Read No Place For a Man for Free Online Page B

get run over by a train? You want to make sure you don’t miss that.’
    Natasha laughed. ‘Too right. Not much happens round here. Don’t want to miss the big event.’
    He was smiling now, a crooked grin but perfect teeth. His hair didn’t look very clean – it was too long, and a dull dark brown as if he’d spent a lot of time in a dusty room. He looked about nineteen. She didn’t think he could be younger, he was too cocky.
    ‘So is that your bedroom, round the back, where I see you?’ The soft, low tone to his voice made the question sound mildly obscene and Natasha could feel the blush coming back.
    ‘Yes. I do my homework up there too. That’s why I see you – it’s not like I’m looking out specially.’ She felt confused, defensive. ‘Anyway, where do you live, what are you doing out there?’
    The boy shrugged. ‘I live down by the allotments. Can’t miss it, it’s the blue Sierra.’
    Natasha was puzzled for a second. ‘You live in a car ? No-one lives in a car!’
    The boy shrugged again. ‘They do. I do. Not all the time, but for now. It’s a good car. Any chance of a cup of tea?’ He flashed her a devastating smile, confident of a yes-answer.
    ‘Er …’ Natasha thought quickly. Was anyone home? Did she want them to be?
    ‘It’s OK, your mother’s in. I saw her,’ he said. ‘I’m good at mothers.’
    Jess flicked through her index cards and tried to remember the last time she’d written a piece about what the girls were currently wearing. It was a good old standby when she was running short on ideas, and the one that had started her off as a journalist. ‘Shop Horror’ had been the tag-line of the first piece she’d ever written: a fast, furious thousand words blending outrage with amusement sent on spec to the Gazette , all sparked off by catching sight of black lace hold-up stockings for six-year-olds, along with lurex bra-tops and miniature G-strings, in a nationwide high-street store. Who on earth, she’d thought, would dress their child up to be a paedophile’s wet dream? Would a girl hardly out of babyhood really feel comfortable (in fact did anyone, really?) in cheese-wire knickers? The features editor had enjoyed her style, printed the piece only days later, invited her to send in occasional articles as and when she thought of them and then, after the success of Teen Spirit , offered her the column she was still writing.
    Jess counted backwards, working out that over that time there wasn’t much about her trio of adolescents she hadn’t covered. She’d written about changingschools, the deep traumas of broken friendships, first periods, exam pressure, dead pets, school trips – just about everything that the average broadsheet-reading family would recognize. It seemed a bit desperate to recycle old articles but the only new topic on her mind at the moment was Matt’s redundancy. It didn’t seem to be on his, though, and she felt as if she was thinking ahead (in the general direction of ruin and disaster) for the two of them.
    It was getting late and Matt still hadn’t returned from the Leo and the girls would be back any minute. Her afternoon had been busy – busy enough for her to push away the waves of panic about the future. She’d roughed out the piece for the Independent , taken chilli con carne out of the freezer for supper and put together a salad to go with it, phoned the plumber about the strange whining noise from the pipes in the loft, checked her e-mails for any word from Oliver (nothing yet) and scooped up the first heap of his abandoned laundry into the washing machine. A small moth of resentment was fluttering inside her. Matt was going to swan back home in his own time (for all time was his own now, wasn’t it?), in a good mood, relaxed, pissed as a rat and looking for a snack to sponge up the alcohol. He’d open the fridge, forage around picking up the yoghourts and commenting on long-gone best-before dates, then he’d rummage in the bread