You Are So Not a Fallen Angel

Chapter 1

Someone fell from the sky and changed my life forever. And no, that is not a metaphor.

The night I met Lorris was one of those perfect summer evenings, when the temperature is just right, the crickets are singing and you wish for nothing more than a cool drink and a quiet place to chill out.

Damn, it was boring.

Summer was supposed to be when everything happened, when you had great adventures, when you went on great holidays, when you met new people and you fell in love for the first time and fought crime and found great bargains in the shops. Supposed being the operative word. It had never worked out like that for me. Sixteen summers on this earth and sixteen summers spent wishing for the leaves to turn brown. I was the only one of my friends who longed for school to start up again every year, just to put an end to endless days of crushing boredom.

“Eliza, if you sigh one more time, I am going to strangle you!” Elijah, my older brother, snapped. He was flopped on his back on a sun-lounger, working on his tan. He didn’t seem to care that at eight o’clock in the evening, he was unlikely to get much in the way of browning. Or maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to move. I knew the feeling.  

I sat up and shot him a venomous look. I had spent most of the day on the edge of the pool reading a book, sighing at five minute intervals to remind everyone around of my existential ennui. I was determined not to suffer in silence this year. If I was miserable, so was everyone else.

“I’m bored,” I said.

“Go and read a book.” Eli didn’t even bother to sit up.

“Very funny,” I snarled, throwing the book at him. It missed his head by about three miles.

“Here’s what you could do,” he suggested, without so much batting an eyelid. “Go learn to throw.”

I leapt to my feet and stalked back to the house, followed by his snorts of laughter.

I paused in the large, echoing hall. The house was stuffy and still from being unoccupied all day. I didn’t fancy going up to my room, there was nothing to watch on TV and we wouldn’t be eating until my parents got back, which wouldn’t be for at least an hour. And back by the pool was Eli.

I grabbed a pair of flip-flops from the hall and a dress off the washing line and left through the side gate.    

Of course, it didn’t help my general languor that I lived in a dump of a town where nothing ever happened. Correction, where nothing interesting ever happened. Blackwith End was mainly inhabited by the rich but not the famous. Bankers and lawyers had their weekend retreats here, as did the occasional oil tycoon, but so celebrities, no matter how minor, frequented the place. Blackwith End had charm but no glamour. Saint Tropez we were not. Most of the houses were unoccupied most of the year, and the rest were lived in by older people who had refused to sell up and stubbornly clung to their houses, smug in the assertion they were holding out against the big corporation. Who the big corporation was, they had no idea, but they could boast about it when they attended bridge meets with their friends.  

This of course meant there were very few people of my age, and the few that were only came here on occasion, and tended to spend the summer in more exotic locations. Tourists did come our way, but they tended not to mix with the locals.

I strode down the high street, casting a glum eye over most of what I saw. The cafés were winding down for the night and the restaurants were just staring up. Frazzled, over heated families were laughing and chatting animatedly together, rehashing their day and planning the next one. I felt a yearning to be amongst them, to laugh and talk and not feel crushed by this incurable boredom.