Free Thieving Fear by Ramsey Campbell Page A

newspaper, which she brandished like a warning to a dog. It was the Knowsley Globe , a local weekly. 'Seen enough?' she said.
    'I haven't. If there's something I –'
    Mrs Stevens leafed through the paper so vehemently that Ellen was surprised the pages didn't tear. Not much less than halfway through she turned it towards Ellen with such eagerness that it left several pages behind. 'Here you are,' she said in a kind of triumph.
    Ellen saw the photograph first, such as it was. She'd hidden her face from the photographer outside the town hall because Muriel's comment had made her feel worse than plain, but she looked as if she had been trying to conceal her identity. How fat a face was her fat hand not quite able to cover up? The headline beside them snatched her gaze away. TRIBUNAL UPHOLDS DISMISSAL OF CARE HOME WORKER , it said.
    The report insisted that the panel had convicted Ellen Lomax of racist attitudes and intolerance of disability and bullying a vulnerable elderly witness. Having parted her thick lips with her outsize tongue, she managed to mumble 'It isn't true.'
    'We've always found it reliable.'
    'How can they print this when I haven't even been told?'
    Mrs Stevens tidied the newspaper and folded her arms. 'I don't think they have to ask your permission to publish the news.'
    'Not the paper, the tribunal. They haven't told me anything.'
    'Dear me, someone has been thoughtless.'
    'Yes, the paper. How could they put in all that and not interview me?'
    'Perhaps they tried.' When Ellen uttered something like a laugh Mrs Stevens said 'Our son works for them. You'll have to excuse me now. I've an applicant to see in a few minutes.'
    Ellen worked her stiff lips until she was able to say 'You never were going to give me a chance, were you?'
    'I wanted to see how far you'd take it so I can advise my colleagues in the business.'
    Ellen rose to her feet at a speed that she tried to find more dignified than ponderous. As she plodded out of the room she felt weighed down by the proprietor's gaze, but as she closed the door she found that Mrs Stevens had crouched forwards, face drooping as she pencilled comments on an application letter. Ellen was tramping along the hall when a voice above her said 'Are you the new girl?'
    A woman was clinging to the banister two-handed while she lumbered downstairs. Although she was mostly enveloped in a voluminous long-sleeved floral dress, Ellen saw that her legs were twice as wide as her feet. 'I'm sorry, I'm not,' she said. 'I won't be working here.'
    'Didn't you like our home?'
    As disappointment shaped her mouth it threatened to infect Ellen's. 'So long as you do,' she said and had to turn away.
    'I wish you wouldn't go. You're a jolly sort, I can tell. Some of these thin ones are a bit grim.' The old lady took a step that trembled the stairs and said 'Us fatties ought to stick together.'
    She only meant that Ellen was less scrawny than whoever she found lacking in humour, but Ellen felt as if a memory that she preferred not to revive were lying in wait for her. 'Sorry, I'm not welcome,' she mumbled and was on her way to the front door when she caught sight of herself in a mirror across the lounge. Several seated residents turned to watch as she leaned through the doorway. She looked smaller than a child, but her head was swelling out of proportion, pumping up her cheeks so that they dwarfed the rest of her face. The expansion had spread lower than her shoulders before she recoiled, to be addressed by Mrs Stevens along the hall. 'Wrong door, Miss Lomax. Nobody wants you in there.'
    'I hope you find a suitable replacement,' Ellen said with the remains of her dignity and let herself out of the house.
    Had the afternoon grown humid, or was that her body? As she crossed the car park the sunlight felt treacly on her skin. She wanted to be home, to look up the phone number of the tribunal, but she could have mistaken her urgency for fever. Her skin was crawling with moisture by the time she