Taken Read Online Free PDF

Emmie liked to call them, the bitches. She’d always been selective with her choice of friends and had deliberately kept away from the girls with their loud mouths and cruel comments. She’d never liked being mean to people and the thought of being friends with girls who spent their time bitching about other people made her shudder. No, she was happy being on her own – though she wasn’t really on her own any more was she?
    Unable to resist, Emmie logged onto her Facebook account and with a smile she changed her status from ‘single’ to ‘in a relationship’. That would give them something to talk about when they saw it. It would stop them calling her ‘Skelly Emmie’. It would show them that someone thought she was nice, someone thought she was pretty and someone wanted her.
    Smiling and sitting back on her bed, she took out her white Swarovski crystal iPhone and dialled a familiar number.
    ‘She’s gone. Where shall I meet you?’
    The journey into London took Emmie longer than she thought it would. The traffic was terrible as they hit Upper Street in Islington and with the cab driver playing bhangra music complete with a deep bass the journey seemed even longer.
    She’d decided to wear her black leather skinny VB trousers with a pink cowl neck top from All Saints but she wondered if she should’ve just put on her new Rock and Republic
jeans with a plain black t-shirt instead; she didn’t want Jake to think she was overdressed.
    She hadn’t really wanted to come up to the West End but Jake had told her he was going to have to work later, so if she wanted to see him, she needed to come to him.
    Emmie could feel the butterflies in her stomach; she knew she was taking a risk by going so close to her dad’s club but she was desperate to see Jake, and the thought of not being able to see him for another week was more than she could bear.
    It was another twenty-five minutes until they made it to Chinatown and Emmie got out of the cab looking round nervously in case she saw her father, whose club was only a few streets away from where she was standing.
    The area was packed with people; a colourful mix of tourists, revellers and Chinese residents all milling round. The sounds and smells blasted Emmie’s senses and looking at the array of roast duck, crispy pork and char-siu hanging up in the various windows of the Chinese restaurants made her feel hungry. She’d already had some soup and an apple earlier on in the day and it’d made her feel like a pig and she’d ended up sticking her fingers down her throat, desperately hoping her body wouldn’t have absorbed any of the calories, so any thought of having a Chinese meal was totally out of the question.
    Outside the dim sum restaurant she saw Jake standing with a long sour expression on his face. He was twenty-two; six years older than she was, but he was one of the few people apart from her father who made her feel good about herself.
    He worked part time for her dad and she’d met him when he’d delivered a package to their house in Dagenham. Her father had been out and by the time he’d arrived back home an hour later, Emmie and Jake had already swapped telephone numbers and email details.
    Of course, there was no way that she could tell her father about Jake; he was so protective of her, no boy could even look at her without her father threatening to ‘put brains on walls’.
    When she’d had her fourteenth birthday, her father had hired out Sugarhut nightclub in Buckhurst Hill for her and her friends. She’d invited her friend, Paul, a sixteen-year-old sixth former with wandering hands. She’d spent the evening dancing with him and thought she was in love when he’d bent down to kiss her on her neck.
    Emmie didn’t see Paul for a whole week after the party but when she did eventually catch up with him, she discovered he had two broken fingers and flatly refused to speak to her. In turn, Emmie refused to speak to her father until she came home