The Driver Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘I’ve had some proper bad looks.’
    ‘Ah, don’t worry about it, they’ll soon get used to you,’ Cheryl assured him unconcernedly. ‘But if you’re after something, I’ll get it for you. You should have just said.’
    ‘Yeah, right. And risk having you grass me up?’
    ‘No way are you saying I look like a grass?’ Cheryl spluttered.
    ‘If I knew what a grass looked like I’d be able to answer that,’ Joe teased, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. ‘But if you’re serious I wouldn’t mind a tenner bag.’
    Promising to drop it round as soon as she’d got it, Cheryl took the money and slipped it into her jeans pocket. Leaning back to check on Frankie again and seeing that he was absorbed in Fifi and The Flowertots on the TV, she reached past Joe and opened the window an inch.
    ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ she said. ‘But can I ask how come you got a place so fast if you’ve only just moved back from Birmingham? Only you’ve usually got to be on the housing list for a good five years before they offer you anything.’
    ‘I actually got back a few months ago,’ Joe said, amused that, once again, Cheryl had come straight out with what was on her mind – although her face said that even she thought she was being nosy now. ‘I stopped at my mum’s for a bit, but we had a row about the fella she was seeing so she kicked me out and I had to go into the homeless. They sorted it.’
    ‘Ah, that’s why you ended up in this dump,’ Cheryl said, having heard from friends who’d been in homeless units that it was a case of take-it-or-piss-off when they offered you a place. ‘Bet you wish you’d stayed in Birmingham.’
    ‘No way,’ Joe replied without hesitation. ‘I knew me and Angie were on the skids, so I’d been wanting to come home for ages. Just didn’t have the heart to walk out on her, so I had to wait till she’d had enough of me.’
    Cheryl wondered if this ex of Joe’s had any idea what she’d lost when she’d kicked him out, because it was nigh on impossible to find a man who was both gorgeous and nice. Round here it was either one or the other: gorgeous, but guaranteed to be a bastard; or nice, but you wouldn’t want to be seen in public with them. Shay, for example: he was fit, but he didn’t half know it, so you could never let your guard down because you were always having to keep an eye on him to make sure he wasn’t slipping some other girl his number. Not that watching him had done her any good because he’d still screwed around behind her back. But at least he was now doing the same to Jayleen – ha !
    Seeming to want to get it all off his chest now that he’d started, Joe said, ‘Angie was ashamed of me not working, so she told her mates I was a freelance computer something or other. Bit stupid considering I don’t know the first thing about computers and some of them know a lot ,’ he added with a sly chuckle. ‘But it made for some interesting dinner parties – them quizzing me about RAMs and hard drives, and me talking shit ’cos I didn’t know what the hell they were going on about.’
    ‘ Dinner parties? ’
    ‘Hey, if you think that’s bad, you should have seen her wine and cheese parties.’
    Cheryl pulled a face. ‘That’s so crap. You can’t just drink wine and eat cheese and call it a party.’
    ‘Oh, it’s not any old wine and cheese,’ Joe informed her with a straight face. ‘It’s got to be specially imported. And your guests have got to be really intellectual, so you can have amazing conversations about really, really interesting shit.’
    Catching the glint of humour in his eyes, Cheryl narrowed her own. ‘You’re having me on, aren’t you?’
    ‘All right, so she didn’t actually import the cheese,’ Joe admitted. ‘But the rest is true – honest.’
    ‘Yeah, right.’ Shaking her head, Cheryl lit her cigarette and sucked on it thoughtfully. ‘You know, I can’t remember the last time I went to a party. You