Stop Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

as short when Laura had been around. She’d always said she’d fancy him with a moustache and a number one but he’d never been keen.
    He guessed that it was now some time within the hours of respectable nine to five and noticed he was still dressed in his security uniform from the night before. He padded down the stairs and opened the door to an expression of stifled exasperation that he was more than accustomed to finding on his younger brother’s face. Matty was about to insert a key into the lock and Leo chided himself for having given Matty the duplicate key when he and Laura had needed somebody to water the plants.
    Matty hadn’t changed since they were kids and still sported the tight brown curls and the flaring nostrilsthat had attracted a lot of unkind ribbing at school. There was only two years between them but there was nothing in their features to tie them by blood. So much so that, as a child, Leo had wondered if they’d been adopted.
    Matty was clutching some brown paper take-out bags under his arm. ‘Like your hair that length.’ Matty must have read somewhere that you should always try to start every conversation by saying something positive even if it was untrue. His second statement pushed crabbily to the front of the queue, however. ‘What took you so long?’
    ‘I had to get dressed.’ Leo answered.
    Matty didn’t wait to be invited in and ducked under the arm that Leo had deliberately left between his body and the door handle. Leo shut the door and scraped up some mail off the wooden tiles, turning to find him in the kitchen unpacking some wrapped food from the bag. Outwardly confident and take-control Matty. How quickly things had turned around. ‘You brought us breakfast?’ He followed him to exert some damage control.
    ‘Brunch. There’s dozens of wholefood places around here. Have you any idea how long it took me to find a café selling good old-fashioned filth?’ Matty dumped the grease-spotted bags on the counter and garnished them with a couple of sauce sachets and scrunched up napkins.
    Leo quickly lifted them off the counter and felt his stomach muscles lock when he saw the shiny stains they’d left. He opened a cupboard and felt the same sensation as he pulled out two side plates from the neat stack inside. He dumped the bags on them. He could wash them up and return them to the stack immediately after Matty left.
    ‘Ciggy.’ Matty made for the back door and unlocked it so he could stand on the balcony overlooking the small, gravelled garden.
    It irritated Leo that Matty never had a cigarette on his way over. It meant he had to stand out there with him in the cold.
    ‘How’s things?’ Matty exhaled smoke through it matter-of-factly, as if it weren’t as significant as everyone who asked it of Leo.
    ‘Working a lot.’
    ‘Too much maybe?’
    Leo was in no mood for Matty’s new caring, sharing persona. ‘So, are you on your way somewhere?’
    ‘Got a few things to do in town. I did make the journey to see you though.’ He narrowed his eyes into the distance for effect. ‘Thought you’d like some company on your birthday.’ Another victory.
    The mail was still in Leo’s hands. He’d wondered why there’d been a few more coloured envelopes than usual. ‘It’s very thoughtful of you, Matty. I’ve got plans already though,’ he lied.
    ‘Corresponding with your internet lunatic?’ He changed tack as soon as he registered Leo’s lips harden. ‘Why don’t you get some time off and come over to see us. We could book somewhere.’
    ‘Us’ meant Carla and the twins. Carla had a sparkling smile and intelligence that she seemed to have distributed evenly between her children. Leo missed playing with them. Missed improvising assault courses for them in the back garden. ‘Difficult to get the time off at the moment. Maybe we could arrange to do something over the next couple of weeks.’
    Matty filled his chest with air as if girding himself for the usual date