Lucas by Kevin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

leaning over the back seat with her bum sticking up in the air. I looked her in the eye, trying to see beyond the pose, trying to imagine what she was like when she was alone … but I couldn’t see it. That sort of girl is never alone, because without other people they have to be themselves, and they can’t stand themselves.
    â€˜Your brother smokes,’ she said, passing the joint to Bill.
    â€˜I expect he does,’ I said.
    She curled her lip. ‘And your old man.’
    â€˜So?’
    She seemed taken aback for a moment, as if she’d expected me to be shocked. Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed, and then Robbie slapped her on the backside and said, ‘Which way, Ange?’ and she took the opportunity to wriggle back into her seat and regain her bad-girl composure.
    â€˜Multi-storey in Crown Street,’ she hissed. ‘And if you slap my arse again I’ll break your bleedin’ neck.’
    Bill, meanwhile, was coughing to death on the joint.
    â€˜Having a good time?’ I asked her.
    â€˜Whoof,’ she said, with tears streaming down her cheeks.
    With the car parked, and Angel and Robbie scuttling off into the spiral gloom of the multi-storey walkways, I finally had the chance to ask Bill what on earth she thought she was doing.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ she said, walking off with an innocent giggle. ‘It saved us a couple of quid bus fare, didn’t it?’
    â€˜Oh, come on Bill … Angel Dean, for God’s sake—’
    â€˜Angel’s all right, she’s a good laugh.’
    â€˜No she’s not.’
    â€˜You have to get to know her, that’s all.’
    â€˜And you do, I suppose?’
    She stumbled over a kerb and started giggling again, then skipped over and slung her arm around my shoulder. ‘Oh, Caity … matey … you’re not jealous, are you? You know you’ll always be the only one for me …’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah … will you get off?’
    I watched her as she bent down and checked her makeup in the wing-mirror of a parked car, and I watched the way a passing group of thirty-year-old men in football shirts nudged each other, eyeing her up. God … I was really getting sick of the whole thing, the whole weekend, everything. I felt as if I’d been plucked out of nowhere and dropped smack in the middle of some tacky Australian soap, where everyone and everything revolved around tits and bums and sex. I was tired of it. If I’d known what was coming I would have turned around and gone home right then. But I didn’t know what was coming. And Bill was my best friend. And I didn’t want to appear un friendly , did I?So I just followed her out of the car park and onto the bridge that spans the dual-carriageway, shaking my head as she hitched herself over the railings and gobbed at the passing traffic.
    â€˜Where are we going?’ I asked wearily. ‘Town’s the other way.’
    â€˜Ah …’ she said, wiggling her eyebrows. ‘Come this way, my pretty. A surprise awaits thee …’
    The surprise was having to spend the rest of the afternoon in a pub called The Cavern at the other end of the bridge with two of the lamest young men I’ve ever come across. They were waiting for us in a balcony garden at the rear of the pub, sitting at a plastic table in the shade of a plastic umbrella. Traffic groaned up and down the dualcarriageway below, almost drowning out the sound of the jukebox, and a stale odour of beer and cigarette smoke drifted out from the dim interior of the bar. Bill introduced the boys as Trevor and Malc.
    â€˜They’re starting at the sixth-form college next year,’ she explained proudly, crossing her legs and pouting as she sat down next to the one called Trevor. He was thin, with tinted glasses and a short-sleeved button-down shirt. The other one was even thinner, in white shorts and a beige-and-white-striped polo shirt.