October by Gabrielle Lord Read Free Book Online Page A

pulled up outside the bank. I scuttled over the road with Boges’s bike and watched from the park opposite. Oriana clawed her way out of the passenger seat, stood up, adjusted her white suit jacket, and smoothed down her skirt. Her flame of red hair was high, as usual, and her outfit was questionable, but immaculate. Her purple glasses sat atop her superior nose. Cyril the Sumo—who was looking rounder than ever—bounded over to her and walked beside her up the stairs and through the automatic glass doors of Zürich Bank. How she walked in those high heels, I had no idea.
    I padlocked the bike and helmet and crossed the road. Keeping my face turned away from the security cameras, I followed her into the bank, pretending to take an interest in the pamphlets on student accounts. I swiftly pulled out my phone, switched on the video mode, and pressed record.
    Carefully I filmed her, capturing her movements and her style. Once inside the bank’s double glass doors, she swept straight over to the biometric scanner, pressed her forefinger over the sensitive area, barely waiting for the steel doors to open before disappearing through them. She didn’t pause once to take off her sunglasses.
    In only a couple of minutes, Oriana and Sumo reappeared in the bank foyer, talking with a clerk.Oriana’s voice was so loud and intense, it was like she was commanding everyone’s attention.
    I quickly pocketed my phone, ducked out the front doors and down the stairs, then across the road to my bike. I unlocked it, jumped on and started pedalling, heading for the corner. I was half-steering, half-pulling my helmet on when I collided with someone.
    Down we crashed—me, the bike and the guy, as well as the three cardboard boxes he was carrying. The boxes spilled open and scattered their contents everywhere.
    I twisted my legs out of the pedals and on all fours I began gathering up the stuff that had spilled—magazines, buttons, key rings …
    ‘Sorry, sir,’ I began, ‘I didn’t see you coming.’
    ‘You!’ he grizzled. ‘I knew I’d bump into you again somewhere! Haven’t you done enough damage to my property already?’
    I looked up the skinny legs and folded arms in a too-short green suit, to find two big possum eyes staring into mine.
    ‘Repro! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you!’
    I pulled my helmet off and quickly gathered up the rest of the bits and pieces that were strewn all over the footpath.
    ‘I thought I was rid of you,’ he said, as I stacked up the last of his boxes. ‘And here you are, poppingup again, or should I say, crashing into my world again! Quick,’ he said, practically dragging me around the next corner and down an alley.
    ‘How are you?’ I asked tentatively. ‘Where have you been staying?’
    He shook his head at me and let out a big, frustrated sigh. He heaped two of the boxes on the front of my bike, so that he was left with just one in his own arms. ‘Follow me.’

    Repro’s new place was like an oversized, abandoned shed. It was less than ideal. For a start, there was no way to hide the front door and there were dozens of gaps in the roof and holes in the walls. I noticed the photo of his mother was hanging from a nail in the cracked wall. Her half smile seemed strangely familiar.
    ‘You can’t go on living here,’ I said. ‘This place must leak every time it rains. All your papers and journals would turn into papier-mâché.’
    ‘Oh, don’t you worry, this is only temporary,’ he said. ‘It took me ages to clear away the rock-fall at my old place, just so I could get back in and collect my stuff. I have another lair lined up, I’m just using this for storage,’ he said, looking around the place with his wiry hands on his hips. ‘I could do with some help with the move.I was just sitting here this morning, wondering how in the world I was going to manage shifting everything from here to my new place. It’s funny,’ he said, ‘how help sometimes lands, quite literally, in your