CHAPTER 4
NO MATTER HOW much everybody raved about Pride and Prejudice, I struggled to get into it. I’d moved onto the tattered couch downstairs, sick of the four dingy walls in the bedroom.
“Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?” I asked the cop sitting in the armchair opposite, his feet propped up on the stained coffee table as he watched baseball on an ancient television scarred with cigarette burns.
“Wouldn’t say no.”
The youngest of my four companions trailed me out into the kitchen and leaned against the wall as I put the kettle on.
“Do you take milk and sugar?” I asked.
“Yeah. We all do.”
“Even the men outside? I could take them drinks as well.”
One was sitting in a nondescript Honda in the driveway, a dark silhouette behind the wheel, and I’d spotted another on a lawn chai
