Touched by Angels by Alan Watts Page B

departed brother without me being the bearer of further sad tidings, don’t you?”
    “ So… what do want from me?”
    “ I assume you are in possession of a certain… fob watch?”
    “ Might be.”
    “ I am offering you a two- way split for the information it holds.”
    She looked at him warily, fully aware this could be a trap, but knowing too that if it was true, he would not dare try to cheat her, nor her, him. It would be the perfect crime.
    “ All right,” she said, “but what about him?” She nodded at the battered corpse.
    “ Leave him to me.”
    He allowed one eyelid to drop and she guessed he had more practised ways of getting rid of inconvenient dead bodies than she did.
    They made their way back once more, this time across the crumbling fence separating the two back yards, to dampen further suspicion from the street.
     
    ***
     
    They had only been indoors a minute or so when the door burst open and Robert came tearing in, heaving for breath, his face strained and anxious. It was nowhere near the end of the school day.
    He stopped abruptly, seeing Bride, who had been on the brink of running to the kitchen ’til he saw their visitor was a boy.
    “ What’s the matter?” asked Lil , kneeling to his level, her fear coming back in less than a second.
    T he boys had been jostling him in the playground, after he had been branded both a ‘creep’ and a ‘traitor’ for what he had said in class about German domination of the seas. And he was forced by Mr Myers to write on the blackboard a hundred times, “Britain rules the waves, not Germany!”
    “ I’ll never read your newspapers again!” he shouted in her face , wiping away his tears before running upstairs.
     
     
     

Twenty
     
    “ I am expected back at the workhouse tomorrow at noon for an update, so we’ve got to act fast. The first thing we’ve got to do is change your appearances for the better, because people of your type do not use safety deposit boxes .”
    “ How?”
    “ I will buy several sets of clothing, in different sizes to ensure the correct fit. I am staying at The Juniper Inn, not far from here, where you must meet me. When you leave, do so casually, as if going for a stroll. Do not change your clothes or alter your appearance substantially. People tend to notice and remember things like that. Make your way directly to the hotel. I am going to give you a map, you must not dispose of it under any circumstances, as it could lead the wrong people back to your address. You must give it to me. Understood?”
    “ Al l right. Then what?”
    “ Then, when you are suitably attired, we will collect the contents of the box, split it down the middle and go our separate ways.”
    It sounded so simple. At the door, he fished in his pocket for a pen and drew a rough map on the corner of Lil’s newspaper. Tearing the corner off, he handed it over to her and said, “Wait an hour before you leave, so nobody watching will connect us.”
    Lil nodded and placed the piece of paper carefully on top of her knitting on the mantelpiece.
     
    ***
     
    Later, w hile they were eating a final meal, Lil realised that Bride would have a long wait in his hotel, as Robert held aloft the key to the safety deposit box.
    It had been lying amongst some dried out old flowers by the door, in the rubbish she had swept there after clearing up.
    “ Bride must have dropped it when he had been fishing through his pocket,” she said giving him a tight hug. “Still, it’s no great problem. We only need the map he had drawn to find our way to his hotel and all will be well.”
    Except it wasn’t where she had left it. She glanced around the room, and when she saw what had become of it, she shut her eyes, wondering if this nightmare would ever end.
    Its remains were by the wall below the mantelpiece, amongst her knitting, with a cluster of mice chewing it up and spitting it out into little grey lumps. She remembered a few strands of wool had been trailing down