by Pam Weaver
‘I’ve got on to a mate who can put us up,’ he’d told her. ‘Save a bit of money that way. He’s not on the telephone so I’ll go up and make the arrangements beforehand. I’ll meet you at platform 12.’
She saw a party of cleaners emerge from a small storeroom and begin to sweep the concourse and then she noticed a man approaching. Bonnie looked around anxiously. Why was he coming her way? She didn’t know him.
‘Excuse me, Miss,’ he said raising his hat. ‘I couldn’t help noticing you standing there. Has your friend been delayed?’
Bonnie didn’t answer but she felt her face heating up and her heart beat a little faster. Oh, George, she thought, where are you? Please come now …
‘If you’re looking for a place to stay,’ he continued, ‘I know where a respectable girl like you can get a room at a cheap price.’
Bonnie looked at him for the first time. He was smartly dressed in a suit and tie. He looked clean and presentable. He looked like the sort of man she could take home to her mother but she didn’t know him from Adam and she had read of the terrible things that could happen to young girls on their own in London in Uncle Charlie Hanson’s News of the World. She turned her head, pretending not to have heard him.
‘Forgive me,’ he smiled pleasantly. ‘I only ask because I can see you look concerned. I don’t normally approach young women like this.’
Bonnie began to tremble. Oh, where are you, George …
‘Could I perhaps offer you a cup of tea in the tea bar?’ He was very persistent but that was what the News of the World said they were like. Men like him duped girls into going with them and corrupted them into a life of prostitution.
She shook her head. Even though she was tired and sorely tempted, Bonnie didn’t go with him. She had seen the man watching her from behind a pillar for some time and she didn’t like it. She picked up her suitcase and walked towards the newspaper vendor to buy a paper.
Eventually she stopped a passing policeman and after explaining that she had missed her friend, he at first directed her, then, having heard her story about the man who kept pestering her, decided to walk with her to a small hotel just around the corner. Bonnie booked a room for the night. It wasn’t until she got undressed that she realised that the locket George had given her was no longer around her neck. Her stomach fell away. Where had she lost it? Had it come off when she was in that horrible factory? What a ghastly day it had been. Everything was going wrong. Bonnie climbed into bed and cried herself to sleep.
About the Author
Adopted from birth, Pam Weaver trained as a nursery nurse working mainly in children’s homes. She was also a private nanny. In the 1980s she and her husband made the deliberate decision that she should be a full-time mum to their two children. Pam wrote for small magazines and specialist publications, finally branching out into the women’s magazine market.
Pam has written numerous articles and short stories, many of which have featured in anthologies. Her story, The Fantastic Bubble, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. She has written two novels, There’s Always Tomorrow and Better Days Will Come, both published by Avon. Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes is her first memoir.
Also by Pam Weaver
There’s Always Tomorrow
Better Days Will Come
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Pamela Weaver 2013
Pam Weaver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Source ISBN-13: 9780007488445
Ebook Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780007488452
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
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