Silent Children by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

days?"
    "Anything can turn into a drama. There's no knowing what until the curtain's up." He hesitated before saying "Don't let it bother you, but she got herself into rather a state on the way about coming here."
    "I'm sorry to hear it. About what?"
    "Well, obviously, about..." He waved at the kitchen. "You won't be too much longer, will you, Ian? We'll both end up with a headache if her highness decides to create."
    "I'm surprised you told her at her age," Ian's mother said.
    "I can promise you we didn't, but unfortunately she overheard Hilene reading some of your press coverage."
    "Hilene can be rather audible, can't she? Are you waiting to be invited in?"
    "I'd better stay where Charlotte can see me, otherwise her siren's liable to go off."
    "That would never do. You might want to consider putting on a spurt, Ian, before anyone gets the impression I won't let your father in the house."
    Ian dumped his drained glass in the sink and went upstairs to grab his shoulder bag, into which he threw his toothbrush and deodorant and skin soap and hairbrush and another pair of the jeans he was wearing and a Drilled Skulls T-shirt followed, to placate his mother, by socks and underpants for the morning. All that should be enough for an overnight stay, but he wasn't going to let anybody think he'd rushed because of Charlotte, and so he stalked to his window.
    She was in the front passenger seat of the Peugeot, squandering the leg room he needed a lot more than she did. She'd drawn up her knees in a long dress like a tube of floral wallpaper, to wrap her arms around them, and was pressing her small, slightly pudgy face against the window, her breath swelling on the glass as though she were trapped beneath it. She was keeping a proprietary gaze on Ian's father, which made Ian bare his teeth just as she glanced up at him and showed him most of her tongue.
    He'd shoved the window open, intending to yell one of the words she wasn't supposed to hear or know, when he realised what he'd done. Pushed that high, the sash always stuck. "Dad," he called, "can you fix this?"
    "Can't your mother?"
    "It's my window. I can't shut it."
    "It won't matter overnight, will it? We're meant still to be panting for rain. It's not as though anyone is likely to—" Perhaps Ian's mother had communicated some rebuke to him, because all at once he dashed upstairs. "Let's get it dealt with and be on our damn."
    The last word had greeted Charlotte's protest that was well on the way to a scream. "Don't, Roger. Roger, come back."
    He sprinted to the window and ducked out. "Here I am, Charlotte. Just shutting this and I'll be there."
    Perhaps she didn't hear him for her cries, because she only raised her voice. Either she'd forgotten how to operate the window or she was too busy clutching her knees and pressing her forehead against the glass, on which her breath kept transforming her face into a wide-mouthed blur. Her distress struck Ian as no more than she deserved, not least for being allowed to call his father by his first name. He watched as his father leaned hard on the sash and brought it down, muffling Charlotte's cries a little. "Are you ready, Ian?" his father was already saying. "Come along at once."
    "Roger, where are you? Don't stay in there, please don't, please." Charlotte's pleas had drawn Ian's mother to the car, and she was trying to persuade the little girl to open the window as his father ran out of the house. The clamour stopped instantly, leaving the adults to sidle around each other at the gate while Ian trudged after his father.
    "You want him back for dinner tomorrow, do you?" his father said.
    "Of course." To Ian his mother said "Be good" as a preamble to an unavoidable kiss greeted by a giggle from Charlotte. She craned around to make a face at him as he sprawled onto the back seat, glimpsing the wink of a net curtain opposite the car. His father swung the car out of Jericho Close and used the mirror to frown at him. "Ian, did you do that on