Hidden Sin: Part 3 of 3: When the past comes back to haunt you. Julie Shaw

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       Chapter 18

      Paula glanced up at the small staff-room wall clock, willing the hands to move faster towards two. She’d come in early, but with Mr Hunter having been so accommodating about her reducing her hours, she didn’t think it fair to push it by asking to leave early as well.

      Her friend Susie, still on lunch, begged to differ. ‘Just go,’ she said. ‘It’ll be well past two by the time he gets back. And if you don’t leave now, you’re going to miss your bus. And your chance to progress the cause for women everywhere. It’s almost your civic duty to get down there and state your case. And I’m sure that, old fart that he is, Mr Hunter would agree.’

      So she’d left work, feeling better that she’d shared it all with Susie, because her attitude towards strippers and pole dancers was unequivocal – as it would be, given that Susie’s former fiancé had been caught in flagrante with a bloody lap dancer. So it at least put the lie to Paula’s early-hours concern that it might be her, and not the men, who was out of step with the real world; that she was being prissy and old-fashioned; that some girls did feel empowered by that kind of work. No, her resolution – that she would not back down on this – had been the right one.

      She knew digging her heels in again might mean she would have a fight on her hands – God, Mo could even sack her if he felt like it – but she felt strangely calm as she hopped off the first bus at the interchange and ran into the baker’s to pick up a pasty.

      She didn’t suppose she’d be eating again till teatime at least and, having foregone breakfast in favour of arguing (though not that unpleasantly) with Joey, needed something to soften the sharp edges of the hangover that were still hammering gently at her temples. In a day full of mistakes – that dress; what had she been thinking? And sitting there snivelling with bloody Mo – staying up with her mam till the small hours, drinking lager, had to rate as the worst. Even if the hangover, which had woken her too early, and still fuming, had at least helped to crystallise her thinking. Whatever impression she’d given to Mo the previous evening, she was now doubly resolute. She mustn’t budge on this. Not an inch.

      And Joey, whose call she’d refused to take when she got СКАЧАТЬ