Living with Shadows by Annette Heys Read Free Book Online

her Frankie was there. She would always talk dirty in front of me and Brian saying what she does with her boyfriend and how she was going to do it. I loved hearing her talk like this. A lot of women wont which is ashame. I see nothing wrong with it. So anyway this Carol had a friend coming down from Suffolk to stay a short while. The friend was another women Sheila and her boyfriend and she had this big herd of children, about five of them, all very young. They were nice kids. This Sheila’s boyfriend did the dirty. He left her and started seeing this Carol. Frankie found out but nothing much happened. Sheila and this Carol went out for some drinks while I, me of all people, baby sat all these kids who were hanging all over me. I got used to them. To tell you the truth I started to like the little brats. Carol and Sheila came back from their drinking binge. They weren’t pissed, just a bit merry. I heard them coming back. They were singing or trying to. They came in the house and that lazy bastard Sheila’s boyfriend came down stairs. He caught me kissing this Carol and he went mad like a pussy cat and threw something which missed. Anyway he stormed out but came back after ten minutes. Then everything was alright. Then this Sheila asked me and Brian who was the best kisser. So we put it to the test and I won. I kissed her. I was feeling hot so I touched one of her tits then she said not on the first date. I thought ok.
    She wanted me to go up to Suffolk with her but I could not look after her and her five kids. If I could who knows I might have. But I already had my own plans. I was thinking of going to see my dad who I had not seen since about seven. It was nearly fifteen years and anyway things weren’t going too well at my landladys. I wanted to punch her sons lights out. I wanted out of this mad house. If I stayed any longer I might have ended up like them. Thankfully I didn’t.

    Kate paused a while. She hadn’t expected him to write so much or to be so enlightening about his sex life. There was an innocence about him that probably stemmed from his sheltered existence in Belfast. She felt for him. This account of his life so far portrayed a pretty gloomy picture. It seemed he’d led a very unsettled life with . . . what . . . around six moves in a few years!
    She went into the kitchen to make herself a coffee while she mulled over the first part of his letter. There was no mention of how long he’d lived in Belfast but since he hadn’t got an Irish accent, she guessed it couldn’t have been since early childhood. No wonder he was keen to leave the place with so much hate and prejudice, yet moving to England hadn’t improved his luck. She wondered about his lack of emotion on leaving his family, the way he drifted in and out of people’s lives and his relationships with girls, most of them older and more experienced than him.
    Kate took her drink and hurried back into the living room, wanting to know if things improved after meeting his father, though fifteen years was a long time and she imagined how awkward that first meeting must have been.
    My dad lived in Sheffield. I thought Im going to see him and if it does not work out then I was going to move back to Watford. I had to stay at this mad house for another month or so until I saved up some money. In the mean time I still kept going over to Carol’s house. By then Sheila had gone back to Suffolk. I only went over when my landlady had one of her fits or I would go for a very long walk and think of things like what was my family up to or have they forgotten about me yet, or why was I still with this crazy family. The truth was I’ve never been by myself and I don’t think I would like to either, or I would think of other silly things like what would I be doing in ten years time from now, or would I find the girl of my dreams. I often thought why was I on this planet? After all what did I have to offer? Here I was, 21, unemployed, not very bright,