Camellia by Lesley Pearse Read Free Book Online Page A

pounds for the ring,' she said wearily. 'It was so cold in Hastings I thought I'd go straight home again. But when I got to the bus stop I found the notes had gone from my pocket. I must have pulled them out with my hanky. I walked back to the pawn shop looking everywhere, but I didn't find them.'
    By the time they stopped outside the house in Fishmarket Street, Camellia was warmer and she'd dried her eyes.
    'I'll come in with you,' he said, before she had time to make an excuse. 'We'll put some money in the meter and make sure everything's all right.'
    He was furious with Bonny, determined to take her to task at neglecting her daughter and leaving her on her own for a whole weekend. But at the same time he didn't want to make too much of it to Camellia.
    She made no protest, but he sensed her embarrassment as she opened the front door and a smell of old fried food and damp wafted out. Bert struck a match and put some money in the electric meter, but as the lights came on he had to repress a gasp of horror at the black mould on the hall walls, the paper hanging off in strips.
    He'd seen plenty of grim places in his years in the force, but this beat most of them. It was so cold he shivered even in his thick sheepskin. Walking into the living room he could only stare in shock. The square of carpet was thin, sticky with spilt drinks, its pattern lost in a dirty film. Camellia turned on an imitation log fire with a couple of electric bars across the front. The logs were broken and dusty, the red light bulb beneath showing through. There were a couple of fireside chairs with greasy seats, a black plastic coffee table decorated with two swans and a pre-war settee with the stuffing coming out of the arms.
    Maybe it wouldn't have been so shocking if he hadn't been in their old house. How could anyone adjust to living like this when once they were surrounded by antiques, Persian carpets and luxurious furnishings?
    'It's awful isn't it.' Camellia hung her head and shifted from one foot to the other in nervousness. 'I didn't want you to see it, Mr Simmonds. Mummy was going to get it done up, but she hasn't got enough money now.'
    Bert gulped back a sarcastic reply. Just the price of one of Bonny's smart outfits would pay for this room to be redecorated, and she knew enough men who would willingly do it for her. He shifted back to being a policeman again, mentally noting all the evidence of Bonny's cruel indifference to her child's well-being, while she made sure she never went short of anything.
    An expensive fur lying carelessly across a chair, a wooden clothes horse with dainty underwear left to dry. A bottle of Chanel perfume, a blue silk scarf and a pair of soft leather gloves shared the table with an almost empty gin bottle and a lipstick-smeared glass.
    Bert went through to the kitchen and opened the drop-front cabinet. It was clean, he guessed kept so by Camellia, but so bare. Half a bottle of milk, one egg in a bowl and just a few slices of bread left in a bag. There were condiments, bottles of sauce and a pot of jam, but no evidence that Bonny ever went to the trouble to spoil her manicured nails with something as mundane as cooking.
    'You can't stay here alone.' Bert turned as the girl came lumbering up behind him. It was painful to compare her appearance now with how she had looked when he first met her as a little girl. Her clothes had been so neat, hair shiny and well cut, plump even then, but now she was obese. What would possess Bonny to allow her to wear that dreadful pleated skirt or the shrunken grey jumper. Her shoes were scuffed and rundown at the heel and her grey socks were in concertinas round her ankles. 'I don't like it one bit, love. There's nothing for you to eat and besides a girl of your age shouldn't be alone at night.'
    I'll be all right.' Camellia's eyes dropped from his. Her mournful brown eyes and her hair had been her best features as a child. Heaven only knows who had hacked off her hair, it looked