Candy Read Online Free PDF Page B

was her pimp. I knew she sold her body, that she spent all day doing things I could only imagine, that she probably wasn’t even called Candy. I knew she’d been leading me on, playing some kind of game, amusing herself at my expense. Yes, I knew all that. I didn’t want to know it. I wanted to believe she was just a girl…just a girl I’d met at the station…a girl who liked me…
    But I wasn’t that naïve.
    No, there was no getting away from it—Candy was a prostitute and Iggy was her pimp. And that should have been it, really. The end of a very short—and very embarrassing—love story: boy meets girl; girl smiles at boy; he buys her a doughnut; she tickles his fingers; he turns to jelly; then pimp meets boy and scares him to death and boy goes home feeling stupid.
    The End.
    That’s the way it should have been.
    And that’s the way it was—up to a point.
    I was scared to death.
    I did feel stupid.
    I was going home.
    But there was something else…something that wouldn’t let go…something that started with the touch of her fingers.
    The touch was still there.
    Candy’s touch. I could still feel it, impressed in the memory of my skin: hot, cold, electric, eternal, the touch of another. It was exhilarating, tingling, intoxicating. And as I walked the streets, I couldn’t stop looking at my fingers, staring at the contours and whorls, searching for the spot where she’d touched me. I kept wanting to feel my skin, to feel the memory from the outside, but I was afraid that touching it might somehow remove the feeling inside…
    And that was just the start of it.
    Deep down inside me, buried beneath all the chaos, I could sense a feeling I’d never felt before. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling or something in between…I wasn’t even sure it was a feeling at all. It was just something—an unknown shade, a barely perceptible signal, like a flickering candle on a distant hill. I knew it was there, but most of the time it was too faint to see, and even when I could see it, I couldn’t tell if I was seeing it or hearing it or smelling it or feeling it…
    It was too many things all at once: a light in the darkness, a crying voice, the scent of freshly washed skin, some wonderful oblivion…
    It didn’t make sense.
    And neither did I.
    I’d reached the end of the avenue now, but I couldn’t remember getting there. And I didn’t know why I wasstanding at the foot of the driveway outside my house, gazing up at the moon. But that’s what I was doing. And I must have been doing it for a while, because my hands and face were freezing cold and my neck was as stiff as a board.
    God knows what I was looking for.
    There was nothing up there for me.
    I opened the gate and headed up the gravel driveway.
    The house looked quiet—curtains drawn, soft lights, silent and still—but that wasn’t unusual. It’s an old vicarage, our house—a three-story gray-stone building set back from the street in a walled half acre of rolling lawns and pine trees and well-tended hedges. It always looks quiet.
    Too quiet sometimes.
    It wasn’t so bad when Mum was still living here and Dad was running his surgery from a couple of rooms on the ground floor, but Mum’s been gone for a while now, and Dad opened up a smart new office in Chelmsford last year, so now the house feels bleak and empty most of the time.
    Not that I mind bleak and empty—in fact, I quite like it. Especially when it’s shrouded in comfort, which it is. Comfort, safety, warmth, tranquillity…
    Home sweet home.
    Dad’s car was parked at the top of the driveway. He’d told me earlier that he was going out that night and I was hoping he’d already gone, but it looked as if I was out of luck.
    Not that it really mattered.
    I just didn’t feel like seeing him, that’s all.
    I didn’t feel like anything.
    When I opened the front door, he was standing in the hallway putting on his coat.
    “Where the hell