Naked Angels. Judi James

checked it all over and anyway she would have heard Lincoln yelling at night, the rooms were so quiet. Which meant they were on their way, coming for her.

      Maybe the clue was in the bit about being so good and truthful. Her grandma had said she had to be good and tell the truth, always. Good children always got their reward; she’d been told that at school often enough. Maybe they were seeing just how good she could be before they came back and surprised her. Being good would be hard, then, because she didn’t feel good, she felt mad that they’d gone at all.

      Grandma Klippel lived mainly on her own, apart from a handful of staff. As well as the chauffeur, who lived in, there was Mrs O’Reilly, an elderly Irish woman bent up with arthritis who nevertheless hobbled the length of the beach each day with a bag full of half-dead flowers for the house, to cook and serve the meals. The flowers were always anemones. Grandma Klippel liked vases full of them all around the place. By the first day their heads would start to droop and by the next they were powdering tables and mantelpieces with their pollen. Mrs O’Reilly was a good person, even though she’d once been bad. Mrs O’Reilly had been good for many many years now, according to Grandma Klippel, and she didn’t seem to have that much to show for it.

      Then there was the woman’s son, Evan. Evan was simple, like a child, but he could polish like a demon and came up for an hour each morning, just to clean the place. When he cleaned he made a racket with his breathing, like an old man. Evangeline wondered whether he was allergic to all the pollen he dusted.

      Evangeline waited for her parents, watching at the window of her room, where she could see for miles. Few cars came by, though, and none ever stopped, apart from the vans with deliveries.

      Twice a day a small plane flew by and either buzzed over the house or trawled along the shoreline like a lazy fly. Mrs O’Reilly swore it was Evan’s father flying the plane and Evan himself waved at it sometimes and did a mad frenzied sort of hopping dance along the beach after it. But Grandma Klippel told Evangeline it had nothing to do with Mrs O’Reilly or her son. She said Evan had no father, which was why he was simple.

      The waiting made Evangeline cry a lot. She wasn’t scared, exactly, but she was tired and impatient and her head ached because it was full of so many questions.

      The house was mainly hollow inside and a lot of the rooms stood empty. The ones that didn’t were filled with old things – dangerous things that broke if you only looked at them. Darius had brought home a few antiques once but these rooms were crammed with them. They were mostly too fancy for Evangeline’s taste; she liked new things you could play with. Grandma Klippel’s belongings made her feel jumpy and nervous. She wondered how Evan, who was fat and hopped about almost as much as Patrick, ever got by without breaking much as he polished. Then she discovered that Grandma Klippel stuck the ornaments down with tape each morning before he came.

      The sea made her twitchy, too. Sometimes she would wake up frightened that it had come right up to the house. It might seep in through the doors and flood the cellar. She could hear it in the dark like a whispering, and often she thought she could make out whole words.

      ‘They’re not coming back,’ the sea whispered one night.

      ‘What?’ It woke her. She stood shivering at the window and watched it heaving. Her eyes were popping and her ears almost fell off her head, they were straining so hard.

      ‘They’re not coming back.’ Did she hear right or was she dreaming? What did it know? She listened till her ears actually ached with the effort. When you listened so hard to silence you thought you could hear anything. She even thought she heard her grandmother crying away in her bedroom.

      ‘They’re not coming back.’ The idea was ridiculous. Parents didn’t just leave their kids – not responsible parents, like hers. Besides, she’d been good for weeks and she’d even picked a spot on the bed for Patrick to sleep on. Sleeping on the bed at night might make up for all the sand.

      Grandma Klippel was difficult company. Despite living alone she still carried on as though she had a house full of people, minding all her manners and dressing properly for dinner. Maybe she did it for Mrs O’Reilly and Evan. Evangeline had never dressed up for dinner before, except at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Now she did, though, because Grandma Klippel insisted on it. She also insisted Evangeline sit up straight all the time and she corrected her grammar when she said something wrong.

      They said prayers before they ate and more prayers at night. Mrs O’Reilly told Evangeline her grandmother had been a regular at the church along the coast for many many years. That was how they met, Mrs O’Reilly said; she tended the flowers there and Grandma Klippel played the organ on Sundays and did good works during the week. She’d stopped going since Evangeline came to live with them, though. The day before she’d left for Boston was the last day they’d seen her there for prayers. The priest came to the house several times for visits, but Grandma Klippel had never once set foot in that church again.

      Evangeline began to wonder how Darius ever grew up so normal.

      ‘Did Darius live here when he was a child?’ she asked her grandmother over breakfast.

      The old lady always looked surprised when she spoke, as though she’d forgotten she was there, and she always paused a long while before answering, too.

      ‘He most certainly did,’ she told Evangeline.

      ‘Did he mind the sea?’

      ‘Mind it? He loved it. It was his passion – sailing, swimming, fishing for crabs down by the old rocks.’

      She touched Evangeline on the arm. ‘Darius was a very special child, dear. Very talented. Very beautiful. So was your mother. You have a lot to live up to, you know. You have to be special too, Evangeline. Better than all the other children. It would please me so much. Do you understand?’

      Evangeline looked thoughtful.

      ‘Is that why Darius wants us to move back out here again?’ she asked. ‘Because he misses the sea?’

      The old lady sniffed. She had blue veins and brown spots on the backs of her hands and sometimes you could see her wrinkles through her make-up.

      ‘Darius is not coming back here, Evangeline,’ she said slowly. ‘They have gone, dear, all of them. My son, your mother. The baby. Even the dog. I’m sorry.’

      ‘Gone where?’ Evangeline looked at her boiled egg and the toast that Mrs O’Reilly had cut into strips. The egg was hard in the middle and dented when she poked the bread into it. Also there was no salt, there never was. For some reason Grandma Klippel would not have the stuff in the house. If you wanted salt you got it outside all right: salt on your face that the sea-spray spat up, salt on your mouth if you forgot to keep it closed, and salt caked onto just about everything that lay in the sea’s path.

      There was a long silence before Evangeline looked up.

      ‘Gone where?’ she repeated.

      Her grandmother dyed her hair, she was sure of it. When you dyed white hair chestnut what you got was orange. False teeth and dyed hair. The old lady’s hair was the colour of pine pollen.

      ‘Gone … away,’ Grandma Klippel replied. Her mouth was tugging at the corners again. Evangeline just stared, even though she wasn’t allowed to. The tickle of fear had started in the back of her throat. She wanted to go on eating egg but the tickle wouldn’t let her.

      ‘How long for?’

      Grandma Klippel sighed. ‘For ever. I’m sorry.’ Evangeline nodded. A sliver of yolk managed its way down the back of her throat after all.

      ‘Are they on holiday?’ she asked.

      The old lady shook her head.

      ‘They just went, dear. You must understand that they are not coming back. Ever. They just had to go away, that was all.’

      ‘Without me?’ It had to be asked. The yolk was slipping back up again, like snot. ‘Without you.’ ‘I won’t see them again?’ ‘No.’