The Facts of Life and Death

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘Shit.’ Daddy stopped dead and pointed at the car. ‘That.’

  Ruby didn’t look.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t take her eyes off Daddy. Her breath went funny in her chest and she felt the damp sea air fill her mouth in shallow sips.

  Daddy’s arm was outstretched. His hand was pointing at the car. And in his hand was a gun.

  31

  THE GUN WAS a beautiful thing. Made for the hand of a real cowboy, and the colour of a stormy sky.

  Ruby and Daddy sat together in the car that had been made lopsided by the flat tyre and studied it by the sick yellow of the interior light.

  ‘Is it real?’ she whispered.

  ‘No,’ said Daddy, and a little of the magic left the gun. ‘But it looks real, right?’

  ‘Yeah! Really real.’

  ‘It’s called a Colt,’ he said.

  ‘Wow!’ said Ruby. ‘Like the horse!’ That made it even better! Her tears and her fears were forgotten before the salt had even dried on her cheeks. All thought of danger had been chased away as quickly as Daddy had chased the stranger into the darkness. She was too enthralled to be scared any more.

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  Daddy tapped the side of his nose to show that that was Top Secret.

  ‘But what about the government?’

  ‘What they don’t know won’t hurt ’em,’ said Daddy.

  ‘Can I see it?’ Ruby reached out, but he pulled the gun away.

  ‘You see with your eyes, not your hands.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘If it’s not real?’

  Daddy looked serious. ‘A gun’s a dangerous thing, Rubes, even if it’s not real.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s real enough to give you a good scare. And real enough to give you bad thoughts. And if anyone saw you with it, it’s real enough to get you shot or arrested by some idiot policeman.’

  Ruby nodded. All of that made sense.

  But she still wanted to touch it.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ she said dreamily.

  But Daddy looked at her intently. ‘Promise me you’ll never touch it, Rubes.’

  ‘Never?’ That seemed like a big ask.

  ‘Never. Promise?’

  Ruby struggled and then pouted. ‘I promise.’

  ‘And promise me you’ll never tell.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘This is the biggest secret of all, Deputy. I could get into proper trouble if anyone knew I’d got this. Don’t tell Mummy. Don’t tell anyone. Cross your heart?’

  ‘And hope to die,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now I got to change the wheel. You stay in the car and keep a lookout down the road.’

  Ruby looked around warily. ‘Is the man coming back?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Daddy.

  He got out of the car – and took the gun with him.

  Daddy took for ever to change the wheel. First he had to go and find stones in the dunes to put under the other wheels. Then he banged and bumped about with the boot open, grunting and muttering and jacking the car up and then down again. When he dropped the wheel into the boot, the whole car tilted backwards.

  And all the time Ruby kept nervous watch, perched on the tapestry cushion, riding the car up and down – scanning the road in case the bastard returned.

  So she was the first to see the blue lights of police cars.

  ‘Daddy!’ She opened the door. ‘Dad—’

  ‘Stay there, Ruby! What did I say?’

  She nervously pulled her foot back in and said, ‘But Daddy, it’s the police!’

  ‘Shit!’

  Daddy slammed the boot and wiped his hands on his jeans and squinted at the approaching lights. There were three cars. Two went up between the houses. The third came slowly closer until it drew up outside the car park, and then it turned in and came slowly towards them. Ruby could hear the sand grinding under its wheels, grain by grain.

  The police car stopped thirty feet away, facing the front of their car, lights on.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Daddy—’

  ‘Shh,’ said Daddy. ‘Stay in the car and don’t say anything.’

  ‘But—’

  He pushed her door shut.

  Ruby was anxious. If she wasn’t supposed to say anything, she hoped the police didn’t ask her anything. The police were always out to get you, even if you hadn’t done anything wrong.

  For what felt like ages, nothing happened. She sat, Daddy stood and the police car stayed right there.

  Finally a policeman got out of the car and came towards them.

  ‘Evening, sir,’ he said.

  ‘All right?’ said Daddy.

  ‘Car trouble?’

  ‘Got a flat,’ said Daddy.

  ‘Want a hand?’

  ‘Sorted it now. Must’ve been this sharp gravel.’ He kicked at the ground with his boot.

  Ruby wondered why Daddy was lying. It wasn’t his fault a bastard had popped the tyre. He should tell the police so they could catch him!

  ‘Would you mind putting the tyre iron down, please, sir?’

  John Trick looked at his hand as if he’d forgotten he was still holding it.

  ‘Course,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ He bent and put it on the ground beside the car.

  When they talked, it sounded like it did when Ruby’s head was underwater in the bath. Sort of a long way off, even though they were right there.

  ‘Can I ask your name, please, sir?’

  ‘John Trick.’

  The policeman nodded, then looked past Daddy and straight at her. Ruby shrank back against the seat.

  ‘And who’s this?’

  ‘My little girl.’

  ‘And what’s her name?’

  ‘Ruby.’

  ‘You mind if I have a quick word with her?’

  ‘Why?’

  The policeman smiled at Daddy. ‘You mind if I have a quick word with her, sir?’

  ‘Course not,’ said Daddy. ‘No bother.’

  ‘Thanks. Would you mind waiting over by my car, sir?’

  Daddy looked at him for a moment, then walked away. Ruby felt panicky to see him go. He stopped halfway between the two cars and turned round, silhouetted by the headlights.

  The policeman came over and tapped on the window.

  ‘Hi, Ruby. Can you open the door for me?’

  She opened the door a crack.

  The policeman opened it a bit more and squatted down on his haunches next to her. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘My name’s Calvin. What’s yours?’

  Daddy had told her not to say anything, but how could she not tell a policeman her name? It was against the law.

  ‘Ruby Trick.’

  ‘Hello, Ruby,’ said Calvin. ‘Been anywhere nice tonight?’

  ‘We went to get chips,’ said Ruby. ‘Then I got sweets and a magazine at the shop.’ She held up TeenBeatz.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘So that’s your dad, is it?’

  Ruby nodded.

  ‘And where’s your mummy?’

  ‘At work.’

  ‘Where’s work?’

  ‘The hotel.’

  ‘Do you know the name of the hotel?’

  Ruby thought about it, then screwed up her face. ‘Something manor.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Calvin. ‘Do you know your address, Ruby?’

  ‘The Retreat, Limeburn, North Devon.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Calvin, writing it down.

  ‘I know my phone number, too,’ said Ruby proudly. ‘I known it for yonks. Since I was young.’

  He laughed and said, ‘And what’s your mum’s name?’

  ‘Alison Trick.’

  ‘And your dad?’

  ‘John Trick.’

  ‘Very good.’ The policeman stood up and tucked his notebook into his pocket. ‘Thanks, Ruby.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, basking in the warm glow of his approval. She’d got all the ques
tions right and hadn’t said anything about the posse or the broken headlight or the cowboy with the knife in his hand. The policeman walked back towards John Trick. ‘That’s fine, thanks, Mr Trick,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a missing-person report, you see.’

  ‘No problem.’

  They both looked across the road. The police cars had parked somewhere in the narrow streets behind the houses, and their flickering lights lit up the tiled roofs like a school disco.

  ‘Hope you find her,’ said John Trick.

  ‘Me too,’ said the policeman.

  The road came at them fast in a gritty black sheet, lit by their single headlight.

  ‘Is the gun in the boot?’ said Ruby.

  Daddy said nothing.

  ‘When we get home, can I see it again?’

  ‘Leave it now, Rubes. When we get home you’re going straight to bed.’

  Daddy put on the radio and whistled along through his teeth, the way Ruby loved to hear. When she was little and they used to go on holiday to Cornwall, she would drowse on the back seat and listen to Daddy whistle along with Kenny Rogers and his four hundred children and his crop and his fields.

  But tonight she couldn’t stop thinking about the gun. She imagined touching it. Not that she was going to touch it. She’d promised Daddy and she was good at promises. But she could imagine, couldn’t she? She could imagine how she’d look in the mirror, wearing the hat and the holster with a gun in it. She’d look like John Wayne. ’Specially if she took her bunny slippers off.

  She imagined pointing the gun at Essie Littlejohn and watching her mean little face crumple in terror. Making her run. She imagined pulling the trigger. Pow! Pow-pow!

  Not at Essie.

  But not that far from her either.

  Ruby grinned at the mental picture, then suddenly frowned at a dull bang from the back of the car.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Ruby.

  ‘What?’ said Daddy.

  Thud. Thud.

  Ruby twisted in her seat to look behind them. There was nothing to see, of course, except the hedges glowing dull red in their tail lights.

  Thud.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t hear it,’ said Daddy.

  Ruby was nervous. The car had to break down one day. Why did it have to happen now when it was so late already and she was so tired? What if Mummy got home and found Panda instead of her?

  Bang-bang.

  ‘There!’ she said.

  Daddy shrugged into the rear-view mirror. ‘The jack’s come loose,’ he said. ‘I didn’t put it back right and it’s come loose.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the gun.’

  ‘Will you shut up about the fucking gun? Jesus Christ, Ruby!’

  Ruby flinched in shock and Daddy braked hard and swung into a farm gateway. He got out of the car and slammed the door and went round to the back and opened the boot.

  Ruby twisted in her seat and watched him through the small strip of space between the boot and the back of the car. An inch of forearms, pushing down to make the jack fit.

  It was her fault. He’d told her to leave it and she hadn’t left it. She should have left it.

  Daddy got back in and slammed the door again and blew out his cheeks like he’d just run up the slipway.

  She eyed him nervously.

  ‘I’m sorry I shouted, Rubes. It’s just that sometimes you really wind me up.’

  She nodded. ‘Sorry, Daddy.’

  He shook his head and stared out of the side window for a moment, then snorted in what might have been a laugh.

  ‘You must get it from me. I was the same when I was your age. I used to wind up my mother’s boyfriends all the time.’

  Ruby was pleased to hear that she and Daddy were the same. ‘How did you wind them up?’ she said carefully.

  ‘All sorts. I’d dance about in front of the telly. Or I’d get between them and Mum on the sofa. Or put mud in the bed. Just little things to make ’em mazed.’

  ‘And what did they do?’

  ‘Mostly nothing. Mostly just a whack here and there. But this one time I got out of the bath and peed in the water before he got in.’

  Ruby laughed heartily, and Daddy gave a little smile. ‘It was funny to start with. He chased me all through the house, bare-arse naked.

  Ruby giggled. ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘You bet I was! I was only seven and he was so angry! He caught me in the kitchen,’ said Daddy. He stopped for a moment, and adjusted his hands on the steering wheel and looked in the rear-view mirror. Ruby waited eagerly for him to go on, a smile near her lips.

  ‘He caught me in the kitchen,’ said Daddy again, ‘and held my face down on the hot stove.’

  Ruby’s smile froze.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Slowly she looked up at Daddy’s face. For the first time she read the scars not as random puckers, but as three rough pink rings. She thought of the heat coming off the spiral plate, and shuddered.

  ‘I thought a dog bit you,’ she whispered.

  He shook his head. ‘We just told people that because we didn’t want the police coming round. Still, I got a month off school, so it wasn’t all bad.’

  He winked at Ruby, but she didn’t feel like smiling.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Kevin,’ said Daddy. Then he frowned and said, ‘Or Steve. Or Dave. One of them. They all had hands.’ He laughed again, but Ruby didn’t.

  ‘Did your Mummy break up with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I told you!’ said Daddy impatiently. ‘It was my fault. I was always winding them up. That’s all I’m saying, Rubes – don’t wind people up. When people say leave it, then just leave it, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Ruby quickly, even though her brain was bursting with questions. She glanced at him every few seconds, gauging his mood, waiting for a thaw. But Daddy kept staring at the road ahead, his hands tight on the wheel.

  Then – after a mile or two – Daddy went on talking, as if they’d never stopped.

  ‘We needed him to stay, see? Because we didn’t have anything and he took care of us.’

  Ruby nodded, although she didn’t understand. Not one little bit.

  ‘Women can’t help it,’ shrugged Daddy.

  Women can’t help it.

  Daddy had said the same thing about Mummy, the night they’d fought over the Jingle Bobs and the job and the fancy man.

  Ruby nodded. She still remembered what it was that women couldn’t help.

  Being whores.

  By the time the car bobbled to a halt on the square, Ruby was asleep again.

  Daddy got out and came round to her side. He took her hand and tugged gently, and she followed her arm out of the car and on to unsteady legs. It had stopped raining and the wind had dropped, and Ruby could taste the sea. If she kept her eyes shut, then maybe she could make it all the way to bed without really waking up.

  To her surprise, Daddy picked her up, with one arm under her back and the other behind her knees. Ruby let it happen. She turned her face into his shoulder and put an arm around his neck, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d been carried like this. She wished it could last for ever, this swaying, jogging feeling of being lifted and held like a baby again.

  He carried her across the cobbles and up the short hill to The Retreat.

  When they got to the step, he put her down carefully and opened the door.

  ‘Don’t wake Mummy,’ he whispered.

  She nodded sleepily and whispered back, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just to clean out the car.’

  Ruby hugged him. ‘Love you hundreds, Daddy.’

  ‘Love you hundreds, Rubes.’

  He closed the front door behind him.

  Ruby hauled herself up the narrow, curved stairs. Her legs were heavy and her arms swung like wet ropes. She didn’t do her teeth; she didn’t have a pee. She didn’t
even touch Lucky for luck.

  In the few seconds before she fell asleep, Ruby only had one thought.

  I have to hold the gun.

  32

  STEFFI COLE WAS almost home when she stopped being a person and became a means to an end.

  Just past the Boat House restaurant, something hard jabbed her in the back, and when she turned to be cross with some joker, a man with no face hissed, ‘Keep walking. This is a gun.’

  So Steffi kept walking. She tried to keep thinking, too, but she had to keep walking while she was thinking, because of the gun.

  Was it robbery? She could cope with robbery. She had sixty-five quid in her jeans. She wouldn’t volunteer it, but if he found it, he could have it.

  Was it rape? She braced herself mentally. If she had to, she would cope with a rape. As long as the man didn’t hurt her, she could cope with anything, she realized.

  Funny how your perspective changed as fast as the circumstances.

  The man kept jabbing her in the middle of her back. She tried to decide whether it felt like a gun. As if she would know! It was probably a lie. Nobody had a gun. Nobody in Instow, anyway.

  But could she take that chance? Steffi thought about the possible consequences of failing to outrun the man. Of him shooting her in the spine before she’d gone five paces.

  Life in a wheelchair, peeing in a bag.

  She thought of falling, of being caught, of making him angry. She thought of the embarrassment of running in terror – in case it was a joke after all and she looked like an idiot.

  Even as part of her mind was screaming at her to slow down and stay close to the houses and pubs, so the alleged gun forced Steffi away from them. An obedient, self-destructive auto-pilot had been switched on inside, and she had lost manual override. And before she came up with any practical way to escape, she simply ran out of time.

  ‘In here.’

  Another sharp jab in her back, between the shoulder blades, and Steffi turned left and stepped on to the fine sand of the dunes.

  She went up the first of them, her feet sinking deep into the white sand.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said.

  He didn’t answer for a few strides, and then he said, ‘We’re going to call your mother.’

  Steffi’s stomach lurched as if she were on a rollercoaster.