Apocalypse Cow Read Online Free PDF Page B

an arm slung around his daughter, a slim young woman with poker-straight brown hair dressed up in a brand-new business suit for her first day at work. A closer study revealed the cracks in the image of family unity: the daylight between their bodies; the way his hand was hovering above her shoulder rather than resting on it; the fixed grin on her face, so wide and false it pushed her large green eyes into slits and revealed every tooth, including the slightly brown incisor she had never got fixed after being hit in the face with a hockey stick at university.
    They had been forced to pose by Lesley’s mother, who was delighted her daughter was following in Charles’s illustrious footsteps. When her mother dropped the picture off at the office a week later, Lesley had dumped it straight into the drawer. She didn’t want anyone to think she was trading on her father’s reputation. She had known he’d put in a word for her, but had been determined to show she deserved the chance. Now she had blown it, he would try to bail her out. As soon as the news of her redundancy reached the old sod in his retirement villa on the Kenyan coast, he would be on the phone to his cronies. Not because he cared about her; the famous McBrien name, renowned through generations of journalism, must not be besmirched in such a way. She didn’t want him to save her. If she was going to make it, she wanted to do it herself. And if she was going to fail, which at the moment appeared the more likely scenario, she wanted to do so with dignity.
    Lesley closed the drawer and headed out for a smoke. Colin’s ridiculously phallic quiff protruded over the top of his cubicle as she walked past. She briefly considered setting fire to it – with the amount of hairspray he employed it would go up like a torch – but decided a few months in jail was not a price worth paying for the brief burst of savage pleasure she would derive from watching him run to stick his flaming head under the water cooler. All the same, she could not resist aiming a slap at the mound of hair, prompting an ‘Oi!’ in protest.
    ‘Urgent newsflash: You’re a wanker!’ she told Colin, who had stood up to glower at her.
    ‘Seriously, Lesley, what the hell’s up with you today?’ he asked, readjusting his hair.
    ‘Like you don’t know.’
    ‘Look, whatever paranoid fantasy you’ve cooked up, leave me out of it,’ Colin responded.
    The apparently genuine confusion on Colin’s face gave her pause. What if the story was real and she didn’t look into it because she thought she was being mocked? That would be far worse than taking a ribbing. She turned away from her nemesis and thumped downstairs. What she did know was her head was buzzing and she was in no condition to make a decision. She needed time to think, and to listen to the recording a few more times. Then she would decide whether to chase the story or make good on her threat to skewer Colin’s nuts.

4
     
    In the belly of the beast
     
    Terry fought his way out from the deep morass of unconsciousness that kept trying to suck him back down into its murky depths. When he hauled open his eyelids, a sterile white ceiling greeted him. He vaguely wondered if he had overindulged, which would explain the stinking headache, and ended up getting lucky. He groped around for a warm body, and found he was alone in a single bed. Despite the unfamiliar surroundings, his first feeling was one of relief. While he desperately needed to end his eighteen-month spell marooned in the love desert, he didn’t want it to be through a one-night stand – particularly given his disastrous last two flings before the barren patch began.
    After the first of those one-nighters, he’d woken to the morning sunlight glinting off the facial fuzz of a snoring heavyset woman with a tattoo of Pocahontas on her shoulder. He had a horrible memory of cuddling up to her in a corner booth at Clatty Pats nightclub, where such characters were ten a penny,