The Angel's Cut Read Online Free Page A

help, and not just live on sufferance because, although they weren’t close, she did get on with her aunt and uncle and young cousins. But, Flora discovered, the larger world was eager to take her back.There had been a lot of people at that party, people who remembered what had happened with horror and pity, and were keen to do what they could for her.
    The man who had caught her in the curtain was the lover of her film star friend, Avril Maye. Conrad Cole had paid for Flora’s hospital room and, although he cooled on Avril—after her husband refused to give her a divorce—they parted on friendly terms, as, Flora would later discover, Cole did from many of his lovers. And, before they parted, Avril persuaded Cole to help Flora.
    Cole asked the editor of his first feature film to let Flora sit in with her. Flora never knew whether to credit Cole with having recognised a talent in her. It didn’t seem likely. Cole’s considerable achievements seemed due entirely to his own inhuman drive, not to any ability he had to surround himself with good people. It was a fluke that he had his very good editor.
    Cole’s editor had been at the party, and was easily persuaded to lend ‘the poor burned girl’ a hand. She was willing to pass on her knowledge, and did, patiently, then passionately when she discovered that cutting film was Flora McLeod’s true talent.
    Flora had a feeling for editing, for handling time. She loved the editing suite. She loved the process, loved to stop and start time. She sat in with Cole’s editor for the rough cut of Desert Nights then, when the editor argued with Cole—as people did, without knowing that they had until he failed to answer their calls—Flora sat with Cole himself, re-cutting the finished product. (Or, at least, Cole declaredit finished because he was tired of it, whereas Flora saw how much more there was to do, how much better they all could have done.)
    Flora was going to every movie at that time. She lived in the dark, until her inner thighs touched again without pain as she walked, and she could go out in public without looking as though she’d ‘just serviced twenty-five sailors’, as she’d joke. Flora began to emerge from the dark when she stopped minding what people saw when they looked at her. So that when some man who was admiring of her wit, or her heavy brown hair, would ask ‘What’s this?’ of the polished streaks on her neck and under her jaw where the fire had licked her, she’d say, ‘I have pointy petals, like an artichoke. Do you like them?’
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    Flora opened her visitor’s bottle, and went to find clean glasses. As she did she explained to Gil that there were muddy clothes on her porch because she’d clambered into Coral Canal.
    â€˜I saw that they were filling in the canals,’ said Gil.
    â€˜We wrote letters and went to meetings, and we were all put aside as Luddites,’ Flora said. ‘So today I went to help block the earthmoving machines.’
    â€˜You shouldn’t be doing that, Flora.’
    Flora paused before pouring his glass and gave him a look. Then she went on. ‘When they began to shove dirt into the canal we all jumped in to scoop it out again. I found myself up to my chest, behind this churning mass of protesters. The contractors were bashing our signs with their shovels.Meanwhile the machines went on easing fill into the water, and the lovely blue canal went grey.’
    She gave Gil his glass, and lifted her own to him. ‘I walked home dripping, and picking clots of cardboard off my clothes.’
    They emptied their glasses. Flora filled them again, and glanced about her. For a moment she tried to cast Gil’s eye—as she understood it—over her arrangements.
    The kitchen door was open and she could see the dishes stacked high on the draining board. Her underwear and stockings hung on a rack winched up against the