Damaged: A gripping short read, the perfect escape for an hour

Damaged: A gripping short read, the perfect escape for an hour
О книге

A gripping and dramatic short read from the master storyteller Barbara Taylor Bradford.Beautiful, artistic and creative, Allison Jones is a force to be reckoned with. Growing up amongst a family of men, she is the treasured gem at the heart of a large and boisterous clan of cops.After the tragic death of her mother, Allison had thrown herself into her work, but then she meets Mike. Neither one of them is prepared for the power and intensity of their love for each other.So, when tragedy strikes, Allison’s life is derailed once again. Her over-protective family have looked out for her all her life, but they cannot protect her from herself…

Читать Damaged: A gripping short read, the perfect escape for an hour онлайн беплатно


Шрифт
Интервал

book cover image


Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

The News Building

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Barbara Taylor Bradford 2018

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Barbara Taylor Bradford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780007503438

Version: 2017-11-02

For Bob, with all my love always.

Manhattan

Allison needed a drink. Her brother, Jimmy, had made his usual foray to her rented room, picked the lock, and dumped her precious stash of Tullamore Dew down the drain. It felt like Jimmy and her dad were on speed dial at every liquor store in New York’s Five Boroughs. The minute she cobbled together enough money to pick up a pint of cheap whiskey, the proprietor would pick up the phone and rat her out. After she had paid, of course.

Cops! She was surrounded by cops. It was the Jones family’s curse. You were either a cop or a drunk; her father, her brother, her uncle, three cousins … all were cops. Even her mother, her beautiful, iconoclastic mother, had been a cop. Shot dead by a sixteen-year-old punk trying to make a name for himself. The whole family were cops, except for Allison. She was the drunk. Someone had to do it.

And drunks needed to drink.

That need was not the only thing propelling Allison Jones towards West Forty-Fifth Street on this bitingly cold November night. She needed to be with people. She needed the rowdiness of an Irish bar, the smell of shepherd’s pie mingled with corned beef and cabbage, and beer. She needed to hear laughter. When, she wondered absently, as she waited for the light to change, had she last laughed? Not just pretended she was having a good time so some guy would buy her another drink.

Never, maybe.

But even as that bitter thought came, she knew it wasn’t true. There was a time, not long ago, when joy and laughter and love were as familiar to her as the emptiness was now. Once she had a big, loud, loving Irish family. Once she had had a career, owned a thriving business.

Once she had had Mike. If you had him, there was nothing more to want from a life.

A car horn blared and she realised she was standing in the middle of Sixth Avenue, tortured by memories and regret. Those who said, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, didn’t know what they were talking about. For her, loss was a physical sensation. Loss tore at her heart, denied her sleep.

Most likely it was because she knew in her heart she hadn’t lost Mike. She had thrown him away. The only thing that made the pain of this feeling stop was oblivion. She was headed there now.

Allison picked up her pace. The familiar light emanating from O’Lunney’s looked, at that moment, like salvation. Her heel caught in a crack in the pavement and she stumbled and nearly went to the ground.

Careful, she told herself, hanging onto a parking meter, unsteady in heels way too high for her condition. She was already buzzed. What Officer Jimmy didn’t know was that his baby sister always carried a little something in her purse, something to get her through one of his purges.

Allison bent and pressed her forehead against the frigid meter until the cold cleared her head. No falls tonight. No mysterious bruises, no being carried out of a bar, no waking up next to someone she didn’t remember meeting. She had promised herself that would never happen again.

Slow and steady, she whispered to herself, letting go of the meter. Ten yards more and she was pulling open the heavy oak door to the pub. Laughter rolled out into the street and Allison forgot how cold it was. She was home.



Вам будет интересно