A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell [Rendell, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-80614-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

22

The young man with the horrible voice was sitting in the bus shelter. He was there again, in spite of having been warned off by her and by Noele. Julia watched him from the window. She had to be sure he was the right one. By that, of course, she meant the wrong one, everything about him was wrong, his voice, his appearance, his manner, his insolence. But was he the one who phoned Francine, talked to Francine and called at Noele’s?

If he had a car, why was he waiting in a bus shelter? That was easy, he wasn’t waiting for a bus, but for Francine. He would have parked that car somewhere. Julia put on her coat and ran across the road, having to stop in the middle for cars going the other way to pass and hear a driver swear at her.

By this time the young man was standing up, pretending to read the bus timetable on the shelter wall. Julia sat down on the seat and studied him. She wanted to make sure she would know him again. His black hair was curly, which she hadn’t noticed that first time, and his eyes were brown. Probably he was Asian or half Asian. The fact that he talked cockney meant nothing. No doubt he had been born here. He was dressed in a suit, dark blue with a pinstripe, and he had a white open-necked shirt on. A ridiculous combination, Julia thought.

She would have liked to ask him his name, but she lacked the nerve. There was hardly anything Julia would not have done to save Francine and protect her from harm. Still, going up to a stranger and asking who he was daunted her. If the time came when she had to she would, but not now.

A complete picture of him imprinted on her memory, Julia walked around the corner into the street which turned off this main road just past the pedestrian crossing. She was looking for the young man’s red sports car and she had to walk quite a long way before she found it. The street climbed up a fairly steep gradient and she climbed with it and on top of the hill she found a red sports car parked. It didn’t surprise her, she had known it would be somewhere.

There was no one about. As is usually the case the street was populated with cars, not people. She walked around the car, looking in at the windows. On the dashboard shelf lay a brochure, a railway timetable and on top of them an envelope with an enclosure. The name typed on the envelope was Mr. Jonathan Nicholson and the address was Fulham, SW6.

Julia returned home well satisfied with her detective work, but otherwise deeply troubled. She wondered where Francine had met this man. Been introduced to him by one of those friends of hers, she supposed, one of the Hollies or the Mirandas. She acknowledged to herself that Francine had won a great victory that day she left Noele’s and for the first time, when told to go to her room, disobeyed.

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