The Rose Petal Beach Read Online Free Page A

isn’t it?’ Scott said. ‘We’ve both let our families down in pretty significant ways – and we didn’t even need to go to prison to do it.’
    I laughed again. ‘You’re not wrong, are you? Sometimes I do have to remind myself that I haven’t actually committed a crime, the way my parents carry on.’
    ‘Me too. Except that’s the disappointing thing.’
    ‘Misfits and outcasts, that’s me and you.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘The problem, though, as far as my parents are concerned, is that I don’t actually care that I haven’t lived up to their expectations. They think I wasted my brain and all the sacrifices they made for me to go to school. But like I said to you way back when, you don’t have to do something just because someone else wants you to do it. You can be whoever you want to be.’
    ‘You know, TB, you changed my life when you said that to me. I asked Grandma Cora if you were right and she said yes. I said could I go to university then one day and she said yes. It was her who told my parents I was going and there were to be no arguments. Even though they wanted me out bringing in money, they agreed. All thanks to you.’
    ‘That’s me all over – life changer, parent disappointer.’
    ‘All round perfect woman.’
    I burst out laughing, it sounded so ridiculous coming from his mouth. ‘Good one! I may have that put on a T-shirt.’ I moved my hand in front of my chest. ‘“All round perfect woman”. I like that. I like that a lot.’
    ‘See, there was a reason I went to uni.’
    ‘OK,’ I said to him, ‘here’s my bus. I’m off into Croydon to find a killer outfit that won’t cost the earth for tonight.’
    ‘Why, what’s tonight?’
    ‘First date with the most gorgeous man in the world,’ I said, standing.
    ‘Really? I didn’t know we were going out tonight.’
    ‘You!’
    ‘Can I come with you? Give you a man’s eye view on what you choose?’
    ‘Sure. But you’re going to be so bored. I always go back and forth to a million shops before I buy the first thing I tried on in the first shop I went into.’
    ‘That’s OK, I’m not busy till later, either.’
    ‘Ohhhh … Date with a gorgeous woman?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ he replied, a filthy grin spreading across his face.
    ‘One of those sort of dates, I see?’
    ‘Yep,’ he replied.
    ‘Well good for you.’
    ‘Good for both of us, it seems, TB. Good for both of us.’
    In my life, I haven’t had much cause to be involved with the police. I haven’t been the victim of a crime I would consider reporting – someone once stole some change and a satnav out of my car when I didn’t properly shut the driver-side door – and I haven’t committed a crime that I could be arrested for. Yet, here I am walking through the automatic glass doors into a large reception area at the police station in Brighton. It is a huge beige and white building that from the outside looks like a long, low block of flats.
    Steeling myself, forcing the shaking away, I walk up to the large, curved wooden counter that seems designed to put the average person at a disadvantage – you have to look up slightly to talk to the person behind it. And they look down on you to speak.
    ‘Hello,’ I say to the man behind the desk.
    He is older than me, probably not far off retirement. His jowls are starting to show beneath the soft lines of his pale, aged face.His head is covered with grey-white hair and he is slightly overweight, but not so he’d need to do anything drastic. He leans on the desk and raises his white eyebrows at me rather than speak.
    ‘My husband was brought in earlier, erm, under arrest. I was wondering if I could see him?’
    The policeman puts his head to one side and looks at me with what are kindly eyes; he seems to have the capacity to be gentle and probably calming, too.
    ‘What’s his name?’ he asks.
    ‘Scott Challey.’ A lump closes up my throat the second those words are out of my mouth. Scott Challey. Scott Challey. Scott