RUBY COULDN’T STOP thinking about the gun. She wanted so badly to tell somebody about it that she thought she might burst.
From the window she saw Adam and Chris disappearing up the Clovelly pathway. Quickly she struggled into her coat and boots, but by the time she had puffed and slithered up to the clearing on the cliff, they were nowhere to be seen.
Maggie was on the swing – hung over the fraying rope like a dishcloth, with her knees dragging in the mud.
‘Have you seen Adam?’
‘They went over the stile,’ croaked Maggie.
Ruby was almost relieved. Now she couldn’t tell Adam about the gun. And telling would have been wrong, because it was a big secret.
So big that Daddy had kept it from her.
Ruby didn’t even want to admit to herself how much that hurt. They were supposed to keep secrets from Mummy – not from each other.
It made her feel…
It made her feel…
Not angry, but…
Something.
Out of habit, she bent and picked up a stick from the forest floor. It fitted well in her hand, but she stared at the damp, gnarled wood with sudden disdain. Only a stupid little kid would think a stick was a gun. Now she’d seen the real thing she could never go back.
Something inside Ruby missed the stick, even as she hurled it into the forest.
She flopped disconsolately on to the bench. The wooden slats were damp and had little aqua flowers of lichen growing all over them. She picked at them intently, peeling them away from their home and flicking them towards the swing.
Finding stuff out wasn’t all good.
The gun was good, but it had ruined the sticks for her. Having secrets was good, but keeping them was hard. And growing up was good, but, at the same time, she didn’t want to lose that warm, safe, little-girl feeling of being carried in her Daddy’s arms.
She had been so impatient for everything to change, and now that it had, she had the strangest sense of wanting to reach out and slow it all down – maybe stop it altogether – just for a little while, while she decided what she thought about it all.
She sighed deeply and blew out her cheeks and stared at the dank forest.
‘Hey,’ she said suddenly, ‘where’s Em?’
‘Over there,’ said Maggie vaguely towards the sea.
Ruby wandered across the clearing, brushed aside the overhanging branches, and there she saw Em, sitting on the edge of the cliff, high above the beach, her bare legs and pink glittery wellington boots dangling in space, and the hem of her dress hitched up so high that Ruby could see the blue elastic of the Pampers she still wore. Em sang tunelessly under her breath, kicking her legs in time to an imagined beat.
She didn’t see Ruby.
Quietly, Ruby stretched out her arm, the way Daddy had on the beach – catching Em in the sights created by her thumbnail and finger. She imagined the butt of the gun snug in her palm, her finger curled around the cool trigger, and the glimmering curve of the bullets winking at her from the fat, grooved barrel.
Real enough to give you a good scare. And real enough to give you bad thoughts.
She thought of the jolt of the shot, the high-pitched scream on the way down, of Em hitting the big black pebbles a hundred feet below.
One of the toddler’s boots had worked its way down her chubby little leg, and she leaned forward to stop it falling off.
‘Ruby?’ Maggie called from the swing.
Ruby opened her mouth to answer… then closed it.
And just watched.
Em teetered – trying to grasp the top edge of the plastic boot. She gripped it briefly, then her fingers slid off, and her whole body wavered back and forth with the recoil before steadying.
Ruby breathed again.
But Em leaned forward once more… seemingly oblivious to the drop, grunting with the effort of bending so far to reach something that had now slipped even further down her leg, a bubble of snot starting to blow in and out of her rosy nose, while with her other hand she tried to keep her tangled blonde hair out of her eyes.
Ruby suppressed a small pang of guilt. Em wasn’t her sister. She didn’t love Em. Em was a pain who slowed them all down, with her short legs and her socks always wrinkling into her rubber boots, and the foul stench that often wafted from her over-padded rear end. Whatever happened, it wasn’t Ruby’s fault. No one would blame her. She’d have something exciting to write in her diary and everyone would want to be her friend.
Nothing could beat a dead child.
Em grunted in frustration, and kicked her legs – and the boot flew off. She lunged to try to catch it, her centre of gravity tipping suddenly too far—
Ruby grabbed the hood of Em’s coat and yanked her back from the edge, dragging her away, across the mud and stones, her heart thudding with how close it had come – how close she had let it come…
Her adrenalin raced. ‘NO!’ she shouted in Em’s face and shook her too hard. ‘NO!’
Em’s face screwed up and she started to roar with fright.
Ruby didn’t care. She was the one who should be roaring with fright. It served Em right if she had got a shock. It was better than falling off a cliff, wasn’t it? Let her cry. Ruby almost slapped her too, just for being so stupid.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Maggie, running from the clearing.
‘Em nearly fell off the cliff,’ said Ruby. ‘I saved her just in time.’
Maggie stared at her and then at Em. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘thanks.’ Then she grabbed Em roughly by the hand and shook her too, prompting new screams.
‘I told you not to go close to the edge! Where’s your other boot?’
‘It fell over the cliff,’ said Ruby.
Maggie rolled her eyes – just the way Ruby had seen Maggie’s mother do.
‘Come on, you,’ she said, and started back down the path, pulling the bawling Em behind her with her one wrinkled sock already clotted with mud and trailing out behind her.
When they had gone, Ruby edged to the drop on her knees so she could look over. Far below on the beach, a tiny pink L was Em’s boot.
Empty of a child.
Ruby stayed there for ages, just looking at it.
She couldn’t help feeling disappointed.