Nirvana Bites Read Online Free

coin, having first failed with a key then a fingernail – now broken) I collapsed back on to the cushions and picked up the notepad again. Perhaps I’d better give Kate a ring first.
    After forty minutes listening to Kate moaning on about something I seemed to have blocked out, I was on the point of a Stan-related revelation when I realised I was hungry. I couldn’t expect to concentrate without a small snack. I knocked up a lentil and vegetable soup thickened with coconut cream, which I had to go out and buy with the pound coin, and then decided to make just a very small loaf of bread to dip into it. While I was cooking, the phone rang but I was at a crucial kneading point and let the machine pick it up.
    Full-bellied and satisfied, I returned to my cushions and punched the button on the machine again. My stomach gave a guilty lurch as I heard Stan’s voice, sounding shaky and subdued.
    â€˜Jen. I’m home. I’ve taken a long hot bath. And even though I had to get a new set of staples out of the sponge and the soap, I’m actually feeling a lot better. I just wanted to say how incredibly grateful I am for your help. I don’t know why, but I just somehow feel that with you on my side, I can come through this thing. I spoke to the others and they’ve all promised to keep shtum. I told them I’m having a breakdown and you’re my therapist. And they believed me! Amazing, huh? Anyway, I’m looking forward to hearing how you’re planning on going about sorting this thing out. Speak to you soon.’
    I felt the burden of responsibility weighing heavily on my shoulders. Too heavily. What had I taken on? I needed help. And, wonder of wonders, Icould get some. At one time or another, we had all called on the other co-op members to help with some crisis, either personal or political. As far as I knew, no one had ever before asked for help to trace a psychopathic blackmailer with a penchant for office stationery, but I was sure if we worked together we would be up to the challenge.
    I trotted back down the stairs and pounded on Maggot’s door loudly enough to be heard over the sound of Lauryn Hill pounding out of her stereo. The door opened and the frame filled with Maggot’s massive bulk – five feet ten and fifteen stone of solid muscle which strained at the seams of her black T-shirt and African-print trousers. When I first met her, five years ago, she had grown tired of attempting to make her hair ‘flap like a white girl’s’, as she put it. She’d given up on straighteners, curly perms and chemicals and concoctions of all kinds and taken to shaving her head. Six months later, she’d grown equally sick of the way people backed away from her wherever she went, so she’d started to grow locks. The effect was only marginally less intimidating, but at least now it was only the white folks who felt threatened. Which was fine by Maggot. Mags is a counsellor in a drugs project in Brixton, which also makes her the only member of the co-op who holds down a steady job.
    I filled her in briefly on Stan’s – and my – problem, and she reacted with decisive energy, as I’d known she would.
    â€˜Right. Emergency meeting,’ she said grimly and reached in for the phone. It never ceased to amaze me that out of a bunch of supposedly politically aware, environmentally conscious radicals, not one of us ever questioned this reliance on the phone to call someone a few yards away on the other side of the wall. We could communicate as easily – and certainly more cheaply – by just knocking on the wall or opening the window and yelling, but we never did. I might bring it up. One day.
    I left the organisation to Mags and returned upstairs to switch the kettle on. Half an hour later an emergency meeting of the Nirvana Housing Co-op convened in my front room. It was customary on such occasions for everyone to bring something, on the grounds