Free Bootlegged Angel by Mike Ripley Page A

Welcome’?
    I tried to get off the floor, or off the bed. Either one, I wasn’t proud, but everywhere I tried to put a hand or a foot down, there seemed to be cold food or a rolling empty bottle.
Eventually I found room to put my feet down.
    I pulled my T-shirt out and wiped my face with it. It came away with unspeakable orange stains but at least I could see out of both eyes. What I couldn’t do was work out why my kidneys
hurt.
    ‘What a sight!’ shrieked Fenella from the bedroom doorway. ‘You look absolutely awful!
    She put her hands to her mouth to hide her giggles.
    ‘Didn’t you make an exhibition of yourself last night, young man? I hope you feel as bad as you look.
Half
as bad as you look! You should be grateful we were here to look
after that nice Mr Seton and get him a minicab. And you should say thank you to Lisabeth for putting you to bed after you fell down the stairs . . .’ She paused for effect. ‘. . . the
second time.’
    That explained the bruised kidneys.
    I touched my hair and found food there too, so I pulled my T-shirt off and towelled my head with it. That gave me a brilliant idea: I needed a shower. Right now. Nothing else mattered. Speech
would come later.
    Fenella shrank back into the living-room as I staggered by her, heading for the bathroom. I could see her nostrils quiver as the scent of prawn curry – a korma perhaps? – wafted
towards her.
    ‘Is there anything I can get you, Angel? Seriously, you look like something the cat dragged in.’ Then, over my shoulder, she said: ‘Sorry, Springsteen.’
    I stopped in front of her and waited until she stopped giggling at her own joke, then I held three fingers up in front of her face.
    ‘Three things?’ she asked innocently, like it was a game of charades.
    I ticked off the fingers one by one.
    ‘Para. Ceta. Mol.’
    I found small words came easier.
    I slouched under the shower long enough to put a dent in the water table, then raided my emergency stash of spare clothes for clean underpants, socks and a T-shirt which read
‘My Other T-shirt is a Paul Smith’. One of these days Amy would notice that I came home in clothes she’d never seen before.
    Amy.
    I rushed to the door of the flat which Fenella had thoughtlessly left open and yelled down the stairs:
    ‘Fenella! Have there been any messages for me?’
    ‘Just a couple,’ she said from somewhere close behind me, shredding what few nerve endings I had left.
    ‘Jesus! Don’t ambush me like that! What the hell are you doing anyway?’
    She had bright yellow rubber gloves on and was carrying a plastic bucket in one hand.
    ‘I’m soaking the curry stains out of your carpet,’ she said primly and then waited, practising her lemon-sucking expression, for me to say something like:
Oh, you
didn’t have to do that
.
    ‘Why don’t you just run the hoover over it?’ I said.
    ‘Then the stain would stay and it doesn’t match the pattern.’
    It didn’t? Oh come on, who knows what colour their bedroom carpet is?
    ‘Whatever. My messages?’
    She breathed heavily down her nose then pulled off a glove and reached into the back pocket of her jeans to produce my mobile phone.
    ‘It says “Five Missed Calls” but I think they’re all from Veronica,’ she said, then she unclipped my pager from her belt. ‘And this says you have to call Amy
on her mobile.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the mobile from her and holding out my hand for the pager.
    Fenella’s lower lip jutted out and she glared at her feet.
    ‘Lisabeth said you wouldn’t let me keep them,’ she said under her breath.
    ‘I gave them to you? Last night?’
    She nodded. ‘Twice.’
    ‘Hmmm. Look, Fenella my dear, I’m going to put some coffee on. When you’ve finished with the carpet, come and have a cup and you can tell me everything that happened last
night. OK?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ she sighed, turning back to the bedroom and pulling on her rubber glove with an elaborate
thwack
.
    ‘Oh, and