Camellia (17 page)

'Of course I did.' She made herself sit down and calmly pick up a sandwich. 'You don't think I'd bother to put on a performance like that for nothing do you?'

'But, how?' he started, his voice quivering and tailing off.

Inside she was quivering too. The pain was almost unbearable, but she knew the only way to get her revenge was to hit him where it hurt, right in his manhood.

'How much did we get?' she asked.

He had turned pale now, and a tick in his cheek was twitching. That always happened when he was scared.

'Fifty quid and expenses,' he said weakly.

'Well, you'd better give me half now,' she said curtly, holding out her hand.

She waited just long enough for him to count out her twenty-five pounds, then she reached out and took another ten from his hands.

'The underwear was part of the expenses,' she said crisply. 'I paid for those.' She turned away. 'Now ring room service and order a couple of Bacardi's to go with the coke. I'm just going to dry my hair.'

She came back into the room ten minutes later, feeling steadier. 'I was going to keep the money for Morocco,' he said. He didn't look like Errol Flynn now, but like any other unwashed hippie, with tangled hair, a faint hint of bristle on his chin and his pupils dilated by the speed he'd taken. She could see weakness in those full lips and sense the black hole where his heart should be.

'I'd rather spend mine on a new pair of boots,' she yawned and climbed into bed, flicking out the light. 'The bathroom's lovely, all pink and cream tiles with smelly things to put in it. I wonder what we get for breakfast?'

There was silence for a few moments, Camellia could feel his discomfort. He was brooding about his prowess now, perhaps wondering if she always put on an act in bed.

'I wish you'd told me you knew,' Dougie's whisper came through the darkness. 'You were so wonderful I forgot all about them, now I feel kind of empty.'

'It's about time you woke up to the fact I'm pretty smart,' she said. 'Don't ever take me for a prat again, Dougie, or I'll walk out on you. I went through this tonight to teach you a lesson. Just remember it.'

'I do love you,' he said fiercely, pulling her into his arms. 'When I said we were meant for one another it was true. I couldn't live without you.'

Camellia lay awake long after Dougie had fallen asleep. She had thought until now that all her old wounds were healed, but she could feel them breaking open again.

She felt just the way she did that day in the changing rooms at school, a hateful memory that she'd believed had been permanently erased from her mind. She was in her PE skirt and blouse, covered in mud from the hockey field and the games mistress had set one of the prefects on the door to make sure no one avoided taking a shower.

All the other girls were stripping off, shouting to each other, laughing and joking as they revealed pretty bras and pants, then all at once Margaret Davenport, a girl with a figure like a beauty queen but the nature of a wasp, spotted Camellia lurking in the corner trying very hard to become invisible.

'Get your clothes off, Camel,' she shouted. 'I can smell you from here.'

Twenty girls all stopped what they were doing at Margaret's shout, and the atmosphere in the changing room seemed to drop ten degrees instantly.

'Yeah, get them off!' someone else shouted and suddenly Camellia was surrounded. Mean faces leered at her, they began to chant 'get them off viciously and hands reached out to pull her PE kit off her.

She slapped out at the hands, but there were too many of them. Someone tore away her skirt and the sight of her big flabby thighs prompted hysterical laughter.

Camellia had never known such terror. They weren't just girls any longer, but a braying mob. She was trapped in the middle of them, some trying to pull her shirt over the head, others dragging on the elastic of her pants.

'Fat Camel, fat Camel,' they chanted as they pulled her to the floor and wrenched off her shirt and underwear. As she lay there, desperately trying to cover her nakedness with her hands, sobbing with shame, her underwear was first examined, laughed at, then held aloft like flags of victory.

That ordeal had ended with the intervention of a teacher, but the degradation of it remained. She felt tonight's events would join it.

The next morning, as more snow fell outside, Camellia found the hurt was soothed by loving attention from Dougie and by the splendour of the room. He had breakfast sent up and fed her pieces of toast dipped in egg yolk, then rolled another joint and they made sweet, gentle love with the mirror firmly covered. It was a taste of all the good things in life, a bath together, the luxury of soft, hot towels and knowing they had more than enough money to go out later and eat somewhere smart.

Dougie opened up enough to admit the night had been set up by the head porter.

'The mirror wasn't put there for kinky purposes,' he explained as if it made a difference. 'Apparently this room was once part of a suite used for business. He found it one day during spring cleaning and since then it's been a good little earner for him.'

'Have you ever brought another girl here?' she asked.

'I haven't performed myself,' he grinned. 'But I have been a go-between before.'

Now the air was clearer Camellia felt a little easier. She would never forgive him entirely, but she'd learned something from the experience. She must assert herself more, stand up to him and even learn from him. She wasn't going to be a victim.

'This is what I want forever,' she said, stretching luxuriously, unashamedly naked in front of the window. 'If you won't get it for me, I'll find someone who will.'

'I never put you down as a gold-digger,' he laughed, sitting cross-legged and naked on the bed, his hair damply curling round his face like a King Charles spaniel.

'I come from a long line of them,' she grinned. 'You should have seen my mother in action.'

Suddenly she found herself talking about Bonny, laughing at remembered incidents. Dougie was interested now, laughing with her, and she felt it might prove to be a turning point in their relationship.

'Once she had a bloke who took her to a posh place in Brighton for the weekend,' Camellia said, a little surprised to find herself identifying with her mother, when once the tale had shocked her. 'They had a fight about something, probably because he wouldn't leave his wife, and he stormed off, leaving her alone in the room. Guess what she did to teach him a lesson?'

'Laid in wait to cut off his prick?' Dougie winced.

'No, nothing so barbaric. She nicked the towels, the bathrobes, even the bedspread and she put a pair of her knickers into his suit pocket and cleared off home. Not because she wanted the stuff, just to embarrass him. I bet he never left another woman alone in a hotel again.'

'So that's why you managed to act so cool last night?' Dougie looked at Camellia thoughtfully. Until last night he hadn't realised how much she had changed – she had grown harder, kind of ruthless. He wasn't sure that he liked it.

'I had good training,' she said defiantly. 'I'm growing more like Mum each day,'

Chapter Seven

'Fucking hell!' Dougie leapt out of bed, waking Camellia with a start.

'What is it?' she said sleepily. Even as she spoke, she heard heavy feet tramping up the bare wooden stairs towards them.

It was November, eleven months since the night at the George Hotel. Despite all Dougie's promises they were still living in the flat in Nottingham Court. Mr Tharrup still ogled Camellia and tried to grope her when the opportunity arose. Camellia still dipped pockets and shoplifted.

Dougie pulled back the heavy wooden shutters from the window before she could even lift her head off the pillow.

'Who is it?' she whispered. 'Why are you opening the shutters?'

'It's the pigs, stupid,' he hissed back. The light through the window was enough for her to see him pulling on his clothes at breakneck speed. 'I'm off. Don't open the door. Let them ram it in to give me time to get away. Tell them I went out some time after ten. They can't have been watching the house otherwise they'd have busted me earlier.'

Camellia's mind was reeling with questions, but Dougie put a finger to her lips and motioned for her to be silent. The heavy feet had now reached the landing outside their door.

'I'll be in touch as soon as it's safe,' he whispered, shoving his arms into his embroidered Afghan coat. 'Shut the window and lock the shutters behind me. Do it quietly so they don't twig. For fuck's sake give me time to get clear.'

At the first heavy knock on the door, Dougie snatched a duffel bag from under the bed, slung it round his shoulder and lifted open the window. He was onto the sill with the silent agility of a cat.

'See you soon,' he whispered as he dropped down onto the roof below. 'Lock it up and keep cool.'

Camellia saw him briefly silhouetted on the frost-covered rooftop, long slender legs straddling the apex, dark hair flowing out over his coat, hand raised in farewell. Then he was gone.

The banging grew louder at the door. 'Police, open up!'

In a flash Camellia had the window closed and the shutters locked and was back in bed, pulling the covers over her head. But her heart was pounding like a steam-hammer and she quivered with fear.

'Remember what he said,' she whispered as the banging grew louder still. 'Keep cool.'

A crash of a heavy boot against the door and the wood splintered. Another crash and the door just caved in, the steel bar clonking to the floor. As she peeped from beneath the covers, two bright beams of light shone into the room.

When they switched on the overhead light, Camellia made herself scream and sit up, clutching the blankets over her naked breasts. The light made her blink. It was easy to act shocked: she was.

Four uniformed policemen, truncheons in their hands, poured into the flat.

'Where is he?' One of them advanced on her.

Camellia backed up against the headboard, whimpering with terror. 'Who?' She curled her arm round her head, for one moment imagining they would actually beat her.

'Douglas Green, who else,' he snapped back, his big teeth yellow in the dim light from the Chinese lantern.

'He hasn't come home yet,' she stammered. 'Why? What's he done?'

The police were everywhere, all at once, rummaging around, turning out drawers, while the more senior one who barked out that he was Inspector Spencer tackled Camellia.

'Don't play the little innocent with me, girl,' he roared at her. 'We know he came back here, we saw him come in at half nine.'

'But he went out again later,' she said, guessing it had taken all this time to get a search warrant. She made a great play of reaching over for her clock. 'Goodness me! Is it really three o'clock? I was asleep till you came crashing in.'

She was terrified now. The expression 'losing your bottle' that Dougie used so often suddenly had real meaning. She wanted to go to the toilet so badly she was afraid she might just do it in the bed.

One policeman was pulling books off the shelves, scattering ornaments, packets of joss sticks and a collection of shells to the floor.

'What's your name?' Spencer barked at her again, daring her to lie to him.

'Camellia Norton,' she whimpered, tears welling up in her eyes. 'What's Dougie done?'

A sixth sense told her this was more than an ordinary drugs bust. Something had been up with Dougie yesterday.

He'd been pacing around the room, chain smoking and refusing to eat. He'd said a deal had gone wrong, but that could have meant anything.

'Three kids in hospital. That's what.' Spencer pulled her forward by the shoulder, ripping the pillows out behind her. 'By now they may all be dead and if you've got any sense you'll tell us where Green is.'

Camellia felt as if her blood had suddenly frozen. 'But what's that got to do with Dougie?' She forced herself to look stupid. 'He can't help three kids being in hospital!'

'Get up.' The policeman rolled his eyes with impatience.

'But I've got nothing on.'

'I've seen plenty of tarts with nothing on in my time,' he sneered. He snatched up a handful of clothes on a chair and threw them to her. 'Get those on, before I drag you out.'

The other policeman came back into the room as she buttoned up a shirt.

'He didn't go that way,' one of the younger men gestured towards the kitchen and bathroom. 'There's bars on the window. I found a substance in the fridge though.'

If things hadn't been so serious Camellia would have laughed. The window was the most obvious escape route, yet not one of them had thought to open the shutters. They'd be well brought down when they analysed the stuff in the bottle and discovered it was cough mixture!

Finally the youngest man, with pale gingery hair and eyelashes to match, made his way over to the shutters, barely glancing at her as she tried to wriggle into her knickers under the covers. He was so ham-fisted he couldn't even unlock the catch.

'I doubt he went out that way,' one of the others said. 'We'd have heard him.'

The young one got the window open eventually and peered out, shining a torch. 'It's a long drop,' he said. 'Should I check it out?'

'I told you he left through the door,' Camellia managed a token of defiance. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, reaching for her jeans. 'If you listened to what I said instead of hassling me, you might learn something.'

'Don't get lippy with me, girl,' the inspector snarled at her. 'And cover yourself up!'

Dougie had dropped the fifteen or so feet to the roof below without a sound, but the young constable was like an elephant. He lowered himself awkwardly over the windowsill, then dropped down like a ton of bricks, smashing something en route.

'Christ Almighty,' Camellia heard him say, his voice muffled. 'I've torn my strides.'

Over two hours later they finally took her down to West Central Police Station in Bow Street. She sat shivering on a stool while they turned out every drawer and cupboard, groped down the side of chairs, turned the mattress upside down, and tipped out packets of sugar and cornflakes to check there was nothing inside.