Tell Me Everything Read Online Free PDF

and the occasional brush-past in the shop, he never touched me. I was grateful for that, but my attempts at storytelling were disappointing to him. If I didn't get on track soon, I was frightened he might start demanding satisfaction for my board and lodgings in other ways.
    T hat night, up in my room, I emptied my purse out onto the floor and stacked up the few coins into piles I could count. I carefully smoothed out the one note and placed it to the side.
    Mr. Roberts wasn't paying me a regular wage. Instead, he would keep the till open after a customer had been in and silently hand me a ten-pound note when he felt like it. I'd slip it into my pocket without even a thank you and that would be that. He saidthat doing it any other way would only attract unnecessary attention and that I could trust him to see me all right.
    By my bed I kept the book Mum had been reading the day I'd left home. I don't know what had made me steal it from her bedside table, but on my third evening alone here I'd taken a sharp craft knife from one of the shop displays and cut a hole carefully through the inside pages. I opened the cover now and checked the cash that I'd hidden was still safe. There was no way it was going to be enough to go anywhere else yet, not even after I'd added the note from my purse. I raised the book to my face and flicked the pages so they brushed my cheek. Their cut edges felt like the flutter of wings, almost a kiss, against my skin.
    And then after I put the coins back into my purse, I took the flashlight Mr. Roberts had given me and went down to wash myself at the sink in the toilet. I hated turning on the bright strip lighting after the shop was shut, taking comfort in the almost secret existence I was leading. As I finished rinsing my hands in the sink exactly six times, I folded my washcloth precisely, each corner matching. At least there were still some things I was in charge of.
    It was only much later, when I couldn't sleep, that I gave in to the ache of needing to pinch myself, over and over, right at the top of my thighs, on the soft plump skin that no one would ever see. I wanted the comfort of the pain, so unbearable I didn't have to think of anything else. At least until the next pinch.

Eight
    I was sitting in the empty salon with Miranda one evening soon after, watching her straighten her hair as we listened to our favorite CD of Bryan Ferry murdering old ballads.
    “I'm after that shake your head look,” she said as she twisted over uncomfortably to one side. I could see the muscle on her neck work its way through her flesh in protest. “When your hair looks as if it's a piece of cardboard that goes from side to side, and people get out of the way in case you slice them in half.”
    I nodded as if I understood. It was a useful trick I first learned during those school counseling sessions. When people start talking about something they're interested in but you're not, you empty yourself of any attempt to enter into the dialogue and just let the language float around you. If you're lucky some words stick, and what you do then is repeat them straight back. It doesn't seem to matter what order they come out in. When the counselor used to get on one of her explaining jags and I did this, she'd clap her hands and say we were finally getting somewhere.
    “So you're just trying to look as if you can slice some cardboard,” I said to Miranda, and she nodded as vigorously as she could with her hair trapped in the straighteners.
    “I'll do it for you if you want,” she said.
    “I've got a friend with this problem,” I said, quickly changing the subject. “Someone wants her to tell him dirty stories, but she doesn't know any. She doesn't know what to do. It's not really her thing.”
    “And this someone is your friend's boyfriend?” she asked, her left eyebrow arching in the mirror as she steadied her head the better to look at me.
    “God no!” I said but then corrected myself. “No, but it's important