The Facts of Life and Death Page 6

  So, instead of succumbing to panic-led convention, Miss Sharpe had upped sticks from flat Norfolk and moved to sinuous Devon, where she joined the badminton club for exercise, bought a house rabbit for cuddles, and – until she could have her own children – enjoyed those belonging to other people in class 5B at Bideford’s Westmead Junior School.

  She wasn’t stupid, so she’d never expected all children to be enjoyable – and so it proved. For every Jamie Starke with her A in English, there was a Jordan Whitefield, with his essays punctuated only by bogeys. And for every sweet-natured David Leather, there was a Shawn Loosemore, who gave smaller children Chinese burns when he thought no one was looking.

  Children lied, too. Miss Sharpe had expected a bit of exaggeration, but she had been surprised by just how tall their tales could be. In the first week’s diaries alone, Shawn had tamed ‘a wild stallyon’ and Connor Nuttall had done a triple somersault in gym – which he’d then painfully failed to repeat for a rapt crowd of children on the hard tarmac of the playground.

  Miss Sharpe still had a pile of this week’s books to go through, but already Noah Jones had swum all the way from Appledore to Instow, and Essie Littlejohn had found an adder. It was half dead this week, but Miss Sharpe suspected that next week it could well be fully alive and – if nothing was said – the week after that Essie might be charming it out of a basket with a flute.

  She understood why they did it. The more outlandish the lies, the more attention the children seemed to glean from their classmates.

  Miss Sharpe knew that it was probably her duty to caution the children against embellishments, but she was reluctant to be too dictatorial because the lies were so much more entertaining than reality. Most of the diaries were plain boring. There were endless Playstation sessions, karate clubs, homework, and doing each other’s hair. David Leather seemed to practise the violin every spare minute of the day, and if Miss Sharpe heard one more time about there being no ponies in Ruby Trick’s paddock, she’d scream. Even Jordan had said ‘Again?’ and made a loud snoring sound, which had made the other children laugh.

  She thought of how Ruby had tried to show off to her father in the car tonight. She understood that little-girl need to have her daddy’s approval – even about something as mundane as a diary. She’d spent her own formative years trying to catch her father’s eye.

  But after her mother had died, nothing had ever really caught his eye again.

  Miss Sharpe wondered where the scars on Mr Trick’s face had come from – ugly, pale arcs that distorted his eye and his dark brow. He wasn’t what she’d have expected for the father of Ruby Trick, with her red hair and freckles. For her own amusement, she’d started to give herself points out of ten for predicting what the parents of each child in her class would look like. She hadn’t met them all yet, and wasn’t terribly good at the game. She’d only have given herself a two for Mr Trick. Unlike David Leather’s parents, who were perfect tens. They had come to school about David being bullied, and could barely fit through the classroom door. They were nice people, but as the parents of a victimized child they were ineffectual – too kind and too comfortable with their own girths to understand that what their enormous son needed to survive school was boot camp, not violin lessons.

  Children were sponges – sucking up whatever was around them without any effort or intention, be it prejudices or food. They thought what their parents thought, said what they said, did what they did.

  Ate what they ate.

  By that reckoning, David Leather was doomed.

  But Ruby Trick wasn’t. Not yet. Her red hair and dirty socks made her an outsider, but Miss Sharpe understood that only too well.

  Miss Sharpe finished her wine. Maybe she could give Ruby the support and encouragement she’d missed out on? Maybe she could make a difference to her life. Be remembered fondly. Get a card when she was sixty saying I owe it all to you.

  Wasn’t that what being a teacher was all about?

  Miss Sharpe sighed and scooped Harvey on to her lap. His ears were so soft they were almost imaginary, and she murmured gently against his silken head, ‘Clever boy, Harvey.’

  She giggled at her own tipsy foolishness. Harvey was a rabbit. All he did all day was hop, eat and poo – none of which really required a motivational speech from her!

  Ruby Trick, on the other hand, was an isolated child without discernible talents, assets or friends.

  That chubby little sponge needed all the help she could get.

  12

  ALL WEEK LONG, Ruby watched her father like a dog watches a man with a tin opener. She knew from school that it was always the daddies that left, and her tummy squeezed like a fist every time he reached for his keys.

  Sometimes he took his fishing rod, but he didn’t bring home any fish, and when they drove up the hill in the morning, empty cider cans rolled backwards from under the driver’s seat.

  At school Ruby huddled on the dry strip under the overhanging roof and watched the other children mob Shawn Loosemore, who had stroked a seal on Westward Ho! beach, and Paul Powers, whose father had bought him a brand-new motocross bike. Ruby knew Paul from the bus. He often smelled mouldy and Ruby noticed that his school shoes were still as scuffed and peeling as ever. His dad must have spent all the money they had on that bike.

  If she had exciting things to write about, the other kids would be nice to her the way they were to Paul. Nobody had liked him either before he got his motorbike. Now he had lots of best friends hanging off his shoulders, giving him things and begging for a playdate.

  She didn’t have a motocross bike or a pony, only a cross Mummy and a silent Daddy, and who wanted to come all the way to Limeburn to see that?

  The wind changed direction and the other children under the overhang shuffled off to find somewhere drier to stand until the bell rang. Ruby was too miserable to notice.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ demanded Essie Littlejohn.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m not.’

  But Essie only tilted her head so she could look at Ruby better, and said, ‘Is it because nobody likes you?’

  ‘Shut up, whore.’

  Ruby didn’t know what the word meant.

  But it shut Essie up.

  After school Ruby cleaned the mud off Daddy’s walking boots, gouging it from the treads with a pointed stick and scraping it off the leather with a teaspoon.

  On Tuesday she spent hours sorting his fish hooks into the right little plastic boxes, even though she jabbed her thumb twice – sending tingles right up to her ears, and drawing a deep-red bubble of blood that made her shiver.

  On Wednesday it stopped raining long enough for her to clean the car. First she took out all the rubbish and put it in the kitchen bin. There were receipts and sweet wrappers and one of Mummy’s old earrings in the passenger-door pocket, but mostly it was empty Strongbow cans.

  She had to make two trips.

  Washing the car took buckets and buckets, and twice she slipped on the cobbles while trying to reach the roof and spilled freezing water all over her shoes.

  Adam came out of his house and asked what she was doing.

  ‘Washing the car for my Daddy,’ she said, and then she bit her lip and turned away and went on washing, because she didn’t want Adam to see her crying. But he didn’t say anything else after that – just did the roof for her and helped to squeeze out the sponges.

  ‘Thanks,’ she sniffed, and squelched home.

  Later, Ruby stuck the little hoop earring into her diary with clear tape. Underneath it she wrote carefully, I found this treshure in my Daddy’s car when I cleaned it for him. I also washed the outside and it took three buckets.

  On Thursday she recorded True Grit for him off the telly. The old film, not the new one, because Daddy didn’t trust any cowboy with long hair, or who wasn’t John Wayne.

  Mummy and Daddy didn’t speak except to say Pass the butter, and when Ruby came home, Daddy was often not there. Sometimes the car was gone,
sometimes just he was. Sometimes he went out at night, even when Mummy was working. He told Ruby not to tell Mummy and she didn’t – partly because she was on his side and partly because she was ashamed to admit to anyone that Daddy would go out and leave her alone. What if she burned the house down? Ruby didn’t like the feeling it gave her – that something bad could happen and she was too small and weak to do anything to stop it.

  Mummy did a lot of extra shifts, and often had to walk up the hill to catch the bus, but Ruby reckoned it served her right. This was all her fault. Her and her fancy man. What if Mummy wanted a divorce? What if Daddy left? What if they moved? What if she got a new Daddy she didn’t like?

  At night she lay awake for hours, straining to decipher the voices from the next room. The soft bitterness that made her understand all the anger and all the fear, and none of the meaning, while the wind squealed and howled through the bathroom window, in a ghostly soundtrack to her misery.

  School was seven hours a day when she didn’t know where Daddy was, so Ruby tried her very best not to go.

  She had a belly ache; she had a broken foot; she couldn’t see out of one eye.

  Mummy had all the answers. She gave Ruby peppermint cordial for her stomach, she rubbed Deep Heat on to her toes and threw a pair of balled-up socks at her.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t catch those if you were blind in one eye, because of depth perception.’

  But Ruby was dogged. ‘My chest hurts,’ she said. It didn’t right then, but it did quite often, so Ruby didn’t think of this as a lie. More like a postponement of the truth.

  Mummy said nothing. She drew back the curtains, although it hardly made the room any lighter, the leaves and branches were that thick around the window. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and took Ruby’s hand, but Ruby took it back.

  ‘Are you happy at school, Ruby?’

  Ruby said yes, even though saying yes to that question was silly. Who was happy at school? Nobody, apart from Miss Sharpe, as far as she could see. But if she said no, then Mummy would know her chest wasn’t really hurting.

  ‘Nobody’s bullying you, are they?’

  ‘No,’ said Ruby, because if she said yes, Mummy might come up to the school and give Essie Littlejohn or the kids on the bus a row, or ask to speak to their parents. And then Ruby would be an even bigger target than she already was.

  ‘Let’s have a look at your chest then …’

  Ruby pulled her Mickey Mouse T-shirt up to her armpits and Mummy peered down.

  ‘Why are you mean to Daddy?’ said Ruby.

  Mummy looked surprised. She didn’t say anything for a little while – just pulled the T-shirt back down and patted Ruby’s tummy.

  ‘You know, Ruby, sometimes grown-ups have arguments, just like children do. It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.’

  Ruby thought about that for a moment, then said, ‘Daddy says he used to be your hero.’

  Mummy nodded. ‘He was,’ she said. ‘He came along just when I needed him most.’

  ‘Don’t you need him now he hasn’t got a job?’

  ‘I—’

  Mummy started and then stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mummy. ‘Listen. These are grown-up things, Ruby. I don’t want you worrying about them. Worrying is a mummy’s job!’ She was trying to make a funny joke of it, but Ruby didn’t smile back.

  ‘Up you get now,’ said Mummy.

  ‘But my tummy hurts.’

  ‘A minute ago it was your chest,’ said Mummy, and Ruby realized she’d blown it.

  ‘You have to go to school, Ruby,’ said Mummy. ‘You don’t want to grow up stupid, do you?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Well, I care,’ said Mummy. ‘Up you get.’

  Ruby sighed and got up.

  Mummy didn’t understand. She could get off the bus.

  13

  MISS SHARPE BOUGHT a Gazette and read the front page as she walked towards school.

  POLICE WARN AFTER SECOND ‘ET ATTACK

  Police have warned that the man responsible for two assaults on lone women in North Devon could ‘go too far’ and commit an even more serious crime.

  In terrifying ordeals, the women were made to strip, while being threatened with violence by a man known as the ET attacker, because he makes his victims phone home.

  Miss Sharpe took a moment to snort derisively. One man and his dog in the Gazette office might know him as ‘the ET attacker’ but nobody normal ever said rubbish like that.

  Neither was physically harmed, but both were left traumatized by the encounter with the man, who wore a black balaclava.

  One woman was assaulted on Westward Ho! beach, and the other in woodland near Clovelly.

  Detective Chief Inspector Kirsty King who is leading the investigation, told the Gazette, ‘These were disturbing and frightening attacks on young women minding their own business in broad daylight.

  ‘Thankfully, neither suffered any physical harm, but we are concerned that the nature of the attacks may be escalating, and fear this individual may injure somebody.

  ‘We would appeal to him to come forward so that he can receive the help he needs before he goes too far.’

  Oh yes, thought Miss Sharpe, that’ll happen.

  She read on:

  ‘We would also urge women alone in isolated areas to be aware of potential threats, and not to put themselves in harm’s way.’

  Police have described the man as being white, with a local accent, and about six feet tall.

  Despite the newspaper hype, the story was disturbing. Miss Sharpe was relieved that she was far too busy to wander about pointlessly on beaches or in woodland, and decided that she’d take a lot more notice of whether her doors were locked at night. It was easy to become casual in the countryside, but she already had a spyhole and never opened the door to anyone she didn’t recognize. Maybe she’d get a chain put on the front door by the local community policing team. She was overthinking things, she knew, but Miss Sharpe’s motto had always been Better safe than sorry.

  EEEEEE-ee-ee!

  The car screeched to a halt less than two feet from her hip. The yellow bonnet with two broad black stripes running down it sprang back up from the sudden harsh braking.

  She’d walked straight out in front of it. Hadn’t even realized she was in the road.

  ‘Sorry!’ she mouthed. ‘Sorry!’ But the reflection of the sky in the windscreen made it impossible to see whether she was forgiven or not.

  She finished crossing and the yellow car swerved noisily around her.

  Not forgiven.

  Nerves fizzed all over Miss Sharpe’s body. She’d almost been killed! While she was planning her own safe passage through life. One split second of inattention and she could be dead now, or paralysed, seriously injured, lying in the road with two broken legs and tarmac under her cheek.

  She started to shake.

  It was shock, certainly. But it was also anger at herself. How could she have been so stupid? That wasn’t like her. That was the kind of thing other people did. People who weren’t as cautious; weren’t as clever.

  Those were the people who were alive one second and dead the next.

  And in the Gazette the day after that.

  14

  ‘LOOK!’ RUBY SAID triumphantly from the triangle behind the sofa.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Daddy.

  ‘The back off the remote control.’

  Ruby clambered over the back of the sofa with the bit of plastic and the glove.

  ‘Clever you,’ said Daddy.

  Daddy fixed the remote and pressed Play on True Grit and for a bit they watched a one-eyed fat man help a little girl find the killers of her father.

  Ruby over-laughed in all the good places, but Daddy didn’t. He toyed with the glove and tried it on, but it was too big for him.

  ‘This was behind the sofa?’ he said.

  ‘Uh-huh. The
re’s a pen lid too. Shall I get it?’

  ‘No,’ said Daddy. ‘Leave it.’

  Ruby snuggled up under his arm, but Daddy was restless. In the middle of the shoot-out, he made her stand up so he could move the sofa to look for the other glove.

  It wasn’t there.

  He stood for a moment, staring down at the carpet, then looked at the door and said, ‘Back soon.’

  ‘How long is soon?’

  ‘Not long,’ he said. ‘Be a good girl.’

  He closed the door behind him and Ruby heard him picking up his fishing gear from the porch. She switched off the TV by pressing the remote-control button as hard as she could.

  She’d been a good girl and it hadn’t worked.

  So she went upstairs and messed with Daddy’s cowboy things.

  The cowboy drawer always swelled in the damp, and Ruby got red and sweaty in the wrestle.

  Once she’d got it open far enough to reach inside, she put the gunbelt on first, hitching it all the way round to the final hole, which was small and stiff. It was too big for her, but not too too big, and if she spread her legs a bit, it would stay on her hips. The holster hung to her knee.

  Then the hat.

  She lifted out the black Stetson and placed it on her own head like a crown.

  The Jingle Bobs were complicated. She couldn’t work them out. She spun the little wheels to make them ring, and decided she’d try them on another time.

  Holding the gunbelt up all the way with a casual hand, Ruby waddled splay-legged the few paces to the mirror on the back of the door.