Free Innocence by Peter Robinson

Innocence
    F RANCES MUST BE late, surely, Reed thought as he stood waiting on the bridge by the railway station. He was beginning to feel restless and uncomfortable; the handles of his bag bit into his palm, and he noticed that the rain promised in the forecast that morning was already starting to fall.
    Wonderful! Here he was, over two hundred miles away from home, and Francis hadn’t turned up. But Reed couldn’t be sure about that. Perhaps he was early. They had made the same arrangement three or four times over the past five years, but for the life of him Reed couldn’t remember the exact time they’d met.
    Reed turned and noticed a plump woman in a threadbare blue overcoat come struggling against the wind over the bridge towards him. She pushed a large stroller, in which two infants fought and squealed.
    â€œExcuse me,” he called out as she neared him, “could you tell me what time school gets out?”
    The woman gave him a funny look—either puzzlement or irritation, he couldn’t decide which—and answered in the clipped, nasal accent peculiar to the Midlands, “Half past three.” Then she hurried by, giving Reed a wide berth.
    He was wrong. For some reason he had got it into his mind that Francis finished teaching at three o’clock. It was only twenty-­five past now, so there would be at least another fifteen minutes to wait before the familiar red Escort came into sight.
    The rain was getting heavier and the wind lashed it hard against Reed’s face. A few yards up the road from the bridge was the bus station, which was attached to a large modern shopping center, all glass and escalators. Reed could stand in the entrance there just beyond the doors, where it was warm and dry, and still watch for Francis.
    At about twenty-­five to four, the first schoolchildren came dashing over the bridge and into the bus station, satchels swinging, voices shrill and loud with freedom. The rain didn’t seem to bother them, Reed noticed: hair lay plastered to skulls; beads of rain hung on the tips of noses. Most of the boys’ ties were askew, their socks hung loose around their ankles and their shoelaces snaked along the ground. It was a wonder they didn’t trip over themselves. Reed smiled, remembering his own schooldays.
    And how alluring the girls looked as they ran smiling and laughing out of the rain into the shelter of the mall. Not the really young ones, the unformed ones, but the older, long-­limbed girls, newly aware of their breasts and the swelling of their hips. They wore their clothes carelessly: blouses hanging out, black woolly tights twisted or torn at the knees. To Reed, there was something wanton in their disarray.
    These days, of course, they probably all knew what was what, but Reed couldn’t help but feel that there was also a certain innocence about them: a naive, carefree grace in the way they moved and a casual freedom in their laughter and gestures. Life hadn’t got to them yet; they hadn’t felt its weight and seen the darkness at its core.
    Mustn’t get carried away, Reed told himself, with a smile. It was all very well to joke with Bill in the office about how sexy the schoolgirls who passed the window each day were, but it was positively unhealthy to mean it, or (God forbid!) attempt to do anything about it. He couldn’t be turning into a dirty old man at thirty-­five, could he? Sometimes the power and violence of his fantasies worried him, but perhaps everyone else had them too. It wasn’t something you could talk about at work. He didn’t really think he was abnormal; after all, he hadn’t acted them out, and you couldn’t be arrested for your fantasies, could you?
    Where the hell was Francis? Reed peered out through the glass. Windblown rain lashed across the huge plate windows and distorted the outside world. All detail was obliterated in favor of the overall mood: gray-­glum and