Kerry heard the key turn in the front door. She knew it would be her parents, returning from their visit to London, but she jumped all the same.

She stood up uncertainly as they came into the front room. Her father was stocky, morose, never really good-humoured. Her mother was small, fussy, dainty, precise. Old for their age. Kerry had been born when her mother was thirty-eight, her father forty-one years old. Not planned, not expected, not welcome. They had never said it, but it was the way she thought they felt about her.

Unwelcome.

Unplanned.

Embarrassing, having parents older than most of the teachers. Embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing!

They had never been what you would call a close family. And Kieron and Vera's idea of caring for an unwanted child, a girl who had entered puberty at the age of nine, with a bosom at the age of ten, a girl who showed all the signs of becoming promiscuous, was to make rules for her that were impossible to keep, to restrict her movements to such an extent that she came, over the years, to resent them.

The opportunity to spend time alone with her best friend, Kim, had come unexpectedly, out of the blue. They had planned for their next-door-neighbour, Mrs Lawrence, to keep a neighbourly eye on Kerry, and Mrs Lawrence had been as good as her word, on the first day the Macklins were away from home. But Kerry had long since cultivated Mrs Lawrence, having spent many afternoons after school in her parlour, watching television, when her parents thought she was in her own home, beavering away at homework which in reality she copied the following morning either from Kim or from someone who was too afraid of her to tell anyone.

And in high summer, when Mrs Lawrence slept the late afternoon hours away, Kerry would have sex with Bellamy in the garden shed, in the living room, in one of the bedrooms, anywhere that Mrs Lawrence could not see them.

Unwittingly, Mrs Lawrence fuelled and fanned Kerry's promiscuity. Unwittingly, she accepted Kerry's assurance that she felt dreadfully unwell and intended spending the next few days just sleeping off an infection that Mrs Lawrence really did not want to contract herself.

Kieron Macklin, at fifty-seven, was a successful partner in a local legal practice. His wife had also practised law, but the sudden interruption and inconvenience of having a child had forced her into early retirement. Latterly, now that Kerry was old enough for her to return to work, she had begun to pick up the threads, found it too daunting a task, and instead acted as Kieron's assistant and secretary in the practice.

Kerry advanced hesitantly, waiting until her father had put down the luggage, where another, closer child might have thrown her arms around him immediately. He turned his brown eyes, dark and mysterious, to her, nodded silently and they embraced. Her mother looked anxiously around the room for signs of riots, disturbance, damage, anything that would confirm her worst fears, then gently disengaged her daughter from her husband and herself enfolded her against her small frame.

It was not difficult for them to see that Kerry was upset. The red rings about her unmade-up eyes, the fact that she was still in her dressing-gown suggested that something had happened.

'Kerry, are you all right?' her father demanded. It was what he was best at, demanding, and shouting.

'It's not me, it's Kim.'

'Kim? Where is she? What's happened?'

'She's dead!'

The words were blurted out like two short reports from a silenced gun. Vera sat heavily on the settee.

'How?' he demanded.

'She was murdered!'

Kerry's eyes welled with tears and her nose began to run again. She sat next to her mother, wanting so much to be held, to be comforted, afraid to reach out, to let her mother take control of her.

'You'd better tell us....' he began, then looked at the ceiling, feeling his own eyes dampening, not wanting them to see.

'.....everything,' he finished, fishing from his trouser pocket a large red handkerchief that matched the one in his top pocket, and his tie.

He sat down on the other side of Kerry and she tentatively shifted away from her mother, knowing that he at least would be willing to embrace her in a symbolic gesture of protection. That was something he had always been willing to do. Touch her.

But she could not, of course, tell them everything. Only what she had told the police. She could not tell them that Bellamy had spent the best part of three days with her in a prolonged orgy of teenage sex and drugs, just the two of them, locked away from prying, neighbourly eyes. She could not tell them what had happened on that first night, the first night they were away, the night she was supposed to entertain Kim. She could not tell them about the other man.

Shaking, as though she had the 'flu she had claimed to have during her interview with the two young detectives, and sniffing back the tears and the mucous that accompanied them, she told them the same story she had told the police, keeping her eyes firmly on the floor, never daring to look at either parent's face.

'I'll need to talk to the police,' Macklin said, when she finished. 'I'll ring Thompson.'

'Not yet,' her mother said. 'I think we'd better all have some tea.'

'Or something stronger.'

'Not for me. You have something, though. And not for Kerry, of course. It's all right, now, Kerry, we're home. You're safe now.' Strangely, though not because her mother said so, she felt safe. Somehow she knew that she was not personally in any danger. It was just a feeling she had.

'I'll put the kettle on.'

'I don't want any tea, Dad,' Kerry said. 'I just want to lie down for a while. This bug is making me feel a bit shaky.'

'Come on, I'll take you up to bed,' her mother said.

'It's all right. I can put myself to bed, Mum.'

She left the room, leaving her parents to stare at each other.

'I'll ring the police. Find out what's going on. I wonder if they've found Kim’s mum and dad.'

'I expect so. God! What a thing to happen!'

'It happens. Young girls get murdered. It happens.'

'It shouldn't happen.'

'I know it shouldn't happen! I'm just saying it happens. The police......'

'I just hope they've got the murderer.'

'I'll ring Thompson, then, shall I?'

'If it makes you feel better. Didn't Kerry say there were two young detectives?'

'I'll ring the station. They'll tell me what's going on.'

Macklin went into the hall and spoke for several minutes to Sergeant Hargreaves. When he sat down again, his wife had made tea laced with brandy.

'Well, they know who it was. Apparently it was the same man that murdered the other girl, you remember, the Bailey girl, about thirteen years ago. Clitheroe. Donald Clitheroe. It seems he broke out of jail this week and murdered poor Kim. Bastard! They're pretty sure it was him because it was the same sort of murder. Two bobbies are questioning the men who were chasing him Sunday night, but he gave them the slip.'

'Poor Kim. Let's hope they get him soon.'

Macklin nodded. He drank his tea, grimacing at the alcohol in it. Brandy was not his favourite tipple.