Candy by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

walls, stone floor, pots on the wall—everything was shrouded in the worldless silence of the early morning.
    “Well…” said Gina, clearing her throat.
    I looked at her, suddenly feeling anxious, wondering what she thought of me. Did she think I was dumb?Naïve? Idiotic? Was she embarrassed by my stupidity? Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything after all, I thought. Maybe I should have kept it all to myself.
    Gina ran her fingers through her hair, glanced at Mike, then looked back at me again, smiling awkwardly.
    “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “You must have been…”
    “What?” I said nervously. “I must have been what?”
    “I don’t know…scared, confused…I mean, if that had been me—”
    “You wouldn’t have been so stupid.”
    “No, I didn’t mean that. God, Joe—it wasn’t your fault. How were you supposed to know?”
    I shrugged.
    Gina leaned toward me. “She didn’t ask you for anything, did she?”
    “What do you mean? Ask me for what?”
    “Money.”
    “No…she just started talking to me.”
    “Well, then…”
    “What?”
    “You weren’t to know what she was, were you? It’s not like she had a tattoo on her head saying, I’m a prostitute… ”
    I grinned.
    Gina grinned back. “She didn’t, did she?”
    “Not that I noticed.”
    Gina relaxed. She reached out and squeezed my hand, then glanced across the table. “What do you think, Mike?”
    Mike raised his head and looked at me. “Are you all right now?” he asked.
    “Yeah, I think so.”
    He nodded. “Did you get his name, this black guy?”
    “Iggy. She called him Iggy.”
    “Iggy?”
    “Yeah.”
    Mike shook his head. “It’s probably just a street-name. He could be anyone. There’re guys like that all over the place—small-time pimps and dealers who run a couple of girls from a flat somewhere…King’s Cross used to be full of them. The whole area was cleaned up a couple of years ago, but there’s still a lot going on down there.” He looked at me. “How old was this girl?”
    “I don’t know…seventeen, maybe eighteen. Something like that. It was hard to tell, the way she was dressed and everything…she could have been younger, I suppose.”
    “Was she using?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Using…taking drugs.”
    I thought about it, picturing her face, her fresh white skin, her arms, her lips, her eyes…her eyes…
    Like tiny black holes.
    “I don’t know,” I said, wondering if I was lying. “I don’t think so…I mean, she seemed all right.”
    “Any track marks on her arms?”
    “No.”
    “What about Iggy?”
    “I didn’t look that closely.”
    “But he definitely had some kind of hold over her?”
    “She was petrified of him.”
    Gina said, “But she was all right with you?”
    “Yeah, she was fine before he turned up. She was just…I don’t know…” I looked at Gina. “She was really nice.”
    “Pretty?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What kind of pretty?”
    “I don’t know—what kinds of pretty are there?”
    “All kinds.” She smiled. “Beautiful pretty, sexy pretty, sultry pretty, tarty pretty…was she tarty?”
    “A bit, I suppose…but not in a nasty way.”
    “Tarty but cute?”
    “Yeah…maybe.”
    I looked away then, suddenly feeling tired, and also a little bit ashamed of myself. It didn’t feel right, talking about Candy as if she was just something to look at—some shiny little bauble or trinket or something. Whatever she was, and whatever she did, she didn’t deserve that.
    “I’m tired,” I said, stretching my arms and yawning. “I think I’ll be getting off to bed now.”
    “Yeah, well,” said Gina, “you’ve had a long day.”
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re sure you’re all right now? You’re not worried about anything…?”
    “What’s there to worry about?”
    “Nothing, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I mean, you’re not going to see her again, are you?”
    “Not unless I want my throat cut.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” Mike