Worlds Apart by Barbara Elsborg Read Free Book Online

assist with anything after all.
    Even so, Roo bounced most of the way back to her bedsit. I’ve got a job. I’ve got a job. I’ve got a job. She was still bubbling when she reached her building but took a deep breath before she unlocked the front door of the three-story house.
    Roo occupied a small basement dungeon complete with bed of nails and Chinese water torture—a perpetually dripping tap—while her landlord had the flat directly above. Since she owed him a month’s rent, Roo needed to avoid him. She crept in silently and thought about telling Taylor she’d be good at this sort of thing until she slammed to a halt halfway down the stairs and barely managed to stifle her yelp.
    All her things were piled up outside her room—clothes, books, bed linen, pillows. Bloody hell. That’s not good. The door was ajar, music coming from inside, and Roo peeked in to see her landlord slapping paint on the wall. An insipid magnolia already covered most of the primrose yellow daubed on by Roo. She would have liked to believe Mr. Aziz was finally getting round to dealing with the outbreak of mold. It had been rising faster than her overdraft and given her yellow paint application a look of a Jackson Pollock. But Roo had long suspected he wanted to rent out her place to a relative and had been waiting for the opportunity to throw her out.
    Not paying her rent on time was reason enough.
    She fingered the fifty pounds in her pocket. It wouldn’t change his mind. He’d snatch it and still throw her out. She’d had enough of this place anyway. The bed was really uncomfortable and the dripping tap drove her crazy. This was supposed to be a temporary stop, and she’d lived here since she arrived in the city.
    Roo crouched down and quietly sifted through her heaped up possessions. There was no room for books, or her lovely vase rescued from a Dumpster, or the posters of half-naked men she’d fastened over the black speckles on the walls. She stuffed the suitcase until it was bulging, forced a couple of cans of food into her straining rucksack, and wore her coat even though it was too hot for it. Because she had no free hand to carry her pillow, Roo wedged it under the coat. After one final check of what she’d left behind, she waved a reluctant goodbye to her bed cover—if she put that where she’d stuffed the pillow, she’d look as though she were giving birth to an elephant—and walked up the stairs out into the night.
    When she reached the pavement, Roo plastered a smile on her face. Okay, she had nowhere to live, but she had a job, clothes, a small amount of credit on her mobile phone, two cans of SpaghettiOs, and she looked pregnant but she wasn’t. Life could be worse.
    But not by a lot.
    Her smile faded as reality over her situation hit home. Roo had moved to Leeds from London three months ago and didn’t yet have any friends she knew well enough to stay with. She could probably find a budget hotel, but it would eat her money. She needed a cheap, temporary solution until her first pay check from ICU. Maybe her only paycheck if things didn’t work out.
    “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on,” Roosevelt had said, and suddenly a bright light blinded her. Well, not really, but it was a road-to-Damascus moment and Roo always paid attention to those. She turned and headed for the retail park just off the city ring road, dragging her wonky-wheeled case behind her.
    Outside the Asda-Walmart superstore, Roo wedged everything under a shopping cart and rode the moving walkway to household goods, trying to stop the pillow from sliding down. She found a two-person tent for the amazing sum of twelve pounds, a foam mat that would at least keep her off the ground, a sleeping bag and a battery-powered lantern. Water was the only other thing she thought she’d need and she put a large bottle in the cart. As she paid at the checkout, she wondered how the hell she was going to carry everything.
    “Long to