The Influence Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rowan after all, Derek thought angrily. He’d been afraid that Hermione might lose control, and this was worse than he’d feared. Whatever she was seeing in the coffin, she sounded capable of reaching in and dragging it out. He tried to turn Rowan away from the spectacle, but her head craned around as he urged her toward the porch. There was confusion in the aisle, Edith having grabbed Keith’s arm as he made to slip out to the undertaker’s men, Lance standing glumly in the middle of the narrow aisle, the vicar peering past him. Derek pushed Rowan as far as the vicar. “Look after her while I see what’s going on,” he muttered, and squeezed past the others toward the front of the chapel.
    Hermione and Alison were gazing into the coffin. Alison was holding her sister’s forearm to restrain her. Derek hurried forward, trying to hush his footsteps on the thick uneven flagstones. He could see nothing wrong. The old woman’s face was lovingly made up, her hands were folded on her chest, and the undertakers had found a white dress long enough to cover her ankles. “What’s up?” he murmured.
    Hermione stared at him as if she was afraid to speak. “We’re wondering how Queenie comes to be wearing that locket,” Alison said.
    He’d already noticed it, a heart-shaped gold locket resting on the old woman’s chest, its thin gold chain around her neck. “Not just any locket,” Hermione protested, lowering her voice when Derek frowned at her. “Alison knows what I mean.”
    “She means,” Alison said apologetically, “it had Rowan’s hair in it. I suppose it still has.”
    Queenie had demanded a lock of Rowan’s hair the first time it was cut, and Derek had never understood why Alison had hesitated. “I told you you should have got it back,” Hermione wailed, her voice rising. “You never should have given her anything of Rowan’s.”
    If she was going to bring Rowan into it, he’d be taking the child for a walk. But now the aisle was further blocked by one of the undertaker’s men. “He says they always leave the lid off unless they’re told different,” Keith explained. “Anyone who wants to should pay their respects, and then he’ll close it for us.”
    The family came forward before Derek could usher Rowan out. By the time he managed to edge unobtrusively through to her, the undertaker’s man was picking up the lid. “We mustn’t leave the locket on her,” Hermione cried.
    “Behave yourself, Hermione,” her mother said, low and sharp. “Show some respect for the dead. She must have wanted to wear it, and that’s all that need concern us.”
    Hermione glanced desperately from face to face. Apart from Lance, who’d given the coffin a token blink and was trudging back to a pew, all the adults were willing her to control herself. Alison guided her toward the pews, murmuring “No need to worry, love, I’m not,” but Hermione’s shoulders writhed as she heard the faint thud of the lid, the almost inaudible squeal of the screws.
    During the funeral Derek kept sensing her nervous glances at Rowan. The vicar said that their sister in God was a woman of rare education and a tower of strength to those who knew her, qualities that were seen too seldom nowadays. Derek took Rowan out of the chapel as soon as he felt he could, catching the undertaker’s men eating biscuits in one of the limousines, their hands held like trays to catch the crumbs.
    Rowan scattered earth on the coffin, since Alison and her parents did. On the drive back to the cottage she wanted to know why you were meant to throw earth like that, but nobody could remember. Hermione stared at her empty hands as if she regretted not having cast earth, whether to placate Queenie or to help fill in the grave.
    At the cottage Rowan sensed that the adults wanted to talk, and took a plate of sandwiches and a glass of orange juice into the garden. Even then the conversation only sidled around the subject of the funeral. “At least she’s