Silent Children Read Online Free PDF

On the walls the overlapping posters for loud films and louder music fluttered their edges as she stepped into the room. "Let's have the window shut. No need to share your tastes with the whole neighbourhood," she said, picking her way around the assortment of obstacles on the floor, and had to lean all her weight on the half-open sash before it would deign to slide down. "How long do you think you'll be?"
    He scribbled no more than another line and slapped the book shut. "That long."
    "No hurry. I can slow dinner down."
    "Don't. I'm going to Shaun's after."
    "Turn that down a bit. A bit more so we can talk."
    Ian jabbed the button of the remote control for his miniature hi-fi stack until he judged even she had to be satisfied. "What?"
    "Do you know if Harmony Duke has a brother at your school?"
    "Rupe Duke."
    "You know him?"
    "Seen him round."
    So that was how Mrs. Duke knew Leslie had a son. As if this explained his not having mentioned the other boy, Ian said "He's only half her brother. His dad wasn't hers or the one he's got now."
    Was there anything else Ian hadn't told her that she ought to know? She was trying to think of a question sufficiently casual not to aggravate his defensiveness when the doorbell rang beneath her feet. She made for the window again, stepping over a sprawl of dog-eared magazines about martial arts and motorcycles and teenage female pop stars wearing very little on the little there was of them. A woman was subsiding into a wheelchair on the path.
    By the time Leslie opened the front door the woman was levering herself erect with one hand on the chair to poke the bell push with a crimson-nailed forefinger. Beneath a cap of close-cropped artificially silvered hair, her sharp face pale as china blinked long lashes in what might have been reproach at Leslie's slowness. "Careful," Leslie was unable not to say as the woman fell back into the chair and planted her fists in the lap of her ankle-length brown dress. "Sorry if I kept you waiting. I'm afraid I need to go to the bank."
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "I've no money you'd call money in the house."
    "May I ask whom you're taking me for?"
    "Nobody. I mean ..."
    "I'm not collecting for the disabled, nor selling door to door." Having paused for Leslie's silence to betray she'd had such possibilities in mind the woman said "Leslie Ames? Verity Drew."
    She raised one hand, either offering it to shake or negligently indicating herself, and Leslie was about to reach for it when the name registered. "You're from the Advertiser."
    "It's good to be famous. Is it convenient for me to ask you a few questions?"
    Leslie wondered how many interviewees had been too abashed to refuse. Discomfiture wasn't her primary reason for saying "I wouldn't mind a word." She retreated as far as the stairs, then saw how high the doorstep was. "Can I—"
    "Please don't trouble." The reporter tipped her chair back, at the same time grabbing the sides of the doorframe, and in a moment she was speeding down the hall, barely allowing Leslie time to dodge. "So this is the room," she said as she came to a halt by the cooker.
    Leslie turned the oven down a setting. "It's my kitchen all right. Would you like a drink?"
    "I don't, thank you."
    "Tea or coffee, I was meaning."
    "Thank you all the same."
    "Not even a glass of water? You look hot."
    The reporter's gaze flickered to the taps and then to the pipes that led under the sink into the floor. "I'm comfortable as I am, thank you," she said, though her shoulders shifted. "Perhaps I can start by asking—"
    There was a screech of pine on concrete. Leslie hadn't meant to pull the bench out quite so vigorously, and almost flinched as the reporter did. She sat on it and thumped the table with her elbows. "Let me ask you something first. Why was that story of yours news?"
    "I take it you mean my piece about this house."
    "The house of horror, as you called it, or whoever wrote the headline did."
    "I'm responsible for it, I assure you."
    "I