Someone Who Isn't Me by Danuta Kot (romance novel chinese novels .TXT) 📕

who piss off?’ Toby was passing a pint to a customer over her head. ‘There’s a queue, Becca.’

That was rich, coming from him. Dosser the Tosser. ‘Yeah, yeah. Just a mo.’ She turned back to Johnny Dip.

‘I don’t know, love. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’

Which bit of ‘leave it alone’ don’t you understand?

First Russ, and now Johnny Dip. Warning her off. She shrugged, trying to make it look as though it didn’t matter. ‘I just wanted to know what happened. To Andy.’

‘Well, now you do. Looks like it’s getting busy again. Do your job.’ He picked up the bottles and turned away, walking with a bit of a limp, leaving Becca feeling stupid and angry.

A dealer. Pond life.

Yeah, well, Johnny Dip was pond life himself.

Curwen had been right. She was too chicken to get the key, and now she didn’t even have the names to give him. The late-evening rush had started and she was kept so busy she didn’t have time to think about what Johnny Dip had said. She didn’t want to think about it.

Later, she saw Sal Capone and Johnny Dip standing together by the fruit machines. Their heads were close together and they were talking.

Later still, when they were leaving, a crowd of them, Becca heard Johnny Dip’s voice. He sounded angry and impatient. ‘It’s cool, Alicia. There’s no need for any of that.’

‘I hope you’re…’

The rest was drowned in the general pub noise as the door closed behind them.

Chapter 24

Becca was ready to hit someone by the time she left the pub. She wanted to hit the guy who had grabbed her, she wanted to hit Johnny Dip for… she wasn’t sure what for, but she wanted to hit him anyway. And Toby for being a lazy git who left her to cope with everything. And Carl because he’d made a crack about Becca fighting with the customers when he’d heard about her run-in with the punter and the twenty-pound note. ‘Here you go, Becca,’ he’d said as he handed her her money in an envelope. He always paid her cash out of the till. ‘Your winnings. You’d have an extra fiver if you’d got a knockout.’ And he’d laughed again until he started coughing.

Moron.

She was just so tired.

It was starting to rain and there were some odd people around. The guy Johnny Dip had hit with the newspaper might be waiting around, waiting to get her on her own.

At least she knew what to do about Andy. She’d learned her lesson, that was for sure. No more listening to smooth talkers across the bar. It didn’t make any difference whether they perved at you, or whether they pretended to be cool and funny, it was all the same.

She shouldn’t be sorry he was dead.

She wasn’t sorry.

She brushed away angry tears. She wasn’t crying because of that; she was crying because she’d got him so wrong.

The rain was getting worse. It dripped in a circle off her umbrella, soaking her legs. As she came round the corner, her bus sailed past her, sending up a spray of water that splashed down her left side. ‘Fucking dickhead!’ she shouted, not sure if she meant the bus driver or herself. She’d missed it and now she had to walk home – no choice. She wanted to sit down on the wet pavement and scream.

Which would really help, right?

She trudged home through the foul weather, trying not to think about the evening that had just passed, but the more she tried not to think about it, the more it came back. She counted her steps as she walked, trying to push the thoughts away. One, two, three, four… The man’s fingers grabbing her shirt, and she couldn’t stop him pulling her forward… There was something else, something that had happened that she’d missed… She was breathing hard with the effort of keeping the thoughts away, feeling dizzy and spaced out, as if the air she was breathing wasn’t reaching her lungs.

She couldn’t do anything else. She couldn’t get the key. Because she was just a bagger, just a nothing who had to work at two crap jobs and still couldn’t make enough to keep herself going. Just a loser who couldn’t spot a creep when he started perving at her, who… Her head felt flooded and it was like the thoughts were shouting at her, drowning out anything else. She wanted to scream, Shut up! Shut up! to stop them.

She had to stop for a moment, putting her hand against the wall to keep herself upright. She just had to find somewhere she could hide to make it all stop, stop, stop…

It was OK. The flat was just over the road.

She half ran across and round the corner to the gennel.

She was nearly home.

It was pitch dark. Her feet caught on the uneven ground, making her stumble. Where were the lights? She fumbled for her torch, and through the confusion of the noise in her head, it began to dawn on her that something wasn’t right.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but now a cold tension was running down her back, that feeling she needed to be alert, on her guard. She tried to move more quickly, stumbling slightly on the uneven ground.

Somewhere not too far away, a bike revved up suddenly, and then stopped. Something rattled in the darkness behind her.

Becca spun round, but there was no one there.

Someone in one of the other yards, one of the other flats. Nothing to do with her.

She reached the gate and her fingers felt stiff and clumsy as she lifted the chain and pushed it open. Then she realised what was wrong. The outside light wasn’t on and the yard was in darkness.

She’d left the light on. She knew she had. Coming back at night, after the shop was shut – she always left the light on.

The gate swung closed behind her, the rattle of the chain making her jump again.

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