The Facts of Life and Death

9

Mr Preece was changing the headlines in the little wire cage as Ruby got off the bus.

Ruby wondered what assault was. She had a mental image of a girl rolling about in the salt that the sea had left behind on the sand. The new headline was MASKED MAN STRIKES AGAIN. But then Ruby saw the poster for the Leper Parade.

The Leper Parade in Taddiport was an annual orgy of running sores and fake blood, hunchbacks, crutches, and people with their arms hidden in their jumpers. Every year there was a prize for the best leper adult and the best leper under fourteen. Daddy had entered last year, but that man from the King’s Arms always won the adult prize because he really didn’t have a leg, and that meant nobody else was in with a chance. But Ruby always imagined that one day she might be the best leper under fourteen. She’d dress in rags and put ash and dirt on her face, with tomato sauce and Rice Krispies for scabs. That’s what the other children did. Last year’s winner also had black stuff coming out of his eyes, which was amazing. She wasn’t sure she could compete with that, but she would certainly try. She must remember to ask Mummy to get Rice Krispies, because usually they only had boring old fake Weetabix.

Ruby was in for another treat inside the shop. Pony & Rider this week had a free LED safety light in a little plastic bag stuck on to the front of the magazine with a blob of clear gum. She couldn’t wait, and bought the magazine and a Mars bar without even browsing.

‘That was quick,’ said Mr Preece.

Ruby said nothing.

Outside the shop she peeled the bag off the magazine cover, then tore it open with her teeth and took out the light. It was small and round and had a clip, and a button on the back that, when pressed, started it flashing red.

‘Wow!’ she said out loud, even though she was alone.

She wriggled out of her backpack and clipped the light to the plush pony’s ear, like a rosette. Then she set off down the hill.

As the light grew dim under the trees, she wondered what the LED looked like on her back. Just past the chapel, she balanced her backpack on the tarmac and trudged back up the hill a-ways before turning around to look at it.

‘Wow!’ she said again. The tiny little light was like a beacon – flashing brilliantly, even in what passed for daylight in this miserable summer.

She hurried to pick up her backpack before it could soak up the rain from the road.

There were no ponies in the paddock, but Ruby hung on the gate anyway, reluctant to walk away in case one suddenly appeared.

Starlight would be a good name. Or Pegasus if it was white. Grey, she corrected herself. Pony & Rider said there was no such thing as a white horse.

A car pulled up behind her. She turned and saw Mrs Braund.

‘Jump in out of the rain, Ruby!’

Limeburn people never passed someone on the hill without offering a lift, whether they knew them or not. The road was so steep that it was a difficult walk up or down. Mummy often got a ride down the hill from the bus stop on Thursday nights with Mr Braund, because that was when he was on his way home for the weekend from his fancy job in London.

Ruby opened the door of the big 4x4 and climbed in beside Adam in the back seat; Chris was in the front because he was the eldest.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ they said.

Adam and Chris didn’t go to her school. They went to a private school and they never caught the bus. They wore striped ties, and grey blazers with red shields on the pockets. She looked at Adam’s knees. Usually they were covered by denim, or bare and tanned in khaki shorts, but today they were in black school trousers. They made his legs look like a man’s.

The back of Chris’s head looked more grown up than the front.

In the cage behind Ruby, the dogs whined because they were close to home. They weren’t Jack Russells or collies like normal people had, they were matching brown Labradoodles called Tony (blue collar) and Cleo (red), and their birthday was celebrated in the Braund house just like the boys’ birthdays were, with balloons around the front door and a cake. April the twenty-ninth. Even Ruby knew the date, although she wasn’t sure any of the Braunds knew the date of her birthday.

Mrs Braund smiled at her in the mirror. ‘That light’s a good idea, Ruby. Makes you easy to see in the shadows.’

‘I just got it free on my magazine,’ she said.

‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Braund.

She was a pretty woman, Ruby thought, with hair so blonde it was almost white, except for that curious dark bit down the middle, like a reverse badger, and she wore lots of make-up and jewellery. Ruby had never seen Mrs Braund in dirty old jeans or a bad jumper. Even the welly boots she wore when she walked the dogs were fancy brown leather things with laces at the top. Chris had told her once that they cost £200 but he was a liar because nobody would pay that for wellies.

‘What’s your magazine?’ said Adam.

‘Pony & Rider.’ She showed it to him.

‘Do you have a pony?’

‘No.’

‘Do you ride?’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

Chris laughed without turning round, and Ruby felt herself going red.

‘So what?’ said Adam at the back of Chris’s head. ‘You read FourFourTwo but you don’t play for Arsenal, last I heard.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Now, boys,’ said Mrs Braund, and Chris shut up and they drove on in silence.

Slowly, Ruby pushed her feet as far under the driver’s seat as they would go, so that Adam wouldn’t see her muddy socks.

The Retreat was unlocked, which meant that Daddy was home.

Ruby stood with her back to the front door and listened for the familiar sounds her father always made before her mother came in from a shift – the scraping of fish scales, slide guitars on the CD player – but there was nothing. Only the usual background noises of the wind keening through the bathroom window, and the trees testing the bowed roof.

‘Daddy?’

She fumbled for the switch and turned on the light.

‘Daddy?’ She wanted to be the first to tell him about the leper parade. And to show him her light.

And then Ruby froze at a sound she’d never heard before.

Ching.

It was a high, metallic ring. Like someone dropping a five-pence piece into the bathtub.

She only heard it for a second and then it stopped.

Ruby felt the silence thud against her eardrums.

Nothing. There was nothing.

‘Da—’

Ching. Ching.

She sucked the word back into her mouth and held it there.

Ching. Ching. Ching. Ching.

Ruby felt a little black worm of fear twist across her belly. The sound was like the ring of a loose shoe on a horse.

Or on a pedlar’s donkey…

She quietly turned off the light, and looked up at the ceiling.

Ching. Ching.

It was coming from Mummy and Daddy’s bedroom.

‘Daddy?’ she said carefully, but there was no answer, and suddenly the sound of her voice all alone in the damp air made her resolve not to speak again.

Ching. Ching. Ching across the floor. Ching. Ching. Ching back in the other direction.

Luring her up there.

The thought made Ruby’s bladder loosen a little, and she clenched her thighs to keep the piddle from running down her leg.

She wouldn’t go up there. She couldn’t. Couldn’t open the bedroom door and get trapped by a crazed ghost until morning. She thought of her mother tugging at the unlocked door, screaming for help, she thought of her father hammering on the yellowing paint, and of Adam Braund shouting her name, while all the while a dead man in chains terrified the rest of the wee out of her – and worse.

Ruby’s face crumpled in self-pity. She wasn’t going to go upstairs to be got by a ghost!

But she didn’t have to…

Ching. Ching. Ching. Her breath caught once more and she watched the ceiling all the way across the bedroom to the door. And then she gasped at the unmistakeable transition: Ching-creak. Ching-creak.

The ghost was coming downstairs to get her.

Ruby’s back flattened against the front door, which snapped shut under her shoulders. Her eyes fixed on the narrow white door that shut off the winding stairwell from the front room.

Ching-creak. Ching-creak. Ching.

The sound stopped behind the little door and her breath stayed in her bumping chest. Then, in a rare show of athleticism, she darted to the sofa and tumbled over the back of it, dropping into the dark triangle of space that was filled with dust bunnies and lost things – a glove, a pen lid, the back off the remote control. A red light pulsed to the same crazy rhythm as her heart and with a jolt Ruby realized that it was the LED. She fumbled behind her and pressed the button, then knelt there, shivering, her eyes only just above the velour back, staring so hard at the little white door that they stung.

The door creaked slowly open.

‘Daddy!’ Relief was like a sugar rush. Ruby jumped up.

‘Why’s it so dark in here?’ he said, flicking on the lights. He was already in his cowboy gear.

‘Didn’t you hear me shouting?’ said Ruby.

‘I wanted to surprise you.’

‘Why?’

By way of an answer, Daddy swaggered across the room towards her.

Ching. Ching. Ching.

Ruby frowned at his feet, and then gasped. ‘Spurs!’

‘Not just any old spurs,’ he grinned. ‘Jingle Bobs.’ He lifted his heel to show her, spinning the spiked wheel that jingled like sleigh bells. ‘Those little metal bits? That’s the clappers. That’s what makes the noise, you see?’

He put his foot down and did a little dance to make them ring.

‘Wo-ow!’ Ruby climbed back over the sofa and bent to have a closer look. Now that she could see how it was made, the sound wasn’t scary at all, only pretty. She felt like a fool.

He put his boot up on the coffee table. ‘Look at that workmanship,’ he said, running a finger across the silver shanks. Horseshoes and tumbling dice were hammered into the metal in little dots. ‘They’re the real thing, Rubes. All the way from Wyoming.’

‘Wyoming,’ she breathed. ‘Like a real cowboy.’

He grinned. ‘You should see the stuff you can buy, Rubes. Real genuine cowboy things.’

‘I bet they cost loads,’ she said.

Daddy said nothing and picked lint off his knee.

Ruby’s awed expression flickered. ‘Does Mummy know?’

He frowned and took his boot off the table with a clink. ‘She isn’t the only one around here who can buy things, you know.’ Now she’d upset him.

‘I know.’

He jingled into the kitchen and back out again with a bunch of red roses. ‘See?’

Ruby’s eyes popped. ‘Are they for Mummy? They’re beautiful.’

‘They should be. They cost enough.’

‘She’ll love them.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Daddy smiled at the roses and everything was fine.

Ruby plumped down on the sofa. ‘Make them go again!’

Happy to oblige, he jingled around the room in his spurs. He kicked up his heels and tapped his toes, and Ruby laughed and clapped in delight.

And the fun only stopped when Mummy opened the front door.