was Angie’s younger sister by a year and several months. She was also plumper and louder, happily divorced and a hard-working mother of two small boys. She had a similar abundance of fiery red hair to Angie’s, and the same arresting blue eyes that changed shade according to her mood.
The two of them had taken over at Bridging the Gap about a year ago after Angie had lost her job as a teaching assistant (cuts to the education budget), and Emma had no longer been required as a receptionist at a local dentist’s after it was absorbed into the Kesterly Health Centre. It was pure luck that the husband-and-wife team who’d been running Bridging the Gap since its inception had decided to retire at that time, and Ivan, the parish manager of St Mary’s, the local church, had decided to give the sisters a chance.
‘Why not?’ he’d agreed, in the slow, doleful tones that had unnerved Angie and Emma at first. ‘You’ve excellent references, the pair of you, and we could do with some younger and livelier input around here. Yes, you’ll suit us very well, and I hope we’ll suit you too. Just make sure there’s no dossing in the church, or anywhere else on the site.’
‘Don’t worry, we promise to go home at night,’ Emma had assured him with mock sincerity.
Ivan blinked, taking a moment to understand, but he didn’t seem to find it funny. ‘I was referring to the men you’ll be taking care of,’ he explained. ‘Or, more accurately, to their associates from the streets. There are shelters for them to go to at night and this church isn’t one of them. Nor are the residences we are fortunate to have use of.’
Both of Bridging the Gap’s properties belonged to an octogenarian recluse, Carlene Masters, who had apparently handed the rundown Victorian villas to St Mary’s to use as the vicar and parish committee saw fit while she went to live in Spain. All she required in return was a small rental income. Angie and Emma had never met her, but they did know that she’d waived the rent for two months during the introduction of universal credit. Since housing allowances were what paid the rent and contributed to BtG’s running costs, the change of system could have proved disastrous for the organization and residents alike when payments had dried up for weeks on end.
Now, as Angie went to update the whiteboard that dominated one wall of the shed-like office she and Emma worked from, she spotted a couple of parish outreach workers crossing the small courtyard outside and gave them a wave. From the large plastic sacks the two women were carrying it was clear they were on their way to the storeroom next door, where charity-shop rejects were kept before being sent to those in need overseas. They were the only people Angie and Emma ever saw at this end of the rambling church complex, apart from Ivan who occasionally dropped by to make sure everything was running as it should.
Their little enclave was tucked in behind the church hall and sheltered by a magnificent copper beech tree, and contained only their bunker of an office with its en suite loo, tiny kitchenette and semi-efficient heating, and the adjacent storeroom. Their window looked out over the courtyard where a sealed-up wishing-well served as a bird table and a high, thorny hedge separated them from the main road beyond. To get to the church they had to follow a stone pathway through a wilderness of old fruit trees and long-forgotten shrubs to connect up with the car park next to St Mary’s offices, where the vicar’s wife and parish manager carried out God’s admin work.
The rectory was the other side of the centuries-old church, looking out over a sprawl of suburban rooftops that ended way off in the distance where the sea could be glimpsed sparkling away like a feast of temptation on crystal clear days. The old graveyard meandered gently down the south-facing hillside for at least a quarter of a mile to the busy residential street below. This was where Hill Lodge and Hope House were situated, in amongst a number of similar formerly grand villas, most of which had now been converted to flats. Angie and Emma never took the route through the tombstones and neglected shrines; no one did, it was too creepy and far too overgrown. Whoever needed burying these days was ferried to the newer, more desirable cemetery in the nearby semi-rural suburb of Morton Leigh.
‘So what’s your new bloke like?’ Emma asked as Angie added Mark Fields’s name to the Hill Lodge section of the whiteboard.
Raising her eyebrows as a fierce gust of wind whistled around their red-tiled roof Angie said, ‘He seems OK. Early days though. If he doesn’t settle in, Hamish will be sure to let us know.’
‘What’s his story?’
Spotting the outreach ladies leaving, heads down as they battled the wind, Angie said, ‘Apparently he broke up with his wife after he was laid off work, and ended up with nowhere to stay when she got the house. Booze played a part in it somewhere, but Shawn, who referred him from the rehab clinic, says he’s been a regular at AA for over six months and is ready to start again.’
‘No history of violence?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
Emma looked both dubious and cautious. ‘He knows he’ll be out on his ear if he starts drinking again?’ she pressed.
‘He does, but let’s assume that he won’t. Did Douglas get hold of you?’
‘Douglas from Hope House? Yes, he did. Apparently he’s lost weight so his belt’s too big and his trousers are falling down. He wants to know how to make a new hole.’
Angie’s eyes danced with amusement. ‘So what did you tell him?’ she asked, able to gauge from Emma’s expression that some sort of irreverence was afoot.
‘I said that if he took himself to Timpson’s in town someone there would be able to help him. He, of course, wanted to do it himself with a hammer and nail, but I reminded him that the last time he’d had those objects in his hands someone had ended up attached to the wall.’
Angie had to laugh. It wasn’t funny really, but the way Emma told it made it sound like a comedy sketch rather than a crime that had ended with his victim in hospital and him behind bars. ‘Do you think the belt story was real?’ she probed.
‘No idea, but it might be worth asking Hamish to pop in later to make sure there’s no live art hanging over the fireplace.’
Choking on another laugh, Angie checked her mobile as it rang. Seeing it was Tamsin, a support worker from the main homeless shelter in town, she clicked on. ‘Hi Tams,’ she said, returning to her desk, ‘If you’ve got any referrals I’m afraid we’re all booked up at the moment.’
‘I wish it were so simple,’ Tamsin responded with a sigh. ‘I’m hoping you or Emma could collect my kids from school when you go for your own.’
Angie said, ‘It’s OK, I’ll take them back to mine.’
‘You’re an angel.’
‘So they keep telling me. What I say is, you just haven’t met my demons yet.’ The instant the words were out she wanted to take them back, return them to the dark and awful place they’d come from, but it was too late. They’d already spilled along the connection, doing their damnedest, and as she looked at her sister she could imagine only too well what both Emma and Tamsin were thinking. Oh, but we have, Angie, we know what you did to your own son, but we won’t talk about it, and we won’t mention what happened to his father either.
‘I hope you’re not peeping,’ Steve warned, glancing at Angie who was next to him in the car, hands over her eyes, as instructed. ‘Or you,’ he added, checking six-year-old Liam in the rear-view mirror.
‘Can’t see anything,’ Liam promised.
Satisfied they weren’t cheating, Steve signalled to turn into a cul-de-sac of twenty mock-Tudor new builds, each with leaded windows and its own small plot of land, front and back. He drew up outside number fourteen, just behind a skip and a few plaster-caked wheelbarrows – though the work was at an end the clearing up was still under way.
Opposite