The One Before the One Read Online Free PDF

she does this several times a day. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a seventeen-year-old sister!’
    ‘Half-sister,’ I correct.
    ‘That is so cool,’ says Shona. ‘I would have killed my three brothers for a sister when I was a kid.’
    Toby and I frown. Shona often saying things that make people frown.
    Toby put his feet up on my desk. ‘So what’s she like? Is she a—’
    ‘Delaney!’
    ‘God, Delaney,’ agrees Shona.
    ‘What?’
he says, wide-eyed at the injustice of it all. ‘A student, was all I was going to say. Thanks a lot, you two.’ He stabs at a ball of Blu-Tack with his pen ‘What do you two take me for? I’m a responsible, married man.’
    ‘Well, since you’re such a fan of responsibility, maybe you’d like to volunteer as a fire marshal? Eh? Clever clogs. Whaddya think about that?’
    Our ‘crisis meeting’ – obviously just an opportunity for Toby to laugh at me – is suddenly cut short by Heather, playfully hitting Toby across the head with her Fire Safety manual.
    ‘Fifty quid for the first three takers and an hour with me, to show you the ropes.’
    ‘That, H, is a very hard offer to refuse,’ says Toby, as Heather swings back and forth on her court shoes, clearly delighted by her opening gambit. ‘But I think I’m going to decline, on this occasion. It’s more Caroline’s sort of thing, isn’t it, Caroline?’ And then he smiles in a way that makes me want to punch and snog him all at the same time.
    So that’s how I get roped into being one of the office’s three fire marshals – me, Heather and Toupee Dom from payroll. I spend the next hour learning how to use the fire extinguisher and sitting in a special chair used to evacuate disabled people from the office, whilst Toupee Dom almost knocks me out with his body odour. I try Lexi several times but, worryingly, get no answer until, finally, around lunchtime – just as I get stuck into my PowerPoint presentation, in particular a verywell-executed pie-chart, detailing what’s currently driving the growth of oral hygiene goods in Asda – comes the shower scene noise from
Psycho.
I immediately grab my phone from the table, but it flips about in my hand like a live trout. There’s a text.
    Am up town. This oldie just tried to flog uz xtc! I
    WMPL!
    C u l8r
    DWBH. [smiley face] Ha ha. lol. Lex xxxxxx
     
    What?
    ‘Am up town’ is all I can make out. So she’s in town, but where in town? Soho? Shoreditch? The arse-end of Hackney?
    I immediately email Toby. He’s got a nineteen-year-old brother. He’ll know what she’s on about.
    To: [email protected]
    From: [email protected]
    This text from Lexi, do I need to worry?
    Am up town. This oldie just tried to flog uz xtc! I WMPL!
    C u l8r
    DWBH. [smiley face]
    Ha Ha. lol. Lex xxxxxx
     
    Five seconds later, an email pings into my inbox.
    Subject: translation services from down-wiv-the-kidz From: [email protected]
    She’s been offered class A drugs by a geriatric. This made her wet herself laughing. She says, don’t worry, be happy!
     
    To: [email protected]
    Don’t worry? I am SO worrying. I don’t think I can hack this responsibility for another human being/space-sharing thing, you were right.
     
    He emails back.
    From: [email protected]
    Relax woman. It could be fun. I sure wish I had a seventeen-year-old lolling about my gaff all summer. Although, it has occurred to me, I don’t know whether it has you. Does the fact you’ve got your sister staying change the book club? Like, do we need to re-locate??!
     
    I email back.
    That, Mr Delaney, is the last thing on my mind.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    When I get home from work, Lexi’s in the back garden, sunbathing. It’s only when she removes the copy of
Time Out
she is reading to talk to me in comedic deep voice (I am finding she rarely uses her normal one) that I realize she is topless.
    ‘Afternooooon. You’re early; good day at the office?’
    ‘Yeah, good, thanks.’ I don’t know