You Are So Not a Fallen Angel

Chapter 8

Chapter 8:

Lorris’ big revelation must have made me faint, because the next thing I remember was opening my eyes and seeing something I could make sense off. A few moments later, my brain kicked into gear and I realized I was staring up at the vaulted ceiling of the church. I appeared to be lying on my back on a pew. How I had gotten there, I had no idea.

I sat up and grabbed the back of the pew as a wave of dizziness hit me. When the world had stopped rocking, I risked opening my eyes again. As I had guessed, I was still in the church, on one of the pew, and I was, as far as I could see, completely alone. Of Mr Perfect, there was no sign.

I stood up and glanced at my watch. It had barely been an hour since I had left my house. Smoothing down my clothes, I stumbled back up the aisle and out of the double doors. After the gloominess of the church interior, the bright sunlight reflecting off the white pebbles of the square blinded me, so I was only aware of Flora when she squealed my name practically next to my ear.    

“Eliza, there you are!” her voice was loud and very high pitched. It made me wince.

“Hey Flora,” I said gloomily. I didn’t want to see my cousin right now. I wanted to see my angel right now, and not just because I still had about a million questions to ask him. The world around me seemed dull and ugly, a personnel affront to me, who had so recently been in the presence of something so beautiful and over worldly. It was almost as if I had gone back to wearing blinkers, after having had them removed for an instant, blinkers I had even realized I was wearing.

“What were you doing in there?” she said, horror clear in her tone. Mouldy old churches, how revolting.

“Confessing,” I said. I noticed I had lost the shopping sometime while I had been making out with an angel in a church. I was so going to hell for that. “Wait a moment, will you? I think I forgot to mention a sin.”

I ducked into the church again, and it didn’t take long to locate my bags. They were lying on the floor between two rows of pews, their contents spilling out across the tiles. I knelt and shoved everything back into the plastic carriers. I then straightened up and glanced around again for good measure, but there was no further sign of Lorris. The angel in the window appeared to be smirking at me though, a smug expression all over his glassy face. I was glaring back at him before I could tell myself to get a grip.

“He’s a window,” I muttered as I pushed the door open again. “Pull yourself together, girl.”  

Flora was waiting for me as I came out. She wrinkled her nose as I stepped outside, as if the smell was offensive to her.

“I hate old churches,” she said, pulling a face. “Nasty, smelly places. I don’t know how you can stand it. Were you really confessing?”

“It’s a Church of England church, Flora,” I said with infinite patience as I started down the road to the house.

“Right,” she said, falling into step beside me.

“Flora, did you get the bread?” I asked a couple of minutes later.

“Why, was I supposed to?”

I stopped dead in the middle of the pavement             and spun around to give her the full benefit of my death glare.

“I thought that was clear enough when I said ‘Flora, please go get the bread at that bakery over there’.”

“I guess I got a bit distracted,” she said, a small smile flitting across her lips.