Attack of the Cupids (15 page)

Love made things happen when everything else said they shouldn't. Love broke rules because they were there to be broken. Yet she too was a part of Heaven.
And if a thing was, in Heaven, then it was as it should be. If you asked Love to your Appeal, and your Appeal got tied up in knots because of it, then that too was as it should be.

One day, maybe soon, or maybe many thousands of years away, the Governors would have to choose between Love and Doom. Not even Love knew what they would do, or when it would be.

The one thing she did know was anyone who thought
she
was going to clear all of this up would be sorely mistaken. Clearing up was what happened to other people.

Among the piles on her desk there was a small bell. It sat there tinging gently each time the heart beat. She lifted a golden hammer and struck it.

‘Yes, Erry?'
said her secretary hoarsely, from the outer room.

‘Who's handling the Appeal for us now?'

The cupid checked the back of his hand, which like bad kids everywhere he used as a notebook.

‘It's Spikey. You said he needed a break from fieldwork.'

‘Did I? I suppose I did. Ask Spikey to step in to see me. It's time we changed tactics.'

A plan was forming in Love's mind. A very, very
Loving plan. The sort that burned cities.

‘He will need something rather special. From our, er, weapons people. You'll be a darling and do the paperwork for me, won't you?'

A sulky mumble from the other room. Cupids didn't like paperwork any more than Love herself. Love ignored it. Her thoughts had shifted on to something else. Speaking of cities . . .

This whole Appeal thing hadn't come out of nowhere. It had been started by someone. As far as Love was concerned, that someone was unfinished business.

‘By the way – I'm expecting a complaint, about a Miss Jones of Darlington Row. Hasn't it arrived yet?'

The secretary suppressed a groan.
‘I'll come and find it for yer, Erry.'

Love stood thoughtfully to one side while he appeared and started searching through the piles on her desk with a pitchfork.

She never made promises. Not the sort she had to keep. In Love, lots of things got said and lots of good intentions got intended. But they weren't contracts. You could walk away from them if you wanted to. That was the whole point. Cupids could
drop pink hearts in people's minds to say ‘essential maintenance will be carried out here'. That was all right. They could attach pink hearts to their arrows to say ‘we apologize for any inconvenience'. That was accepted.

But they never, ever, ever attached notes to say ‘If you are not completely satisfied with our service . . .'

That is, no cupid would ever, ever, ever do it again.

Love is not easily angered
 . . .

(Such a giveaway, that word ‘easily' . . .)

Love keeps no record of wrongs
 . . .

The angel had no need to keep a record. The ‘fifty-page incident' was not exactly something she was being allowed to forget. Nor had she forgotten who caused it. She had approved his transfer out of her department immediately. And since then she had remembered him. At least, she had remembered him often enough to keep remembering. With her peculiar and erratic focus, she had been waiting through the centuries.

For the day he became a Guardian.

(The polite way to describe the relationship between cupids and guardian angels is this: You
could never get them to sing off the same sheet, you could never get them to sing in unison, and you would
really
have to stretch your definition of ‘harmony'. All this was said by an Angelic Choirmaster who had actually tried.)

Cupids and Guardians both did what most other angels didn't do. They went down to Earth and worked with what they found there, i.e. humans and all the things that were wrong with them. This did not mean they were allies. Two thirds of all that paper on the desk of Love came from unhappy guardian angels who were having to live with what the cupids had done to their human after the cupids had packed up and moved on to the next job.

And the Guardians wanted the Angel of Love to know about it.
You didn't ought to have done it
, they wrote (in angel-speak).
My human is out of control. Danger to themselves and everyone around them. Sleepless nights. Suicidal thoughts. Overload – overload
etc.

My darling Windleberry. Do you know how much trouble you have caused me?

Maybe you do.

Can you guess, then, what I'm about to put you through?

Perhaps you're thinking:
All right. A few nights without sleep won't kill us. A few weeks of pining we can deal with
 . . .

You have no idea what you are in for. You have no idea – yet.

‘Got it, Erry,'
said her sweating cupid at last. He heaved it out from under a thousand other reports that had come in the same morning.

‘Thank you. You're a sweetie.'

A thousand reports – but this was the one for which she had waited through thirty centuries. She had already had the Objection he sent. It had arrived almost immediately after the pink heart had been delivered. But the Objection wasn't the same as the heartfelt cry of Protest, the anguish of someone who was a slave to Order, finding that his life was now to be ruled by Chaos.

And here it was:
Miss Jones of Darlington Row. Formal Complaint.

Lovely.

Lovely, my dear Windleberry. I'm going to enjoy your little essay. I hope you've written it with feeling. I think I might frame it.

I'm going to enjoy the next one too. And the next . . .

Slowly, smiling, she opened the cover. The Heading read:

She frowned. Miss
B
Jones? That wasn't the initial she was expecting.

She turned straight to the end of the report.

The signature wasn't the one she had expected either.

‘FUG!'

Billie was in detention. She spent it writing a love letter to Tony. She hadn't decided if she was actually going to give it to him. What she wanted was for him to notice her without her seeming to try. But Imogen and Tara were in the same detention and Billie knew that it would make them mad.

Imogen and Tara also spent their detention writing letters. They were poison pen letters, to Billie.

Sally went home and told Mum that there was going to be a call from school about Billie. Mum took paracetamol and went to lie down.

Somewhere halfway through Sally's R.E. essay, her phone buzzed. It was a text from Ameena, replying to one Sally had sent her earlier.

V soz 2 hear, Sally thumbed back. Bad Luk. She put the phone down and picked up the dictionary. The phone buzzed again.

‘Aargh, the curse of Miss Tackle!' muttered Sally.

No thx I like this life, she sent back.

Tight-lipped, Sally put the phone down. She picked up her pen. She tried to think about comparisons between Sikhism and Islam. She found she couldn't. She put her pen down and picked up her phone again.

nt her fault, she texted. Stuf goin on.

‘Not that that changes anything,' she said, as she put her phone down again.

It didn't.

The passages of Sally's mind were dark. The air within them was heavy, as if a small thunderstorm was brooding somewhere. Her thoughts chased through them fretfully. They had no power.

‘Imogen only did it because of Viola,' she said. ‘And Ameena was only playing for us because I asked her to. And now someone else is going to get dragged in, because of what Imogen did to Ameena! It'll probably be Janey. Janey's
nice
!'

Walk, walk, walk, through the corridors of crystal where everything was in its place and nothing met her need. The monuments and images looked down and could not speak. The words on the walls had no meaning. Windleberry strode beside her, head bowed. This air of grief and anger was like acid to him. There was nothing he could do about it. He could only endure it. He was patient, powerless, everlasting. He stayed with her.