56

ALISON AND RUBY Trick left Limeburn, and never went back. They didn’t go to stay with Granpa and Nanna though – not even for a night. They stayed at the Red Lion on the curved sea wall at the foot of Clovelly until Mummy sold her earrings and necklace, and Tiffany brooch, and then they moved into their very own little cottage halfway up the hill.

Ruby loved it. She only had to look out of her bedroom window to see little grey and brown donkeys pulling sledges up the street, loaded with tourists’ suitcases, and Mummy promised next summer they’d have window boxes filled with red geraniums.

The bruises on Ruby’s legs faded from black to purple to brown, and finally to banana yellow. One morning, she examined her legs in bed and couldn’t see a single mark. It was one of several improvements. Her chest still ached now and then, but she got used to reading in a chair, and walking up and down the hill twice a day to stroke the donkeys in their big green paddock chased away the last of her puppy fat.

For a while the police kept coming to see them to ask them questions about Daddy and the posses. It took Ruby a little while to let go of her loyalty, but eventually she told them almost everything.

Almost.

One time a policeman asked about a gun and Ruby said, What gun? just like Mummy had told her to, and that worked, because they didn’t ask again.

So she never told them how on the morning after the storm – when the sea had finally finished with Limeburn – Mummy had lifted up the pedlar’s flagstone, and Ruby had put the gun underneath it.

Then they’d picked their way down the Peppercombe path – she in her jumper and bruised, bare legs, Mummy in muddy pyjamas and diamonds – and Mummy had told the police all that had happened, half talking, half crying.

The only bit she’d left out was the gun.

That was their little secret.

A month or so after they moved into their new home – just as the sun was making its sheepish return to North Devon – there was a knock on the door and it was Adam. He’d walked all the way from Limeburn.

It was chilly, but it was bright and dry, so he and Ruby played with Harvey for a bit, then they went up the hill to the visitor centre and bought ice creams, and ate them together next to the donkey paddock. Ruby told Adam all their names – Sarah and Eli and Peter and Jasper and all the rest. ‘You can ride them and groom them and everything,’ she told him. Then – in case he doubted such wonders – she added, ‘I do it every time I get my pocket money.’

Adam told her about their house falling down, and the huge hole that was left in the cliff where the mighty oak used to be.

None of it mattered to Ruby now. It was as if Adam was talking about another place she’d only heard about.

‘I’m cold,’ she said, and Adam gave her his hoodie. It smelled just the same as before, and made her feel just as happy.

They didn’t talk about Limeburn again until Adam was getting ready to walk the four miles home.

Then he asked, ‘Are you ever coming back?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘It’s a long way,’ said Adam. ‘It took me ages to walk here.’

Ruby nodded, but she felt sad. Adam was the one thing she missed about Limeburn.

She turned away and leaned over the fence. She put her palm against Eli’s broad forehead with its Catherine wheel of grey hair in the middle. His heavy head relaxed and his eyelids drooped, as she rubbed him there like a magic lamp.

Adam climbed on to the fence beside her.

For a little while he just watched her.

Then he also reached out, and stroked the donkey’s long, fluffy ears and said, ‘Maybe I’ll get a bicycle.’

Ruby tried her best never to think of John Trick, because whenever she did, it was of his bloody teeth bared as he hissed in her face, I’m not your Daddy.

Eventually, she hoped that that was true.

She did think a lot about Miss Sharpe and the little horseshoe on her charm bracelet. Without it, she would never have just known that Daddy was a killer. She might still have believed that he would come home and take care of them.

She might even have waited with Mummy for him to do just that…

She thought about Steffi Cole too – giving her five pounds before she was murdered, just because they both loved ponies. And about Frannie Hatton, taking her nose ring out and dropping it in the car-door pocket – hoping it might help somebody else, even though she knew that she was beyond help.

And it had helped, thought Ruby. It had helped her. They had all helped her in their own ways – living and dead – just the way Mummy had always helped her. She could see that now.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, Ruby Trick started to think that ending up as a woman might not be so terrible after all.

Every day, she felt a little bit better, a little bit safer. A little bit more grown up.

But at night…

At night the Gut swarmed with dark sharks, and the Gore loomed, black and shiny, out of the deep green sea.

At night she woke in terror from blood-soaked dreams.

At night Ruby Trick wondered where the Devil was now.

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