The Facts of Life and Death

30

EXTREME FISHING WAS on TV because Daddy liked to tell the men on there where they were going wrong. A fat man in a red baseball cap was up to his hips in a river. He looked like a marker buoy.

Daddy was busy checking Mummy’s phone while she was in the shower. The shower always made the whole back wall of the house shudder like someone driving over a cattle grid.

Daddy thumbed through the messages and Ruby watched, glazed, as the words on the little screen rolled by in time to clicks from his thumb. Now and then he would stop and open a message and then close it again and keep clicking.

It was boring. He never found anything good.

The man in the red cap didn’t catch a thing, just like Daddy said he wouldn’t.

‘He didn’t catch one,’ said Ruby.

Daddy said nothing.

Mummy came downstairs. She was dressed for work, but her hair was still wet.

‘When were you going to tell me about this?’ said Daddy, tapping the phone.

‘What’s that?’

‘This meeting with Ruby’s teacher.’

‘Is that my phone?’ said Mummy.

‘What meeting?’ said Ruby.

‘Are you checking my phone?’ said Mummy.

‘Don’t you think I’d want to know about it?’

‘What meeting?’ said Ruby again. Why did Miss Sharpe want a meeting? She’d been going to school, hadn’t she?

They both ignored her. ‘You never come to school things,’ said Mummy.

He shrugged. ‘I’m coming now.’

‘Good,’ said Mummy, and made a half-hearted grab for the phone, but Daddy laughed and snatched it away and held her wrist while he kept thumbing through the messages.

‘Why are you checking my phone?’

‘Is there any reason I shouldn’t?’

‘Maybe!’ Mummy tried to break free, but Ruby could tell she wasn’t trying too hard. She was half laughing, and so was Daddy. It made her feel like laughing too.

‘Who’s T?’ said Daddy.

‘Who?’

He read the text: ‘Call you later. T. Who’s T?’

Mummy stuck out her tongue. ‘None of your beeswax.’

But Ruby could tell Daddy had stopped playing. ‘Tim Braund?’ he said.

‘Don’t be daft. It’s Tina on reception. She told me about a book and said she’d call me later with the title.’

‘What book?’ said Daddy.

‘How should I know? She hasn’t called me yet.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. Ruby didn’t believe her either. ‘Don’t believe me then,’ laughed Mummy. ‘Let me go.’

‘I won’t,’ said Daddy. ‘Not either of you.’

But he did let her go, and she rubbed the red mark on her wrist and said, ‘Ow. That hurt.’

‘Sorry,’ said Daddy. ‘You want me to kiss it better?’

Mummy just held out her hand for the phone. Daddy gave it to her, then he winked at Ruby and whispered against her ear, ‘Go upstairs and put Panda to bed.’

Ruby’s heart skipped a beat. She was going on another posse! She ran up the narrow stairs on her hands and feet for added speed.

She’d had Panda all her life – Granpa and Nanna had bought him for her as a nought-birthday present. For years Panda was bigger than she was, but he’d shrunk now, and one of his arms had fallen off from too much hugging. It was still somewhere in her sock drawer, but Mummy never had time to sew it back on. It didn’t make any difference to his latest role, which required him to lie in bed and pretend to be Ruby. Aided and abetted by a pillow, he did a grand job.

Ruby put Panda in her bed and arranged the covers over him so that just the tip of one ear was showing. Then she went to the window.

Outside the trees cut out all but a ragged strip of sky that she had to peer upwards to see. It was still getting dark, but it was already night in the forest – a dense, brooding wall of leaf and trunk that rose up to its full height barely twenty feet behind The Retreat. Now and then Ruby saw a squirrel or a bird in the trees, but mostly it was dead and silent.

She drew the curtains so that the room was even murkier than usual.

Mummy would never guess it was Panda and not her in the bed.

Alison Trick waited until they heard the creak of Ruby’s bedroom floor before she said quietly, ‘I don’t think you should take her out.’

‘What?’ John looked at his wife in surprise. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t think she should be driving all over the countryside on a school night.’

‘You’re the one who’s always going on about her watching too much TV.’

‘This is different.’

‘How is it different? We go fishing together. We watch telly together. We go driving together. How’s that different?’

Alison shrugged. ‘I just don’t think it’s healthy. She’s ten. She should be tucked up in bed, not gallivanting around with a bunch of idiots dressed as cowboys.’

‘She’s not with a bunch of idiots. She’s with me.’

Alison shrugged.

‘You’re just jealous,’ said John Trick.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’ He nodded. ‘She loves it. It’s a big adventure. We have a great time. We talk and we sing and we eat chips. We have fun together. We have fun without you, and you don’t like it.’ Alison shrugged. ‘I am a bit jealous. What mother wouldn’t be? I’m missing out on so much of her growing up. But this isn’t about me, John. I don’t want to stop her having fun – I just want her to get enough sleep. It’s not rocket science.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Alison sighed. ‘What?’

‘It’s not rocket science. Are you saying I’m stupid?’

‘No!’

‘Just ’cos I haven’t got a big fancy job and a big fancy car like Tim fucking Braund.’

Alison Trick looked down at the china dog on the window sill. ‘Why are you always trying to pick a fight with me? I can’t say anything any more.’

‘You can say whatever you like. Nobody’s stopping you.’

Alison picked up her bag and dropped her phone into it.

‘Can we just go?’ she said. ‘Please.’

John Trick picked up his keys.

When he’d dropped Mummy at the bus stop, Daddy called upstairs and clapped his hands. ‘Ready, Rubes?’

She came to the top of the stairs. ‘I haven’t had any tea.’

‘I’ve got some squash for you. Grab some biscuits and let’s go.’ Ruby couldn’t believe her luck.

She followed Daddy downstairs and they searched for the biscuits. They weren’t in any of the cupboards.

‘Have some bread or something.’

‘But you said I could have biscuits.’

Daddy got impatient. ‘Maybe there are none.’

‘There are. There’s a whole tin of custard creams.’

‘Then why the hell does the stupid cow hide them?’

‘She doesn’t want me to have nice things to eat,’ explained Ruby. ‘Only vegetables.’

‘I’ll buy you chips,’ said Daddy. ‘Let’s go.’

Daddy didn’t get any chips for himself, because he had cider.

As they sat outside the Blue Dolphin, a gaggle of giggling women came up Bridgeland Street, all dressed in fishnet stockings and pink T-shirts that read HANNAH’S HENS LOOKING FOR COCKS.

‘Look at this lot,’ said Daddy, shaking his head.

Ruby knew they were slags, and was suddenly deeply grateful to Mummy for cleaning the nail polish off her hands before Daddy had had a chance to see it.

The rain dwindled to nothing, and made it easier for Ruby to keep watch as they started off again, but the only people they passed were a boy pushing a broken-down motorbike and a man walking a white dog.

‘Can we get a dog?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Ruby bit her lip. Stupid. Now she’d asked and been told no and so she couldn’t ask again for ages. She wondered whether Daddy would say yes to a rabbit, like Miss Sharpe’s, but that was a question she’d store up for when he was in a better mood. Maybe when Daddy wasn’t on his third can of Strongbow. She didn’t understand why he bothered spending money on something that only made him cross. At least Mars bars and Pony & Rider made her happy.

They swooped down the hill back into Bideford twice before they saw anyone who needed help.

It was a young woman waiting for a bus. She had short blonde hair and jeans and her name was Steffi. She was only going across the river to Instow, and asked to be dropped off outside Paul’s Deli on the seafront.

‘I’ll take you to your door,’ said Daddy. ‘Don’t want to leave you somewhere that’s not safe.’

‘Thanks,’ said Steffi, ‘but I work there and need to pick up my wages. I walk home from there all the time. It’s not far.’

‘You should be more careful, you know,’ said Daddy seriously. ‘Taking lifts from strangers. You know there’s a nutter about.’

‘Well,’ shrugged the girl, ‘you have your little girl with you, and I’ve been walking to Paul’s and back for yonks, so… y’know…’

‘I wish I could work in a sweetshop,’ said Ruby. ‘Do you eat all the sweets?’

Steffi laughed. ‘They don’t let you. You get fired if you eat the sweets or read the magazines.’

Ruby frowned. ‘Even Pony & Rider?’

‘Oooh,’ said Steffi. ‘I used to read that all the time!’

‘Did you?’ said Ruby excitedly. ‘Do you have a pony?’

‘When I was little I did. His name was Lundy Lad, but we called him Laddie.’

‘I wish I had one,’ said Ruby wistfully, ‘but it’s too expensive.’

‘It’s not just the money,’ snapped Daddy. ‘It’s a lot of work, a horse. It’s not just the money, Ruby – you’re just like your mother, you are.’

Ruby sat back. She was stung. She wasn’t like Mummy; she was like Daddy!

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

They dropped Steffi outside Paul’s. She said thank you and waved Ruby goodbye, before going into the shop.

‘Here, Rubes,’ said Daddy after a moment. ‘Go and get yourself an ice cream.’

He held out a pound coin. Ruby knew it would only buy a lolly, not a proper ice cream, but she also knew it was a pound’s worth of sorry, so she took it and squeezed between the seats, and followed Steffi inside.

From the outside, Paul’s looked like it was going to be rubbish, but inside it was much bigger and brightly lit, with a deli counter and sweets and a huge wall of magazines and comics. There were even ice creams in the ice-cream freezer.

Ruby was hanging over it to ponder the lollies when Steffi stopped beside her.

‘You OK?’ she said.

‘Yes, thanks,’ said Ruby.

‘I didn’t mean to make your dad cross.’

Ruby shrugged. ‘He’s only cross because he hasn’t got a job.’

‘Oh,’ nodded Steffi. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s OK.’ Ruby picked out a Fab.

‘Hey,’ said Steffi suddenly. ‘Put this towards your pony.’ She dug a five-pound note out of her jeans pocket and handed it to Ruby, then walked out of the shop.

Ruby was so stunned that she couldn’t even say thank you. She’d had three quid once off Granpa for a birthday kiss, but she’d never had a five-pound note in her hand that actually belonged to her.

Five pounds!

She spent every penny. Mostly on chocolate bars and crisps, but, because it was free money, she got a magazine as well. She already had the latest Pony & Rider, so she bought something called TeenBeatz. On the cover it said SIX WAYS TO TELL IF HE REALLY LOVES YOU and GET KISSING RIGHT FIRST TIME, and it had a free pencil sharpener stuck to the front. Ruby added everything up in her head and made up the last few pennies with aniseed balls from a box by the till.

‘Where’d you get all that?’ said Daddy in the car.

‘She gave me five pounds!’

‘Who did?’

‘That girl. Steffi.’

‘Why?’

‘Dunno,’ said Ruby. ‘But I saved your pound for you.’

He took it without a word.

They drove down the seafront, with the lights of Appledore on their left, reflected in the still river between them, and the big fancy houses on their right. Long gardens and glass balconies, and the Commodore hotel all low and white, and lit up by spotlights on the sweeping lawns.

‘Hey!’ said Ruby. ‘There’s that car with the funny horn.’ They cruised slowly past the yellow car with the black stripes parked on the seafront, and Ruby could see the dark silhouette of the driver at the wheel.

‘Arsehole,’ said Daddy, and Ruby giggled.

Daddy needed the loo, which was in the car park next to the dunes, where the road curved away from the sea.

The car park was just a flat piece of ground sandwiched between the dunes, the beach and the road. It had been tarmac once, but now was almost covered with shifting sand that made a crunchy little noise as Daddy swung the car round and reversed it neatly against the looming banks of sand.

‘Wait here, Rubes,’ said Daddy.

‘’K,’ she said. Not that there was anywhere to go.

As soon as he was out of the car, Ruby got in the back where she could stretch out on the seat, and started on a Mars bar and TeenBeatz. She had to squint in the low yellow interior light, but reading a magazine about kissing, while eating a free Mars bar washed down with blackcurrant squash, made her feel like a grown-up.

Ruby woke on a bang and a scream.

Her heart bumped and her breath felt like she’d been running; she sucked in blackcurrant spittle that had collected at the corner of her mouth as she lay on the back seat.

The end of the scream sighed away and stopped, and there was only silence.

The car wasn’t driving but it was tilting, and she sat up slowly, expecting to see that they were home and parked on the uneven cobbles. They weren’t. They were still by the dunes.

‘Daddy?’

Daddy wasn’t there. Ruby rubbed her eyes and looked around her, then twisted and got to her knees so she could look out of the window.

Someone was crouching down beside the car.

‘Daddy?’

The someone stood up and stepped backwards and looked around the car park. There was a streetlight behind him so his face was in shadow, and for a second she thought it was Daddy because he was wearing a cowboy hat, but it wasn’t Daddy – he was a lot fatter, and the streetlight silhouetted the fluffy mutton-chop sideburns on his cheeks.

Ruby held her breath.

What was he doing?

And what would he do next?

Something in his hand caught the moonlight and glittered.

A knife?

He came towards her – straight at her! Ruby shrank away from the window and squeezed down into the footwell. He must surely see her! And when he did, he would open the door and reach in and murder her. Stab her in the heart. Cut her into little pieces.

She hadn’t found the killer, but the killer had found her.

He was inches away. He reached the back window. But instead of smashing it and diving through it and grabbing her and slitting her throat, he bent and dropped almost out of sight.

Ruby found her voice. ‘Daddy!’ she screamed. Then she crawled up and along the seat and hammered on the window over the man’s head. ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’

The man staggered upright and stumbled backwards and for a second their eyes met through the glass. Then he threw up his arm to hide his face.

‘Oi! Oi!’

Then suddenly the man was running and Daddy was running after him. Out of the darkness, past the car and after the stranger, their feet hitting the ground with a rhythmic ring, across the road and between the houses, where the night swallowed them both as if they’d never been.

Ruby sat, stunned, her hands and forehead pressed against the glass like something forgotten. Abandoned.

Then she wriggled between the front seats and locked both the doors, panting with fear.

She waited.

She waited.

She should get out and cross the car park and knock at one of the houses and asked them to call the police, but she was too scared to get out; too worried that the man might already have killed Daddy, and circled back through the dunes that squeezed the car park, and might even now be waiting for her to lose her nerve and make a run from the relative safety of the car.

Her heart caught up with her head.

He might have killed Daddy.

Ruby bit her lip hard, trying not to cry, but fear escaped her in a long thin whine she didn’t even know she was making.

She tugged open the glovebox in search of a weapon, but there was only rubbish – cigarette papers, pens, a Bic lighter, a roll of black plastic tape, and a brown medicine bottle with a sticky lid.

Nothing she could use to fight off the stranger.

She even looked through the rear window at the dunes looming over the car. If she saw the man coming back along the road, she would run into the dunes and hide. The thought of leaving the car was terrifying, but she would do it if she had to.

From the tunnel of black that was the lane between the houses, a shadowy figure emerged, and Ruby’s nerves sang like reeds.

She fumbled with the door handle and fell out of the car on her knees. Then she scrambled to her feet and ran into her father’s arms.

‘I thought you were never coming back,’ she wept. ‘I thought you were dead.’

He held her tight. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Sssshh. I’m fine, Rubes.’

‘I thought he was going to kill me,’ sniffed Ruby against his ribs.

He laughed. ‘He’s not killing anyone. Specially not my best Deputy!’

They started towards the car.

‘Was he the killer?’

Daddy shook his head. ‘That wazzack? Nah, Rubes. See how he run off? A killer doesn’t run off like a big bloody baby. A killer stands and fights!’

‘But what was he doing?’ said Ruby.

‘Shit.’ Daddy stopped dead and pointed at the car. ‘That.’

Ruby didn’t look.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t take her eyes off Daddy. Her breath went funny in her chest and she felt the damp sea air fill her mouth in shallow sips.

Daddy’s arm was outstretched. His hand was pointing at the car. And in his hand was a gun.