To Kill For by Phillip Hunter Read Free Book Online

don’t think she was getting through.
    â€˜You wanted to be a carpenter, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I remember you told me.’
    That was true, as far as it went. It was something I’d once enjoyed, when I was young, when I still thought there was a choice. Then, I’d thought I could use my hands to make something. Turned out I could use them better to pull things apart.
    â€˜Sometimes I don’t think I’m going to make it,’ she was saying. ‘You know? I mean, I think, Who are you kidding? Who do you think you are? I mean, look at me, Joe. Just some over the hill black tart. Who the bloody hell would want me to make them beautiful?’
    I said, ‘You’re not so bad.’
    When I looked at her, she was resting her fork on her plate and looking off into some middle-ground. She hadn’t heard me. She had that look, the one Kid had had sometimes. It made Brenda look like a child, lost, scared, trying not to show it. Kid had been a child, she had been lost and scared and hammered by the world. I suppose Brenda was a child too, in a way. She still had the sort of stupid dreams that children had, like wanting to be a beautician.
    I finished eating and went to make a cup of tea. When I came back, she’d given up with the meal and had gone to sit on the sofa. She had the window open, the curtains pulled back. A weak cold breeze wafted into the place and carried a far-off smell of wet air and diesel, and the sound of droning traffic. She was smoking and gazing at the darkness outside. In her hand was a glass of gin. It was a big glass and it was mostly full. I saw the bottle on the floor. I didn’t see any tonic.
    There was a glaze to her eyes, and I thought she’d been crying. I put the mugs of tea down on the table. She kept her eyes on the window. In a low, distant voice, she said, ‘I can’t stand it, Joe. Sometimes, I just can’t stand it. What they do.’
    I knew what she was talking about. Marriot did things with kids.
    â€˜Get out, then. I’ve told you, do something else. Fuck Marriot. He gives you any grief, I’ll rip him apart.’
    She smiled vaguely, like she was humouring a child. But the smile wore away from her face, and her gaze was back into that middle distance again, between here and nowhere, between what she was and what she knew she could never be. I don’t know why she did that to herself. I’d told her enough times that life was a piece of shit. If she’d got used to that, she wouldn’t have been endlessly disappointed. But when I would say that to her, she would look at me with her thin smile and it would be like she was sorry for me, like I was the one suffering, and she was here to make everything all right.
    So she carried on with her suffering, and with her life, and with me. She was a romantic, I suppose, or an idealist or whatever. You can’t do much with people like that.
    Whatever she saw there, in that middle-land, she didn’t want me in on it. I think she thought she was protecting me. Maybe she was.
    It’s funny; Brenda thought she could protect me. Kid thought so too. And Browne. None of them could do anything for themselves except be victims, but they all thought they could protect a violent, war-torn monster like me. I say it’s funny. It’s not. It’s about as far from funny as you can get.
    â€˜We could go somewhere,’ I said. ‘We can start again. Somewhere.’
    â€˜You don’t understand, Joe. I can’t explain it. I have to carry on. Not for me, but…’
    There were tears coming down her face. She stubbed her cigarette out and took a long drink from the glass. She shook her head and wiped away the tears. She looked at me and forced a smile.
    â€˜I’m being stupid,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go and get some fresh air.’
    I should have listened to her. Things would’ve been different. She might’ve