Read Online The Death of the Elver Man by Jennie Finch - Free Book Online Page B

just worn out. Mebbe you’m due a bit of a holiday?’
    Alex felt a lump rise in her throat at his kindness. ‘I’m fine Bert, really. We’re so short staffed at the moment I can’t just go off and leave everyone else in the lurch.’
    Bert raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you look after yerself. You’m here late too much. Won’t do you no good, getting so tired and, well ….’ Here he lowered his voice and glanced up at the windows behind him. ‘’Tis not like it’s appreciated much, now is it?’
    Alex followed his gaze up to her Senior’s window. Things must be bad, she thought, if even Bert knew how Garry felt about her.
     
    The next day she arrived on foot, before anyone else and spent several hours catching up with her case notes. She had a number of social enquiry reports to prepare for the court but was at a loss without a car. She needed to visit two of the households before she could finish the background sectionsbut they were both out in the countryside and the only buses ran to factory hours, collecting workers for the giant plastics complex in town and delivering them home again after their shifts. She gazed out of the window, chewing a pencil and punching the keys to her calculator. She could either pay for the taxis to go and do her work visits or pay to get the car fixed. Her budget was not big enough for both.
    ‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, throwing the pencil across the room just as the door opened and an unfamiliar face peered round.
    ‘Whoa, bloody hell!’ said a woman’s voice, the owner ducking back out of harm’s way.
    Alex leaned to one side and peered at the doorway, ‘Can I help you?’ The woman looked in, poised for flight.
    ‘Yes?’ asked Alex. She knew she was being less than gracious but she didn’t feel very welcoming. The woman entered and held out her hand.
    ‘Hi, I’m Susan but everyone calls me Sue,’ she said with a smile.
    Alex blinked at her, her tired brain running through the possibilities – client, client’s girlfriend, probably not old enough to be client’s mother ….
    ‘I’m the new probation officer,’ said Sue. ‘I’m in the next office. Mind if I sit down?’ She plonked herself into the easy chair by the window and kicked off her shoes, gold coloured sandals with light soles and thin straps.
    ‘You’ve got a fabulous view. That bike shed thingy is in the way from my room.’
    Alex knew all about the ‘bike shed thingy’ as on her arrival she’s been offered a choice and opted for this room precisely because of the uninterrupted view of the river. Things had been so much rosier then, almost welcoming in fact.
    ‘Ah, I’m Alex,’ she said, realizing she had been staring in silence ever since Sue’s entrance.
    Sue flicked her hair back, long blonde hair that flowed down her back almost to her waist and gave Alex a glittering smile. ‘I know. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Weboth went for the same job in the summer and you got it, but last month they rang me up and said they had a post after all and would I like it, so – here I am.’
    Alex nodded, rather at a loss.
    ‘Are you, ah …,’ she searched for a polite way to ask whether Sue had any experience, settling for, ‘transferring from another office?’
    Sue shook her head. ‘No, I qualified last August but I’ve had to make do with Social Services work until now. I was running an Intermediate Treatment group in Devon for a while. That was fun.’
    Alex wasn’t sure ‘fun’ quite encapsulated the experimental and occasionally risky nature of most I.T. work. Combining the social work approach of offering alternative interests to juvenile criminals with a client group drawn mainly from the super-fit ‘short sharp shockers’, it was frequently ridiculed in the press, and the more spectacular failures (‘Hooligans on free trips abroad burn down beach huts – we foot the bill!’) were career killers. She looked at Sue with new respect.
    ‘What is that shed thing