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anything nasty. Bonny will just be in a room on her own, on a trolley, all covered up. We'll just take a look at her together and you confirm it is her. That's all there is to it.'
    They were led into a small room by another man in a white gown. It was exactly as Mr Simmonds said. The man waited until Camellia was standing by the trolley and then lifted back the sheet covering her.
    It was of course Bonny, despite the frantic prayers Camellia had offered up that it wouldn't be. She looked just the way she did in the mornings after a night of drinking. A bluey tinge to her skin, older and kind of hard. If it hadn't been for her hair stained darker by the mud, Camellia might have believed she was still asleep.
    She confirmed it was her mother, but she couldn't kiss her. Her heart was telling her to. Her whole being wanted to stroke that golden hair, hold her tightly one more time. But she didn't. Instead she just looked, then turned away as if she didn't care.
    Camellia lay back in the seat and closed her eyes as they drove back to Rye. Bert knew she wasn't asleep, it was just her way of dealing with what she'd just seen. But as he glanced at her pale, expressionless face so close to his shoulder, he was reminded of another time he had driven down this road with her, some eighteen months earlier. It had been about the same time of day, around four thirty or five in the afternoon. Not a hot sunny day though, but a bitterly cold afternoon in February and already dark.
    He was driving back from Hastings towards Rye in his Morris Minor, a tricycle for his son's fourth birthday on the back seat. It was Saturday and so cold he was sure snow must be on the way. He couldn't wait to get indoors and warm himself by the fire. The heater in the car wasn't very good.
    As he drove he was thinking about the past. It was incredible to find he'd been in Rye for fourteen years. It seemed such a short while ago that he was a young constable out on the beat. Now he was thirty-five, a sergeant, married with two small boys. To think, until he was twenty-eight, he believed he could never love any woman except for Bonny Norton!
    Bert winced. What a fool he was over her! Always looking for her, hoping and wishing but never quite daring to do anything about it. Thank goodness Sandra came along when she did! Bonny was anyone's now for the price of a drink or two. If he'd got tangled up with her after John died, his career and happiness would have been finished.
    Sandra was a total opposite to Bonny. Small and dark-haired, shy and loving, she didn't have a devious thought in her head. He had met her out at Peasmarsh, the year after John Norton died, she worked there as a nanny for Clive and Daphne Huntley. They were rich folks, the kind that couldn't be bothered with their kids. They'd had a burglary one night and he'd gone out to take a statement from them while the CID looked for fingerprints. Sandra made them all tea and before Bert left the big house he'd persuaded her to meet him on her night off. Eighteen months later they were married and living in a policehouse.
    As he went over the brow of the hill at Guestling, his headlights picked up a figure some five or six hundred yards ahead. It looked like an old lady. He wondered if she'd missed the bus, as he couldn't imagine anyone choosing to walk along this dark, deserted stretch of road without good cause. He slowed down. She was hobbling, and just the way her shoulders were hunched up suggested she was in distress.
    Bert went on past her to where there was a layby on the side of the road. A stream of cars coming through from Hastings obscured his vision for a moment. Leaving the engine running he got out of his car, pulled his sheepskin coat round him more tightly and called out.
    'Would you like a lift, love? It's a bit cold and dark to be out walking on this road!'
    He anticipated a rebuff. Old country women were a tough breed and she wouldn't know he was a policeman.
    He could see her a little