The Facts of Life and Death (37 page)

He looked until his eyes ached, but he could see no sign of his wife and her bastard child.

He would just have to go out there and hunt them down.

John Trick was three steps down the stairwell when he came back up and went into Ruby’s bedroom. Her window was tiny and overgrown and was hard to see out of at the best of times, so he didn’t expect much.

And he didn’t get much.

The forest raged and loomed and flailed at The Retreat, and he wouldn’t have seen a white elephant standing ten yards into the trees, it was that dense.

He almost turned away, and then he blinked and looked again.

Nothing. Nothing.

There!

What was that?

John Trick squinted.

Through the trees and the rain – about halfway up the Peppercombe pathway – a red light flickered.

Harvey didn’t like being in the pony backpack.

It hadn’t been too bad the first time, because that journey had been gentle and he’d just eaten a whole lot of Bugsy Supreme, which had made him sleepy.

But this journey was not gentle. It was wet and it was cold and it was noisy and bumpy, and after one sudden drop that left him frantic and on his back, he decided that the snare around his neck had to go.

He started to claw at the zip. It didn’t take him long to get one front paw through the tiny gap he managed to make, but then things came to a halt.

Having one paw and his head out of the bag was even more unbalancing, and Harvey twisted his head and tried to chew his way out of the backpack.

He chewed on the pony’s ear and then on the loop for hanging the backpack on a hook, and then on the pony’s other ear.

Finally Harvey chewed on the LED light that Ruby had got free off the front of
Pony & Rider.

All you had to do was press the button on the back.

It was only a matter of time.

THE HOUSE WAS
haunted and draughty and smelly and hung off a cliff, but when Ruby reached it, it felt like stepping into a safe haven.

But the moment she followed Mummy inside, a pulsing red light bounced off the walls.

Mummy cried,
‘Ruby!
Oh my
God!
Turn it off!’ She rushed over and spun Ruby round and felt for the switch on what Ruby realized must be her LED light. Harvey bit Mummy and both of them squealed.

Ruby dropped the pack off her shoulders and found the little plastic button and the room went black.

‘How long was it on for?’ cried Mummy. ‘How long was it on for?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know! What if Daddy saw it?’

Mummy hurried to the glassless window. The floor there was always creaky and Mummy gasped and held the wall for support. Ruby ran over to join her.

Below them was The Retreat, still surrounded by shiny black water.

As they watched, Daddy came out of the front door and waded down the garden path, moving
fast
, as if he knew where he was going.

Ruby and Mummy held their breath.

Daddy went swiftly to the gate – and then turned and waded towards the Peppercombe path.

Mummy clutched Ruby’s hand. ‘He knows we’re here!’ She looked around the bare room and her voice cracked in desperation. ‘We have to hide! There’s nowhere to hide!’

‘I know where,’ said Ruby.

Calvin Bridge drove down the hill to Limeburn.

The normally dark, eerie lane was now treacherous too. Twice he had to steer around fallen branches, and once a branch crashed down into the ditch right beside them.

‘Shit!’ shouted King, and Calvin would have seconded it, but his mouth was too dry from fear.

They looked at each other, but Kirsty King wasn’t the type to go back, and Calvin wasn’t the type to go back if she wasn’t going back.

So he went on.

They passed the little car park where visitors parked and swung round the final corner down to the village.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said King in amazement. ‘Is that the sea?’

The flagstone in the hearth weighed a ton. Even with Ruby and Mummy trying to move it together. Their fingers could barely get purchase, and risked being squashed every time they lost their grip and dropped the huge slate. It wasn’t a job to do in the dark.

And Ruby didn’t even know what they’d find underneath.

Bare earth? Floorboards? A hole that was big but not big enough? Or a hole already occupied . . . ?

She didn’t have time to care. For now, she needed Adam’s ghost story to be true more than she’d ever needed anything in her life. Their lives depended on it. So she knelt and grunted alongside Mummy, while Harvey – free at last – twitched his nose at the edges of the stone, as if that would help.

Finally they got a good enough grip to lever the slab up and peer underneath, and Ruby felt her tummy flip over.

It was just as Adam had described.

The hole was not big, but it was big enough.

Who knew why it had been dug – for smuggling or family heirlooms or for hiding a priest – but Ruby no longer had any doubt that once the bones of a pedlar had been found here, curled up and grimacing and with knife-marks on his ribs.

She shivered all down her back.

‘Get in,’ said Mummy. ‘Quick!’

Ruby didn’t hesitate. She crouched down so she could slide under the flagstone.

Ching. Ching.

Mummy dropped the slab in terror and Ruby felt her heart stop.

Daddy had come to take care of them.

‘
HELLO, WHORES.
’

Ruby still didn’t know what the word meant, but it made her feel sick to hear him say it.

Mummy stood up. ‘Ruby. Get behind me.’

She did. She was too scared not to.

‘Don’t hurt her,’ said Mummy, and Daddy laughed a laugh that made Ruby go wobbly inside.

He started across the room towards them and Mummy backed away, with Ruby bumping behind her. She stumbled over the backpack and the red light flickered back into life.

‘John, please listen to me. You’re not well. I think you’re not well. Please stop this and we’ll see a doctor together. I promise you, I won’t let you go through it alone. We’ll go through it together. I
promise
.’

He laughed again. ‘Cross your heart?’

‘Cross my heart.’

‘And hope to die?’

Mummy didn’t answer. She kept moving round, pushing Ruby behind her, and Daddy kept following them. If Mummy moved left, he feinted left. If she moved right, he feinted right, and when she stood still, he kept coming. Mummy was trying to keep the room between them. Ruby understood what she was doing. But she knew it couldn’t last.

And it didn’t.

Daddy backed them into a corner. The corner furthest from the door. Furthest from safety.

As Ruby felt the walls on her shoulders, Daddy stopped.

He widened his stance. His arms moved away from his sides, slightly crooked at the elbows. He stretched his fingers.

He was getting ready to draw.

Mummy didn’t know, because she wasn’t a cowboy, so when he snapped the gun out of the holster, she screamed like in a horror movie.

Daddy laughed and laughed and laughed to see Mummy shrinking, terrified, against the wall.

‘It’s not real!’ cried Ruby. ‘Mummy, it’s not real!’

But that didn’t make Mummy feel better. It made her
furious.

‘You fucking bastard!’ she screamed. ‘Are you crazy? How could you scare us like that? How could you scare your own little girl?’

‘She’s not my little girl.’

Ruby frowned and looked at Mummy.

‘Is she?’ said Daddy.

‘Of course she’s yours,’ said Mummy. ‘She’s your little girl and you’re supposed to love her and take care of her, not scare the fucking
shit
out of her!’

Mummy reached for Ruby’s hand and she took it, holding on as if they were hanging off a mountain together.

Daddy shook his head slowly. ‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘
Yours.
But not mine. I used to
think
she was mine, but now I know better. The way she betrayed me? The way she’s started sniffing around the boys? The red hair? That’s all
you
, Alison. Not me. That’s all you and—’

‘Shut up!’ shouted Mummy. ‘You shut your
mouth.
Ruby’s your daughter and she loves you! Don’t you, Ruby?’

Mummy jerked Ruby’s hand so hard that she winced. ‘You love your Daddy, don’t you, Ruby?’

Mummy’s terror made Ruby nod, even as tears fogged her vision. But Mummy wanted more, and shook her hard and shouted, ‘Tell him you love him!’

Ruby couldn’t. She was so scared she couldn’t speak.

Mummy’s nails dug into her hand.
‘Tell him, Ruby! Tell him you love him
!’

Ruby shook her head.

No.

Daddy spun the Colt on his finger, and gave the mean, bitter little laugh that Ruby knew so well.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘She doesn’t love me any more than you do.’

Ruby felt Mummy’s grip ease, and her shoulder slump a little.

‘But we
used
to,’ Mummy said softly, and Ruby looked up into her mother’s face and saw how tired it was, and how sad.

‘We
used
to love you, John. We both did. We both loved you so much …’

Her voice wavered and she stopped.

And then Ruby felt her mother sort of straighten up beside her before she spoke again.

‘When you were worth loving.’

Daddy flinched as if he’d been smacked. He looked dazed and very young, and just for a second, Ruby saw him the way he used to be, years ago, when he still had a job and a family who loved him – and it made her feel as if her heart might burst out of her chest with grief.

Then Daddy’s face changed again and he raised the gun and made an inhuman sound and came at them like an animal; like a tiger with its teeth bared, and murder in its eyes.

Mummy screamed and Ruby dropped to a helpless ball on the floor underneath her, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands over her ears, waiting to die.

There was a huge cracking, crashing sound and a frightened howl and then a weird, grunting noise.

And then only the roar of the storm.

Slowly Ruby opened her eyes.

She frowned in confusion as her brain adjusted to what she was seeing in the pulsing red glow.

Daddy was up to his waist in splintered, rotting wood, holding himself in place only by his elbows, the gun still in his hand.

He had gone through the floor.

Right in the place where she and Adam had made spy-holes so that they could watch the sea.