One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis Read Free Book Online

him.
    “Nah, wasn’t me Bev, though you need to get a life,” says Brad, with an Australian accent and an affectionate smile. But Bev is not in the mood to be placated. Instead she stops shouting and sits at the kitchen table and starts to rock to and fro, as though she’s mad. “I’ve had enough of this fucking house. That was my chocolate,” she says, pitifully now. “My fucking chocolate.” The swear word is almost a caress, a seduction, and I mourn Bev her lost chocolate and I don’t know what to say, she seems so sad. I feel like I’m witnessing a bereavement.
    Angel stands up and goes over to the iPod to put some music on, loud, I don’t know who it’s by but it repeats over and over, “Where’s your head at?” which I feel is a bit taunting, but Bev doesn’t seem to mind, the anger has passed now. Someone I can only assume is Brad’s girlfriend bounces in. She’s tiny, in a mauve patterned mini-dress, with a perfect little body and a plain face, like she got mismatched in the doll factory. She stops at Brad’s side and looks at me suspiciously. “This is Cat, Erica, she’s moved into Fidel’s room,” says Angel in her friendly easy way, but Erica just looks at me with undisguised hostility.
    “Who gave her the room? We didn’t even advertise it yet.” Her voice is as ugly as her face, a brutal Antipodean twang that twinges my over-strung nerves.
    “Yeah, well Cat was desperate, weren’t you babe, and it saves us the hassle,” says Angel implacably. I love Angel. She is kind and speechlessly pretty and gets away with everything. I wonder what she’s doing living here. ( She should be a super-star , I think, but this is before her fourth vodka and the tales about her crap upbringing with her feckless mother and various “uncles.”)
    “Well, does Chanelle know?” asks Erica and I wonder who she’s talking about, until I remember the unfriendly black girl who answered the door to me three vodkas ago. I realise I haven’t seen her since.
    “Yeah babe, she knows. It’s all cool.”
    Erica looks deeply pissed off and nudges Brad out of the kitchen, as though his trip to the sweetie shop is up and it’s time for him to go home for his nap. Angel snorts. I giggle. I don’t know what it is – the vodka, the new beginning or these wildly eccentric characters, but I’m almost beginning to enjoy myself, for the first time in months. It’s insane. I feel a searing of guilt, and remind myself not to look back, I’m doing the best thing for all of us, in the long run. And I have no other choice now.
    The swarthy boy from earlier is back, at the stove this time, cooking his vegetables and he quite impressively manages to make the kitchen smell worse than it did with just the bins. A second boy appears from outside, bike helmet under his arm, yellow lycra body suit hot with sweat, and kisses swarthy boy number one. They say something to each other – in Portuguese I think – and ignore me completely. Angel smiles and pours us another drink.
     
    I feel like I’ve known Angel forever. I think we’ve come into each other’s lives at just the right time, we have a connection of sadness, and even though I can’t tell her my story she doesn’t mind, she somehow understands.
    Angel works as a croupier in a West End casino and I don’t know whether that’s terribly glamorous or terribly seedy, I’ve never met anyone with that kind of job before. She’s lived in this shambolic shared house for three months, she tells me in between kitchen interruptions, after her boyfriend beat her up and threatened to kill her and she had to find somewhere to hide. Before that she lived with him at Tower Bridge, and I’ve heard of there, it’s on the river obviously, so I assume it must be posh. It was her friend Jerome who helped her move into this house, where her boyfriend wouldn’t find her, just until she got herself sorted.
    Jerome is a bouncer who technically occupies the final room, though it