The Facts of Life and Death

by Belinda Bauer

  John Trick was not one of those.

  The dirty white car sent up great bow-waves as he defied the heavens and headed for hell.

  He’d lost Alison.

  She was dead to him. The filthy whore.

  The worm of suspicion had turned into a python of hatred and self-pity – squeezing his guts and starting to swallow him whole. He saw it all now. He’d been blind, but he saw it all now.

  He’d kill her. He’d kill them all! Her and her bitch mother and her red-headed pervert of a father.

  Trick sobbed through gritted teeth and pressed his palm to his belly to feel the coils of the mighty snake. It was loose inside him and he had no control over it.

  If he didn’t feed it, then it would kill him.

  But killing Alison was too good for her. Too quick, too painless, too kind. He needed to see her suffer for what she’d done to him. For taking away his strength and his power and his self-worth and his fucking life with her whoring and her betrayal and her lies.

  He could punch her and kick her and slap her – but it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough.

  But there were other ways to hurt a mother …

  John Trick turned his head.

  A woman was pushing a buggy in the rain. Running with it – head down, splashing through floodwater, regardless of the wet, which had already soaked her jeans, making them look almost black.

  The baby was enclosed in a plastic bubble, a PVC chrysalis designed to keep it warm and dry.

  Designed to keep it safe.

  But the spray from the wheels and from passing cars had spattered mud all over the front of it, and condensation inside the bubble made the child invisible.

  John Trick slammed on the brakes and slithered to a halt just ahead of the young woman.

  He got out of the car and walked briskly around the back of it towards her.

  She stopped. Lifted the drenched hood of her anorak from her eyes to stare hopefully at him. He knew how it would go. How it could go.

  You want a ride?

  Yes, please! I wouldn’t normally, but have you ever seen weather like it?

  He didn’t give a shit what she’d normally do.

  Five feet from her, he pointed the gun at her face.

  ‘Whore,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ The young woman frowned as if she just hadn’t heard him.

  ‘Fucking whore.’

  She heard that! Her face dropped slowly into the more familiar confusion and fear.

  Then she looked at the gun for the first time and gasped.

  Trick kept the gun on her face as he bent to lift the plastic bubble.

  ‘NO!’ she screamed. ‘NO! Leave him alone! Help! Help me!’

  The woman tried to pull him away, but he ignored her. Nobody was going to help her. There was nobody out in this weather. Nobody but her. The selfish bitch. Taking her baby out in this weather. Putting him in danger. Not caring about him.

  He’d show her. He’d teach her a lesson she’d never forget.

  Never.

  The fastenings on the bubble were weird. He couldn’t see how to undo them.

  The woman clawed at the side of his head and he belted her with the gun. She fell backwards into a puddle. A deep puddle, a shallow pool. She lay there, dazed, with her eyes blinking, blood coming out of her nose, and water up to her ears, while cars went past them like speedboats.

  He turned back to the buggy.

  Ah, that was how you opened this fucking bubble. That was how you got inside …

  His phone rang.

  He straightened up and answered it.

  He stood there in the rain, listening, nodding, responding, as the young woman raised herself groggily from the water. She fell twice getting up, water pouring from her hair and her clothes.

  ‘My baby,’ she kept saying. ‘My baby.’

  John Trick hung up the phone.

  The woman ignored him. She staggered to the buggy and draped herself over it like a giant spider.

  ‘My baby.’

  ‘That was my wife,’ Trick told her. ‘I have to go.’

  51

  ‘WE HAVE TO get out,’ cried Ruby. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘No, Ruby,’ said Mummy. ‘We’re surrounded by water. It’s too dangerous to try to leave. Daddy will come soon or the tide will turn and we’ll all be fine.’

  ‘No!’ said Ruby. ‘We have to go now. Before Daddy comes!’

  ‘It’s OK, Rubes, we’ll be safe if we just wait here.’

  ‘No!’ Ruby yelled. ‘We have to go! We have to go!’

  Mummy took her wrist. ‘Calm down, Ru—’

  ‘I don’t want Daddy to come!’ Ruby shouted. ‘I’m scared of Daddy!’

  Mummy’s fingers tightened on her wrist and she went white and very quiet and looked hard into Ruby’s eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ruby fought back tears. ‘I don’t want to see Daddy any more. I want to go now. Just with you. Please, Mummy. Please?’

  Ruby expected Mummy to ask her why. She expected Mummy to try to talk her out of it. She expected Mummy to tell her she was being a silly little girl.

  Instead Mummy squeezed her hand and said, ‘OK. Let’s go.’

  Mummy didn’t even change out of her pyjamas. She pulled on trainers and grabbed her phone and then helped Ruby dress.

  ‘No jeans,’ said Mummy. ‘They’ll get wet and too cold.’ So Ruby pulled a thick jumper over her Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and put on her own trainers. Her hands shook so hard that Mummy had to tie her laces.

  Ruby looked round her room. She had to take what she could. She put Lucky in her pony backpack, along with his broken leg and the sled and the potato. Maybe one day they could all be fixed, like the bathroom window.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mummy.

  ‘Where are we going to go?’

  ‘Up to the road,’ said Mummy. ‘I’ll call Nanna to come and pick us up.’

  She grabbed Ruby’s hand and started down the stairs.

  But then she stopped.

  ‘Wait here,’ she said, and ran back to her bedroom.

  Ruby followed her. Mummy was down on her knees, pulling stuff out of the wardrobe.

  ‘Mummy, come on!’

  ‘Wait!’ She opened the bag with the jewellery in it and started to put it on, twisting her head and wincing as she forced the earrings through half-healed lobes, her hands shaking as she unclasped the fish brooch.

  Mummy had gone mad.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ruby yelled. ‘Daddy’s coming!’

  ‘Here,’ said Mummy. ‘Do this up. We mustn’t lose it.’

  Ruby struggled with the clasp on the necklace, but finally found the clip. Then Mummy got to her feet and they rushed out of the room.

  Ruby followed her downstairs. The water was coming up to meet them. In the lounge it was thigh-deep now, and freezing cold.

  Hand-in-hand, they waded past the blue tapestry cushion and the tilting TV to the front door, and took their coats off the pegs.

  On the way out, Mummy reached down and picked up the little china dog from the front window sill and slipped it into her pocket.

  When they passed through the flooded doorway and into the ocean of their garden, Mummy and Ruby stood for a moment in shock.

  They couldn’t see much, but what they could see was terrible. A vast, alien expanse of sea where the village was supposed to be. The cottages down the hill were half under water and their windows were dark. The giant tree was still trapped between them, and they could hear the crashing and the tinkling of broken windows and smashed cars as it wallowed on the cobbles.

  Mrs Braund’s best chair floated past them – its only occupant a large wet rat digging its claws into the yellow silk upholstery.

  ‘What about Adam?’ said Ruby.

  ‘They’ll be OK, Rubes. They’ll all wait upstairs until the tide turns.’

  ‘What about Mrs Vanstone? She can’t get upstairs.’

  Mummy bit h
er lip. ‘Come on, Ruby,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘We have to get Harvey,’ said Ruby.

  ‘We can’t!’ said Mummy. ‘We have to hurry!’

  ‘We have to! He’ll drown.’

  She broke free from Mummy and splashed round to the back garden. Twice a wave knocked her off her feet and the second time Harvey’s dustbin washed right over her with a clunk on her head. It was bobbing about at an angle, but he was still in there, crouched in the bottom, looking twitchy.

  Ruby got to her feet and shrugged off her pony backpack. She emptied Lucky and the sled and the potato into the sea. Then Mummy joined her and carefully scooped Harvey out of the bin and put him in the backpack instead. On Ruby’s instructions, Mummy zipped the bag up so that just his head was poking out, the way she’d done on the bus from Fairy Cross. It seemed a thousand years ago, but it was only two days.

  Then they headed back towards the front garden gate, but it was under water and they couldn’t find it and kept bumping into the stone wall, until eventually Mummy helped Ruby over that instead, and they headed to where the road used to be. The water was up to Ruby’s waist, and when waves came, her feet actually left the ground, and she could feel Harvey scrabbling about in fear in her backpack, but at least it meant he hadn’t drowned yet.

  Mummy shrieked and Ruby turned and saw a black rat run up her arm, spiky and terrified. Mummy flailed and sent it flying back into the water.

  ‘Shit!’ she said. ‘I dropped the phone.’

  Ruby said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

  Something big splashed towards them in the darkness, from the direction of the cottages.

  ‘Hello?’ said Mummy nervously, but it didn’t answer back. Within seconds they saw it was one of the Labradoodles. Ruby saw his blue collar and called, ‘Tony!’ but the dog just kept swimming past them, head jutting, towards the road.

  They followed in his wake.

  The headlights of a car flickered between the trees.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ said Ruby.

  They stood and shivered, and watched the lights approach. As the car came round the last turn into the village, it narrowly missed the terrified dog running blindly up the lane. The car swerved hard, then continued almost to the water’s edge before stopping.

  ‘It’s Daddy,’ Ruby said. ‘We have to go back.’

  They both turned and looked behind them at the black, raging sea and the flooded village, then back at the lights of the car, parked between them and safety.

  ‘We can’t, Ruby,’ said Mummy firmly. ‘We have to get up high, and we have to get safe. And even if it is Daddy, right now he’s safer than this.’

  ‘No, Mummy! He’s not! He killed Miss Sharpe!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My teacher. He killed her. He killed her and all the others too!’

  Ruby knew she was babbling and she could see Mummy’s confusion and disbelief, but she carried on in a rush, ‘Before – when you were still upstairs – Miss Sharpe’s body came in the house and I knew it was her because of her charm bracelet and then the sea took it out again.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Rubes? You didn’t say anything.’

  ‘There was too much to say.’

  It was true, and Ruby felt the weight of all the things she hadn’t told Mummy or anyone else. There’d been a point where she might have said something to somebody – but once that point had been passed in silence, there was simply too much to say.

  ‘Shh!’ Mummy flinched and gripped Ruby’s arm as the car door opened and the driver got out. Even silhouetted in the headlights, they could tell it was Daddy, wearing his Stetson and his Jingle Bobs. And in his holster, Ruby could see the outline of the gun.

  Just like a real cowboy.

  Ching. Ching.

  The sea around them was dark and rough and Daddy couldn’t possibly have seen them, but he never broke stride. He walked into the waves as if they weren’t there, and headed straight towards The Retreat. Towards them. There was something so relentless – so dangerous – about it that Ruby gasped in terror.

  Mummy felt it too. She must have, because without a word she turned and took Ruby’s hand and led her back into the rising water.

  ‘The haunted house,’ said Ruby. ‘That’s highest up of all.’

  52

  KIRSTY KING MET Calvin Bridge at Georgia Sharpe’s house.

  He drove on from there, while she read the diary.

  ‘It’s hardly damning evidence,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘But it feels right,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  King put the little blue exercise book on the dash and added, ‘But it doesn’t feel good.’

  Calvin nodded sombrely. ‘I know.’

  Running made everything more scary. But Ruby knew from the Gore that standing still could be even worse.

  They tried not to splash, not because of the noise, which was negligible in the howling wind and thrashing forest and crashing waves, but because of the white marks it made on the surface of the oily black brine. There was nowhere to hide but the dark and the waves.

  Twice, submerged branches knocked them off their feet, but Mummy kept hold of Ruby’s hand so hard that it hurt, and they always stuck together.

  Once Ruby turned around and saw Daddy was closer, so she didn’t turn around again.

  The water was terrifying – the dark and the depth and the strength of it – but the idea of Daddy seeing them was even worse.

  They passed The Retreat. The temptation to run into their home and cuddle up there in their warm beds was huge, but Ruby knew that Daddy would reach the house soon, and she didn’t want to be there when he did.

  So they waded past the place where the front gate probably still was, and instead went through the narrow gap between the noisy, swaying rhododendrons, to the Peppercombe pathway.

  It was a waterfall of muddy water, shot through with debris washed out of the forest. The first part of the path was cut through thick undergrowth, and was slow going, with debris and brambles trying to stop them, trying to hold them there for Daddy to find. Mummy went ahead to deflect the worst of the muck, but Ruby was scratched and caught by a hundred thorns and prickles, and smacked by sticks and branches being washed down the path.

  Twenty feet up – above the worst of the brambles – they turned to look down at The Retreat.

  Ruby’s fingers gripped her mother’s leg. Daddy had reached the front gate already. He was so close! They were almost straight over his head! For a terrible second she thought he was going to look up and see them and start up the path behind them. If that happened, he would catch them for sure.

  But he didn’t look up, and even if he had, he’d never have seen them against the dark forest. He went through the gateway – moving much faster through the black seawater than they had – and disappeared into the house.

  Without saying a word, Mummy led them upwards again.

  Ruby slipped and fell to her knees, but Mummy was there to pull her up again. Harvey didn’t like the rough ride. He squealed and scrabbled to be free.

  ‘Shh, Harvey,’ said Ruby. ‘Good boy.’

  It didn’t help.

  Ruby fixed her eyes on where Mummy was placing her feet, and followed in her footsteps.

  John Trick searched The Retreat. It didn’t take long because the ground floor was flooded and the upstairs was only three rooms big. Even so, he opened the wardrobes, just in case they were hiding in there.

  The house was empty. Alison had called him for help and he’d told her he was coming home, and then the fucking bitch had fucked off somewhere else.

  Tim Braund’s, most likely. She’d probably used this as an excuse to go whoring.

  When he caught her, he’d make her suffer.

  He’d make her see what she’d done to him.

  He glared through the bedroom window. From there he could usually see the lights in the little white cottages closer
to the sea, but under the murderous sky, the homes on the square were only vague blobs of grey in the inky sea.

  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.

  53

  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.