Read Online A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: R.J. Ellory
Ads: Link
stood in the hallway. She watched her daughter through the half-open doorway of her room. Shuddered when she saw that doll sitting right in front of her, as if the two of them were watching TV together.
All smashed to hell, isn’t it? Natasha thought, and in thinking this she remembered how her life had been with Darryl King all those years before. How much she had loved him. How much she had believed that he was the one, the only one, the single most important thing that had ever happened to her. And then later, when he became someone else. She remembered his attitude, his arrogance, the way his life had started coming apart at the seams.
This is the Big H baby! This is the junk, you know? This is my skag, my horse, my thunder . . . I do this shit, or it does me. Who the fuck cares?
I’m not doin’ no crack here, sugar. I got my 24-7, my bad rock, my candy, my chemical . . . I got fat bags, french fries, some gravel and hardball . . . I got hotcakes, jelly beans, prime time, rockstar, sleet, sugarblock and tornado . . .
I got the whole fucking world in my pocket, baby. Should try this shit, you know? This shit gon’ make you hot!
And how he would kick off sometimes, his world-has-done-me-wrong thing.
Tell you what the world thinks about people like us? People like us don’t give a damn what it takes. We take what we need. Rob everyone blind. Steal from our own grandmothers. Fuck you mo’fucker. Fuck you! That’s who they think we are, and that’s who we’re gonna be!
How many times had Natasha thought about giving up that life? She’d thought about it all the time . . . especially when Chloe told her that someone had called her a crack whore.
What’s a crack whore, Mommy?
No-one should be called a crack whore when they’re five years old.
The truth? Ultimately Darryl King had not been the truth. However much Natasha might have loved him, and however misguided that love might have been, she knew that his vision of the world was not how it was. She did not live like an animal. She did not live in filth and shit, in squalid rooms piled high with stolen TVs and PS2s and greasy takeout cartons. Not everywhere was damp; not everywhere smelled like urine and baby puke and people dying. The corridors of her project building did not echo with the phlegm-spittle hacking rasp of tuberculoid grandfathers, the cries of unwanted newborns with colic. Perhaps, because she came from here, she was loathed and despised and undesirable, just as Darryl would have had her believe. But she did not believe it. Not all the time.
She had a nine-year-old daughter. Her name was Chloe. She was not unwashed or unwanted. She was not named Delicia or Lakeisha or Shenayne-LeQuanda ...
Chloe’s father was dead. His name was Darryl King. He was crazy, but Natasha had loved him - desperately, unconditionally at first, and then when it all went bad she had continued to love him for the hope that it could somehow become what it had once been. Natasha Joyce had loved Darryl King enough to give him a child and then, later, when it all turned bad, to sit with him through the blood pressure, the sweating, the nausea and hyperventilation, the hypersensitivity, the tactile hallucinations, the images of bugs burrowing under his skin, the euphoria, the paranoia, the depression and exultation, the panic, the psychosis, the seizures . . .
Loved him enough to try everything she could to stop him taking drugs.
But the power of his addiction had been far greater than any love or loyalty he had possessed. He’d taken everything they had, everything they didn’t.
One time Darryl left them; hadn’t come back for two days.
Natasha had known that one day he would leave and never return.
Natasha Joyce knew that life was just a matter of escaping what you did not want, trying to hold on to what you did. You kept trying, or you accepted what people thought you were and decided you could not change.
Darryl had done that: he’d become what other
All smashed to hell, isn’t it? Natasha thought, and in thinking this she remembered how her life had been with Darryl King all those years before. How much she had loved him. How much she had believed that he was the one, the only one, the single most important thing that had ever happened to her. And then later, when he became someone else. She remembered his attitude, his arrogance, the way his life had started coming apart at the seams.
This is the Big H baby! This is the junk, you know? This is my skag, my horse, my thunder . . . I do this shit, or it does me. Who the fuck cares?
I’m not doin’ no crack here, sugar. I got my 24-7, my bad rock, my candy, my chemical . . . I got fat bags, french fries, some gravel and hardball . . . I got hotcakes, jelly beans, prime time, rockstar, sleet, sugarblock and tornado . . .
I got the whole fucking world in my pocket, baby. Should try this shit, you know? This shit gon’ make you hot!
And how he would kick off sometimes, his world-has-done-me-wrong thing.
Tell you what the world thinks about people like us? People like us don’t give a damn what it takes. We take what we need. Rob everyone blind. Steal from our own grandmothers. Fuck you mo’fucker. Fuck you! That’s who they think we are, and that’s who we’re gonna be!
How many times had Natasha thought about giving up that life? She’d thought about it all the time . . . especially when Chloe told her that someone had called her a crack whore.
What’s a crack whore, Mommy?
No-one should be called a crack whore when they’re five years old.
The truth? Ultimately Darryl King had not been the truth. However much Natasha might have loved him, and however misguided that love might have been, she knew that his vision of the world was not how it was. She did not live like an animal. She did not live in filth and shit, in squalid rooms piled high with stolen TVs and PS2s and greasy takeout cartons. Not everywhere was damp; not everywhere smelled like urine and baby puke and people dying. The corridors of her project building did not echo with the phlegm-spittle hacking rasp of tuberculoid grandfathers, the cries of unwanted newborns with colic. Perhaps, because she came from here, she was loathed and despised and undesirable, just as Darryl would have had her believe. But she did not believe it. Not all the time.
She had a nine-year-old daughter. Her name was Chloe. She was not unwashed or unwanted. She was not named Delicia or Lakeisha or Shenayne-LeQuanda ...
Chloe’s father was dead. His name was Darryl King. He was crazy, but Natasha had loved him - desperately, unconditionally at first, and then when it all went bad she had continued to love him for the hope that it could somehow become what it had once been. Natasha Joyce had loved Darryl King enough to give him a child and then, later, when it all turned bad, to sit with him through the blood pressure, the sweating, the nausea and hyperventilation, the hypersensitivity, the tactile hallucinations, the images of bugs burrowing under his skin, the euphoria, the paranoia, the depression and exultation, the panic, the psychosis, the seizures . . .
Loved him enough to try everything she could to stop him taking drugs.
But the power of his addiction had been far greater than any love or loyalty he had possessed. He’d taken everything they had, everything they didn’t.
One time Darryl left them; hadn’t come back for two days.
Natasha had known that one day he would leave and never return.
Natasha Joyce knew that life was just a matter of escaping what you did not want, trying to hold on to what you did. You kept trying, or you accepted what people thought you were and decided you could not change.
Darryl had done that: he’d become what other
Similar Books
