The Influence Read Free

Frozen chops and steaks shifted in the bag on the seat beside him as the car swung around the curves, and he thought he’d make it on his own if there were a few more folk like those.
    He had to make it, and a year ago he’d thought he would, though less from choice than because the contractor who’d employed him had gone bankrupt. All the same, he’d wanted to work for himself since he’d met Alison while he was working at the student nurses’ hostel; she was making the most of her qualifications, and he should make the most of his. Many of the contractor’s customers had known Derek and appreciated the care he took, and quite a few had promised to support him.
    Up to a point, they had—usually up to the point when he sent them his bill. Small jobs paid on time; it was the large firms that made you wait and might be using you to stave off bankruptcy, but if it weren’t for them he wouldn’t have enough work. He needed the money even more than he had a year ago. He’d needed it then so that they could move out of Liverpool, and now he needed it to take them out of Queenie’s house.
    They’d stayed in the run-down flat in Liverpool for as long as they’d felt safe. The burning buildings of the eighties had stayed streets away, the street battles three storeys below. But once Rowan started school they’d realised that the National Front lurked at the schoolyard gates with racist leaflets and ten-year-olds smoked heroin in disused shops. Earlier this year a police van speeding along the pavement towards a potential riot had demolished the gateposts of the flats, where Rowan often stood to watch the street. They’d begun to work all the hours they could, desperate to save enough for the deposit on a house, their savings having dwindled constantly since Rowan’s unexpected birth—and then Queenie had invited them to come and live with her.
    As soon as they’d moved in Queenie had taken to her bed. She’d read all day and had expected Alison to be available whenever she was in the house. Within weeks she was bedridden, which made her more demanding, as if she was determined to prove she still had power. Derek had supposed he would help look after her, until she’d made him realise the extent of her contempt for him. Having to rely on her, to hope they could trust her hints that she might leave the house to Alison, dismayed him almost as much as her power over Alison—almost as much as the thought of her gaining a hold over Rowan too.
    He trod hard on the accelerator until he reached the suburbs. Where Crosby became Waterloo the houses crowded together, thinner and shabbier. As he turned along the side road, a buoy tolled beyond the dunes that faced the parade of nursing homes. Out past the marina, the coastguard radar cupped the movements of the night. He parked by Queenie’s house, under the last streetlamp.
    The street was quiet except for water splashing from a gutter and the slow muffled beat of the sea. He lifted the gate clear of the scraped path and let himself into the house, and made for the living-room, whose window was lit. But the only sign of life in the high gloomy room with its huge cold fireplace was a Lisa Alther novel, face down on the leather settee.
    That would be Hermione’s book, the kind she gasped and shook her head over. At least she’d come over from Wales to keep Alison company. He made for the kitchen by the stairs. The women weren’t in the cavernous stone-flagged room with its black iron range. He left the steaks and chops in Alison’s refrigerator and went back along the hall, pushing open doors on either side of him, but all the rooms were dark—the dining-room whose dusty chandelier chimed sluggishly, the sewing-room full of draped machines, the sitting-room with its screens and piano and framed brown photographs. He hoped the women were asleep, getting the rest they deserved. He climbed the wry stairs into the gaping hush the storm seemed to have left in the house.
    Rowan