Dark Avenging Angel (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

Two years flashed by. Two years when life felt good. I woke each morning, fired up and ready to go to work. I made friends I could laugh with, drink with and work with. Even the odd boyfriend came and went, but with no regrets. I learned what most people discover when they’re children—how to have fun.

I didn’t see my angel again, and as time passed, I convinced myself that her chapter in my life was closed. Sealed forever. Thanks to her, the demons of my past had left. She could help someone else now. I didn’t even have my dream anymore. The image of that tuxedoed singer faded from my memory. I had grown up.

How naïve I was.

I had a new best friend too. Lucy Pargiter. She was my colleague in display. We worked well together, found we both enjoyed the same films, laughed at the same comedians and even enjoyed similar tastes in music. Fortunately our tastes in men differed, which is how she introduced me to John Dudley.

John was thirty-five, divorced, no children. His height of six foot two suited him and he bore it with confidence. Some tall men stoop, as if they’re ashamed of towering over most folk. Not John. He entered a room and took control of it, but not in an obtrusive or arrogant way. Charismatic, sensitive. Small wonder I fell in love with him almost at our first meeting.

He must have seen something he liked too because he asked me out again. Lucy was delighted.

“I’m really pleased you two are getting along,” she said, tossing back her long, auburn hair. “It’s about time John met someone. He’s been on his own far too long.”

“I’m surprised you two didn’t get together,” I said as we sipped red wine in the busy pub after work. “You’ve known each other forever.”

She fingered the stem of her glass. “That’s the reason, I think. He was my brother’s best friend at school. I’ve known him pretty much all my life and it would feel sort of incestuous if we were anything more than friends.”

I smiled. “Can’t say I’m sorry you feel like that.”

Lucy laughed. “Besides, he’s really not my type. I prefer blond, suntanned guys. Like George Michael.”

“Well you won’t get far with him.”

She laughed. “Why not? I reckon I stand as good a chance as anyone. I just have to find a way to meet him, sweep him off his feet and—”

“He’s gay.”

Lucy looked as if I’d shot her. “He’s
not
.”

“Most definitely.”

“How do you know?”

“Gordon told me.” Gordon was one of my telesales team. “He said it takes one to know one and George Michael definitely
is
one.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh for heaven’s sake. Bang goes another one. It’s true what they say, you know. All the good men are either married or gay. Why can’t I find a gorgeous, hunky, available straight guy?”

She didn’t. At least not for a while.

I suppose it was inevitable that our evenings would dwindle away as my relationship with John became more intense.

“You see Lu whenever you want,” he said. “We’re not stuck together with Super Glue. I’m quite capable of spending a night at home on my own. Or I might even venture out to the pub…” he struck a dramatic pose, “…alone.”

I punched him and our mock fight ended in bed, as always. The truth was, I couldn’t wait to rush home to him every evening. He touched parts of me no other man had ever aroused before. This man entered my head, body and soul and took up residence there. For the first time in my life, I gave myself up totally to the love of one man.

Unaccustomed waves of euphoria set me laughing for no reason or smiling at nothing. Life surged through me. I had never experienced this and I prayed with all my heart it would never end.

Mum, too, had got a new life, new friends and interests. She’d taken up golf and bridge. She’d even started embroidery, and had gone on four holidays abroad with a group of women of a similar age. I traveled up to see her every month and each time she seemed to grow younger. Her eyes were alive and shining. For the first time, she dressed with confidence and walked tall.

“This is how I used to be, before your father,” she said.

We never discussed him. He was as dead to us as his ashes which we never collected from the crematorium. I hoped they’d long ago been thrown out with all the other garbage.

A year after we met, John moved in. Even after all the months we had been together, every time I touched him, a thrill shot through me. Lucy and I saw each other at work, but hardly ever anywhere else. She never complained or seemed to harbor any jealousy, whereas I would get pangs of guilt I pushed to one side.

I shared my feelings with John. “If only Lucy could find someone of her own. She deserves to be happy too.”

John pinched my chin between his thumb and forefinger and flashed that same smile that had won me over the first time we met. “Lucy is fine. She’ll find someone when she’s ready. Don’t worry so much.”

We were watching TV.
Top of the Pops
was on and there was a new number one. My mind was on the induction course I would be conducting the next day for some new recruits, so I was paying scant attention.

But when a familiar face flashed onto the screen, I nearly dropped my mug of coffee.

“Oh my God! It
can’t
be him.”

“Who can’t be whom?” John took the mug from me and followed my gaze. “Oh, you mean Cavour? It’s not a bad song. Different.”

My hands trembled. In the video, the tuxedoed singer stood at the microphone, backed by three young women in scanty, gold skirts and bra tops. John was right about the song. Pop fused with rap, mashed up with a little opera. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did, and he had the number one to prove it.

“He’s singing in Italian, isn’t he?” I said, still unable to get my head around what I was seeing.

“Yes, but the song changes to English partway through.”

Right on cue, the rap was in English, and as I heard him speak, a chill ran down my spine. I knew that voice with its gentle, seductive accent.

I squirmed as Cavour stared straight at the camera in a close-up. Straight at me. I jumped at the last line of the chorus.

“You can have anything you want. Everything.”

I cried out.

John put his arms around me “What the hell’s wrong, Jane? You’re shaking.”

I tore my gaze away from the TV. How could I tell him without sounding crazy? How on earth would I ever be able to explain those dreams of a few years ago? Or the dark angel who had made sure I was avenged? It all seemed so far away now. Almost as if it never happened. I should just wave it away.

But I couldn’t. Hell, I was probably going to marry this man. I couldn’t keep such a secret from him. After all, I didn’t have to tell him all of it, did I? Memories of Stuart’s skin peeling from his bones pushed their way into my unwilling mind. The sound of my father’s spirit screaming in torment…

No, John didn’t need to know all of it. Just the relevant bit. Just this bit. For now, anyway.

The song ended. I released myself from John’s grasp, grabbed the remote and switched the television off.

He never took his eyes off me for one second. A frown creased his face. The face I adored so much, with its dark-brown eyes I could melt into; the glossy, black hair I loved to stroke.

I swallowed hard. “You’re going to think I’m crazy and you’re probably right.”

The frown vanished, replaced with a smile. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I love you.”

“I love you too, but you haven’t heard what I’m going to say yet. That singer. Cavour. I’ve seen him before. I’ve dreamed about him.”

John took my hands in his. “Should I be jealous?”

I shook my head. “No. Nothing like that. This was when I was in Baileyborough. I’ve told you about that horrible time in my life.”

“Yes, and the boss who disappeared just after he’d been fired. Wonder whatever happened to him?”

I shook my head. “The point is, I’d never seen Cavour until just now, but he’s the spitting image of the man I dreamed about. He told me I could have anything I wanted. Everything I wanted. Just like in the song. But he never showed me how.”

“My dreams never make any sense. I’m always somewhere I don’t remember, with people I either know or don’t know, and then I wake up.”

“I can’t remember my dreams much these days, but back then the dream I had about this man happened most nights. Then, when I left Baileyborough it stopped.”

“And tonight you’ve seen someone who reminds you of him.”

I was about to protest; to say it didn’t just
resemble
him, it
was
him. But that would have sounded crazy, wouldn’t it?

“Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right. Coincidence, that’s all.”

But it bothered me. I didn’t dare tell John how much.

The song, appropriately titled “Everything”, stayed at number one for three weeks. Next day, I heard it everywhere. In shops. At work. On my car radio—at least there I could switch it off.

At six thirty that night, the salad was ready and on the table. The steaks were waiting to be grilled. I switched on the TV in time for a pop-music show. A minute later and a different video for Cavour’s number one single, “Everything”, began.

This one showed him in a tuxedo, on a dance floor in a sumptuous lemon-and-white ballroom glittering with chandeliers, and people enjoying a lavish party. Could the scene become any more surreal? Only if my dream self appeared as his dance partner, I suppose.

In the close-ups, his face stared out at me from the screen. The resemblance was uncanny, even allowing for lapses of memory. In that moment, I knew I had to find out all I could about this Italian singer who had invaded my dreams and promised me the world.

Of course, these days it would be easy—just go on the Internet. In the 1980s, research required more of an effort. It meant a visit to the library.

The following evening it was open late, so I took myself there while John attended another meeting. It didn’t help that I was going from a standing start. I knew nothing about him, not even his real name, but I picked up the latest edition of a hefty encyclopedia and soon found what I was looking for.

Cavour, aka Carlo Castiglione. Born Naples, January 15, 1947, died Rome, February 10, 1979…

My heart thumped. Dead?

Singer, musician and songwriter. Adopted the name Cavour in tribute to his hero, the father of Italian unification and independence…

There was little else. I searched more books, but they were just too out of date to provide me with any helpful information. Not that I really knew what I was looking for, anyway.

I asked the librarian if she had any other sources or newspaper archives I could search. She did. Microfiche of a trade music paper from the exact time he died. Surely, somewhere, there would be an obituary with more detail. Maybe even some kind of contact information. Someone I could trace who had known him well and might be able to throw some light on what this man, who must have already been dead, had been doing invading my dreams and speaking in song lyrics.

I discovered from the librarian that the master recording of “Everything” had only been found six months before when his mother was clearing out some of his belongings.

Yet more to ponder.

By now I was convinced there was some sort of bond between us, not that it made any sense. Why me, for heaven’s sake?

I sat in front of the microfiche screen and fiddled with the dials. The machine squeaked a little as page after page flashed up clearly in front of me until I found something.

Around three paragraphs in, I learned he had died alone in a fire at his home in a converted palace on the outskirts of Rome. An investigation was launched into the cause of the blaze, but was shut down within twenty-four hours. No explanation had been forthcoming from the police.

Speculation continues. Cavour enjoyed a life of excess. He epitomized the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll lifestyle he had aspired to as a teenager growing up in the back streets of Naples. A long-term interest in the dark arts led to him proclaiming that his death would not be the end.

Looked like he’d got that right. The next sentence chilled me.

It also made him powerful enemies within the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church held considerable influence in Italy and so much was starting to emerge about dark forces within the Vatican itself. Could that explain why the inquiry was shut down before it had even begun? Maybe people were right to speculate about the cause of that fire.

The library was closing, so I left. That night I couldn’t sleep. Nor the next night.

More than once, John found me nursing a mug of tea at three in the morning. The fourth time it happened, he refused to go back to bed.

“This has become too much of a habit, Jane. I wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not there. You’re washed out. Come on, tell me what’s on your mind.”

Could I tell him? Would he just laugh at me? I had to take the chance.

“It’s that singer—Cavour. I don’t understand how he could have appeared in 1979 as a recurring dream, in a scene so much like one of the videos of that song “Everything”. And it’s not as if the video were made at the time he recorded that song either. They’ve cobbled it together from old footage. They only found the master tape last year. Apparently, it had been lying forgotten in some old trunk of stuff they’d cleaned out of his home and given to his mother. On top of that, I’d never even heard of the man until we watched
Top of the Pops,
but in some crazy way I feel as if I’ve known him forever.

“I had that same dream for weeks, months even, when things were so bad in Baileyborough. Then, when I left there, the dreams gradually faded away and I haven’t had one for four years or more. I just can’t explain it and it’s bothering me. I can’t help feeling it means something and I need to find out what that is.”

John poured himself a glass of milk and sat back down with me.

“I think it’s just an incredible coincidence. Really. I can’t think of any other explanation. Serendipity or whatever.”

Yes,
I thought.
Serendipity.