The Influence by Ramsey Campbell Page A

said.
    Ken took the lettuce from him and opened the alley door, shaking his head sadly. “Give him what he’s asking for.”
    Derek backed into the alley and knocked over a dustbin. He almost sprawled on his back. The youths snorted at that, but they weren’t smiling as they followed him. As he hauled himself to his feet, his fingers found the neck of a bottle that had rolled out of the dustbin. He smashed the bottle against the alley wall so savagely that Ken’s sons retreated a step. He felt a splinter of glass lodge in the side of his hand like a hint of how fighting them would feel, and it excited him, made him determined to hurt them worse. Then he thought of Rowan, imagined her seeing the state he might be in. He flung the bottle away and turned his back on the youths. They jeered at him and flung rubbish after him as he made himself walk slowly to the car.
    He’d kept his self-respect, but at what cost? He’d have to use a lawyer now and pay more for the work on the house. He drove back to Waterloo, growing unhappier with himself and the news he had for Alison. But when he found her, sorting through old photographs in a room on the middle floor, she looked so taken aback that he was afraid to ask what had happened. “Lance killed himself,” she said.
    “Never. When?”
    “Days ago, but Richard only just called my parents. Hermione can tell us more about it when she gets here. You don’t mind her staying overnight, do you? She sounded pretty shaken.”
    “Whatever you think, Ali. No joy at Ken’s, by the way. I could hardly get near him for his family.”
    “We’ll survive until things improve.” She hugged him but only made him feel awkward, as if she were letting him know she realised he hadn’t told the whole truth. He was glad when the phone rang. “It’s a domestic job in Bootle,” he called up to her. “I’ll take Rowan along.”
    Rowan was behind the house, gazing over the top-heavy privet hedge towards the bay. “You’ll take root if you stand there much longer,” he told her. “Come and see what needs doing to someone’s house.”
    “I’d rather not, daddy. My new friend Vicky may be coming to play with me, and I want to be here in case she does.”
    He wasn’t prepared to feel so rejected. Maybe she thought it wasn’t ladylike to carry his tools any more. There might come a time when he didn’t know her at all. The idea dismayed him, and he had to make himself concentrate on sketching the rewiring for the newlyweds in Bootle. When he returned to Waterloo, Hermione had arrived.
    She was in the front garden, attacking the lawn with shears. “Here I am again, Derek. You’ll be thinking you can’t get rid of me.”
    “Don’t break my heart. You know you’re always welcome.”
    “Am I? I don’t feel it. I don’t mean you, I mean the house.” She glanced at it as if she expected to see someone watching. “What about you? Do you feel welcome?”
    “Rowan does.”
    “I’m not sure I like that either.” She plucked grass off the blades of the shears. “Well, you’ll be thinking your neurotic sister-in-law is as bad as ever.”
    “You need time to get over things, that’s all. The bad bits of your past are dead now, aren’t they? Queenie and now Lance.”
    He thought he’d been too harsh, but she nodded slowly as if to convince herself. “Lance, yes. No mistake about that, he was cut in half by a train. The driver said he looked straight at it and then stepped in front of it. How could anyone do that, Derek?”
    “Maybe he couldn’t stand himself any longer, the shame of it and people knowing.”
    “That’s what his father thinks. But he was coming here, Derek.”
    “So what?” Derek said, feeling obscurely threatened. “He had to be going somewhere.”
    “But why would he come all that way and then do that to himself?”
    “He’d been talking about Rowan, hadn’t he? Maybe when he came that close he couldn’t stand what he was thinking about her.”
    The