Silent Children

Silent Children by Ramsey Campbell

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Authors: Ramsey Campbell
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like? Could be that's why it didn't do so well."
    "We'll let Ian give you his opinion. At least it's a book, not a video."
    "Great," Ian said, and hugged the fat book.
    "Maybe not that great," Jack told him. "The scariest part is the author photograph."
    As Ian turned the book over, the front caught the light and flashed Leslie a glimpse of a malevolent old face grinning like a skull. She preferred the image on the back, of the author with hair streaming over his shoulders, with a smile that looked close to having been held a moment too long. From the youthfulness of the photograph, not least its hint of vanished brashness, she guessed the book to be five or six years old. She pushed herself up from the bed and smoothed the quilt as Ian lifted a hand to stifle his mirth. "It's okay to laugh, trust me," Jack said.
    "Okay then, I won't."
    Leslie didn't know whether he was so ready to please Jack because he was American, or from Hollywood, or a writer, or even just a man, and she was content not to care. "Let's let Jack settle in for a while."
    "I was going to show him some tricks with my word processor," Jack said.
    "In that case I'll leave you men to entertain each other while I get on with dinner."
    "Do you need to fix it?"
    "It won't take long. It isn't too elaborate a welcome, I'm afraid. I didn't know what you liked."
    "Can it wait until tomorrow? Then why don't you save it and I'll buy you both dinner. I feel like celebrating where I've ended up."
    Ian was pretending to read the blurb of the novel and imperfectly concealing an expression not unlike the one Melinda would have worn if she'd observed the situation. "Did you have anywhere special in mind?" Leslie said.
    "I don't know this part of town too well yet. If you have a favourite I can drive wherever you like."
    "And not drink."
    "You have to get used to that in Angel City. That and having to tell the same story over and over until it doesn't feel like a story any more."
    "Sorry, telling a story..."
    "To movie producers, in case they're the one who buys what you're offering."
    "Someone still could even though you're over here, do you think? If you want to share a bottle there's a good Chinese restaurant down on the main road we could walk to."
    "Sounds fine to me if it does to Ian."
    Ian was reading the first page of The Old Monster. "It's good," he said without looking up.
    She steered him, still reading, out of the room. She watched him make his slow way downstairs, turning another page as he reached the hall, before she went into her room to choose an outfit. Her favourites all had something to do with Roger. For months that hadn't bothered her, but now, inexplicably and so even more annoyingly, it did. The black dress she'd worn for clubbing with him in the West End, the ankle-length cream silk he'd bought for her last birthday, the pert red one to which she'd treated herself for their second honeymoon, a weekend spent in Paris while eleven-year-old Ian had given her mother plenty to criticise once she'd handed Leslie a brimming cup of boiling tea to keep her seated... She was only going out for a Chinese meal, for heaven's sake. Eventually, after a session of holding clothes in front of herself as though she were the sort of cardboard figure she used to dress when she was little, she put on the white silk blouse and pinstriped skirt and jacket she'd worn for the opening of the shop, a costume that had certainly pleased Melinda. She hooked silver stars into her earlobes and dabbed perfume behind her ears, and stepped out of the bedroom to meet Ian on his way upstairs. "Will I do?" she said.
    "More than that," Jack said, emerging from his room.
    He was wearing a white linen jacket, pale grey knife-edged slacks, a dark grey shirt and slim back tie. "You will too," she was able to say without blushing, for which she was far too old, and walked lightly downstairs to let them all out of the house.
    Janet from next door and Mrs. Lancing were in conversation halfway

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