Free Thieving Fear by Ramsey Campbell Page B

reached the road to Hesketh Park.
    Crossing the park on her way to the interview, she'd imagined walking through all its seasons to her new job. She'd wished she had a notebook for scribbling her observations: a girl being led by the hand past the duck pond by a boy stripped to the waist for some kind of action; a Crazy Golf course so miniature that you couldn't call it crazy, just mildly deranged. This no longer seemed inspired, and as she passed the aviary beyond the vandalised greenhouses she was distracted by a rooster puffing itself up. It reminded her of her appearance in the mirror, and so did the chubby-cheeked jovial moon on the front of a small blue engine carrying toddlers along a path. Perhaps she could do without a notebook.
    Three-storey blocks of apartments faced her side of the park, but hers was at the far end of a side street. The numbers of her cousins' first initials admitted her to the square white concrete lobby. Mrs Sharp from the left-hand ground-floor flat kept replenishing a vase on a table with flowers from her plot behind the block. The current bunch was as white as the solitary envelope beside the vase. Although it hadn't been there when Ellen had picked up her mail – bills and offers rendered personal by computers – it was addressed to her. Someone had ringed the address with an incontinent blue ballpoint and scrawled more than one sputtering version of a word beside it. MISDELE was succeeded by MISDILIVERED , so forcefully that several of the letters were italics.
    The item had been posted first class several days ago. Ellen tore open the envelope and unfolded the single sheet, which was apparently all it took to sum her up. The Appellant's attitude to a disabled witness was judged to be unsatisfactory. Her approach to this witness went some way beyond cross-examination and, given the age and frailty of the witness, could only be described as bullying. The Appellant displayed tolerance of racism and exhibited racist tendencies of her own. By the unanimous decision of the Tribunal, the appeal of the Appellant is dismissed and the decision of the Respondent is upheld.
    The sheet bore a telephone number, but what would calling it achieve? The impersonal language had left her feeling exposed, unfamiliar to herself, guilty of behaviour she hadn't been aware of. What else was she unwilling to acknowledge about herself? She was refolding the page rather than screwing it up in her fist when she saw Mrs Sharp's Punto puttering into the car park. She didn't want to talk to anyone just now. She ran upstairs, at least until she reached the last flight, and arrived panting on the top floor.
    Her family were waiting in her hall, or rather Rory's portraits were. He'd made prints for his cousins and Hugh while he was at art school. Each of them was gazing past the artist as if they were seeing the future, but now their fixed stares seemed more ominous; she might almost have imagined that they'd noticed an intruder. Ellen shut the door and halted in front of her own portrait, where her faint reflection on the glass doubled the image. Whichever way she moved she was unable to fit her present face within the younger model. Why was she wasting time? She ought to be checking whether she'd heard from Charlotte.
    The computer occupied much of the desk beside the bookshelf full of Cougar titles in the main room. She switched on to find there was indeed an email from her cousin, headed Take Care? It was hundreds of lines long, and she sent them racing down the screen as she tried to find their point. Cougar might want her novel, but not under that title. Charlotte's senior editor Glen had suggestions for improvements – many of them, though some were Charlotte's. Ellen felt heady with elation and yet heavy with the prospect of so much extra work on a story she'd been sure was finished. In particular she could have done without Glen's choice of words or Charlotte's decision to quote them unedited. 'Right now your