Page 62 of In Sheets of Rain

23

And Angels Sang A Song Of Grief And Sorrow

My character was going through emotional turmoil. The odds were stacked against her. She was in the middle of having a traumatic conversation with her boss; a boss that didn’t comprehend the magnitude of what she was going through.

And then he fired her.

Try as she might to explain the situation from her perspective, her boss insisted the blame lay with her. It was unfair. Unjust. But everything was going wrong and nothing my character said or did changed the fact that she’d lost her job, her best friend was missing, a killer was on the loose, and she couldn’t pay her crippled son’s next doctor’s bill.

Sean said something. I thought it might have been about the car. But my character was following a shadowed figure down a dark alley, and I just knew she was about to come face to face with the killer.

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, feeling my heart rate escalate right along with my character’s.

A man stepped out of the shadows, my character stumbled to an undignified halt, then the glare of passing headlights illuminated the looming figure in front of her, and she gasped.

She knew him!

“Kylee?”

“Yeah, it’s all right. You can take my car,” I said in answer to Sean’s question.

“Kylee! You’re not even listening, are you? I asked, have you seen my car keys?”

I spun around in the office chair and blinked up at him. My character had just had a gun drawn on her by her ex-boyfriend. I desperately wanted to see what happened next.

“What?” I said, still blinking.

“Jesus Christ, Kylee. You’re always up inside your head. It’s not healthy. And do you really think anyone is going to read your book?”

“What?” My heart stuttered.

“You’re so naive, Kylee. Writing a book takes skill and talent. You haven’t even done a writing course. There’s no way you’ll be picked up by a publisher.”

“Your keys are on the hall table, under the newspaper,” I said.

“I’m heading up to Warkworth,” Sean said, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Then he stormed out of the room.

I stared at the empty doorway for long minutes and then turned back to my manuscript. I reread the last few paragraphs and then deleted them. And when the cursor made it back to the start of that chapter, I kept my finger pressed down on the delete key.

It took forty-five seconds to erase what had taken months to create. In a final move worthy of a method actor committing murder for the first time up on the big screen, I dragged the manuscript’s folder into the trash bin with a flourish.

I told myself that it was a stupid story anyway.

* * *

The community hall was all lit up. The cheerful lights lay down a welcome mat of warmth and family. People were milling around outside. Faces concerned. Arms wrapped around loved ones. Some of them were in traditional Pacific Island dress.

John and I walked up the path to the front of the hall, our arms laden down with med kits and the defib and a half-full O2bottle. I was trying to calculate how long it would take to get back to the ambulance and grab the spare, should we need it, when the singing spilt out of the opening doorway.

It hit me in the centre of the chest. Like a physical wave of angelic sound. Flowing out of the community hall and punching me in the solar plexus.

A part of me knew this job would stay with me forever.

We were ushered into the main hall itself; the lights blazing, fifty-odd people in Tongan dress around us. Reds and whites en masse. So many.

Our guide directed us to a supine form. A large male dressed in an ankle-length white cloth skirt wrapped up in a woven mat, his skin pallid in colour. Musical instruments were scattered around the hall. Some of them I didn’t recognise.