Someone Who Isn't Me, Danuta Kot [good books to read for adults TXT] 📗

other moron about being a private detective and all that shit.

So what if he did come into the pub tonight? She’d show him she wasn’t bothered. She’d just be like, ‘Hi,’ and get on with her job and show him he didn’t matter.

She looked at her phone again. Nothing. No messages, and it was only four and her shift didn’t finish until six. Two more hours.

Fucking shit. Fucking Andy. Fucking arsehole moron Bryan, fucking waste of space.

The light in the supermarket was flat and dull. It made her eyes feel sore. She stood up again and eased the aching muscles in her back.

And then she saw it. The newspaper stand was in front of her, and the late edition of the local paper, the Hull Daily Mail, had just been delivered.

Andy’s face looked right at her.

Without even thinking about it, she grabbed the paper off the stand. Andy was smiling in the photo, the way he smiled at her when he came up to the bar, as if she was the only person he really wanted to see.

But the headline… SUNK ISLAND BODY IDENTIFIED AS BRIDLINGTON MAN.

It was like someone had kicked her in the stomach.

It couldn’t be Andy… He wasn’t… The photo…

But it was. It was Andy. Her eyes skimmed the article and fixed on the words knife attack. She felt cold and weak, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her.

He hadn’t been at the pub this week because—

‘Becca!’ She blinked and came back to the present, suddenly aware of a bell ringing. The paper dropped out of her hands and onto the floor where a passing shopper wheeled her trolley over it. Bryan was shouting across the shop. ‘That’s the second time I’ve called you. You’re wanted on the tills. And you can pay for that paper. This isn’t a lending library.’

She couldn’t speak. She just stared at him blankly. Tills?

‘You’re not paid to stand there and read the papers. Didn’t you hear the buzzer? You’re wanted on Lane 2. Now, if you don’t mind.’

‘Yeah… yeah. OK. I’m…’ But he’d turned his back on her and walked away. She stared after him blankly. But Andy was… Didn’t he realise that Andy…?

In a daze, she shoved the paper out of the way with her foot and moved towards the front of the shop, dimly aware of people looking at her.

Andy with his daft jokes and texts, Andy, dancing with her, Andy, sitting in his car giving her that smile, of course I do…

Knife attack. Andy was dead. Someone had killed him.

The memories came hard and fast. Into trouble. With the kind of people…

She went to the till and tried to key in her security number, but her eyes were filling with tears and she couldn’t see properly. Her fingers kept fumbling and she entered the numbers wrong. The queue was massive and people started streaming to her from the backs of the other queues which caused more muttering from the waiting shoppers. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t let them see her cry.

The people in the queue shifted restlessly.

‘Buck your ideas up. You should have been here five minutes ago.’ Sheryl, at the next till, was an assistant like Becca, but because she was older, she seemed to think she was in charge. Becca found her anger again. It was better than this horrible, dragging hurt inside her. ‘Oh, fuck off,’ she muttered.

‘What did you say?’ Sheryl snapped.

‘You heard me.’

‘I’m going to report—’ Sheryl started.

Becca glared at her and Sheryl shut her mouth, turning away to smile at the woman she was serving. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

The monotony of putting people’s shopping through the scanner calmed Becca down. Gradually her hands stopped shaking and slowly the queue diminished. She focused on her job, not letting her thoughts move away from what she was doing.

Don’t let them see you cry.

Eventually, she was even able to produce a thin smile when the customer she was serving said, ‘Good afternoon.’

She looked up. It was the old man who came to shop once a week. He always bought the same things: a sliced loaf – from the reduced shelf if there was one there – a litre of milk, a small box of economy tea bags, some own-brand cereal, seven tins of cat food, seven small tins of baked beans and seven small tins of rice pudding. He wore a flat cap and an old parka that was about two sizes too big for him. He walked slowly with a stick, stopping frequently to catch his breath.

She put his shopping through the till and helped him to pack it into the small rucksack he always carried. ‘How’s…’ she racked her brains, trying to remember his cat’s name.

‘Muffitt? She’s doing nicely, thank you. How about you? Are you all right, love? Only you seem a bit down in the mouth.’

She looked up into his anxious frown and decided he wasn’t being nosy; he was concerned about her. ‘I’m OK, thanks.’ She managed another smile. ‘Bit tired, you know?’

‘Well, I hope it’s because you’ve been having fun. Young people should have fun. You take care of yourself now.’

She kept her hand on his bag. ‘Listen, you know about cats, don’t you? What should I feed to a stray kitten, you know, a tiny one?’

‘Does it not have its mother?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s, you know, wild.’

‘And you can’t catch it?’

‘Not yet.’

He looked sad. ‘Poor little thing. It may not survive, you know that?’ Becca nodded. ‘Give it kitten food – you can get the little biscuits – and dissolve them in a bit of water.’

‘Not milk?’

‘Milk might upset its stomach. Keep an eye on it. And try to make sure it has a place to go where it can keep warm and dry.’

‘OK,’ she said.

He smiled at her. ‘It’s good there are people like you who care.’

‘Becca, you aren’t here to talk to your friends. We’ve still got a queue.’ Sheryl’s voice cut sharply through their conversation.

The old man turned on her. ‘This young lady