The Guardian Angel

  The Guardian Angel

  Copyright ©2015 Liam Livings

  First Edition

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover design by Meredith Russell

  Edited by Sue Adams

  Published by Love Lane Books Limited

  ISBN 978-1-78564-028-5

  All Rights Reserved

  This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee. Such action is illegal and in violation of Copyright Law.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Dedication

  This one’s for Nick G, my wonderful, complicated, enthusiastic friend who always lived his life in screaming colour and who died suddenly in February 2015 at thirty-three years old. I will never forget you, Nick. I’m so pleased you came into my life, with your natty waistcoats, bowls of microwave popcorn in the office, and naughty/filthy sense of humour. I’m so pleased you found your happy ever after with R. For the record, I agree with you, food really is an everyday luxury. I disagree with you, Enya isn’t inferior. And Death Becomes Her really is the most camp film on earth. Every time I watch it, I will remember you, Nick.

  To my readers, I hope you enjoy spending time in this magical world I’ve written.

  Love and light, Liam xxx

  * * * * *

  Sometimes Anna and I could provide comfort for each other. She developed a theory that our lives were so awful because our guardian angels had gone on sabbaticals, and that currently we were being minded by temps who took no pride in their work.

  “They do the bare minimum. We won’t get our hands caught in a mincing machine, but that’s all they’ll do for us.”

  Angels, by Marian Keyes.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 1

  It all started on my way back from the wrong job. I’d just turned it down because I couldn’t stand to listen to that lot going on about sustainability this and putting bees on the roofs of houses that. I just wanted them all to fuck off. I didn’t need their job offer. I had a good feeling the law firm application would get me onto their graduate scheme. I knew it. I could feel it in my water.

  The law firm sent me a letter thanking me for the application. And good luck with my other job searching.

  Fuck it.

  I returned to the office just west of Liverpool Street station to do my last week of temping—my last week temping there, after a long series of temping jobs, some of which had made me want to jump under the train some mornings, others I could just sail through with my brain in neutral. And now this one. Well, this one was fine.

  It had been fine. At first I thought it was quite interesting to try to do what New York City had done with its unloved, unknown areas, and name them. Like their SoHo was the area south of Houston Street. TriBeCa was the Triangle Below Canal Street. All this was interesting and news to me when I’d started at the Between Town Partnership. They were trying to make the area between the City of London, Liverpool Street, and the West End, happen. At the moment it was a sort of nowhere between the proper shopping of the West End and the financial district—a sort of no man’s land. No one had reason to go there specifically, unless they worked there, as I had for a variable three months.

  I turned on my PC, went to the kitchen to make myself an instant coffee, but not Nescafé because they were doing something nasty about bottle-feeding in Third World countries. I had listened at the time, a bit, but had just internally rolled my eyes. No, this was all free-range, organic, preloved coffee. Shame it still tasted of shit, though.

  I sat at my PC and noticed a white feather next to the mouse. I picked it up, looked at it closely, noticing it was pretty perfect as far as feathers went, and then threw it in the bin.

  The morning passed without incident: spreadsheets about the CO2 output of various buildings, some brainstorming for this new area, and another offer of an extension to my contract.

  “I’ll think about it, thanks,” I said, folding the offer letter into my bag and leaving for lunch.

  I sat on a bench in a little park. The grass was covered in office workers, each eating their lunch and grabbing some air and sun for a moment in their day. I pulled out the offer letter from my bag, and another perfect white feather fell into my lap. This one was a bit larger—as big as my index finger—and still perfectly white, still not bent or dirty. I folded it back with the offer letter, then rang Amy at work. She’d know what to do.

  “Good morning, The Music and Video Shop, how can I help you?”

  “It’s me. How’s your morning?”

  She swapped her phone voice for her proper, slightly Welsh accent. “Busy as it goes. I can’t believe people still actually come into a shop to buy this stuff.”

  “Just be thankful they’re trying to close down Pirate Cove. And there’s plenty of people who don’t know how to use it anyway, playing it safe, buying DVDs and CDs from you lot.” I paused, thinking about my morning, my situation, and the feathers; she’d want to hear about those. “So, white feathers, what do they mean?”

  “Oh, exciting! I’m due my break. I’ll make myself an herbal tea and call you from the staffroom.” After some muffled shouts about breaks, she rang off.

  I stared at the office workers, talking on their mobiles, shovelling lunch into their faces, or sitting in groups, laughing and joking together. A bus stopped outside the black iron railings of the park and filled the air with fumes and a screeching of its brakes.

  My mobile rang with Amy’s number. “What else except this feather?”

  “I’m still debating if I could really be that person and accept the offer of the job and stay longer at this place. I mean, I know it’s okay money. I know it’ll mean I can pay the mortgage and eat for a bit longer without resorting to selling my body. I’m aware of all that. But really, Between Town Partnership? I just can’t be arsed. It’s balls, isn’t it? It’s all a load of balls, and I just can’t decide if I can bear it five days a week for another three months. I didn’t go to uni for three years to do this shite, did I? All that debt—it’s got to be worth more than this?”

  “Right, I’m here now.” She slurped from the usual dandelion and burdock herbal tea.

  I could practically smell its vileness wafting down the phone. “So?�
��

  “Take it if you want. Don’t take it if you don’t want. You can always get a different job if something comes up. At least you’ve got this one bagged.”

  “Says the woman who still works at her ‘just for the summer holidays at uni’ job.”

  “Say what you want, Richard, but I’ll be a manager within a year and I’m already managing easy listening and books, so it’s looking up.”

  “Amy, is that really looking up? Is that genuinely your definition of looking up? Because if it is, I’m very disappointed in you.”

  “I suppose I’m just more pragmatic about these things. Look, you’ve got to work no matter what. No option. No rich parents willing to pay for you to loll about after uni. No lottery win in the pipeline?”

  I shook my head and mumbled, “No.”

  “Right. Well, then, beggars can’t be choosers. In this economy, you should be glad of the offer and take it. Think about it.”

  “But I don’t want to do this. I don’t give a shit about what they’re doing. Not only is my heart not in it, my body, soul, and mind aren’t in it either. And I just don’t think I’m ready, this early in my career, to sacrifice all that just for a pay cheque each month.”

  “It’s three months, not indentured servitude tied to your home. Three months. Think about it.”

  “I will.” I knew I wouldn’t. I’d already thought about it, and talking to Amy now was just reinforcing my original decision. “So, the white feathers. Bottom line, what’s it about, according to your sources, I mean. Actually, it’s just a stray white feather or two, but I’m up for a laugh, so go on, entertain me….”

  “Carry on like that and I’ll put the phone down.”

  “Sorry. I am really interested. It’ll make me smile, ’cause God knows nothing else today will. I am, as they say, all ears.”

  Amy took a long gulp of her tea, cleared her throat, and began. “There’s many different theories about the white feathers. Some people think it’s the spirits of dead relatives trying to get in touch with the living—”

  “I don’t like the sound of that. Imagine who it could be! Granny, angry ’cause I never visited her enough when she was alive, or that strange Auntie Muriel with the big smock dresses, enormous bosom, and wet kisses of bright red lipstick, smothering me every time I visited.” I shuddered at the memory. “Sorry, go on. It’s interesting, and I’m not being sarcastic. I’m really interested.”

  “Or it could be something to do with fairies. People think there are little fairies and pixies around us all the time, and sometimes one of their little wings brushes against something and knocks off a feather.”

  I blew a long raspberry down the phone and rolled my eyes, grateful she couldn’t see me.

  “I can soon put the phone down, you know. I’m not saying it’s what I believe, it’s general theories. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, then explained that yes, that was what I wanted. “Sorry,” I added.

  “So the fairies knock their wings—” She paused and I imagined her counting off the reasons on her hands. “—oh yes, and then there’s the angels theory. People believe—some people—that everyone has a guardian angel looking after them and the white feathers are their way of trying to get in touch with the person they’re looking after.”

  “Why would they do that?” This sounded even more far-fetched than the fairy explanation, and I knew that one was shite.

  “Lots of reasons: to tell you they’re helping you with something, to help guide you to make a particular decision, loads of reasons.”

  “Shit, do you think this means I’m meant to stay at this job? That it’s my destiny to think of a natty name for the area of London west of Liverpool Street and east of Holborn viaduct?” I paused and took a deep breath. “Fuck me. If that’s it, I might as well jump in the Thames now and be done with it.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. It doesn’t suit you, Richard. I read somewhere that some bloke said he found a white feather and it was his guardian angel trying to say he was sorry for not giving him as much good luck as he’d have liked, but he was still learning.”

  “So the angels have L-plates, do they? Is there a British School of Angeling they go to, sitting next to more experienced guardian angels and learning how to stop people choosing the wrong things or to stop them from falling down manholes? I don’t think so.”

  “Believe what you want to, but I’m done. I did what you asked, and it’s up to you if you want to believe it.”

  “It certainly is. Thanks, talk soon.” I put the phone down.

  Chapter 2

  I finished the week at the Between Town Partnership and attended my own half-arsed leaving do, consisting of a gift pack of toiletries and a box of chocolate chip cookies. Siobhan the receptionist-stroke-HR person said there weren’t any cakes left in the whole of the City of London, so she’d got me biscuits instead. We stood around the plate of biscuits, dunking them in our tea—no wine before five thirty. They promised to keep in touch and said they’d definitely see me around.

  Around where? Why am I going to come to this little office again? At every temp job I’d left over the last nine months since graduating, it had been the same drill as this. Half-arsed leaving party, because when you take a short contract you always know it’s ending, even at the start. But this etiquette seems to have grown where you still do a leaving party, just like you would for someone who’s worked there for twenty years. And at the party, we’d all stand around saying we were bound to bump into each other again soon. “Moving in the same circles” was often mentioned. At a factory that made and distributed toilet roll to hotels, when the manager said that remark, I’d just nodded while staring at a piece of stained carpet in the distance. If I move in these same circles again, something will have gone very wrong with my life.

  Now they patted me on the back. Siobhan gave me my HR paperwork once I handed in my ID badge and swipe card. It all felt quite ceremonious in its own sad little way as I handed back my stapler. She said I could keep the pen and notepad I’d written in.

  A small victory.

  “Where you working next?” someone who worked in Finance asked, but whose name I’d never bothered to find out.

  “I’ve got some applications in: graduate jobs, graduate schemes, that sort of thing. Keep your fingers crossed for me.” I smiled weakly.

  Finance man smiled back, then made two thumbs up. “Stay in touch!”

  He was nice. He is nice. We could have been friends if I’d bothered to find out his name. Not now—that ship had sailed.

  I left for the Tube and made my way back to north London, to the flat in Tufnell Park, which had seemed so perfect when I was sharing it with Jenny, my friend from uni. Until just as we graduated, we fell out. In a rather strange way.

  “What’s wrong?” I’d asked one night, almost a year ago, both of us slumped in front of the TV after a day of job-hunting.

  “Not that you’d care?” she spat, and lit a Silk Cut Ultra cigarette.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve failed.”

  “Job-hunting… look, it’s not easy. I know that too. I can give you a hand. We’ll do it together.”

  “No. Uni, everything. I’ve failed.”

  “What did you get?” I’d just scraped a 2:1 but didn’t want to ram it down her throat.

  She flicked some ash into the Quaglino’s ashtray we’d nicked one night, both of us mindless pissed and out of control, rolling home in the small hours. Good times.

  I started, realising she wasn’t going to reply. “2:2? Or was it a third? It’s not too bad. You can still get a lot of jobs with that. And it’s a good university, this. Best for teaching in the south-east they say, and history apparently.”

  “I didn’t do teaching, or history. You know that.”

  “What did you get?”

  “Ungraded.”

  Now this had been a surprise. This I hadn’t expected. Jenny wasn’t exactly
an academic. She wasn’t a “get your books out when you get the essay questions” sort of girl. And in fairness, I wasn’t that sort of boy either. We’d sort of breezed through the other two years together, scraping by with a C here and a B minus there, propping each other up with coffee when we pulled an all-nighter to finish an essay due the week before, having begged our tutor to give us another extension. Jenny had that many dead grandparents, I feared for their neighbours—there must be something in the water round her way.

  And okay, so we did get a bit too into the London scene. Both of us grew up in, as she described it, “Buttfuck nowhere.” Jenny from rural Gloucestershire’s rolling hills and farms, and me from Wiltshire, from a tiny village the other side of Salisbury where the nearest petrol station or big town was a forty-minute drive away.

  Coming to London was a bit like being let loose in a sweet shop. I’d frequently had to remind Jenny why we were actually at uni in London.

  “It’s your fault, I blame you,” she said, staring me in the eyes.

  “How’d you work out that one?”

  “Dragging me to night clubs in the week, making me stay out all night when I’ve got an essay deadline.” She picked up the ashtray. “This. This is a symbol for our recklessness in uni, and I blame you for it.”

  “But I did all those things with you. And I still got my essays in—just about—on time.”

  “That’s the bit you didn’t tell me. In the third year, it’s all so much harder. And after going out, somehow you managed to still get your work done. Or had you done it before we went out?” She peered at me, like she’d just found me furkling through her purse.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I’d done it, sometimes not.” I shrugged. “I assumed you were working away on your laptop in your room too. You never said anything?”

  “I was so hung-over one day, I turned on Carrie, and as I opened the document to start writing my essay, I threw up all over the desk. I was lucky to have saved Carrie from that.”