Neverwhere

even then, they forget you pretty quickly.»
«But I saw you,» said Richard. It had been bothering him for a while.
«I know,» said Door. «Isn’t that odd?»
«Everything’s odd,» said Richard, with feeling. The string music was getting louder. The surges of anxiety were somehow worse up here in London Above, where he was forced to reconcile these two universes. At least below, he could just proceed dreamlike, putting one foot in front of the other like a sleepwalker.
«The Angelus is through there,» announced Door, interrupting his reverie, pointing to the direction from which the music was coming.
«How do you know?»
«I know,» she said, with utter certainty. «Come on.» They stepped out of the darkness into a lighted corridor. There was a huge sign hanging across the corridor. It said:
ANGELS OVER ENGLAND AN EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM Sponsored by Stocktons PLC
They crossed the corridor and walked through an open door, into a large room in which a party was going on.
There was a string quartet playing, and a number of serving staff were providing a roomful of well-dressed people with food and drink. There was a small stage in one corner of the room, with a podium on it, beside a high curtain.
The room was completely filled with angels.
There were statues of angels on tiny plinths. There were paintings of angels on the walls. There were angel frescoes. There were huge angels and tiny angels, stiff angels and amiable angels, angels with wings and haloes and angels with neither, warlike angels and peaceable angels. There were modern angels and classical angels. Hundreds upon hundreds of angels of every size and shape. Western angels, Middle Eastern angels, Eastern angels. Michelangelo angels. Joel Peter Witkin angels, Picasso angels, War-hoi angels. Mr. Stockton’s angel collection was «indiscriminate to the point of trashiness, but certainly impressive in its eclecticism» (Time Out).
«Would you think,» Richard asked, «that I was being picky if I pointed out that trying to find something with an angel on it in here is going to be like trying to find a needle in an oh my God it’s Jessica.» Richard felt the blood drain from his face. Until now he had thought that that was simply a figure of speech. He hadn’t thought it actually happened in real life.
«Someone you knew?» asked Door. Richard nodded. «She was my. Well. We were going to be married. We’ve been together for a couple of years. She was with me when I found you. She was the one on the. She left that message. On the answering machine.» He pointed across the room: Jessica was making animated conversation with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bob Geldof, and a bespectacled gentleman who looked suspiciously like a Saatchi. Every few minutes she checked her watch and glanced toward the door.
«Her?» said Door, recognizing the woman. Then, obviously feeling that she should say something nice about someone Richard had cared for, she said, «Well, she’s very . . . » and she paused, and thought, and then said, » . . . clean.»
Richard stared across the room. «Will she . . . is she going to be upset that we’re here?»
«I doubt it,» said Door. «Frankly, unless you do something stupid, like talk to her, she probably won’t even notice you.» And then, with more enthusiasm, she said, «Food!» She descended on the canapes like a small, smut-nosed girl in a too-large leather jacket who had not eaten properly for sometime. Enormous quantities of food were immediately crammed into her mouth, masticated and swallowed, while, at the same time, the more substantial sandwiches were wrapped in paper napkins and placed into her pockets. Then, with a paper plate heaped high with chicken legs, melon slices, mushroom vol-au-vents, caviar puffs, and small venison sausages, she began to circle the room, staring intently at each and every angelic artefact.
Richard trailed along behind her, with a Brie and fennel sandwich and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
Jessica was deeply puzzled. She had noticed Richard, and having noticed him, she had noticed Door. There was something familiar about them both: it was like a tickle at the back of her throat, impossible to get rid of, utterly irritating.
It reminded Jessica of something her mother had once told her about, of how Jessica’s mother had, one evening, encountered a woman she had known all her life—had been to school with, had served on the parish council with—and how her mother, encountering the woman at a party, had suddenly realized that she was unable to recall the woman’s name, although she knew the woman had a husband in publishing named Eric and a golden retriever named Major. It had