something in the doorway. He beckoned to another officer, who walked over to look at it with him, and they both started hunting around. After a while they came over and showed us what they’d found.
‘It’s a firework, miss. Jammed through your letterbox. A nasty Hallowe’en trick. We’ve had one or two like this tonight. Fireworks start earlier every year.’
‘Oh,’ was all I could say, remembering the assault on Mr Broadbent’s shop and all the sinister revellers passing through the Square. It seemed senseless, but I was exhausted now and I couldn’t work it out.
One by one the spectators were moving away. Some, like Mr Broadbent, came up to me, saying how sad they were and offering help. I thanked them all, grateful for the second time in a month, that I had so many good neighbours.
It was only when Sarah Quentin came and put her arm around me that I finally cracked. I cried on her shoulder like a hurt child and she soothed me as she might have done her daughters when they were small.
Ben started to offer me a bed for the night but she interrupted, firmly insisting that I must go to them and stay in their elder daughter’s bedroom. She’d find me some clothes, she said. Mothering was what I needed, so I told the police where I’d be and gave a fireman back their blanket. It was then I realised I was still wearing the stranger’s coat. I looked round for the young man with the gold hair, but he wasn’t there.
‘Come on now,’ said Sarah firmly, so I meekly obeyed, allowing myself to be led away across the garden, with Ben and the vicar several steps behind.
When we reached Ben’s house he said, in a woeful voice, ‘Well, goodbye, then. I’m so sorry, Fran. About your shop–and, well…everything. I mean, I know I haven’t…’ but I cut him off by hugging him again quickly. I couldn’t cope with some eloquent apology right now.
It was three in the morning and I felt wide awake; my nerves were jangling. As I sat in the Quentins’ kitchen nursing a cup of tea, Lucifer crouched on the table, staring at me resentfully. There was no point in going to bed, I thought, but Sarah Quentin must have put something in my tea, because when she ushered me upstairs into a pretty pink and white bedroom where she helped me into a bed warmed by a hot-water bottle, I fell immediately into a deep sleep.
Chapter 32
And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
Luke XXII. 43
My dreams were awful, full of shouting and smoke and demonic laughter. When I awoke it was light, and my hands and face were red and burning. As I held them under the cold tap in the bathroom, I thought of Zac. Somehow I had to phone him, tell him what had happened. My next thought was of Raphael. We couldn’t leave him in the workshop. It probably wasn’t secure.
Sarah was up and making breakfast when I came downstairs in a dressing-gown I found on the back of the bedroom door. I saw from the clock that it was nearly eight.
‘We had a call from Amber,’ she explained. ‘We didn’t want to wake you. Jeremy’s gone to the hostel.’
‘Why the hostel?’ I repeated, more than a little dazed.
‘She was hysterical,’ she said. ‘Someone at the hostel told her about the fire…she thinks it’s something to do with that girl Lisa. Jeremy’s gone to pour oil on troubled waters.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Surely oil was the last thing we needed where fire was concerned, I thought vaguely. ‘He thinks Lisa might have started the fire?’
‘I’m sure Amber’s jumping to conclusions. The police seemed to think it a nasty prank, didn’t they? Now, Fran, let’s go and investigate Fenella’s wardrobe. There should be something in there that’ll fit you.’
The Quentins’ elder daughter was a couple of sizes bigger than me, so I felt slightly ridiculous in her baggy trousers, T-shirt and sweater, but they would have to do for now. It was nine o’clock and I told Sarah I had to go over to the shop to find Zac.
It must have been one of the biggest shocks of his life. His van skewed to a halt outside and I rushed over at once as he jumped out. ‘How the hell did this happen?’ he demanded.
‘Oh Zac,’ was all I could muster, for I was crying again.
He drew me close. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he whispered.
I stumbled out the story, and together we went to look at the ruins of Minster Glass.
Other people were stopping to gawp at the burned-out shop. At first sight it was awful, truly awful; a blackened morass of charred wood, broken glass and twisted metal, still smoking slightly in the cool morning air. Someone had taken a brush to the glass on the pavement, piling it all up in the doorway. Zac squatted to pull out bits of Dad’s angel that were sticking up out of the heap, but shoved them back. They were clearly beyond repair. Amber would be devastated.
‘Zac,’ I said in a low voice, ‘can we go round the back? I want to see what the workshop’s like.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re thinking the same thing I am, aren’t you?’ he said. I nodded.
I slotted a key into the back door of the workshop, then discovered I’d left it unlocked after that man had helped me the night before. I wondered again who he was. His coat must be in the rectory somewhere. I should give it back.
We walked into the workshop, where wisps of smoke still hung in the air, and saw that all the surfaces were coated in a fine black dust–but nothing had actually burned. I hardly dared approach Raphael but watched Zac walk over and trace a finger lightly over the glass. He smiled and looked up. ‘He’s fine! He’s really fine. Come and see.’
Like everything else, Raphael lay under a sooty shroud. All it would take to restore him was a soft brush and a good polish; I could see that right away. The relief was overwhelming. Once more, in his turbulent history, the angel had survived.
‘Thank goodness I put this away.’ Zac opened a cupboard and drew out The Angel Book.
‘Let’s take a look upstairs.’ I was feeling reckless now. ‘I don’t think the flames got there.’
I started towards the stairs, but he shouted, ‘No! Don’t be a fool. We’ve taken enough of a risk coming in here.’
‘Oh, come on,’ I said, anxious now. ‘I’m sure the fire hasn’t destroyed the main structure.’ Was my tuba OK? And I needed my clothes. The thoughts were tumbling in. What about all the books and papers and Laura’s diary? And the photo of my mother?
Zac marched over and grabbed my arm. ‘Fran, I know you’re my boss but I’m ordering you. You’re not to go up there.’
‘All right,’ I said fiercely, shaking off his arm. He looked a little hurt and I felt guilty. ‘Sorry,’ I said, looking around the workshop. ‘It’s just so awful, isn’t it? To think the shop’s lasted a century and a half and then this happens.’ And suddenly I couldn’t be brave any more. Just when I’d thought things couldn’t get any worse–first with Dad, and then Ben–I’d been dealt this blow. It was a mistake to cry. My eyes, already smarting from the smoke, were now streaming and painful.
‘Come on,’ Zac said. We were both coughing by now. ‘Let’s get out of here. We can move Raphael to the garage later.’
We went next door to the café. When she brought our cappuccinos over, Anita sat down with us. ‘On the house today, my loves,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do. So tell me how it happened.’
‘I was having some weird dream,’ I said, and stopped. The dream flickered bright in my memory, then died again. ‘I woke up–it must have been the smell of smoke or something. Or if it was a firework–that’s what the police think–perhaps I heard it go off?’
‘Did you realise it was a fire straight away?’
‘Oh yes. The air smelle
d hot, smoky, and there were strange crackling and roaring noises.’
‘I bet you were terrified,’ Anita said, shuddering. ‘I’d have shrieked the place down if it had been me. Here, I’ll get us some more coffee.’
I told Zac about the golden-haired stranger giving me his coat and preventing my crazy plan to go into the workshop. I’d been too much in shock to think, but I might have died of smoke inhalation. ‘I think my brain had really gone,’ I said ruefully.
‘I’m not sure it’s come back, judging from just now in the shop,’ said Zac.
‘Charming,’ I said, kicking him lightly under the table. He kicked me back and our legs locked for a moment. I felt my scorched cheeks grow hotter still.
‘I could hardly believe it when I got in this morning,’ Anita remarked, bringing more cappuccinos and a couple of pastries, and sliding back into her seat. ‘It shocked the life out of me. You’ve really had it rough lately, what with your dad and everything.’
My dad. It was as though a blade had cut through me.
‘We can’t tell him, Zac,’ I whispered.
‘I know,’ he replied.
By one o’clock we were all back at the vicarage eating Sarah’s home-made leek and potato soup when Jeremy returned. He looked strained and exhausted.
‘The police have only just gone,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken two of the girls.’
‘Lisa?’ I asked.
‘And one called Cassie.’
‘I remember her.’ The pudgy girl with the miserable face and the voice of a child.
‘She’s a friend of Lisa’s. Cassie says she and Lisa were out with a couple of young men last night. One of the boys had some fireworks. They dared Cassie to do it and she did.’
‘But why our shop?’
‘I think Amber’s had it right all along, but not exactly right. Lisa’s been very clear about her dislike for Amber and outspoken about Jo’s little crisis. You’re a friend of Jo’s and Amber’s employer. Perfect motive. The thing is, put Lisa under questioning and she gives up Cassie without a thought. She’s a nasty piece of work. And now Cassie could end up in jail.’