The Blooding Read Free Page B

was waiting outside her house when Lynda arrived.
    "Sorry, dear," Mrs. Walker told her, "I'm on sick leave from work and won't be needing you today."
    Lynda was disappointed, but shrugged, smiled, and said, "Well then, I'll just go home, or maybe to Enderby to see a friend. Bye!"
    "Bye, dear," Mrs. Walker said.
    It was 6:55 P . M . By the time Lynda got home a full moon had risen. A blanket of frost had settled on the ground in the Eastwoods' garden. Lynda told Kath she wouldn't be earning any money that night, then said she'd be going to visit her best friend, Karen Blackwell. Lynda had PS1.50 she'd saved from babysitting to pay toward the donkey jacket, which she'd ordered from a shop-at-home catalogue that Mrs. Blackwell had shown her.
    "Are you coming straight home?" her mother asked.
    "I'll probably stay at Karen's for a while, then I might just stop to see Caroline," Lynda said. "Don't worry, I'll be home by ten."
    "Independent," her mother always said, when discussing Lynda. "The child is so independent."
    She was the sort of girl who didn't want much parenting. Lynda seemed to know exactly where she was going in life and performed so well in so many ways it was hard to bridle this middle child. If she wanted to dye her brown hair a darker shade, well, what could you say? It was better than the henna red still showing from her previous experiment.
    There was an occasional nagging worry for her mother. Lynda had had a steady boyfriend during the prior year and a couple of casual ones, and being she was so young it caused Kath a bit of concern. And Lynda had met another boy at the Lutterworth School disco, a boy Eddie called a half-caste. Yet as far as Kath knew, her daughter did not smoke or drink, and Kath believed her daughter to be a virgin. Eddie often said that Lynda was nobody's fool, and so a mother needn't worry too much.
    At 7:10 P . M . Lynda walked down Redhill Avenue, not the most direct route to Karen Blackwell's. She was seen by a friend named Margaret, who asked where she was going.
    "Down a friend's," Lynda replied.
    Margaret later said that Lynda "was her normal cheerful self."
    At 7:30 P . M . Lynda arrived at the Blackwells'. Karen had been Lynda's best friend for seven months, and they'd known each other since primary school and at Lutterworth. They were in different classes with different teachers, but were the same age and shared adolescent confidences.
    Lynda gave the PS1.50 to Mrs. Blackwell who in turn would give it to an agent for Kay's Catalogue Club. Mrs. Blackwell signed the club card, reporting the payment toward the donkey jacket.
    The Blackwells liked and approved of Lynda Mann. "A quietly spoken, well-mannered young lady," Mrs. Blackwell said of her daughter's best friend.
    Then Lynda said, "Well, I'm off to Caroline's to collect a record I've loaned her."
    Caroline lived in Enderby, about a fifteen-minute walk from the Blackwells', up Forest Road, near The Black Pad.
    "I knew it was about half seven," Caroline later said, "because Lynda was in and out the door before the music for Coronation Street came on the telly."
    Lynda walked up Forest Road, toward the streetlight where a footpath leads off toward the pastureland belonging to the psychiatric hospital and joins The Black Pad, the lonely path that angles down toward the cemetery behind Narborough church.
    Lynda saw a figure standing by the lamppost. He had placed himself in the light like an actor on his mark. He was not far from the gate of the Carlton Hayes psychiatric hospital. On that gate was a sign warning motorists who might enter through the gateway. The sign said: DEAD SLOW!
    Kath and Eddie Eastwood had themselves a pleasant evening. First they attended a ladies' dart tournament at the Carlton Hayes Social Club. Then they were off to The Dog and Gun, a favorite pub of Eddie's where he managed to win a few pints of bitter playing darts until 12:10 A . M . One of his victims was a local policeman, which evoked the expected