Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin Read Free Page B

it, noticing a small family, a young couple with a boy a little younger than Ted, staring up in awe and with some degree of trepidation.
    She grinned.
Newcomer, eh? Pfttt.
    She hoped they weren’t going to be razzed on their first day and lose everything like she had. It was a grim reality of life, she pondered, that there wouldn’t be a Jez; a knight-ess in shining armour, out there to pick up every newcomer who came badly unwrapped on their first day.
    She proceeded across the plaza, picking up her pace as she spotted the canteen. It was cluttered with grimy, unshaven men in oily dirty overalls. Pilots like Aaron, stopping here long enough to deliver and collect, and grab a fried breakfast of fat-soaked synthi meat. She scanned the various men digging into steaming plates of food, but saw no sign of him. She weaved through the plastic chairs to the door of the canteen and opened it. Inside a warm fog of steamed food and body odour greeted her. A familiar smell, not so different to that of the kitchen in which she worked. She studied the queue of men by the counter, many of whom turned to stare at her in a way she found uncomfortable; in the same way they looked hungrily at their freshly fried food.
    There was no sign of him inside.
    She decided her best bet was to take a seat at one of the tables outside the diner and watch for him. She could do that for only another fifteen or twenty minutes, then she knew, regretfully, she would really have to get on her way to work. Ellie picked an empty table and made her way over to it. She pushed to one side the detritus on the table to one side; an empty plate with scraps and a cup with the dregs of a coffee in the bottom. She was wrestling with a chair, awkwardly wedged beneath a table, when she felt a heavy thud on her narrow back.

CHAPTER 4
    ‘Hey Ellie girl? Good God, is that you?’ rumbled Aaron, looking down at her, his face a mask of surprise.
    ‘Aaron!’ she cried, surprised at how delighted she was to see his scruffy face once more. She embraced him, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders. He swamped her awkwardly with one large arm in return, and then held her away from him to look at her. ‘What’s happened to you?’ he said with incredulity.
    She didn’t understand at first, but then it occurred to her that she must look radically different to the girl he’d dropped off three weeks ago.
    Jez’s influence of course.
    She had taken Ellie round some market stalls selling cheap off-world clothes, selecting garments that were more to
her
taste than Ellie’s. She’d also gone to great pains to show her how to apply make-up, again in off-world fashion; pale foundation, dark eye shadow and carbon-black lipstick. By the time she had finished, Ellie looked like a hastily assembled, down-market version of Jez.
    Aaron gazed at her death mask make-up and her dyed, fox-red hair , the black vinyl thigh-boots, the pink lace tutu skirt under a dark green pvc corset…and the Crazie-Beanie T-shirt. He took it all in with an expression of disapproval and concern.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she shrugged self-consciously, ‘I…I’ve got a bunch of new clothes now,’ she said offering a smile that looked like an apology.
    ‘I noticed,’ he said. ‘Sit down, I’ll go and get us some coffee. Then you can tell me what the Hell you’ve been up to these last few weeks.’
    ‘Okay,’ she said. She got the idea he disapproved as she watched him head inside the canteen. He was gone for only a few minutes before returning with two plates of steaming food and a couple of plyfoam cups of coffee on a tray.
    ‘Oh….I’m not
that
hungry,’ she said curling her black-painted lips in disgust as she studied the pool of fat-soaked food on the plate he set down in front of her.
    ‘You look like you could do with some decent food, girl. So eat up.’
    Ellie’s stomach churned at the thought of placing that food in her mouth, but at the same time she didn’t want to start off on a bad