There was still a chance if the lights were against it and she began desperately chasing after it, hampered by her fragile, high-heeled shoes. But the lights were green and she watched helplessly, gasping and bent double with a sudden cramp, as it lumbered over the brow of a hill and like a brightly lit ship sank out of sight. 'Oh no!' she screamed after it, 'Oh God! Oh no!' and felt the tears of anger and dismay smarting her eyes.

This was the end. It was her father who laid down the rules in her family and there was never any appeal, any second chance. After protracted discussion and her repeated pleas she had been allowed this weekly visit on Friday evenings to the disco run by the church youth club, provided she caught the 9.40 bus without fail. It put her down at the Crown and Anchor at Cobb's Marsh, only fifty yards from her cottage. From 10.15 her father would begin watching for the bus to pass the front room where he and her mother would sit half watching the television, the curtains drawn back. Whatever the programme or weather, he would then put on his coat and come out to walk the fifty yards to meet her, keeping her always in sight. Since the Norfolk Whistler had begun his killings her father had had an added justification for the mild domestic tyranny which, she half realized, he both thought right in dealing with his only child and rather enjoyed. The concordat had been early established: 'You do right by me, my girl, and I'll do right by you.' She both loved him and slightly feared him and she dreaded his anger. Now there would be one of those awful rows in which she knew she couldn't hope to look to her mother for support. It would be the end of her Friday evenings with Wayne and Shirl and the gang. Already they teased and pitied her because she was treated as a child. Now it would be total humiliation.