Read Online The Driver by Mandasue Heller - Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t there, she shoved the quilt off and staggered into the kitchen to get the keys, calling him all the lying bastards under the sun for saying that he was only nipping out for half an hour last night.
    Stepping into a pile of dog shit, she screeched, ‘Oh my fucking God !’ when it squelched up between her toes.
    Eddie had used up the kitchen roll and put the empty tube back in the drawer, and Chrissie refused to go to the bathroom and risk getting crap on her lovely carpet so she was forced to rinse her foot in the sink. And all the while the stupid bitches were still knocking, as if they thought she was deaf or something.
    Chrissie yanked the door open when she’d cleaned herself up, stalked past them and unlocked the adjoining flat. Following when they scuttled inside, she held out her hand, impatient to get this over with and get back to her bed.
    Elena gathered the money from her friends and handed it over, glad that Chrissie had come instead of Eddie, because he always took it from them individually and would have seen that Hanna had yet again brought home the least and Tasha the most.
    Standing beside Elena with her arms folded, Tasha stared at Chrissie with barely concealed contempt. Wrinkling her nose when Chrissie snatched the money and shoved it into her pocket, she sniffed the air exaggeratedly. ‘What’s that disgusting smell?’
    ‘Probably your body telling you it’s time to get a wash,’ Chrissie sniped, pulling the door open and backing out into the corridor.
    ‘Liar!’ Tasha hissed when Chrissie closed the door. ‘It’s her who stinks. You could smell her as soon as she came out.’
    ‘Oh, give it a rest,’ Elena said, slipping her jacket off and heading for the bathroom.
    ‘Make me!’ Tasha yelled, yanking her own jacket off and hurling it into the corner. ‘What are you staring at?’ she demanded, catching Hanna looking at her.
    ‘Nothing,’ Hanna muttered, rushing into the bedroom to escape.
    Katya was sitting on the couch taking her boots off. Tutting softly now, she said, ‘Do you have to be so nasty?’
    Spinning on her heel, Tasha gave her a dirty look. ‘What?’
    ‘I’m sick of you picking on Hanna,’ Katya told her wearily. ‘She hasn’t done anything to you – why can’t you just leave her alone?’
    ‘She’s an idiot,’ Tasha snapped, taking a crumpled cigarette out of her pocket and looking around for a lighter. ‘And what’s got you talking all of a sudden? We usually can’t get two words out of you.’
    ‘I speak when I have something to say,’ Katya said quietly. ‘And this needs saying, because you’re upsetting Hanna and that affects us all.’
    ‘You’re making my heart bleed,’ Tasha sneered, inhaling deeply on her smoke and eyeing Katya with the same contempt she’d aimed at Chrissie. ‘You really think you’re something special, don’t you? But you’re no better than me. You’re exactly the same.’
    ‘I know,’ Katya agreed. ‘But I don’t take my frustrations out on everybody else like you do. We’re all trying to get through this as best we can but you’re making it unbearable. Can’t you see that?’
    ‘Trying to get through this?’ Tasha repeated nastily. ‘You’re as stupid as she is if you think you’re ever going to see a happy ending. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is it , sweetheart.’
    Tasha was voicing what Katya was constantly struggling not to allow herself to think, and the words settled over her like a cold, dark cloak of hopelessness.
    A glint of malice in her eyes, Tasha said, ‘Oh, please  . . . you’re not going to cry , are you?’
    Holding it together with difficulty, Katya said, ‘We all cry, Tasha – even you. You might hide it better than we do but you’re not so different on the inside.’
    ‘You’re so wrong,’ Tasha informed her. ‘You’re all weak, but I’m a fighter, and I’ll get out of here while you’re still sitting here accepting your fate like little