The Fiend

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It was the end of August and the children were getting bored with their summer freedom. They had spent too many hours at the mercy of their own desires. Their legs and arms were scratched, bruised, blistered with poison oak; sea water had turned their hair to straw, and the sun had left cruel red scars across their cheekbones and noses. All the trees had been climbed, the paths explored, the cliffs scaled, the waves conquered. Now, as if in need and anticipation of the return of rules, they began to hang around the school playground.

So did the man in the old green coupé. Every day at noon Charlie Gowen brought his sandwiches and a carton of milk and parked across the road from the playground, separated from the swings and the jungle gym by a steel fence and some scraggly geraniums. Here he sat and ate and drank and watched.

He knew he shouldn’t be there. It was dangerous to be seen near such a place.

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