Vicky Angel Read online

  Vicky bursts out laughing. I start sniggering too. Sam looks up at me, his glasses knocked sideways so they're dangling from one ear. His eyes look pink and naked unframed. I feel meaner than ever. I give Vicky a shove to get her out of the way and run over to him.

  “Sam. I'm sorry. I wasn't really giggling at you.”

  “Feel free to have a belly laugh,” he mumbles into the grass.

  “Have you hurt yourself?”

  “No, I'm just lying here because I fancy a nap.”

  “Oh, Sam.” His legs still look weirdly froglike. Maybe they're both broken? I kneel down and start kneading his tracksuit gingerly. Sam tenses. Then he starts to shake. Is he sobbing? No, he's the one laughing now.

  “What's funny?”

  “You're tickling me! What are you doing? Feeling me up?”

  I take my hands off him as if he were red hot.

  “Of course not! I was checking you for broken bones.”

  “Just a broken heart,” Sam mutters, getting up on his hands and knees. He groans dramatically.

  “Are you sure you're OK?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, staggering to his feet. “How to make a complete prat of yourself in five easy stages.” He pats his big belly. “I'm not quite Mr. Fighting-Fit Six-Pack-Stomach just yet.”

  “Still, all this running is good for you. Good for us.”

  “Yeah, like you really need to lose weight, Jade.”

  “Well, I need to get fit.”

  “Does it … help any?” Sam says delicately.

  “Not a lot.”

  “Well …” Sam gestures. “After you. Don't worry. I won't tag on. If I stumble again just leave me lying there, right? If I'm still in the same comatose position when you jog back you'd better give me a prod.”

  “No, I'll sit on your tummy and use you as a picnic bench. Oh come on, Sam, let's run together. I'm sorry I was such a pig before.”

  “It's OK. I made allowances.”

  “Seems like everyone's been doing that. Which makes me feel really bad. And it's not like I'm the only one missing Vicky. I mean, you were obviously nuts about her too, Sam.”

  He stares at me. “She's not the one I'm nuts about!” he says.

  There's a long pause while I take this in. Then we both start running, red in the face. Sam can't be keen on me?

  “Didn't you realize?” Sam puffs.

  “Is it because you can't have a thing about Vicky now? So you've transferred it over to me?”

  “No! I've never been that keen on Vicky. I didn't like the way she always bossed you about.”

  “No she didn't. Well, she did, but I didn't mind.”

  I know she's lurking somewhere now, listening. She's going to be so angry with me. I decide I don't care too much when I'm running round with Sam but I get worried when I'm at home. I wait for her to come, feeling sick, scared she'll come, scared she won't. She waits until I'm asleep and then she's there screaming and I wake screaming too and tell myself it's only a dream, but it isn't a dream, it's real, Vicky's dead, and it's my fault….

  “You look like a little ghost, Jade!” Mum says in the morning, while Vicky laughs harshly.

  I must look really awful because Mrs. Cambridge comes up to me in the corridor and asks if I'm ill.

  “No, I'm fine, Mrs. Cambridge,” I say, trying to edge past her.

  “No, wait a minute, Jade. I want you to come to the library straight after lunch, at twelve-thirty sharp.”

  “But we're not allowed in the library then, Mrs. Cambridge.”

  “Not unless you have special permission. And I'm giving it to you. Twelve-thirty, right?”

  I don't make it up to the library until twenty to one. I haven't been held up having lunch. I haven't even bothered with it. It's just that I can't seem to arrive on time anywhere now. Time doesn't seem to have any meaning. Mostly I can't remember if it's morning or afternoon. Five minutes can take a lifetime, or five hours disappear altogether.

  Mrs. Cambridge is waiting in the library with an older woman. I wonder if she's a new teacher. She's got untidy gray hair straggling out of a tortoiseshell clip. She's wearing those baggy flowery trousers that arty grannies love and a plain gray top with an odd stiff white collar. Ah. I get it.

  I want to make a bolt for it but Mrs. Cambridge spots me through the glass door and leaps up. I have to go into the library and join them.

  “There you are, Jade! I was about to send out a search party. Now, this is Mrs. Wainwright.”

  “You're a vicar?”

  She laughs. “I wish. No, I'm still training, Jade. I've only got chaplain status at the moment.”

  “You might have seen Mrs. Wainwright at the Lakelands Shopping Centre,” says Mrs. Cambridge.

  I blink. Mrs. Wainwright doesn't look like she shops in Kookai and Morgan and La Senza.

  “I'm kind of attached to it. It's the town's true cathedral. Thousands worship there every day. The church can only muster ten good old women by way of congregation so I mill round the Centre with the shoppers and see if anyone wants a chat.”

  “And now Mrs. Wainwright's here to have a little chat with you, Jade,” says Mrs. Cambridge. “Well, I'd better dash. I'm supposed to be on playground duty. See you, Stevie.”

  So they're obviously mates. I can't believe this. Maybe Mrs. Wainwright is going to pray with me!

  “Oh God, this is so embarrassing,” I mumble.

  “Don't worry, I'm embarrassed too,” says Mrs. Wainwright. “And you mentioned God first, Jade, not me. I take it you're not a churchgoer?”

  “No.”

  “Well, relax, I'm not here to try to convert you— though should you feel the desire to come to church you'd be ever so welcome. No, Anne—Mrs. Cambridge—asked me to pop into the school because she knows I've done a grief counseling course.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh dear! You look like I've just announced I'm a dentist. Don't worry, I'm not going to drill into your soul. We can just have a chat. Or we can squirm silently for ten minutes and then call it a day.”

  “Look, it's very kind of you, but …”

  “But you feel it's none of my business.”

  “Well, that sounds rude.”

  “And you think I couldn't possibly understand. Here I am, a fat holy lady in silly trousers, smiling away without a care in the world. What do I know about grief? Well, listen, Jade, I don't know what it's like for you, but I do know what it's like for me.”

  I look at her.

  “I lost a child. I lost several babies, I kept having miscarriages, but then I had a little girl, the loveliest little girl, Jessica. Want to see her photo?” She brings out her wallet and shows me a picture of a little curly-haired kid in stripy dungarees.

  “She's cute.”

  “Yes, she was adorable. Everyone thought so, not just her besotted old mum and dad. But then she got ill. Leukemia. They can often cure it nowadays but they couldn't cure our Jess. She died when she was five.” She's talking in this completely matter-of-fact tone, as if she's telling me a weather forecast, but her eyes are bright and tears start sliding down her cheeks.

  I look away quickly.

  “I always cry when I talk about her,” she says, taking her glasses off and wiping the smears on her gray clerical top. “Have you done much crying, Jade?”

  “I don't really cry much.”

  “It can be quite soothing, you know.” She blows her nose—on a tissue, not her top—and puts her glasses back on. “Tears are meant to get rid of all the toxins. You feel lousy when you're grieving, right? Tears can heal. They've done this analysis on tears. Don't ask me how they do it, you hardly want to hold little thimbles to your eyes when you're in the midst of hysterics, but anyway, the chemical content of misery tears is different from the ordinary watering you get when you've got a bit of dust in your eye.” She peers at me. “You think I'm waffling a whole load of nonsense, don't you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Did you have any more chi