The Influence by Ramsey Campbell Page B

discussion was making him nervous, the memory of meeting Lance, the sense of Lance’s mind as a dark pit that anyone could fall into if they strayed too near. “You do realise that we’ll never know what he wanted to tell Alison,” Hermione said, and he was about to retort that it didn’t matter when Rowan came round the house.
    “Where’s mummy? Oh, hello,” she said to Derek, “I didn’t know you were back. Please may I go just on the dunes where you can see me, and look for my friend?”
    “Here I am, Rowan.” Alison appeared at the open front door with a scraper and a length of peeled wallpaper. “What’s wrong?”
    She was asking Hermione, who was staring at the child. Hermione cleared her throat nervously. “Did you give her those binoculars?”
    “One of her friends did,” Derek said.
    “You can have a look with them if you like,” Rowan said, and reached behind her neck for the strap.
    “No, no, I just want to see them,” Hermione said hastily. She peered at them, a frown narrowing her eyes. “Perhaps I could just hold them.”
    Her attempt to sound casual made Rowan dubious. “My friend said I could keep them as long as we live here.”
    Derek let out some of his growing impatience. “What’s the problem, Hermione?”
    “They’re hers.” She was speaking to Alison, almost pleading. “I saw them in her room, I’d swear to it. Can’t you see how old they are?”
    “Listen, if someone doesn’t—”
    “She means Queenie, Derek. She did have some binoculars like these. They weren’t in her room when we cleared it. Rowan, love, I won’t be angry if you say you did, but did you take those from the old lady’s room?”
    “I didn’t, mummy,” Rowan said, close to angry tears.
    “She used to sit at the top window with them after her father died,” Hermione told Derek as if that should convince him. “She’d watch his grave for hours.”
    “They’re Vicky’s. Vicky gave them to me,” Rowan cried.
    Hermione clutched Derek’s arm so hard that he gasped. “Who did you say?”
    “Vicky. She’s my new friend. I met her when I was staying with you.”
    “Oh,” Hermione groaned, swaying heavily against Derek.
    He freed his arm and gripped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Hermione, you’ll be upsetting the child if you don’t lay off. What’s up with you?”
    “It’s all right, Derek, I’ll look after her.” Alison put an arm round her sister. “It’s just one of those coincidences, Hermione.”
    “What kind of coincidence?” Derek demanded.
    Alison glanced at Rowan and scowled at him. “It’s just a coincidence,” she repeated more forcefully. “She’s thinking of Queenie, that’s all. We only called her Queenie because grandfather used to call her his queen. She was christened Victoria.”

Chapter Twelve
    The silence seemed to stretch the air until Rowan’s ears throbbed. The shriek of a seagull felt as if the air were tearing. Derek muttered under his breath, and then Hermione pulled away from mummy. “Rowan,” she said in a voice that meant to sound disinterested, “what’s your new friend like?”
    “She’s nice. I can tell she reads a lot and likes old things. She always tells the truth, and she’s awfully clean. Her daddy brought her up, but now she doesn’t know where he is.”
    Everything she said appeared to upset Hermione further. “And you say you met her near my house?” Hermione whispered.
    “On the beach when I went with granddad. But she said she lived near here.”
    “Very near,” Hermione said, and swallowed. “Rowan, will you promise me something?”
    “What?”
    “Just for me, will you promise not to play with this girl you call Vicky?”
    “Do us a favour, Hermione,” Derek interrupted. “She’s got few enough friends round here yet without you losing her one.”
    “Just until we’ve had a chance to meet her, then. What about the children who live across the road?”
    “Mary and Paul? I don’t like them any