Page 155 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
AB:It’s a happy ending, then.
OM:Remember I said no one’s predicting the future any more? Because it’s too late. There’s no future. This is it. The end of days. [You don’t seem to question Oliver’s ramblings, Mand. Aren’t you concerned about him? EC]
WhatsApp messages between Ellie Cooper and me, 10 August 2021:
Ellie Cooper
Check your inbox for the latest file. Do you think Oliver is becoming obsessed with the spiritual side of the angels case?
Amanda Bailey
Yeah, he is a bit. It keeps him away from my angle
Ellie Cooper
You’ve found the baby?
Amanda Bailey
When I find out what REALLY happened that night, it’ll lead me to the baby. Give me a moment to send some messages and I’ll tell you what I’ve got so far.
Text messages between me and Clive Badham, 11 August 2021:
Amanda Bailey
Hey there! Just reading through Divine again. Love, love, love the character of Ashleigh. OMG she totally pops! I’m thinking Carey Mulligan, Ana de Armas, Chloe Grace Moretz. Just out of interest, is she based on a real-life person from the case?
Clive Badham
Awesome! I LOVE all those actors. They’d each bring something to that role. No, I made Ashleigh up as a plot device to get Holly away from Gabriel and Jonah. She waits and watches, then: BAM! She explodes their whole world. Does it matter she’s fictional? Will the actors prefer to play someone real?
Amanda Bailey
No, no. Makes no difference to them. Just want to have all the facts when I speak with them. Great. I’ll be back in touch when I’ve contacted their agents etc.
Clive Badham
Email from me to Ellie Cooper, 11 August 2021:
TO:Ellie Cooper
DATE:11 August 2021
SUBJECT:My findings so far
FROM:Amanda Bailey
Thanks for the file. Right, this is where I’m at. All top secret.
Gabriel had a ‘Holly’ with him and was up to something in 1990. He placed the same cryptic small ad in a local newspaper for a whole month. The message led to a disused passageway under the M40 motorway in west London, where I found a thirty-year-old angel symbol just like the ones the police officers found on the floor of the warehouse and that Oliver and I found in the stairwell at the luxury flats that stand there now. We don’t know any more about early nineties angel activity yet.
Our Holly, from 2003, came from a troubled background and absconded from the care system, but she was different. Her parents were drug-addled aristocracy. She’d been at Gordonstoun School but uprooted to London. That summer she went AWOL from what was no doubt a chaotic life. If the baby was born in early December, then she’d have been three months pregnant at the end of the school term – precisely when she absconds to live with Gabriel. If her baby was adopted by extended family, as I was told way back when I first started this, then it was a ‘dark’ adoption because they don’t want anyone knowing that Lady Georgina and the baby she had at seventeen were involved in such a sordid case. So, my next task is to find Lady G and as much as I can about the Holly from 1990.
Of the three fictional works I’ve been reading, two have just thrown up a very strange coincidence.My Angel Diaryby Jess Adesina andDivine– an unproduced script by a wannabe screenwriter – both feature a character called Ashleigh. In each case she’s a woman associated with Holly who potentially comes between her and Gabriel. The scriptwriter claims he made that name and character up. The ever-slippery Jess Adesina is yet to reply to my message.
Meanwhile, I await some documents from the late Mark Dunning, whose widow has sent me a package by courier. She seems to believe he wants me to have it, and sent her a sign from beyond the grave. I’m happy to get that info any which way it comes to me.
Nowhere in any of these three stories is there an angel called Raphael.
