The Rose Petal Beach Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanting to make sure he’s OK, when all along he is a prolific criminal with a double life; someone who deserves to be behind bars.
’
    I want to say in reply that he has no idea about me or my life, that I am not easily deluded and Scott is not a criminal. He may have come from criminal stock, but he is not one. But that look, that unnameable look I saw on Scott’s face, keeps barging its way into my mind. I lower my gaze because there is something going on that I don’t yet know about.
    ‘Mrs Challey?’ the policeman says.
    My two companions turn their heads towards me in unison, then both jerk their heads towards the Kindly Policeman, telling me I am being called, and to go find out why.
    ‘You’ll be all right, girl,’ says the thin man.
    ‘Tell ’em nothing,’ says the many-layered man.
    Rising from my seat, I walk on rubberised legs towards the desk.
    ‘Detective Sergeant Harvan said it’s highly unusual but she’ll be with you as soon as she can,’ he tells me.
    ‘Thank you,’ I reply.
    ‘Take a seat.’
    I nod, and return to my crew. ‘Told you you’d be all right,’ the thin man says as I sit down again.
    ‘Good girl, you didn’t tell them anything did you?’ says the many-layered man.
    Scott and I are going to laugh about this one day. We’re going to laugh and laugh and laugh.
    Seventeen years ago
    ‘Aren’t you sick of just being friends?’ he asked me.
    We were in my bedsit, a nicely-decorated large room with separate bathroom and loo, and a kitchen area – which had really classy wooden worktops – that I could screen off from the main sitting room/bedroom with a large, cream curtain. Living with my parents had got too much since it’d dawned on them that I definitely wasn’t going to university. Sarto was still living there, enjoying all the benefits while he went to medical school, and that was fine. Anyone could live there relatively unbothered if they were studying, but I was not doing that. I was a constant reminder of how they had failed – the one who found book stuff the easiest was the one who had turned her back on it. I loved working, I loved my job, and I’d been promoted several times in the last eighteen months but that all counted for nothing – as far as my parents were concerned – because I was without a degree.
    Whenever Scott returned to London from university in Essex, he would find me. We would spend our free time together, mainly hanging out in my bedsit, eating crisps and watching videos, then at the end of the holidays he would go back to university and we wouldn’t keep in touch. It wasn’t that kind of friendship.
    ‘How can I be sick of being friends?’ I replied. ‘You’re a wonderful friend.’
    His dark eyes grew a bit wider, and his lips entwined themselves into a wry little smile. ‘I mean, don’t you fancy having sex with me? Once or maybe even a few times? But you knew that’s what I meant, didn’t you?’
    ‘Yes, I knew that.’
    ‘You just wanted me to say it out loud?’
    ‘Partly. I also wanted to give myself the chance to think about whether I wanted to have sex with you.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘I don’t think I do, actually.’
    He was surprised and then immediately hurt, his face flushingred. ‘Not even a little bit?’ he asked, a little less confidently. ‘I get vibes off you sometimes … I was wrong?’
    ‘No, no,’ I rested my hand on his arm and a streak of desire shot through me, pooling in the space beneath my ribcage and between my legs. Scott did that to me even when I wasn’t touching him. ‘You’re not in any way wrong. I … I think I’m having too much fun seeing different people to want to, you know, have a boyfriend. Settle down. Especially with a guy who isn’t here most of the time.’
    ‘I wasn’t talking about that.’
    ‘Yes you were.’
    His soft, pink lips twisted a little more. ‘Yes, I was. But not intentionally.’
    I took my hand away, sat back on the beanbag and picked up my packet of