Read Online Junk by Josephine Myles - Free Book Online Page A

her, all right. The expression on her face still haunted his nightmares. She’d come round after a few days and told him it was fine, and she didn’t mind really, but it could never erase the memory of her devastation. “I waited until she was having a good spell. I’d somehow convinced myself she’d take it okay. But she went downhill again after that. Barely got out of bed again from then on.”
    “She was ill?”
    “Leukaemia. She’d had it for a while. It started getting bad when I was in my late teens. Dad died when I was a kid, so I was her sole carer. It’s why I never moved away.” He could say it in such a matter-of-fact tone now. He’d almost convinced himself it hadn’t hurt like hell to give up all his dreams of moving to a new city. Somewhere he’d have been able to start afresh and be someone different. Someone confident and proud of who he was.
    Instead, he’d stayed here and stagnated.
    “Was she a hoarder herself?” Lewis asked, the question surprising Jasper, even though he probably should have expected it. That was what Lewis was here for, wasn’t it? Talking about Jasper’s hoarding problem. Not going over their schooldays.
    “She had lots of stuff. Not books. Hobbies. Crafts. That kind of thing.”
    “And is that all still here, behind your stuff?”
    How did Lewis know these things? Jasper nodded mutely.
    “It’s probably going to be tough on you when we get things cleared back to that stratum. All hoarders react differently, but all of them find it emotionally draining.”
    “Why are you telling me this? Sounds like you’re trying to put me off.”
    “I just want you to go into this with your eyes open. It will be difficult, and you’ll need to be brave, but you can do it, I know.”
    “You don’t know anything about me really. I’m not brave. I’m a coward. Always have been.”
    “I don’t know. You’ve taken the first step and admitted you have a hoarding issue. That takes guts. Asking for help takes even more.”
    “I spent weeks with your number programmed into my phone.” Jasper exhaled an almost-laugh at the memory of his vacillations. “Every day I’d look at it at least five times, daring myself to touch the screen. In the end it was the book slide in the living room that made me call. I just couldn’t bear living like this anymore.”
    “I’m glad you did call,” Lewis said, smiling just as a shaft of sunlight lanced in through the back door glass and lit up his face. His eyes glowed like a pool of water, small flecks of lighter and darker blues in his iris only adding to the effect. Everything about Lewis looked wholesome and outdoorsy, from his sun-bleached hair to the light tan across the bridge of his nose. In comparison, Jasper felt sallow and drawn, even though he knew his skin was actually darker than Lewis’s.
    “Did you want to see the back garden?” Jasper asked. Lewis would fit in just right there. He was all wrong surrounded by the stacks of unread paper. “It’s kind of stuffy in here.”
    “Sounds great.”
    Jasper led the way to the back door and opened it onto brilliant sunshine. There were trees in the back garden too, but fortunately they were dwarf fruit trees and planted far enough away from the house not to shade it out. There was a shallow veranda along the back, something his dad had apparently added to make Mama feel more at home after moving to England. Between that, sheltering them from the view of the neighbour’s upstairs windows, and the high stone walls overgrown with plants, it was an intensely private place.
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lewis step next to him and pull a bottle of water out of his bag.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t offer you a drink. Where are my manners?”
    Lewis took a long swig, then offered him the bottle. “No worries. I’d rather that than be force-fed lukewarm, stale-milky tea from a dirty cup like I do with some of my clients.”
    “Ugh. No, no dirty cups here.”
    “I saw.