The Influence by Ramsey Campbell Page A

at the pub. Too many parents treated their children like property, and few neighbors were willing to intervene. The thought of intervention roused the doubt that had been dozing in her mind all day. She was wondering what Lance wanted with her child.
    The will didn’t mention Rowan. Perhaps Hermione had misheard him, the way he mumbled in his beard. Alison had only been able to reach his father, and she wished she hadn’t told Richard so much; he’d sounded as if she had confirmed his fears. Surely if Lance had designs on Rowan he would hardly have tried to contact Alison, but what could be so important that he had overcome his shyness?
    When the next shift came on, so many children wanted to say goodbye to her that she had to run to the bus station. Perhaps Lance would have left her a message, she thought, but all the messages on the tape were for Derek. The shrunken voices seemed to echo in the house now that her parents had gone home. She mustn’t mind that they’d spent longer with Hermione than with her; Hermione needed them more than she did, just as she needed to feel protective of Alison to distract herself from her own fears: Alison had known that ever since she could remember. They would all be here for Christmas—the house would hardly be sold by then—and perhaps that would help make up to Rowan for not staying. Alison strolled across the road to collect her.
    Jo was leafing through mail-order catalogues and watching a soap opera. “I told her she can stay for tea if she likes. Patty’s taken them all on the beach.”
    Patty was Jo’s teenage daughter. “I’ll just tell Rowan I’m home,” Alison said, and made for the promenade. Breezes stroked her face and stirred the spiky grass that crowned the dunes, yachts swayed on the marina by the docks and the radar station. She stepped onto the concrete walk beyond the dunes and saw that Jo’s three were the only children in sight on the narrow beach.
    She ran down the steps to the sand. The two younger children were nudging Patty and whispering. “Where’s Rowan?” Alison demanded.
    Patty turned defiantly, earrings jangling, penciled eyebrows high. “Her friend took her away,” she said.

Chapter Ten
    Dear diary, I like my new school becose everyone is frendly and the teacher is nice and were aloud to write our own things sometimes, like now I can write my diary. Soon our class is going to take assembely and I’ll be a loanly old lady, thats if were still living in the big house…
     
    Rowan bit the end of her pencil. She had nearly written that she hoped they would live there for ever. It must be hard for mummy and daddy as well, to have to move again so soon, but now that the man who owed them so much money was paying up, mightn’t they be able to stay? She missed her friends from Liverpool, but perhaps one of her parents would soon have time to take her in the car to visit them. She drew the house with all its windows lit and ships sailing by under the moon, the way she imagined them when she heard them from her bed, then she coloured in the windows, different colours for different rooms. When she coloured the top floor she thought of sleepwalking up there. Mummy said she must have done that because of all the upset, but in that case, shouldn’t they avoid the upset of moving again? No, that was selfish. Mummy and daddy had enough problems. She ought to help by being grown-up.
    After school she went into the schoolyard determined not to let her father even suspect what she was hoping. She needn’t have made the effort; Jo was waiting instead. “Your daddy’s busy, chick. You come home with me and we’ll see if there’s some sweeties.”
    “Don’t give her more than me like you did last time,” said Mary, who was in Rowan’s class but who seemed younger than her. Little Paul, who was in the nursery class, said “Sweeties, yum.” He ran ahead on the way home, until Jo smacked him when she’d had enough of running after him. He was