The Influence Read Online Free PDF

where she wanted to be,” Edith said, and Hermione’s eyes flickered. Derek couldn’t stand the timidity of the conversation any longer. “With her father, you mean,” he said.
    “He made her think she was the most important person in the world,” Lance said, and Derek’s innards tightened at his slowness: the cure seemed almost as distressing as the illness. “She wanted to keep him with her always, even when he died.”
    “That was just a silly business you children scared yourselves with,” Edith told Hermione.
    “It’s all very well for you to dismiss it like that, mother, but you were never that anxious to be left alone with her yourself.”
    Derek meant to help. “What were you all so shy of? She looked like any old maid to me. What was all that about Rowan and the locket?”
    “She used to terrorise Hermione when we were little,” Alison said. “That doesn’t go away all at once just because the person has.”
    “I’ll tell you something, Derek, that may help you understand,” Hermione said as he opened his mouth and closed it again. “When I was a baby they gave her one of my first teeth, and do you know what she said to me when I was old enough to realise? She told me that if I ever did anything she didn’t like or said anything against her she’d make me feel as if that tooth was being pulled out. I wonder if you’d want anyone saying such things to Rowan.”
    “What do you think?”
    “It’s the first I’ve heard of it if she said that to you,” Edith declared.
    “Mother, I did try to tell you, but you said exactly what you’re saying now, that it was all nonsense. Only I noticed you never gave her any of Alison’s teeth.”
    The imminence of a family quarrel made Derek uneasy, and he tried to head it off. “No wonder you didn’t like her, but you must have realised sometime that she couldn’t do what she said she’d do to you.”
    Hermione seemed not to know where to look, and then she stared defiantly at him. “She did.”
    “Hang on, you mean she—”
    “I mean that if I ever said anything about her I thought she wouldn’t like, the tooth that had grown there started aching. This tooth,” she said, poking a stubby forefinger into the flesh beneath the left-hand corner of her mouth.
    “You poor little sod. Thank Christ we all grow up. How long is it since you felt she could do that to you?”
    “The night she died.”
    Derek didn’t know what to say. Distressingly, he felt a twinge of the inner shrinking he’d experienced on meeting Lance. “She’s dead now at any rate, Hermione,” her father said. “You’ve no reason to worry about yourself, or Rowan for that matter.”
    “May she rest in peace,” Hermione muttered, “which is more than she let your father have.” She gazed wistfully out at Rowan, who was throwing back her head to drain her orange juice. “I was going to suggest that Rowan could stay for the weekend while you sort out Queenie’s house, but now that you’ve heard how neurotic I am I don’t suppose you’ll want her to.”
    Derek glanced at Alison, who looked his question back at him. “We’ll be staying,” Edith said.
    “Rowan can stay if she wants,” Derek said. When he went out and asked her she skipped with delight, and he felt he’d been unfair to Hermione. He ought to know as well as anyone that it wasn’t so easy to shake off what had been done to you as a child. Rowan would be fine, he told himself, with three adults to keep her safe. He closed his eyes and raised his face towards the sunlight, and scoffed at himself: surely there was nothing here for Rowan to be kept safe from.

Chapter Five
    Dear diary, this morning I tidyed my room but Hermione wouldn’t let me use the vaccume even though I do at home, but yesterday I helped in the shop becose grandma said I ought to help Hermione chuse what children would like best, then we all went for an evening walk where I like, down Greenfield valley with the old factorys and