The Facts of Life and Death (32 page)

Suddenly Ruby wondered whether Miss Sharpe might be so sick she couldn’t get out of bed to answer the door. Maybe she was so sick that she needed a doctor.

Or an ambulance! Ruby might have to dial 999, which would be so
exciting!
Everyone at school would be so jealous! She hoped Fairy Cross had a phone box. She didn’t want to knock on a neighbour’s door for help and for
them
to make the 999 call and get all the glory.

She tried the door handle, because a lot of people never locked their houses or cars.

Miss Sharpe did.

She went round the house and knocked on the back door.

‘Miss Sharpe!’ she shouted. ‘Miss Sharpe!’

The back door had little glass windows in it, although one was cracked and one was missing altogether, and the room Ruby could see through her cupped hands was the kitchen. There was stuff all over the floor – little pellets of something. Ruby frowned, trying to make out what they were. While she stared at the pellets, a large grey rabbit suddenly bobbed across the floor and started eating them.

‘Harvey!’ said Ruby. The pellets must be rabbit food.

Well, if Harvey was home then Miss Sharpe must be too. In bed. Sick. Needing blue flashing lights and a siren and a saviour.

Ruby tried the door and found it unlocked. Feeling like a burglar, she went inside.

It was scary being in somebody else’s empty house, even if it was Miss Sharpe’s. It was very, very quiet, and smelled a bit funny, like dinner, but there was nothing on the stove.

‘Miss Sharpe!’ she called out.

The rabbit came over and Ruby crouched down to stroke him. She was very gentle but he wasn’t scared at all, and let her stroke him all over as much as she wanted. As she stroked him, Ruby felt better. It was like touching Lucky for luck, but nicer and warmer. The longer she stroked Harvey, the better she felt. He was so soft that she had to watch her own hand in places, to make sure she was actually touching him.

His ears were brilliant.

‘Good boy,’ said Ruby. ‘Wait here.’

Harvey did wait, while Ruby crept quietly into the front room. ‘Miss Sharpe!’

No one was there, so she went slowly upstairs. Halfway up she heard a sound and spun round to look behind her.

Harvey was at the foot of the stairs, sniffing her footprints.

‘Good boy, stay there.’

She stood on the landing. ‘Miss Sharpe? It’s me. Ruby Trick.’

There were three bedrooms, and Miss Sharpe wasn’t in any of them. The beds were neatly made, and on a chair in the biggest room was Miss Sharpe’s handbag. Ruby recognized it because it had a little leather tag shaped like a Scottie dog.

Ruby went downstairs again and Harvey was there to meet her. He followed her into the kitchen, too.

She saw that the rabbit food strewn across the floor had rolled out of a big bag in the corner that had fallen on to its side, so she righted it. It was called Bugsy Supreme.

Near the back door were two bowls. One had more Bugsy Supreme in it and the other was empty. Ruby picked it up and filled it with water.

The second she put it back on the floor, Harvey hopped over and started to drink.

‘Awwww, poor boy!’ she said. ‘You were so thirsty!’ She crouched down and stroked the rabbit while he drank, and when he’d finished, he sat up straight and pulled his own ears down around his face, one by one, to clean them, which made Ruby laugh out loud because he looked like a toy rabbit or one in a cartoon.

She was cross with Miss Sharpe for not being there when she was supposed to be sick, but she was even crosser that Miss Sharpe had gone out and left Harvey without any water. If
she
hadn’t come by he might have died!

She should take him home.

The idea came to her fully formed. She would take him home. It wouldn’t be stealing; she would just keep Harvey safe and fed and watered until Miss Sharpe came back. Then she would give him back. Miss Sharpe would probably be
grateful
that Ruby had rescued Harvey. Ruby bet she
would
be.

She could always tell someone, of course. She didn’t
have
to take the rabbit home. Ruby frowned at
that
fully formed thought. She could go next door and ask them to look after Harvey until Miss Sharpe came back. She could tell the school and they would call Miss Sharpe’s mobile phone and see how long she’d be away. She could call the RSPCA and they would send a man in a van to take Harvey to a rescue centre.

If she did
any
of those things, then she wouldn’t have to take the rabbit home.

So she didn’t do any of those things.

Instead she found a carrier bag and scooped plenty of Bugsy Supreme into it, then knotted it at the top. There was no kind of cage that she could see, so she emptied her backpack on to the kitchen counter and put Harvey in there. She pulled the zips up high, so that only his head was poking out of the top of the bag, right beside the plush pony’s head, which looked pretty funny, like she had a rabbit
and
a pony in her bag! She’d have to show Adam.

Then she picked up the food and left, closing the back door behind her.

Ruby waited for a bus for almost an hour. When she got on she told the driver she didn’t have any money.

‘I got off the school bus at the wrong stop,’ she said.

He looked Ruby up and down. ‘Are you new?’

‘No, I was just thinking about something else.’

The driver sighed and said, ‘How far are you going?’

‘Limeburn.’

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Just this once.’

When she got home, Mummy was there and Ruby was relieved to see her.

She told Mummy she’d been chosen to bring the school rabbit home.

‘I didn’t know you
had
a school rabbit.’

‘Yes. His name’s Harvey. He’s Miss Sharpe’s really, but she’s off sick so they said I can look after him.’

‘Didn’t they give you a cage?’

‘I couldn’t carry it on the bus.’

‘Did they give you some food for him?’

‘Yes,’ said Ruby, and showed it to her.

‘He’s very cute,’ said Mummy. ‘We’ll make him a bed outside.’

‘Harvey lives inside,’ said Ruby.

‘Well, here Harvey lives outside. You can let him out every day and play with him in the garden, but he’ll poo on the carpet indoors and that’s not on.’

‘OK,’ said Ruby reluctantly.

Mummy made a really good house for Harvey out of an old metal dustbin on its side and steadied with bricks. They filled it with sawdust from the shed next to the wood store where Daddy sawed up the logs, and they made a door from chicken wire.

Ruby played with Harvey for a while before tea – even after it started to rain – and Adam leaned over the gate and couldn’t believe how lucky she was.

And, for a short while, Ruby couldn’t either.

It was dusk before John Trick noticed he was drenched, and when he reeled in his line, there was a small, exhausted whiting on the hook.

He took his priest from his pocket and knocked the fish on the head, but he’d had four cans of Strongbow and he missed. The glancing blow only seemed to revive the fish, and it leapt from his hand and started to slap across the jagged rocks towards the sea.

Trick went after it, lurching and slipping. He missed it twice as it flashed and shimmered. On the first miss he dropped the priest between two rocks; on the second he ripped his jeans and skinned his knee.

The whiting was a flip-flop from safety when Trick finally grabbed it and pressed it hard against the slime-covered rock. Panting, he groped about and his hand closed on a smooth pebble the size of two fists.

He hit the fish twice, caving in its gills and popping out a silvery eye.

Then he hit it again and again and again – until the rock was coated with blood and guts, and scales were scattered around him like glittering confetti.

THE DAY OF
the Leper Parade dawned grey and unseasonably sultry. The air was so heavy that it had pressed the sea into submission, and – even though the spring tide was due – the water lay flat and grey all the way to Lundy Island. Or where Lundy Island should be. There was no sign of it on the pale horizon.

Lundy high, sign of dry
,

Lundy low, sign of snow.

Lundy wasn’t low. It just wasn’t there.

Ruby stood at the top of the slipway and stared out past the Gut and the Gore. She’d always felt the sea in her belly, and even though the tide was low and the water a long way off, today she felt it more than ever.
There’s a storm coming
, she thought. But that was ridiculous. She’d never seen the sea more calm, or felt the air more still.

By lunchtime the air was like breathing water. The sky was giving her a headache. She could feel it pressing on her face, right under her eyes, and as soon as she pulled the potato sack over her head, it stuck to her skin.

Mummy got ash from the fireplace in the front room and smeared it all over her face and arms, but it didn’t stay as ash – it turned to paste and rolled up in the damp.

‘Can I have scabs?’ said Ruby.

‘How do we do scabs?’ said Mummy.

‘Rice Krispies and tomato sauce.’

‘We don’t have Rice Krispies.’

Ruby had forgotten to ask for them. There’d been so many other things to think about lately. She sighed. She’d never win best leper under fourteen with just a sack and some ash. Any old leper could do that.

‘I’m sorry, Rubes,’ said Mummy.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ruby.

Suddenly she wanted to give Mummy a hug. It had been so long since the last one that she wondered whether she even should, but then she did anyway.

She was glad she had. Mummy’s arms were warm and kind, and didn’t seem surprised at all that Ruby had finally come home to them, even if she’d surprised herself.

‘Love you hundreds,’ Ruby said.

‘I love you too, Rubes.’

Ruby nearly told her then. She nearly did. About the posses and the gun and the slashed tyre and Daddy not loving her, the feeling of dread in her tummy.

But if Daddy left them now, it would be her fault, because she’d made him so angry.

And then Mummy’s arms might not be so warm and welcoming.

So instead she just stood there on the spider rug and rested her head on Mummy’s chest and hugged and hugged and hugged.

Ching-ching.

They both looked up at the ceiling.

Ching-creak. Ching-creak.

‘Daddy’s coming.’

Taddiport was teeming with lepers that evening. Hardly anyone had come to watch – they were all taking part.

Daddy wasn’t the only one who hadn’t come as a leper – several people were in fancy dress. Crusaders and pirates spilled out of the pub and into the narrow road to mix with beggars and cripples and both halves of a pantomime horse: the front rearing up with his head flung backwards down his neck and holding a pint in his hoof; the back, red-faced and sweating, in hairy brown trousers and a tail.

Ruby kept a firm grip of Mummy’s hand, and they followed Daddy through the crowds. Now and then they lost sight of him for a few strides, but they could always find him again by listening for the Jingle Bobs, which cut through the hubbub.