AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She must think we’re an office full of halfwits. I assured her in no uncertain terms there’ll be trouble if she continues with this nonsense. Honestly, these people! Anything for sensationalism. Out for compensation, of course.” She handed me a scrawled note. “Here’s the detail. I haven’t written it up.”
“Thanks,” I smiled. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Oh, and Sophie,” she said, before wandering off. “Your mother called, asked that you call her back. Apparently you’ve been ignoring her messages?”
Yes. Yes, I had.
“I’ll deal with that, too.”
She rolled her eyes in a thoroughly patronising manner. “Seems you have a lot of things to bedealingwith, Miss Harding. Best get to it. Chop-chop!”
Bitch!The note went straight in the bin, along with any intention to call my mother.
It could all wait, the whole sorry lot of it.
I had a date to arrange.
Chapter Four
Callum
“Got any more for me?” I whispered into the mobile, hiding my face from passers-by. “Need the work.”
Jack Willis took his time answering, smoking a big fat joint, no doubt. “Not till next week. Next delivery’s Tuesday.”
I sighed. “Throw me some rope, Jack. Anything bigger?”
“I thought you weren’t in the game for bigger parcels?”
Desperate times. “I could do one or two.”
I heard him rustling papers. “Maybe next week, we can talk then. Best I can do.”
Too late. Much too late. “Any chance of an advance, Jack, I wouldn’t ask...”
“You know I don’t do advances, kid. Sets a bad precedent.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
I hung up, almost out of phone credit and feeling like a first class prick.
I’d made best part of two hundred quid the last few days, running myself ragged delivering packages across the city. Two hundred quid that could feed me and Casey like kings, but no. It was all for the Stoney’s pocket. All that work and still it weren’t enough.
Vick had scraped a couple of quid together, selling old toys on eBay, but we were still over a hundred short. Finding a hundred quid over the weekend wouldn’t be easy. Not without robbing. Saturday morning, less than two days to go and out of options. We had nothing to pawn, nothing left to sell, no place left to turn.
Maybe the Stoneys would settle for two hundred, but I doubted it. They weren’t the generous type. They’d take the two and give Vick a black eye for her trouble, probably even worse for me. Couldn’t do deliveries with busted kneecaps, nor find food for Casey.
Vick had been crying every night. Sobbing on my shoulder like a little girl. Guilty, she said, but she needn’t have been. It weren’t her fault. She didn’t ask for this life, where the money’s too short to make ends meet, and we’re all on a treadmill to nowhere.
The cash burned a hole in my pocket as we walked on past the butchers. What I’d give to buy a decent fucking steak. One for me, one for Vick and one for Case. Hell, we could do with it. I was still fit, but I was losing muscle, bulking up with extra layers so people didn’t notice. They’d be on me like hyenas, some of them, if they thought they could take me.
My phone started ringing. I could hardly bear to look, hardly bear to break the bad news to Vick.
A number I didn’t recognise. I’m wary of those, but I had no more credit to listen to voicemail, and maybe it was about some work.
“Yeah?”
A pause at the other end. A bit of a cough. “Callum Jackson?”
