Someone Who Isn't Me Danuta Kot (best books to read .TXT) 📖

was located not too far from the city centre, but in an area of industrial sheds and overgrown parking spaces. There was an open drain running through the middle of the space, surrounded by what looked like waterlogged wasteland – an industrial Sunk Island in the middle of the city.

It was an odd place to have a beauty salon, but Hull was undergoing urban renewal on the back of the funding City of Culture had brought in. The area could be on the way up, and might be a good spot for a trendy new place to be located. What she needed to do was find out if Poppy was there, or if anyone knew where she had gone.

According to the local business pages, the salon was still open. There was a link to a website, which Kay clicked on. The landing page had the name of the salon emblazoned across it in fancy pink lettering, with the words for a memorable experience written in smaller letters underneath. The image was the face of a beautiful young woman who was pouting at the camera – presumably demonstrating what Carla’s Place could do for its clients.

Kay had imagined the salon as somewhere cool, trendy and minimalist, but the website made it look as retro as you could get.

She clicked on the menu. Under the claim: Carla’s Place offers a first-class service at very reasonable prices, there were buttons to click for booking, for information about prices, news and events, a gallery and a contact us link.

Kay hesitated. She needed to check if Poppy was there but she didn’t want to go through the main switchboard, where she would have to identify herself in some way. That could alienate Poppy even more.

Most salons these days operated on a contract basis. The therapists and the stylists paid for the space, the equipment and the reception staff, but were effectively self-employed. Just another aspect of the gig economy.

Maybe she could try and contact one of the stylists… Had Poppy given her any names? Kay racked her brains, but she couldn’t remember Poppy mentioning anything like that. OK, she could check the people who worked there, see if any of them rang a bell.

There wasn’t a list of stylists or beauticians, so she clicked on the gallery link to see what she could find.

And now a list of names appeared: Krissie, Layla, Jazmyn…

Kay’s feeling of unease had been growing. With some trepidation, she clicked on the first name, Krissie. A thumbnail appeared showing a woman standing with her back to the camera. Her hair hung down her back. She was wearing a camisole and a thong. Krissie is in her mid-twenties, with long dark hair. She is a size 10 with a 34e bust.

Underneath were reviews from recipients of Krissie’s services. Kay’s gaze skimmed the top line of the first one, then she stopped reading. She went back to the gallery and scrolled down the list of names: Layla, Jazmine, Dolores, Kitty, Maggie, Nadia, Polly, Michelle, Clara…

How naive had she been? How naive had they all been?

Slowly and reluctantly, she clicked on Polly.

Polly is in her late teens with long blonde hair. She is a dress size 8 with a 32c bust.

Could Polly be Poppy? The description matched. Would Poppy be careless enough to use a name so close to her own? Would she even care? Kay couldn’t help remembering Becca and the time she had worked as a cam-girl on a sex-chat website, making short, soft-porn videos. It had all been over by the time Kay knew about it, but Becca was still dealing with the damage it had done to her life.

Becca, at least, had had no physical contact with her clients.

Carla’s Place was a massage parlour that sold sex by the quarter hour.

And someone from Tania’s House had sent Poppy there to work.

She’d been there for months, from before Xanthe left to now, and Kay had been stupid enough to take the information given to her at face value – OK, Poppy had been evasive in their encounters, and Kay had been working hard to gain her trust. They’d focused on Poppy’s drug use and her return to counselling and support, but even so, Kay should have been on top of this at once.

She’d read the notes, priding herself on her professionalism and feeling smugly superior to Dev Johar, totally missing the fact that Poppy’s key worker had found her a job in a brothel.

This was Kay’s responsibility. With the bitter taste of failure in her mouth, she understood she’d left Poppy to wander into a dark, dark world with no support at all.

There was no excuse. Carla’s Place didn’t even pretend to be a beauty parlour, and the kinds of services it offered were barely veiled – a sliding scale of rates from forty pounds for fifteen minutes to a hundred for an hour. Any doubts were dispelled by the images in which young women – their faces concealed – were pictured half-naked in suggestive poses.

And Poppy had left the police station in the charge of someone who worked there.

Kay was in a quandary as she collected her stuff together. She needed help, but she didn’t know who to ask. Xanthe had known. She must have known. What about Dev?

Dev had sounded truly concerned about what was happening to Poppy, and he’d sent Kay out to look for her. Faced with a crisis, he’d dropped his jobsworth fussiness and shown professionalism – or was his unusual concern because he knew what was going on and was trying to distance himself?

She couldn’t be sure, but she couldn’t alert Dev – yet – to what she was doing.

She needed to find Poppy first. She needed to deal with this. Now.

Chapter 34

Bridlington

The pub was quiet when Becca got there, and for once, Toby arrived the same time she did. She’d got so used to him being late that she’d almost forgotten what time he was supposed to start. She could