Fiction
MISSING ANGEL
by CHRISTOPHER NEW
Description
Enduring another of his amateur actress wife June’s parties, John Bishop sneaks away upstairs to say good night to his thirteen-year-old daughter Angel, then goes reluctantly down to act as host. A would-be astronomer who dropped out of university to marry June when she became pregnant after a one night stand, he is now an air traffic controller at London Airport, whose chief delight is Angel and the stars. Tomorrow they plan to watch a new comet together through his telescope.
But the next day Angel fails to return from school. Day follows day, sleepless night follows sleepless night. John and June find themselves under suspicion for a time, being questioned by the sly Inspector Mabbott, who sometimes seems more interested in toying with them than in finding their daughter.
The ‘Missing Angel,’ temporarily a media celebrity, is soon displaced by a new sensation and Angel becomes just another unsolved case in the Missing Persons file. When a psychic astrologer friend of June’s claims to have seen her ‘passing over,’ June gives up all hope, and tries to resume her life.
Not so John. He searches London’s seediest streets night after night, comes home exhausted and searches again the following night. To keep her memory fresh in his mind, he starts writing private messages to Angel on his computer. He is searching for her, he tells her, as astronomers once searched the skies for a missing asteroid. Gradually June and he, never very close, drift further apart. June accuses him of being morbidly obsessed and continues a clandestine affair; he accuses her of heartlessness. Eventually June moves out to live with her lover. Soon John begins a tentative friendship with Amy, a divorced colleague at work.
John’s relationship with Amy deepens as the months pass, and it seems he too is at last putting his loss behind him, when a chance find of some pornographic photos revives his conviction that Angel is alive, although the police experts assure him the girl in the smudged pictures is not her. Persisting against all disbelief and indifference, he is eventually led to the sinister sensualist Anton, who remains just within the law and claims he can help – or is he merely stringing John along for the money he extracts from him? In a state of utter fatigue, John’s concentration fails dangerously at the control tower as a plane comes in to land and he is suspended from work.
But Anton says he has finally located the girl in the photos, and, despite Amy’s entreaties and warnings, John sets off alone with the large cash fee that Anton demands for finding her.
John finds the address, where supposedly Angel, now an underage prostitute, can be found. A girl like Angel appears, but when she sees him, runs away. John chases after her, sees her boarding a bus, but is himself knocked down by a following bus as he lunges after her.
When he recovers consciousness, he sees Angel bending over him while the paramedics assess his injuries.
More Information
Bibliographic Information
- Pages312
- Publish StatusUnpublished
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