Silent Children Read Free

brass receiver of the antique phone they'd chosen to go with the oak panelling the shop had acquired in its incarnation as a specialist in all the coffee there was. "Classical Discount," she said, and with hardly a pause "Yes, she is. It's your mother, Les."
    "Maybe she wants my advice," Leslie joked, and accepted the heavy receiver. "Yes, mother."
    "Perhaps if you occasionally took mine, you'd have reason to be grateful."
    It wasn't an accusation so much as an expression of her constant disappointment with Leslie, with her having done only just as well at school as her parents expected, falling short of the university they'd considered best for her, graduating from the university she'd enjoyed for three years only to find work in HMV, and as for her life since then... "I have, you know, mother," Leslie said gently. "You just don't notice when I do."
    "Name me one occasion."
    "None of the ones when you tell me to do things you know I won't so I'll feel I've let you down." Leslie kept that to herself, not a new experience, and said "This isn't why you rang, is it?"
    "I fear not. When I drove to collect Ian he wasn't there."
    "Oh dear. Could you have missed him?"
    "You should know there's very little I miss. He was meant to be in detention yet again, but he'd failed to present himself."
    Leslie's grimace was so fierce that a man examining the display of standees in the window moved away quite speedily. "What's his crime now, do you know?"
    "I made it my business to find out. He and his usual cronies were caught smoking. The solitary crumb of comfort, if it's that, is they were only cigarettes."
    "Takes after me at his age, don't say it." When her mother took her at her word Leslie said "He'll be home. He knows where his dinner is. Maybe he just didn't want you seeing him in disgrace again."
    "I fear I've almost grown used to that. Perhaps if you were to show a little more concern about his behaviour—"
    Leslie interrupted only partly because an idea had suggested itself. "It's Thursday, isn't it? That used to be Roger's day off. Maybe Ian's gone to him."
    "Perhaps I can leave you to ascertain that."
    "I'll call now," Leslie said. Her enthusiasm deserted her as soon as her mother rang off, but she dialled the number that, however much she resented it, she found readily available in her head. The phone hadn't finished ringing twice when a breathless voice demanded shrilly "Hello?"
    "Hello, Charlotte. Is Roger there?"
    The phone emitted a clatter that suggested it had been flung away. "Mummy, it's Roger's old wife," the eight-year-old shouted across at least one large room.
    The phone took its time about speaking again. "Leslie. How are you? How's your business?"
    "Fine."
    "I'm very glad to hear it," Hilene said with a genuineness Leslie found harder to cope with than she thought insincerity might have been. "What can I do for you?"
    There was no use retorting that she'd already done a great deal more than enough. "Ian isn't with you, is he?"
    "Well, no, he wouldn't be. It's not our day for him, is it?" With so little change in her voice it was clear that her daughter had stayed in the room Hilene said "You haven't hidden your friend Ian anywhere, have you?"
    The giggles that provoked must have been accompanied by an outburst of Charlotte's vigorous shakes of the head. "No scent of him here, I'm afraid. Is there some trouble?"
    "He's at the puffing stage. Silly boy and his silly friends couldn't even wait to light up till they were away from the school."
    "Gosh, I thought we'd impressed on him how dangerous they are. Nasty smelly cigarettes. They make you ill, but you can't stop smoking once you start, so don't you ever touch them."
    Only the words, not her tone, made it clear that most of this was addressed to her daughter, and all of it felt like a rebuke to Leslie, who retorted "I didn't expect him to be there, but I thought I'd better check."
    "I'll tell Roger when he brings the car back from being fixed. Poor old thing, it's