Vicious Circle (60 page)

“No previous history,” she repeated dreamily. “When he said that—about me—I suddenly realized that he was right. I had no history of anything at all. No past, because I’d never had the courage to go out and have a present.”

“And your religious beliefs?” I asked. I know how that sounds: you’ll just have to believe me when I say the tone wasn’t quite so snide as the words.

“I still believe in God,” she assured me earnestly. “But—I don’t think that I have a vocation for the church. I’m going to go back to my old job, and try to live a little more in the world.”

“What was your old job?” I asked.

“I was a librarian in Stepney.”

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have touched a straight line like that for a free weekend in Las Vegas. But tonight didn’t have an ordinary feel to it. “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s really going to—”

“We should be moving,” Juliet said.

She stood, and Susan followed suit, giving her a smile of radiant admiration.

“I’ll see you, Felix,” Juliet said.

“Sure.”

“Good night, Mr. Castor.”

This time I just nodded. Mine’s not going to be half as good as yours, I thought gloomily.

They left, arm in arm. All along the pavement as far as I was able to keep them in sight, men walked into walls and into each other and almost under cars as they turned to watch.

They say that if you suffer in this life you’ll come back as something better in the next.

I’m coming back as God.

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 shop front 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.