Vicious Circle

25

I saw her one more time, a few months later. Not Juliet, I mean: Abbie.

I was coming home late from some night of debauchery in Farringdon: I think it was the night that Paul finally made it down to the Jerusalem and called in my marker, but maybe that was a different time altogether. Anyway, I found myself walking along Old Street at one in the morning, dead drunk and more or less at peace with the world.

A small, wild quartet of ghosts burst through a shopfront ahead of me in a storm of shrieks and giggles, saw me watching them and stopped. All of them were girls, ranging in age from ten to about sixteen. They tried to compose their faces, like living girls faced suddenly with a stern teacher or a scary headmaster: and like living girls they couldn’t quite do it. One of them set the others off again and they fled, laughing like birds, across Golden Lane into a narrow alley between two office blocks. Three of them dissolved there into sudden, evanescent motes of light. Abbie lingered a moment, head bowed, as if fighting a brief battle with herself. I hoped she might look back, so I could wave, but I guess she didn’t want to be left behind. She picked up her steps and faded into the dark.

Not everyone gets the ending they deserve. Rafi deserves to have his evil twin ripped out and sent back to Hell with firecrackers tied to his tail. Pen deserves Rafi. Father Gwillam deserves martyrdom. Someone up above or maybe down below deals out destinies without ever giving us a chance to watch the shuffle or cut the deck. It’s not fair. But then, nobody ever told us it was going to be.

I whispered her name like an incantation.

Abbie Jeffers.

Fanke.

Torrington.

Peace.