Chapters (50)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Ninteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Letter From the Author
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
We stood outside in the cold and he lit up. ‘I’ll quit soon. Maybe I should try one of those e-cigarettes. Anyway, there are two things I need to talk to you about. The first one is the job. I’m really sorry, mate, but business is pretty bad at the moment. Emma and the others did their best while I was away but there are a lot of twats out there who decided they didn’t want to do business with us anymore. Now I’ve been cleared I’m hoping they’ll come crawling back. But in the meantime, I can’t afford to take anyone on. I feel crap about it, but . . .’
‘It’s fine.’ I tried not to show my disappointment. ‘I’m just happy the mess is being sorted. What was the second thing?’
He blew out smoke and squinted at me. ‘Have you . . . heard about Karen?’
I stared at the ground. ‘Yes. Awful. Do you know how it happened?’
‘It was a heroin overdose.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. I heard from her sister, Violet, who’s a friend of the missus. They had the coroner’s report yesterday. Heroin. I can’t believe Karen was into that shit.’
I couldn’t either. ‘She wasn’t into drugs when I was with her. The odd spliff. We took E together once because she’d heard it was meant to be an amazing experience. But heroin?’
‘I know. I spoke to her a few weeks ago, just before all this paedo crap happened. God, that seems like a long time ago now. We mainly talked about me but I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think if she seemed different in any way. Like I’d be able to tell. Most drug users function pretty normally, especially early on.’ He tutted. ‘We talked about you a bit. She told me she was really happy with the work you did for her, in the end anyway. She thought it was a bit weird though.’
I hadn’t been listening properly, because I’d been remembering the phantom text I’d received from her the night I’d taken the sleeping pills, asking me to call her. The text that I was sure I’d hallucinated. I snapped out of my reverie. ‘What was weird?’
‘You. Sending your girlfriend round there to get your money.’
It took a moment for this to sink in. ‘What?’
‘Karen said that you sent your bird round to see her, to have a go at her about making you do all that work again. She was really surprised, thought you’d turned into a right wanker. Karen said your bird said something about how no one could get away with trying to take advantage of you anymore. Hey, are you all right, mate? You look like you’re about to have a funny turn.’