The Watcher by Charlotte Link Read Free Book Online Page A

home and she had to get supper ready, Gillian finally managed to make her getaway a quarter of an hour later. She felt free when she and Becky were finally on the other side of the road. The cold wind did her good. After a certain point she had barely been able to stand the festively decorated kitchen, the smell of cooking, and oh-so-perfect Diana.
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me there’s a Christmas party at the tennis club the day after tomorrow?’ she asked when they were almost home. As usual, they had walked in silence.
    ‘Didn’t want to,’ mumbled Becky.
    ‘Didn’t want to what? To tell me? To go?’
    ‘To tell you.’
    ‘Why not?’
    Becky walked up their drive silently. Tom’s car was parked in front of the garage. He normally drove to London earlier than Gillian and came home later. Gillian had to fit Becky and the housework into her routine, so they had decided to each make their own way to work.
    Gillian grabbed her daughter’s arm. ‘I want an answer from you!’
    ‘To what?’ asked Becky.
    ‘To my question. Why you didn’t tell me?’
    ‘I want my own Internet connection!’
    ‘That’s not an answer.’
    ‘Everyone in my class—’
    ‘Rubbish! Everyone in your class does not have their own connection, there’s no need. The Internet—’
    ‘Is terribly dangerous, full of evil men who try to groom girls in chat rooms and then—’
    ‘Unfortunately, yes, they do exist,’ said Gillian. ‘But that’s just one of the dangers. The main reason is that I think you’re too young to spend hours in front of the computer every day without any checks. It’s not good.’
    ‘Why not?’ asked Becky.
    ‘Because it’s more important for you to do your homework, meet your friends, have some exercise,’ said Gillian, and even she could hear that she sounded like a nanny.
    Becky rolled her eyes. ‘Mum, I’m twelve. You still treat me as if I were five.’
    ‘That’s just not true.’
    ‘It is. Even when I want to go and see Darcy, you come along because you think something might happen to me on the way. And you absolutely hate talking to her mum. Why don’t you let me go on my own?’
    ‘Because it’s dark. Because—’
    ‘Why can’t you just trust me?’ asked Becky. At that moment she saw her father, who had opened the front door and was standing in the bright light of the hall. Without waiting for an answer from her mother, she ran to him and threw herself into his arms.
    Gillian followed her slowly, pensively.
5
    She jumped as the beam of light slid along the wall behind the television. A moment later, she wondered if she had imagined it. Or dreamt it. She had fallen asleep, in spite of the whodunit she was watching being exciting. But that often happened to her. She was a morning person. From half past five she was awake with lots of get-up-and-go energy. In the evening it was a different story . . . Sometimes she went to bed at eight.
    She sat up in her armchair.
    She listened for noises outside. She could not hear anything.
    She had noticed the same thing three or four times recently: that a car came out here, in the evening, in the dark. She had heard the engine. She had seen the headlights’ beam glide across the living room wall. And then – nothing. Not a sound, a light, nothing. As if someone had stopped and turned the engine and the headlights off.
    And was just sitting there . . . doing what?
    Anne Westley was not a woman who was easily scared. The first time she had stood up, stepped outside and even walked down the paved garden path to the gate. She had tried to make something out, but it was almost impossible out here. The wood grew right up to the edge of her property. Anne knew that a night was never completely black, but out here it was. Almost impenetrably so.
    And the position of her house was what made the appearance of a car so strange. There was not even a road anywhere nearby. Some distance away there was a remote car park, from which point a number of footpaths