Sins Read Free

throat and tried again. ‘Excuse me, please.’
    The model tugged on his leather-clad arm. ‘Ella wants to get past you, Oliver.’
    ‘Squeeze through then, love. I don’t mind if you rub up against me bum.’
    He was being deliberately vulgar, Ella knew, hoping no doubt to embarrass her, so she gave his back a freezing look. The model giggled as Oliver arched his back to create a space large enough, perhaps, for her to wriggle through, but nowhere near wide enough for Ella.
    ‘Ella can’t get through there. Ollie, you’ll have to move,’ the model told him.
    Now he was looking Ella up and down and then up again, his inspection coming to an end when his gaze rested on her now flushed face.
    ‘Going to make the tea, are you, love?’ he asked her, giving her a wicked grin. ‘Two lumps in mine,’ he added, before deliberately letting his gaze rest on her breasts.
    As she left the office Ella could hear the model saying bitchily, ‘Poor Ella, being so huge. I’d hate to be like that. She’s the size of an elephant. I’m surprised she doesn’t try to lose some weight.’
    This was followed by Oliver Charters’ laughter as he announced, ‘There’s no point in her trying. She’d never succeed.’
    Her face on fire, Ella was rooted to the spot, forced to listen to them discussing her until she was finally able to make herself walk away. She hated them both but she hated him, Oliver Charters, the most, she thought bitterly. Horrible wicked man! She could hear their laughter following her down the corridor.
    So, Oliver Charters thought that she didn’t have the willpower to lose weight, did he? Well, she’d show him. She’d show them all.
    The Duchess
.
    Dougie Smith stared hard at the faded name on the prow of the ship berthed in the dry dock.
    ‘Laid her up because she ain’t wanted any more. Bin pushed out of her place by summat new,’ an old tar standing on the dockside, lighting up a Capstan FullStrength cigarette, told Dougie, before breaking into a fit of coughing.
    Dougie wondered if the vessel’s silent, almost ominous presence in its enforced retirement was some kind of message for him. He nodded in acknowledgement of the sailor’s comment and then turned away, careful to avoid the busy activity on the dockside, with its smell of stagnant water, cargoes from the ships, and the familiar mingling of tar, oil, rope and myriad other aromas.
    Ducking under hawsers and ropes, he huddled deeper into the reefer jacket he’d been warned to buy in the balmy warmth of Jamaica, where he’d changed ships.
    The cargo ship he’d worked his passage on from there to London loomed up out of the cold January fog like a grey ghost. Dougie shivered. He’d been warned about London’s cold, foggy weather by the crew of merchant seamen he’d sailed with. Toughened old tars, most of them, they’d been suspicious of him at first, a young Australian wanting a cheap passage to the ‘old country’, but once he’d proved he could pull his weight they’d taken him under their wing.
    He felt bad about the lies he’d told them and the truth he’d had to keep from them, but he doubted they would have believed him if he had told them. What would he have said? ‘Oh, by the way, lads, I just thought I’d better tell you that some solicitor in London reckons that I’m a duke.’ Dougie could just imagine how they would have reacted. After all, he remembered how he had reacted when he’d first heard the news.
    He picked up his kitbag, turning his back on the grey hull of what had been his home for the last few months,and headed in what he hoped would be the right direction for the Seamen’s Mission he’d been told about, where he could get a clean bed for the night.
    At least they drove on the same side of the road here, he acknowledged, as a truck came towards him out of the fog, its driver blasting his horn as a warning to get out of the way.
    The docks were busy, no one paying Dougie any attention. Seamen didn’t