Desh Read Online Free

drive to three different stores as the coin counting machines clogged up, and people behind them became aggressive. Even late at night the supermarkets were depressingly full.
    But Nessa was mollified and when Sadhan came home he’d brought the takings back for his daughter to count, and yes they’d had a bumper night by Shapla standards, which when added to the cheques he’d given her provided just enough to pay two month’s rent on the following Monday, which might be enough to see them through to the next time.
    He’d stuffed everything to do with the business into a bag, when he got the call from home. So after he’d eaten, Nessa was finally persuaded to go to bed, Mazid felt he could then escape and Aila was left to face her father again.
    He emptied the bag out onto the table. She sorted through the jumble of papers, clipped credit card receipts in one pile, till receipts in another and tapped on a school calculator as she went. He lent back in the chair and watched. Every so often she’d stop and ask the questions he didn’t want asked and his shoulders would slump, then she went for the big one.
    â€œWhat’s the loan really for? If it’s to cover rent, why fifteen grand?”
    He dropped his head into his hands and groaned.
    â€œAll right. Enough. I give up. Go to bed, Dad.”
    â€œSalaam Aikum, my golden girl.” He stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead.
    â€œGod be with you, too,” she said as he left and Aila stayed at the table working until the Sainsbury’s bag became three neat piles of paperwork and the first streaks of orange broke through the morning sky.
    Deals, debts and demons
    Aila waited outside the bank while navy-suited girls sat like soldiers inside their glass booths and thought, if the loan goes through, it will take a huge chunk out of my money for years – ten long years. The clock on the wall clunked forward to 9 a.m.
    She deposited the money and the loan application and hoped navy-suitedness would prevail and the loan would be refused. If the banks did their job properly, it would be and she drove to work thinking it really shouldn’t be possible for a twenty-two-year-old, eight months into her first job, to be given a loan for fifteen grand.
    Ah well, it was done now and, as she walked down the corridor towards the office, her mood started to lift. At least work made sense and she didn’t have to be Affa, Mia or a punch bag. The whiteboard on the wall shouted sales figures in red marker pen. Microsoft pinged into life and the manager poked his head round the door.
    â€œBig weekend then?”
    â€œOne long party.” She took her sunglasses off.
    â€œBlimey. Anything I can do?”
    â€œNah, just let me work. It’s the best cure.”
    â€œYou and me both, hun.” Neil touched her shoulder and added fresh numbers to the whiteboard.
    Later in the day, an outraged female member had been propositioned in the mixed steam rooms and Neil wanted her to deal with it.” You’re good at this stuff,” he said. So she marched down to the pool, yanked open the steam room doors and, in her best Assistant Manager’s voice, reminded the steroid-addled goons sat in a sweaty circle that not every woman expected to be hit on in the steam room, and even fewer women would find their pumped-up pecs that appealing. “So, behave or be banned.”
    Afterwards, she high-fived Neil and he left her to check the CCTV footage from the night before and plough on with the month-end reports for August. When the spread sheet finally took shape, it had grown dark outside.
    The call from her father came as she left the building. Was she coming home? Why was it necessary to work so late? A good daughter helped round the house and kept her head covered. Aila tried not to bite back until he finally hung up and, as her feet ground the gravel of the car park, she thought, funny how sound travelled at night.
    The