Read Online The Other Child by Charlotte Link - Free Book Online

there is someone.’
    He did not say anything.
    â€˜You’ve always had such young girlfriends,’ said Karen in despair.
    Youth. That was all she had to offer.
    â€˜Maybe I’m changing some things in my life,’ he replied.
    â€˜But—’
    He slammed his briefcase down on the table. He had been holding it all this time.
    â€˜Listen, Karen. Stop putting yourself down. Tomorrow you’ll be bitterly sorry. It’s over between us. There are any number of men who would walk over hot coals for a girl as beautiful as you are. Just forget me, and don’t dwell on it.’
    Her first tears fell and she sank back down onto the stool where she had sat and waited for him. ‘I can’t forget you, Dave. I can’t. And I think … you can’t actually have forgotten me either, otherwise last week you wouldn’t have—’
    â€˜What? Screwed? Bloody hell, Karen, you know how things go!’
    â€˜Your new girlfriend isn’t fit. Maybe you don’t enjoy sleeping with her, like you do with me.’
    â€˜That’s my business,’ he said. He was getting more and more angry, because she had hit upon a sore point. He just could not imagine having sex with Gwen, and he was already fearing the day – or night – when it would be unavoidable. Probably the only thing that would help then would be to get completely plastered and to try to imagine Karen’s beautiful body.
    Better for Karen not to hear about this plan.
    She was crying hard now. ‘And today Detective Inspector Almond came by again,’ she sobbed. ‘About Amy Mills.’
    Dave took his coat off, resigned. It was going to take a while. Now she had got to the topic that would really bring on the waterworks. At least it had nothing to do with him. A little progress. If only he were not so tired, and did not have so many problems.
    â€˜What did she need to see you again for?’ he asked, beaten. And when Karen, instead of replying, just started sobbing more violently, he fetched a bottle of the hard stuff from a cupboard and two more-or-less clean glasses. ‘Here, have a sip.’
    She rarely drank alcohol and had always complained when he did, but this time she put the glass to her lips and knocked it back. She let him pass her a second glassful and emptied it as quickly as the first. Then at least her tears subsided.
    â€˜Oh, she basically just asked again about everything we’d already gone over,’ she said. She was just as distraught as in July, when Amy Mills’s murder had shaken the whole of Scarborough. ‘I’m the only person Amy was even a little in contact with, so she wanted to talk once more about all her daily habits and routines with me. But I don’t know all that much about them. I mean …’ she bit her lip, ‘I always found Amy a little … odd. So uptight. I felt sorry for her. But I certainly wasn’t a close friend of hers.’
    â€˜You can’t blame yourself for that now,’ said Dave. ‘You did more than the others. After all, you went for a coffee with her once or twice and listened to her problems. She obviously had real issues with making contact. That’s not your fault.’
    â€˜The police have no idea who did it. There’s not a single lead,’ said Karen. ‘At least, that’s the impression I get.’ She added: ‘Do you know Mrs Gardner well?’
    â€˜You mean …’
    â€˜Mrs Gardner, the woman whose child Amy was looking after that evening.’
    â€˜Linda Gardner. Of course I know her. She teaches languages too, and we’ve always made sure our teaching matched up. But I don’t know her more than that.’
    â€˜She was teaching the evening Amy was murdered.’
    The evening he had met Gwen and driven her home. How well, how very well he remembered that evening!
    â€˜Right. That’s why Amy was babysitting.’
    â€˜Detective