Naked Angels. Judi James

loved playing tricks and he’d fooled her many times in the past. This was a good one, though – the best. She just wanted him to get on with it and jump out from where he was hiding. She didn’t mind losing, just this once, but she wished they’d come out, that was all.

      Evangeline had supposed they’d all be lurking somewhere in the house. She’d wandered off to hunt for them but a policeman had stopped her and taken her downstairs.

      ‘Where are you off to?’ he’d used the sort of kind tone people who have no kids of their own use when they talk to children. Evangeline had stared at him. It was her house. She had no need to explain. Thea never stopped her if she wanted a wander. She hadn’t been stopped since she was three years old and unsteady on the stairs.

      ‘I’m hunting for my parents,’ she told him. ‘They’re hiding here somewhere. It’s a game.’

      The policeman’s expression changed. ‘Aren’t you the Klippel girl?’ he asked.

      Evangeline nodded. The man looked sick suddenly, taking off his cap and running a white handkerchief over his forehead.

      ‘You’d better run on downstairs, honey,’ he said in a funny voice, ‘your mommy and daddy aren’t hiding here.’

      It was not long after that that the Bentley arrived and Darius’s mother climbed out of the back with her tight little smile and her leather high-heeled shoes that matched her handbag, and stole Evangeline back to her house in Cape Cod. She had nipped her up like a pinch of snuff and stolen her away right from under Miss Starmount’s nose and the teacher had not said a word, just sobbed and waved a hankie as the car had driven off. Evangeline had always thought teachers were there to look after you until your mother arrived. She hoped Thea would give the woman a good hiding as soon as she got back and discovered what she had done.

      ‘I can’t stay long,’ she told her grandma as they drove off. ‘I have to get back for my tea.’

      The old lady said nothing. She was sitting so straight her back never touched the seat and her eyes were runny-looking, as though she was trying hard not to laugh. Every so often her body gave a little shake, as though a snigger had finally leaked its way out, but when Evangeline looked she was never actually smiling.

      ‘You may eat your tea at my house.’ The answer had been so long coming Evangeline had forgotten the question. Grandma Klippel’s voice sounded thin and scratchy, like wire wool.

      Evangeline looked troubled. ‘Do you have banana cake?’ she asked.

      ‘Thea allows you to eat cake?’ The old woman sounded surprised.

      ‘Every day.’ Evangeline needed to clear these points up. She’d heard about kids who only ate cake and sweets as a treat. She had never been one of them.

      ‘Anything,’ she added, for safety. ‘I’m allowed to eat anything. Whatever I like. So is Lincoln.’ She didn’t want her brother going short, either.

      She expected an argument but Grandma Klippel was looking out of the window and had some sort of lace material pressed against her mouth. Maybe she got travel sick, like Patrick.

      ‘Evangeline, you’re going to have to learn to be good – very good,’ was all she said, and it came out in a whisper.

      ‘OK, Grandma.’

      ‘I can’t abide lying, Evangeline. You must always be truthful, dear. Whatever else you do you tell the truth at all times, do you hear?’

      Evangeline nodded. She studied the boils on the back of the chauffeur’s neck for a while. Perhaps it was the sight of them that made the old lady queasy. She’d better not hang around Patrick in the winter, then, because the old dog would get lazy in the cold and mooch about the house all day, and that brought on boils that made the chauffeur’s look like mere pimples in comparison.

      They drove on in silence past the bleak-looking sand flats, and the sky turned to slabs of slate, so that Evangeline wondered if it was night coming or a storm. A black crow circled the car for a while, making her shiver. She wasn’t scared of crows, not unless they got too near, but she was a bit scared of storms. She began to dig in her school bag.

      ‘What are you doing?’ Grandma Klippel perked up a bit, though her voice still sounded as though it came from far away.

      ‘Looking for my lucky picture.’ She pulled out the shot of Lincoln in the mouse ears. ‘Look.’ It just had to make the old lady laugh. That picture made everyone laugh, guaranteed.

      Grandma Klippel took the photo from Evangeline. Her arm smelt of perfume, which was strange, because Thea only wore perfume when she was going somewhere special. She watched the old woman’s face. It was a while before she could turn her eyes towards the shot and when she did she didn’t laugh, she looked as though she’d been kicked. A bit of her mouth sort of crumpled away and her eyes got thinner, like stick-beans.

      ‘He doesn’t mind people laughing,’ Evangeline told her, in case she thought it was rude or something.

      The old woman raised a finger and touched it to the part of the photo that had Lincoln’s face on it. The crow swooped so close its wing touched the window. Evangeline cried out and when she looked back the photo was back on her lap and her grandmother was gazing out at the sea again. Only this time the hankie was stuffed harder against her mouth.

      Evangeline was asleep by the time they reached the house and she only woke up as the chauffeur tried to lift her out of the car seat. She wriggled a lot. She didn’t want to be lifted. She wasn’t a baby. Then she took one look at the house and she knew more than anything that she wanted to go home.

      They were absolutely in the middle of nowhere. There was the house and the car and there was them and then – nothing, just the sand and the sea and a handful of gulls overhead who screamed as though they were being gutted alive. Evangeline hated the sea. She turned to look up at her grandmother. This couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be her home.

      ‘You live here?’ she asked. She didn’t mean to be rude, she just wanted to check the facts.

      Grandma Klippel nodded. ‘Will you come inside? It’ll get chilly out here soon.’

      Evangeline swallowed. ‘I think I ought to be getting back.’ No wonder they’d never had the grandmother to visit – she’d have melted away in all the noise and doggy racket of the house in Boston.

      The old lady looked down at her then, looked her right in the eye for the very first time: ‘This is your home now, dear,’ she said. ‘You must live here, with me.’

      Evangeline looked back at the house. The place was huge. There must have been over a hundred windows staring back at her. She could see the sky reflected in those windows – flat and grey, like curtains that needed a rinse. Saul Peterson would have needed a whole month off tending the cranberries to paint a place that size.

      It was made of clapboard that was painted a dirty blue colour, like the sea should have been, with white around the windows and the doorway. Someone had made an ugly garland around the porch by pressing clamshells into cement. In front of the house were sand dunes and behind the house was the sea. It looked as though the house had turned its back on the ocean altogether because there were no windows on the lower floors on that side. The view from everywhere but upstairs would be of the grass-spiked dunes out front.

      ‘Patrick won’t like it here,’ Evangeline said. The sand would blow into his eyes and between his paws. They’d taken him onto the beach last year and he’d come back whining with sores between his pads. There were no trees to climb, either. She’d promised Lincoln they’d be climbing trees before the fall. What were her parents thinking of, moving out here?

      Her grandmother was going into the house anyway. Evangeline picked up her school bag and ran after her.

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