Someone Else's Son by Sam Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

we at least introduce ourselves? It wouldn’t be right otherwise.’ Then she thought, is this a set-up? Is the box full of crap from the bin?
    The boy leant across with his hand outstretched. ‘Max Quinell,’ he said. ‘Year eleven no-hoper and all-round outcast. Pleased to meet you.’
    Dayna felt her cheeks burning. She relaxed a little. ‘Dayna Ray. Year eleven punchbag and also all-round outcast. Delighted to meet you, too.’
    They shook hands.
    Dayna felt it. Up her wrists, along her shoulders, straight into her heart.
    By the look in his eyes, the deepening of their chocolate colour, she reckoned he felt it too.
    God.
    ‘So. What is it?’ She sniffed. She hadn’t got a tissue. She pulled off the paper and stared at the box. She tilted her head round to read. ‘Xtreme-Force Pressure Washer including rotating head and six-metre hose.’ Dayna looked up at Max. ‘Nice,’ she said, nodding. Then she started laughing. A laugh that tore the fear and hate from her belly, a laugh that rang between the walls of the dank alley where she sometimes chose to sit, a laugh that announced to the universe that everyone had better watch out because she’d got a new pressure washer.
    ‘You like it?’
    ‘Love it,’ she said.
    ‘Now you can clean up your life.’
    ‘It’s already working,’ she said, hardly able to wait to get the thing out of the box.
     
    Fiona Marton usually ate her lunch alone. It wasn’t by choice, rather because Brody insisted on eating his lunch alone, holed up in his office forking noodles from a carton, thereby leaving her on call and unable to go with the others to the canteen or that new place round the corner. She didn’t care. She could watch him through the glass partition, hunched over his desk, just thinking, just eating, occasionally drawing half a bottle of water in one gulp. She’d eat her sandwich – always cheese and lettuce – studying him as she chewed thoughtfully, imagining, wondering.
    Today, however, was different. ‘Let’s go out for lunch,’ Brody said mid-morning. He’d just finished a lecture. Fiona nearly fell off her chair. She was typing up some letters he’d dictated earlier, all part of her job.
    ‘You mean us?’ She couldn’t look at him. Blind or not, the man seemed to know when she blinked. He was sure to feel the heat of her blush.
    ‘Of course us.’ He waited for her response. ‘Well?’
    ‘Yes,’ she replied, wondering what the catch was. He went back to his office. She watched as he typed on his laptop. The talk-back facility was turned down so low she could barely hear it. Brody, she knew, heard every syllable clear as a bell, confirming that what he had entered was correct. ‘That would be very nice,’ she called out. She wished she’d worn her new blouse.
    By one o’clock they were seated in a booth in what Fiona could only describe as a greasy spoon caff not far, she noted dismally, from the estate where Brody lived. Sticky red plastic benches bracketed an equally sticky laminated table. ‘God, you should see this place,’ Fiona said. ‘It’s trying to be all fifties diner, but actually I think everything here literally is from the fifties. Including the food.’
    Brody grunted.
    She sighed and picked up the menu. It wasn’t what she’d had in mind. ‘There’s bacon and eggs. Bacon butty. Egg butty. Scrambled egg and bacon, with or without tom—’
    ‘I’m having Chef’s Special.’
    Fiona glanced at the menu, then looked around the diner and saw it written up on a chalk board. ‘You’re right. There’s a Chef’s Special. What is it?’
    ‘Different every day.’ He stopped, turned to his left, paused for a moment. ‘How’s it going, Edie?’ His face rippled to a smile.
    ‘Just wonderful, thank you, Professor. I’m a grandma for the sixth time.’ Edie smoothed out her apron proudly.
    Fiona saw that there were a couple of other waitresses buzzing about. How, then, had he known this was Edie? He must have been in