The Blooding
her large garden. As the job took on more hours, becoming full-time on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, it meant that Dawn had to do more housework, provoking a few disputes between mother and daughter.
    When the school term had ended in June, Robin and Barbara had been disappointed with Dawn's grades. Robin's way to handle it was to take Dawn to task, present clearly and concisely why he judged her performance substandard, and then leave it. He wasn't the type to complain to his daughter about school grades.
    "I never expected Dawn to pursue an academic career," he later said. "She was gifted at drawing. More of an artistic type. She could do a picture without even being taught about perspective and things like that. She could really see"
    Actually, Robin was not all that certain about many of the roads he'd taken. He didn't know if he should've gone to university instead of getting his advanced education in night school. Would it have meant a better position? He wasn't a man to let off steam. Was that the proper way? He pondered such matters.
    Robin was, as he put it, "the kind who worried about small things. I used to feel nervous and apprehensive about jobs and thin .4: at work. Enough to make whoever I was with feel the tension."
    Never having been quite sure about decisions he'd made or postponed in his own life, he couldn't fret too much about his daughter's underachieving in academics, particularly since she was generally sensible and rather mature, perhaps more comfortable with herself than he had ever been with himself A reasonable man could hardly demand much more than a child who could really see.
    During the first week in July, Robin had taken the entire family to Tall Trees Caravan Park in Norfolk where they'd stayed in a friend's caravan. Dawn had been excited about another holiday trip to Hunstanton that was coming up. She had a part-time job that summer working at the newsagent's shop in Enderby, and she was spending her money on all sorts of fashion magazines and clothes. The Ashworths had regularly received good reports from Dawn's employer at the shop. She was said to be a reliable, likable girl who seemed to know everyone in the village.
    In high summer, Dawn began going out nearly every evening to the home of her friends in Narborough. Robin and Barbara didn't like her being out so much even on summer's light nights, but Dawn had agreed always to be home by 9:30 sharp. Occasionally, if there was something special afoot, Dawn would. ring her dad and ask for a lift.
    On the morning of July 31, Robin woke his daughter to go to her job. She was a bit cross and grumpy, complaining that he should have woken her earlier.
    Dawn did her job that day as usual, and nothing extraordinary occurred in the shop. An employee later said that two girls came in whom Dawn was temporarily "on the outs with," and Dawn had a few mildly catty things to say about them, but it was just adolescent bickering.
    The Ashworths lived only a few minutes from the newsagent's shop, and after receiving her wages at 3:30 P . M . Dawn walked home. She told her mother she was going to have tea with her friends Sue and Sharon, in Narborough. Barbara told Dawn to be home by 7:00 P . M . because she and Robin were going to a birthday party for a friend's little boy.
    That made Dawn decide to add some sweets to the present she'd already bought for the child, so she returned to the newsagent's shop and bought a fifty-pence box of Smarties to include with the other small gift. She also bought a pale-pink lipstick.
    She had ten pounds with her when she left the shop at 4:00 P . M ., heading for Narborough. She was wearing a white polo neck pullover , covered by a multicolored loose-fitting blouse. She wore a midcalf white flaring skirt, white canvas pumps, and carried her blue denim jacket.
    The most direct route to the homes of her two girlfriends in Narborough was by way of the footpath. Dawn had frequently been warned about the village footpaths by

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