Read Online End in Tears by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online

confused the two Hondas, one following close upon the other. It was getting dark, too dark to read number plates, and he got the gray when he meant to get the silver.”
    â€œHe caused that woman’s death,” said Hannah.
    â€œShe died in Amber’s stead. He failed with Amber in June, so he tried again in August and this time,” said Wexford grimly, “he got it right.”

CHAPTER 7
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    W hen they were children, she and her sister, their father had taught them how to convert one temperature scale into another, a useful formula no one had ever mentioned at school. In those days it was always Fahrenheit you wanted to convert into Celsius—or Centigrade as they called it then. Something about multiplying by nine, dividing by five, and subtracting thirty-two. Sylvia thought she ought to teach her boys. But not now. She wanted no encounters with Robin and Ben for at least an hour after what they had put her through. They had gone into the garden where they were playing in an inflatable pool, a grandparent’s gift, and she hoped they would stay there until teatime.
    She had told them about the baby. She was showing now and very soon they would notice. So she told them, remembering all those years ago when her mother had told her she was pregnant with Sheila. What had she said in reply? She had a vague idea it was something like, “Will you love me best?” Like a policeman, Robin had said, “Who’s the father?”
    No child would have said that when she was his age. She had blushed to hear it. “Dad is.” And when she was Robin’s age no child would have had to hear that either. Of course they wanted her and Neil to get back together. Never mind the two lovers she herself had had, never mind Naomi. They wanted their mother and their father living together again with them. All children wanted that.
    â€œSo Dad will be back here with us,” said Ben, a statement of fact, not a question.
    â€œNo,” she said. “No.”
    This was too much for them. They looked at her. Then Ben got out his Game Boy and held it, staring at it. And now, when it had come to the crunch, she funked it, she chickened out. She couldn’t tell them—not
now
—that the baby wouldn’t be “theirs” but would go to Neil and Naomi, be put into Naomi’s arms before she could make herself miserable by bonding with it.
    â€œWell, that’s it,” she said. “That’s my news. Now you know.”
    They said nothing. What had she meant by saying to herself that they had put her through it? They had hardly said a word. It was her own deepening guilt that put her through it. Every day, nearly every hour. And this evening her parents were coming. She didn’t know what her father would say. She never did know with him.
    Â 
    The young people who Barry Vine and Lynn Fancourt interviewed all told much the same story. Amber had come alone to the Bling-Bling Club “some time around ten” and stayed until a bit after one. Chris Williamson said he didn’t notice the time and Charlotte Probyn said it was later because she and Chris left when Amber, Samantha, and Ben Miller did. Lara Bartlow had already gone with James Sothern. She wasn’t his girlfriend but they lived near each other on the Muriel Campden Estate. It was a puzzle to Sergeant Vine what they went to the club
for.
Ben, Amber, and Veryan Colgate didn’t drink, Liz Bellamy drank one glass of wine and the others beer. None of them danced because, it appeared, the boys wouldn’t. Lynn Fancourt couldn’t understand Vine’s attitude, but then she was much nearer their age.
    â€œThey’re with their mates, aren’t they? They talk, have a bit of a laugh. Then there’s the music.”
    â€œMusic,”
said Barry who was well known for his preference for the operas of Bellini.
    Samantha Collins was more interesting. Her dislike—jealousy?—of