The Facts of Life and Death

51

‘WE HAVE TO get out,’ cried Ruby. ‘We can’t stay here.’

‘No, Ruby,’ said Mummy. ‘We’re surrounded by water. It’s too dangerous to try to leave. Daddy will come soon or the tide will turn and we’ll all be fine.’

‘No!’ said Ruby. ‘We have to go now. Before Daddy comes!’

‘It’s OK, Rubes, we’ll be safe if we just wait here.’

‘No!’ Ruby yelled. ‘We have to go! We have to go!’

Mummy took her wrist. ‘Calm down, Ru—’

‘I don’t want Daddy to come!’ Ruby shouted. ‘I’m scared of Daddy!’

Mummy’s fingers tightened on her wrist and she went white and very quiet and looked hard into Ruby’s eyes.

‘What do you mean?’

Ruby fought back tears. ‘I don’t want to see Daddy any more. I want to go now. Just with you. Please, Mummy. Please?’

Ruby expected Mummy to ask her why. She expected Mummy to try to talk her out of it. She expected Mummy to tell her she was being a silly little girl.

Instead Mummy squeezed her hand and said, ‘OK. Let’s go.’

Mummy didn’t even change out of her pyjamas. She pulled on trainers and grabbed her phone and then helped Ruby dress.

‘No jeans,’ said Mummy. ‘They’ll get wet and too cold.’ So Ruby pulled a thick jumper over her Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and put on her own trainers. Her hands shook so hard that Mummy had to tie her laces.

Ruby looked round her room. She had to take what she could. She put Lucky in her pony backpack, along with his broken leg and the sled and the potato. Maybe one day they could all be fixed, like the bathroom window.

‘Come on,’ said Mummy.

‘Where are we going to go?’

‘Up to the road,’ said Mummy. ‘I’ll call Nanna to come and pick us up.’

She grabbed Ruby’s hand and started down the stairs.

But then she stopped.

‘Wait here,’ she said, and ran back to her bedroom.

Ruby followed her. Mummy was down on her knees, pulling stuff out of the wardrobe.

‘Mummy, come on!’

‘Wait!’ She opened the bag with the jewellery in it and started to put it on, twisting her head and wincing as she forced the earrings through half-healed lobes, her hands shaking as she unclasped the fish brooch.

Mummy had gone mad.

‘What are you doing?’ Ruby yelled. ‘Daddy’s coming!’

‘Here,’ said Mummy. ‘Do this up. We mustn’t lose it.’

Ruby struggled with the clasp on the necklace, but finally found the clip. Then Mummy got to her feet and they rushed out of the room.

Ruby followed her downstairs. The water was coming up to meet them. In the lounge it was thigh-deep now, and freezing cold.

Hand-in-hand, they waded past the blue tapestry cushion and the tilting TV to the front door, and took their coats off the pegs.

On the way out, Mummy reached down and picked up the little china dog from the front window sill and slipped it into her pocket.

When they passed through the flooded doorway and into the ocean of their garden, Mummy and Ruby stood for a moment in shock.

They couldn’t see much, but what they could see was terrible. A vast, alien expanse of sea where the village was supposed to be. The cottages down the hill were half under water and their windows were dark. The giant tree was still trapped between them, and they could hear the crashing and the tinkling of broken windows and smashed cars as it wallowed on the cobbles.

Mrs Braund’s best chair floated past them – its only occupant a large wet rat digging its claws into the yellow silk upholstery.

‘What about Adam?’ said Ruby.

‘They’ll be OK, Rubes. They’ll all wait upstairs until the tide turns.’

‘What about Mrs Vanstone? She can’t get upstairs.’

Mummy bit her lip. ‘Come on, Ruby,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’

‘We have to get Harvey,’ said Ruby.

‘We can’t!’ said Mummy. ‘We have to hurry!’

‘We have to! He’ll drown.’

She broke free from Mummy and splashed round to the back garden. Twice a wave knocked her off her feet and the second time Harvey’s dustbin washed right over her with a clunk on her head. It was bobbing about at an angle, but he was still in there, crouched in the bottom, looking twitchy.

Ruby got to her feet and shrugged off her pony backpack. She emptied Lucky and the sled and the potato into the sea. Then Mummy joined her and carefully scooped Harvey out of the bin and put him in the backpack instead. On Ruby’s instructions, Mummy zipped the bag up so that just his head was poking out, the way she’d done on the bus from Fairy Cross. It seemed a thousand years ago, but it was only two days.

Then they headed back towards the front garden gate, but it was under water and they couldn’t find it and kept bumping into the stone wall, until eventually Mummy helped Ruby over that instead, and they headed to where the road used to be. The water was up to Ruby’s waist, and when waves came, her feet actually left the ground, and she could feel Harvey scrabbling about in fear in her backpack, but at least it meant he hadn’t drowned yet.

Mummy shrieked and Ruby turned and saw a black rat run up her arm, spiky and terrified. Mummy flailed and sent it flying back into the water.

‘Shit!’ she said. ‘I dropped the phone.’

Ruby said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

Something big splashed towards them in the darkness, from the direction of the cottages.

‘Hello?’ said Mummy nervously, but it didn’t answer back. Within seconds they saw it was one of the Labradoodles. Ruby saw his blue collar and called, ‘Tony!’ but the dog just kept swimming past them, head jutting, towards the road.

They followed in his wake.

The headlights of a car flickered between the trees.

‘Someone’s coming,’ said Ruby.

They stood and shivered, and watched the lights approach. As the car came round the last turn into the village, it narrowly missed the terrified dog running blindly up the lane. The car swerved hard, then continued almost to the water’s edge before stopping.

‘It’s Daddy,’ Ruby said. ‘We have to go back.’

They both turned and looked behind them at the black, raging sea and the flooded village, then back at the lights of the car, parked between them and safety.

‘We can’t, Ruby,’ said Mummy firmly. ‘We have to get up high, and we have to get safe. And even if it is Daddy, right now he’s safer than this.’

‘No, Mummy! He’s not! He killed Miss Sharpe!’

‘What?’

‘My teacher. He killed her. He killed her and all the others too!’

Ruby knew she was babbling and she could see Mummy’s confusion and disbelief, but she carried on in a rush, ‘Before – when you were still upstairs – Miss Sharpe’s body came in the house and I knew it was her because of her charm bracelet and then the sea took it out again.’

‘What are you talking about, Rubes? You didn’t say anything.’

‘There was too much to say.’

It was true, and Ruby felt the weight of all the things she hadn’t told Mummy or anyone else. There’d been a point where she might have said something to somebody – but once that point had been passed in silence, there was simply too much to say.

‘Shh!’ Mummy flinched and gripped Ruby’s arm as the car door opened and the driver got out. Even silhouetted in the headlights, they could tell it was Daddy, wearing his Stetson and his Jingle Bobs. And in his holster, Ruby could see the outline of the gun.

Just like a real cowboy.

Ching. Ching.

The sea around them was dark and rough and Daddy couldn’t possibly have seen them, but he never broke stride. He walked into the waves as if they weren’t there, and headed straight towards The Retreat. Towards them. There was something so relentless – so dangerous – about it that Ruby gasped in terror.

Mummy felt it too. She must have, because without a word she turned and took Ruby’s hand and led her back into the rising water.

‘The haunted house,’ said Ruby. ‘That’s highest up of all.’