Someone Who Isn't Me Danuta Kot (best books to read .TXT) 📖

bag on the ground. The scarf went on top of that to make a bed in the makeshift shelter. She put the bowl just under the shelter of the tarp and scrambled to her feet.

She’d been concentrating on the kitten to stop herself thinking about Andy, but as she stood up, it all came flooding back – the odd texts, the pig-creep copper, the kind of people you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of…

Everything felt confused, but she had to get to work. Her bus was due in less than a minute. She was out of the gate and running towards the bus stop. Seconds. She had seconds.

She turned into the road and almost ran full tilt into two people who were standing there. Two kids. One was a tall, thin lad she’d never seen before, the other was… She took in the small figure and the mountain bike with the orange handlebars.

Jade’s kid. Lewis.

What was he doing here? ‘Does your mum know where you are?’ It was out of her mouth before she had time to question the wisdom of saying anything. Lewis’s eyes narrowed, and his mate uncoiled himself from where he’d been leaning against the wall. ‘What’s it to you, bitch?’ Lewis said.

‘Don’t you call me bitch you…’

And her bus shot past her, speeding towards the stop where no one was waiting. Becca spun round, waving at it as she ran, but even though the driver must have seen her, the bus sailed past the stop and vanished. Jeering laughter broke out behind her.

She wanted to smack their stupid faces. ‘Your mum is so going to know where you are right now,’ she shouted at Lewis.

Fucking bus. Fucking work. Fucking everything. She was left with a fifteen-minute wait or a twenty-minute walk. She wasn’t going to wait at the stop, not with those kids hanging round. It made no difference. Either way, she was going to be late.

And she was. It was the first time, but you wouldn’t think it from the way Bryan, the manager, carried on. You’re shift starts at… If you want to be part of the team… I don’t expect…

Bryan put Becca in the stockroom as punishment, working on her own, getting the delivery sorted onto the trolleys for putting out on the shelves. Some of the boxes had been standing in the rain and the wet meant that the parcel tape had lost its stick. She went to lift one of them and it collapsed round her, sending tins rolling across the floor. The noise brought Bryan in, shouting at her. ‘If any of those tins are damaged, that’s coming out of your pay. Jade, you help Becca sort this mess out. And keep an eye on the tills.’

‘And shove a broom up your arse and sweep the floor as you go,’ Jade muttered, coming in to fill a trolley to take the stuff out onto the shop floor.

Jade was looking tired and drawn. ‘Are you OK?’ Becca asked.

‘Knackered. The little one had me up half the night, and our Lewis, little bugger, didn’t go to school yesterday and he didn’t come home till gone ten.’

Becca made a sudden decision. Jade might not like hearing it, but Becca had to tell her. What were mates for? ‘I saw him, your Lewis. Last night down by the arcade. And this morning, near mine. He was with another lad.’ She described the lanky teenager.

‘It’ll be that Zak – he’s an evil git. He goes to the same school. He’s older than Lewis, and Lewis thinks the sun shines out of his arse.’ Her gaze was suddenly hard. ‘Why didn’t you say before?’

‘I did. Just now. As soon as I saw you.’

Jade’s sudden anger faded. ‘Yeah, I know. You haven’t got kids, more luck you. I’m just… I’m telling you, Bex, I don’t know what to do with him.’

‘I used to wag it all the time,’ Becca said. She was going to add, ‘And I’m OK,’ but that wasn’t true, was it? She was trapped here in this dead-end job and she was kidding herself if she really thought she was using her time to make any decisions about her life. She was just… a bagger who couldn’t be a chooser.

The thought came unbidden: Where is Andy?

Jade was trapped too. She had to work to take care of her children: if she worked, she wasn’t at home when they needed her. If she left her job and the benefits people decided she hadn’t had a good reason, they’d sanction her and she could lose her home. Becca didn’t know what to say, and Jade left her alone not long after.

Thinking about Jade made Becca forget her own problems for a while, but by the afternoon, she was back at the bottom of the ladder again. She couldn’t stop herself from checking her phone to see if there was another message from Andy, but there was nothing.

She sent him a text anyway: See you tonight? and then hated herself for doing it.

After lunch – she only got only fifteen minutes because shitface Bryan made her make up the time she had come in late – she was on shelf stacking. She spent all afternoon kneeling on the floor trying to fill the shelves while people shopped around her. And she was supposed to keep an eye on the tills so she could help out if it got busy.

Her back was hurting, her arms were aching and she was fed up. She stretched briefly then kneeled again in front of the low shelves while shoppers pushed past her, shoving her trolley out of the way, shuffling through the shelf contents disordering what she had just straightened.

She checked her phone for about the tenth time, but there was nothing. Maybe Andy wasn’t in trouble at all. Maybe he was just a creep, with his Great, A x. And she’d sent a pathetic text about seeing him tonight when he was probably busy telling some