How to Make Friends with Demons Read Free

drowned-at-sea-but-don't-yet-know-it. It was an unregistered charity. It couldn't be registered with the Charity Commission because it kept no books. GoPoint stuffed to the gills maintained thirty-seven beds, and right now with November burrowing deeper and deeper into winter it would be working at capacity and beyond. The saintly Antonia Bowen, sitting on the steps quoting William Blake at me and looking exactly like one of the inmates, was the institution's manager, inspiration, apologist, advocate, fundraiser and janitor.

    A fuckin' saint, I swear it.

    Her clients came through her doors with nothing and sometimes left with Antonia's clothing. She dressed herself in whatever rotten garb was left behind; paying herself and her intermittent staff with the casual donations that came her way. One or two staff members were paid from eccentric contracts with this or that social welfare scheme. She was a deep thorn in the side of the social services and the government agencies because she made outrageous guerrilla raids on their offices. Because all help had been refused, on one occasion she and five of her inmates carried the corpse of a woman who'd died on the premises down to the offices of the Department of Health and Social Security and left it in the reception with a Queen's Silver Jubilee tin tea-caddy for donations.

    Now Antonia's landlord, with an eye to property development, had hiked up the rent. GoPoint, well in arrears, was threatened with closure. I was working on something that might buy her a little time, but there had been a hitch and it was proving difficult.

    "I'll come back next week, hopefully with better news," I told her.

    "You're one of my heroes, William. I wish there were more like you."

    "You don't know me, Antonia! I'm not worth bothering with."

    "You're one of the kindest, warmest men I've ever met."

    She linked her hands around my arm and when she looked at me with those cloudless eyes, I couldn't take it. She was one of the seraphim. I had to change the subject. "Hey, I met someone who worked here. Pretty thing. Said her name was Yasmin."

    She blinked thoughtfully. "I don't think I'd be able to employ someone called Yasmin."

    Ah, so we do have prejudices, I thought. A pinprick in your sainthood. That's a relief.

    She was still thinking. "Hey . . . unless it was the girl who started the library. Have you seen our library lately? Come inside."

    The "library" was a dozen shelves of second-hand mostly paperback books. I had no intention of visiting it. Firstly, GoPoint was infested with demons for obvious reasons. The clients had to vacate the place between midday and four o'clock so that they didn't merely rot on their pallet beds all day long. The idea was to give them purpose. It was while they were out of the building seeking purpose that the demons became most active in their prowling, relentless search for a new host. Secondly, demons do tend to cluster around the yellowing pages and cracked spines of second-hand books. I've no idea why.

    Not that I discussed demons with Antonia. She, who every single day walked with purity of heart in a place teeming with demons, said that although she'd seen them, she didn't want to discuss them.

    I simply made my excuses. I got up off the steps, dusting the seat of my trousers. "Antonia, your conjunctivitis has come back. You should get it seen to."

    "It's nothing."

    I was about to argue with her when a young woman with a shocking set of teeth and wearing a dirty padded jacket—it looked like the insulation you might put round a hot-water cylinder—lumbered up to us. "Is it four o'clock?" she said in that Mancunian vibrato you get when loss of drugs wobbles the sternum. "Is it? Is it?" Her eyes were popping. Two huge dilated pupils had the words intravenous hellhound written on them in spiralling calligraphy.

    "No," Antonia said to her. "It's about two thirty."

    The Mancunian turned her beggar's gaze on me. I felt a tiny bit scared, and sad