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Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1990
Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008175801
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175818
Version [2016-02-18]
FOR CHRISTOPHER
with much love
(To say: Well done!)
CONTENTS
On this Friday morning in mid-November the long spell of golden autumn weather showed signs of coming to an end. Swirls of cloud, gunmetal grey, slipped along through the lower sky, the freshening wind held a threat of rain.
In the scattered hamlet of Overmead, a mile or two to the east of Cannonbridge, lights shone out from isolated homesteads. Three-quarters of a mile beyond the silent, shadowy expanses of Overmead Wood, a neglected stretch of open woodland, a side road, scarcely more than a glorified lane, branched northwards from the main thoroughfare running out of Cannonbridge. Some five hundred yards along the side road stood Jubilee Cottage, the home of Ian and Christine Wilmot, in a sizable garden still bright with Michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemums, yellow poppies.
The cottage had been converted a few years ago from a pair of semi-detached Edwardian dwellings set at right-angles to each other. It was now a handsome, substantial, many-gabled residence with ornamental windows and ornate chimneystacks, its mellow, rosy brick elegantly set off by cream-coloured paintwork, brilliant swags of scarlet pyracantha berries round the doors and windows.
In her comfortable bedroom on the first floor, furnished, like the rest of the house, with carefully chosen Edwardian furniture bought from auctions and salerooms, Karen Boland, a cousin of Christine Wilmot, was up and dressed, washed and groomed, ready for her day’s studies at the Cannonbridge College of Further Education. She had been a student at the college since September, following a full-time course in general education.
Karen was sixteen years old, slightly built, delicately pretty, with small, soft features and a smooth, rounded forehead that gave her a lingering look of childhood innocence, a little at variance with the veiled expression of her wide hazel eyes; they held a suggestion of wary containment, the look of one who has already learned some of the harsher lessons of life.
She was dressed in