The Facts of Life and Death

by Belinda Bauer

Ruby barely heard the words. A seed of panic germinated rapidly inside her. She’d assumed that the aching in her chest would go away, but boobs were for ever. They never went away. They just got bigger and bigger and more and more in the way. Already she could hardly lie flat on the spider rug.

  ‘I can’t get boobs!’ she burst out. ‘How will I even read?’

  Mummy smiled as if she’d made a joke, but she hadn’t. She hoped Mummy was joking.

  But Mummy wasn’t joking. Instead Mummy said, ‘If you’re starting to develop them you’ll probably start your periods soon too. Do you know what periods are, Rubes?’

  ‘Are they like lessons?’ frowned Ruby. There were periods at school. PE was the worst. The last thing she needed was more lessons; she was rubbish at the ones she already had. Although she couldn’t think of anything worse than growing boobs!

  And then Mummy told her the facts of life …

  Ruby sat in stunned silence.

  The facts of life. The facts of life? That couldn’t be true. She’d never heard of them! Were they even real? Surely nobody could keep that a secret – something so disgusting, so scary? Who else knew about this? Did Miss Sharpe know? Did Adam? How could people know, and still walk around all day as if nothing was wrong?

  The boobies and the blood and the boys and the babies.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said with a trembling lip.

  Mummy smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s true, Ruby, but don’t worry about it. These things happen to all girls when they become women, so you have to know about them.’

  ‘But I don’t want to know about them!’

  ‘But Ruby,’ said Mummy gently, ‘if girls don’t know the facts of life then they won’t understand about boys and sex and they can get into all kind of trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘All sorts of things. Things that can ruin their lives.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Just . . . horrible things.’

  Ruby’s mind boggled. How could anything be more horrible than the things Mummy had just promised were going to happen to her?

  And soon!

  It seemed her body had played a mean trick on her. It had started out as one thing and now it was going to change into another thing without even asking.

  In the back of her mind, Ruby knew that girls grew up to be women. But for some reason she’d always assumed that she’d grow up to be a cowboy.

  Daddy had warned her. He’d warned her about growing up and she hadn’t understood.

  Tears pricked at the backs of Ruby’s eyes. She understood now.

  She understood that she was never going to ride a bucking bronco, or hitch her pony up outside school, or keep wolves at bay with a fire and a six-gun. Instead she understood that she was going to get boobs and have to sit in a chair to read a book, and paint her nails and kiss boys, and have babies and blood come out of her front bottom.

  ‘No!’ she said firmly. No!’

  Mummy tried to put her arms around her, but Ruby pushed her away.

  She didn’t want it. She didn’t want any of it. She didn’t want to be a slut and a slag and a whore. She hated women and she hated Mummy for telling her about it.

  No wonder Daddy didn’t love her any more.

  Ruby burst into tears.

  Alison Trick was stunned.

  She’d been nervous about ‘the talk’ for a while now. Her own mother had left it far too late, and she hadn’t wanted to repeat that mistake.

  She’d expected Ruby to be embarrassed. Confused. Maybe a bit apprehensive.

  But she hadn’t expected hysteria.

  She tried to console Ruby, but she wouldn’t stop crying. The little girl wept with every bit of her being, doubling over, holding her tummy in her fists, while tears ran off her face and on to the bed, like rain off old gutters.

  Alison felt her own throat ache. ‘Ruby, what’s wrong?’ She rubbed her back and stroked her hair, and bent down so she could peer up into her daughter’s hot little face.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong, sweetheart. Please. You’re starting to scare me.’

  Ruby shook her head. A couple of times she tried to speak, but she couldn’t. She cried and cried and cried in her mother’s arms, and when she finally got words out, they were so tiny and feeble, and so clotted with snot, that Alison Trick had to put her ear close to Ruby’s lips, to hear what it was that her little girl was trying to say.

  ‘Don’t tell Daddy.’

  44

  ON THURSDAY, RUBY rode the bus to school, deaf to the yells and the insults and the dirty names and the hair-pulling. The bus no longer registered on the scale of turmoil that her life had become.

  As they passed through Fairy Cross, she thought of Miss Sharpe.

  A bigger boy stamped on her foot and ran the sole of his other shoe down her leg, pushing the white sock down her shin and leaving a long scrape of mud and red skin behind it.

  Ruby stared at him with unseeing eyes until he got up and moved to the back of the bus.

  You can always come and tell me things, Ruby. Even secret things.

  It was time to ask a grown-up for help.

  Miss Sharpe was off sick.

  The supply teacher’s name was Mr Brains and he didn’t want any jokes about his name because he’d HEARD THEM ALL BEFORE.

  Still, 5B tested him on that claim from nine thirty when he introduced himself until the final bell rang at three thirty. Mr Brains couldn’t win. If he knew a fact the children laughed because his name was Mr Brains, and if he didn’t know a fact, or a face, or what happened after the next bell, or where the staffroom was, the children laughed because his name was Mr Brains.

  Ruby didn’t laugh. Ruby nearly cried. She had to tell someone. She wasn’t sure what to tell them, but now that she’d decided to tell, she just had to tell somebody something and let a grown-up decide what to do.

  But who was there?

  She couldn’t tell Mummy because she’d lied to her about the posses. Adam was just a kid like her – and if he told his father then Mr Braund might come round and there’d be a fight.

  Who else could she trust?

  There was nobody.

  Ruby went through the school day in a haze of anxiety and on the way home on the bus she leaned her head against the glass and felt every bump through her temple as she worried about what to do.

  Before she was really aware of it, Ruby had got off the bus in the wrong place. She got off in Fairy Cross, along with three children she hardly knew. They all looked at her funny, and then walked away, giggling.

  She walked in the other direction – towards the pub.

  It had been dark when she and Daddy had been here before, and raining then too, and she took a couple of wrong turns. But Fairy Cross was so small that even if you took every turn wrong, you’d find the right one quite soon, and it wasn’t long before Ruby found herself outside Miss Sharpe’s house.

  She opened the little wooden gate and closed it behind her, then went up the path and knocked on the door.

  She was nervous. But the longer Miss Sharpe took to answer the door, the less nervous she got, until she realized Miss Sharpe wasn’t home, so she didn’t need to be nervous at all.

  When she stopped being nervous, she got a bit annoyed, and also worried. She’d got off the bus and now she wasn’t sure how to get on another one. She’d only ever caught that one school bus from the stop at the top of the Limeburn road. She didn’t even have any money, she realized, and got even more annoyed with Miss Sharpe for not being at school, even if she was sick.

  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.<
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  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.

  45

  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.’