Attack of the Cupids by John Dickinson Page B

said.
    The voices of the row outside seemed suddenly far away. The taste of old, bad memories flooded into his mouth. He turned away and drew something from the breast pocket of his dinner jacket.
    â€˜. . . I’m calling Viola
now
. And after that I’m calling Cassie!’
    â€˜Kamikaze,’ sighed the Inner Sally.
    â€˜And you
can’t stop me!
’
    â€˜And what’s that?’ said Muddlespot.
    â€˜This? – Oh . . .’ said Windleberry, putting it back again. ‘Something I happened to have with me. Standard issue.’
    It had been a small but powerful hand torch. And for a second, as the twins stood face-to-face in the kitchen, something had flickered in Sally’s eye. It had been a signal – for anyone who knew how to read it.
    â€˜Really?’ said Muddlespot, interested.
    â€˜Have you got her number?’ said Billie.
    Tight-lipped, Sally gave her the number.
    â€˜That
looked
like a signal,’ said Muddlespot.
    â€˜Did it?’ said Windleberry. He shut his mouth firmly.
    But when he checked his hands, they were shaking.

The Jones household at night. The girls are in bed. So is Mum, who has taken herself off early with a headache. The only ones awake are Greg, down in the living room watching the football, and Shades the cat, crouched on the landing and sifting the darkness with his yellow eyes.
    The house is a vast, shadowed wilderness, tumbled with belongings. Menace is everywhere. It crouches behind the water glass. It waits beyond the pot of skin cream on the bedside table. It watches from between the sheets of homework, piled untidily beside the door.
    On Earth, an angel is an idea. Ideas have to fit inside people’s heads. So angels have to be very small, and when they step out of the head that houses them they find the world is very large indeed.
    There’s no truce out here. Inside the mind there may be rules about what happens when you meet with The Enemy. Outside, there are no limits. Eyes may be gouged, heads split, backs stabbed and tongues torn out by the roots. Out here, you must watch every shadow. And when The Enemy appears, you’d better pray you’ve got him outnumbered.
    On a high, flat hilltop (in fact a pile of books), Windleberry waited. He looked out across the sea of chaos that was Billie’s room. Billie did not do tidy. Billie had never done tidy. Parents of career teenagers, who thought that nothing could surprise them any more, peeped in on Billie’s room from time to time and were impressed. There were clothes, clothes and more clothes upon the floor (every third item was an odd sock). There were books, papers, sweet wrappers, cassettes, CDs, pencils, pens, sharpeners and – oh, more books, some make-up things that possibly she’d forgotten about and (what was this?) an audiotape, her recorder that she didn’t play any more, some pictures that at one time she had been going to put into her album but had in fact been left to crumple under the weight of a pile of shoes that were now too small for her. Every flat surface was crowded, and where things didn’t get moved around very often thedust would have come up to Windleberry’s knees. The house mites ploughed through it like small komodo dragons.
    In the darkness, the shelves and the top of the chest of drawers were mountains crowned with forests. The floor was a mass of waves and shapes and canyons, a volcanic surface where huge lakes of molten lava have flowed and cooled and cracked into piles of tortured rock.
    â€˜Guard us,’ Windleberry murmured, ‘from all perils and dangers of this night . . .’
    He turned his head slowly, staring into the darkness. He could see little more than outlines. This was partly because he was wearing sunglasses. But he did not take them off. Angels on Earth never do.
    â€˜From all evil and mischief. From the crafts and assaults . . .’
    Under her blankets,