Faces Read Online Free PDF

anticipation. A fight was always a crowd pleaser. ‘Do yourself a favour and fuck off.’
    Angelica looked at the large unkempt women before her, she took in the grubby clothes, the hair still in its rollers from the day before, and the bright-red lipstick that was applied without any kind of finesse. Putting her large shopping bag carefully down on to the pavement, she squared up to the woman and said quietly, ‘This is your last chance to pay me what you owe. I need that money, I earned it, and I won’t leave until I have it safely in my purse.’
    Elsie Reardon laughed then, really laughed. It was a nice laugh, in fact, in any other circumstance it would have made Angelica join in, share the joke. Instead, she drew back her fist and, smashing it into her antagonist’s face with more force than expected, she quickly grabbed at the head full of rollers and, using them as a lever, dragged the protesting woman onto the pavement. The fight was over quickly, and with the minimum of fuss. Angelica could fight, could really have a row if she needed to, but that was the difference between the two women. Elsie Reardon could talk a good fight, but she couldn’t actually have one; she depended on her bulk and her mouth to win the day for her.
    Angelica, however, was a natural fighter. She took a child’s sock from her coat pocket, a long white school sock she had filled with stones from her garden, then she set about battering the woman with gusto. Angelica knew that she would get her money, and she also knew that she was a fool to have trusted this woman in the first place. But this had been easier than she had believed possible. Reardon had had a fearsome reputation and she had taken that from her.
    She’d had no choice. Her old man was once more on the missing list, and she hadn’t even enough money to buy a loaf of bread. So, either way, she had to call in the debt owed her. She had tried asking politely and it had been futile, the hammering had been the decider. Finally, the money was paid over and she thanked the woman and walked back home with her head held high. In Bethnal Green market she bought a few bits and pieces for the kids’ dinner, and worried once again how the hell she was going to pay the mountain of bills she had indoors. Big Danny, as her husband was known, had been gone for three days and now she knew she had no hope in heaven of getting any money out of him. It was Monday and she had last clapped eyes on him on Friday morning as he had left for work. She knew she had more chance of getting the Pope’s inside leg measurement than getting any money out of the man she had married.
    But what really hurt was the fact that she had been reduced to brawling in the street for a paltry fifteen bob, and that was something she would never forget and, as her husband would find out soon enough, she would never forgive, either.
     
    Big Dan Cadogan was a seriously worried man. He was in a pub in north London drinking a pint bought with his last few bob. He had been on the missing list for three days and he was not only skint, he was now the proud possessor of a very large gambling debt.
    He could vaguely remember getting into a card game with some heavy-duty players, and that was about all he could remember for certain. That he had been had over was a given; when under the influence of the toxic shandy he was an easy mark. But the worst thing was that he knew he had been the orchestrator of his own downfall - as usual. When drunk he was convinced he was the poker king of east London. He had more than likely bluffed away the six hundred quid he now owed on a pair of twos or an ace high. Cards were his downfall; one game was never enough and, coupled with the drink, he was a real liability. He had no recollection of any of the hands he had held, or the people he had played with. All he knew for certain was that he owed the Murray brothers six large and, like many a man before him, he was not stupid enough to argue the