Girl Seven Read Online Free Page A

eyes as I slipped it off my shoulders, folded it slowly and placed it with the jacket.
    His face was expressionless, but he was tapping the arm of his chair.
    I slid my skirt and tights down to my ankles and step­ped out of them, suddenly more conscious than I liked of what he might think of my skinny and childlike body. I tried to remember in more detail what his wife had looked like. She’d also looked slight of frame, but more athletic than me, with broader shoulders.
    With a breath, I unhooked the straps of the black bra and let it slide down my arms.
    My body felt hot, inhabited by an exhilarated visceral sen­sation that squeezed my diaphragm and shortened my breath.
    I saw him wet his lips, eyes down, away from my face.
    ‘Can you, er... turn around?’
    I turned around in a circle. As my back was to him I was overcome by the fantasy of him approaching behind me, taking me by the arms, kissing his way down my back, pushing me down on to his desk with his hands all over me...
    ‘Yeah, that’s fine. Fine, I mean... nice. Good.’
    ‘Only good?’
    I picked up my clothes and started to dress myself, coy all of a sudden.
    He gave me an exasperated look. ‘Yeah. Great. Look, stop being a smart-arse and tell me when you can start. Tomorrow?’
    Pulling my jacket on, I beamed. ‘Really?’
    ‘Bring in some ID and bank account details tomorrow morn­ing and I’ll give you a hundred or so to go out and get together some decent outfits, then you’ll be good to go. You can shadow one of the other girls for the night.’ He was writing something down. ‘If you run off with the hundred and think I won’t find you, I will, OK? So don’t.’
    It was the first time I’d felt vulnerable in front of him, but he said it so matter-of-factly that I was pressured to ignore the momentary fear and move on.
    I sat down to pull my tights back up. ‘Seriously?’
    ‘Yeah. Um, one question though.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    Awkwardly, he cupped one hand beside his mouth, as if someone might be listening.
    I leant in.
    ‘You won’t think it’s racist if we play up the Japanese thing, will you?’
    I whispered back sardonically, ‘No, you’re fine. I won’t sue.’
    ‘Awesome.’ He spun around in his chair again, appraising me. ‘Because the whole Japanese schoolgirl thing, the little white socks, the skirts and stuff. It’s a total no-brainer.’

3
    Nausea hit me on the tube the following morning, and I held my forehead in my hands for most of the journey.
    In my mind there were images of bumping into my parents or sister. I couldn’t imagine what an alien environment my old estate would seem without them, but at the same time I was scared of walking towards my old flat and feeling too much as if I was going home.
    Would I have the guts to go inside? Was I going to start crying? Maybe I’d just go crazy and start screaming and hitting things. What if I ran into someone I’d known?
    It’s OK, I thought. No one had really known me there anyway.
    I stared at the shoes of the person sitting opposite me until my stop.
    My old block of flats wasn’t far from the tube station. In fact you could see it straight away, looming into the sky. They should have knocked it down, or burnt the fucking thing.
    The houses, the roads and the pavements surrounding it were drenched in familiarity, but felt too quiet for my memory of the place. It was like walking on to a battlefield in the years after the fight, when there were no traces of blood any more and the grass had grown back, where the calm would always feel at odds with the knowledge of the violence that had taken place.
    I stopped walking, midway between my block of the flats and Jensen McNamara’s. There had been a broken skateboard in the bushes next to the pavement the last time I’d walked the same route, but it was now gone.
    It had been humid then. At least it had the grace to be cold now.
    I walked up to the nearest building and buzzed Jensen’s old flat, wondering what the