Belinda Bauer - The Facts of Life and Death

‘Up you get now,’ said Mummy.

‘But my tummy hurts.’

‘A minute ago it was your chest,’ said Mummy, and Ruby realized she’d blown it.

‘You have to go to school, Ruby,’ said Mummy. ‘You don’t want to grow up stupid, do you?’

‘I don’t care,’ said Ruby.

‘Well, I care,’ said Mummy. ‘Up you get.’

Ruby sighed and got up.

Mummy didn’t understand. She could get off the bus.

MISS SHARPE BOUGHT a Gazette and read the front page as she walked towards school.

Police have warned that the man responsible for two assaults on lone women in North Devon could ‘go too far’ and commit an even more serious crime.

In terrifying ordeals, the women were made to strip, while being threatened with violence by a man known as the ET attacker, because he makes his victims phone home.

Miss Sharpe took a moment to snort derisively. One man and his dog in the Gazette office might know him as ‘the ET attacker’ but nobody normal ever said rubbish like that.

Neither was physically harmed, but both were left traumatized by the encounter with the man, who wore a black balaclava.

One woman was assaulted on Westward Ho! beach, and the other in woodland near Clovelly.

Detective Chief Inspector Kirsty King who is leading the investigation, told the Gazette, ‘These were disturbing and frightening attacks on young women minding their own business in broad daylight.

‘Thankfully, neither suffered any physical harm, but we are concerned that the nature of the attacks may be escalating, and fear this individual may injure somebody.

‘We would appeal to him to come forward so that he can receive the help he needs before he goes too far.’

Oh yes , thought Miss Sharpe, that’ll happen.

She read on:

‘We would also urge women alone in isolated areas to be aware of potential threats, and not to put themselves in harm’s way.’

Police have described the man as being white, with a local accent, and about six feet tall.

Despite the newspaper hype, the story was disturbing. Miss Sharpe was relieved that she was far too busy to wander about pointlessly on beaches or in woodland, and decided that she’d take a lot more notice of whether her doors were locked at night. It was easy to become casual in the countryside, but she already had a spyhole and never opened the door to anyone she didn’t recognize. Maybe she’d get a chain put on the front door by the local community policing team. She was overthinking things, she knew, but Miss Sharpe’s motto had always been Better safe than sorry.

EEEEEE-ee-ee!

The car screeched to a halt less than two feet from her hip. The yellow bonnet with two broad black stripes running down it sprang back up from the sudden harsh braking.

She’d walked straight out in front of it. Hadn’t even realized she was in the road.

‘Sorry!’ she mouthed. ‘Sorry!’ But the reflection of the sky in the windscreen made it impossible to see whether she was forgiven or not.

She finished crossing and the yellow car swerved noisily around her.

Not forgiven.

Nerves fizzed all over Miss Sharpe’s body. She’d almost been killed! While she was planning her own safe passage through life. One split second of inattention and she could be dead now, or paralysed, seriously injured, lying in the road with two broken legs and tarmac under her cheek.

She started to shake.

It was shock, certainly. But it was also anger at herself. How could she have been so stupid ? That wasn’t like her. That was the kind of thing other people did. People who weren’t as cautious; weren’t as clever.

Those were the people who were alive one second and dead the next.

And in the Gazette the day after that.

‘LOOK!’ RUBY SAID triumphantly from the triangle behind the sofa.

‘What’s that?’ said Daddy.

‘The back off the remote control.’

Ruby clambered over the back of the sofa with the bit of plastic and the glove.

‘Clever you,’ said Daddy.

Daddy fixed the remote and pressed Play on True Grit and for a bit they watched a one-eyed fat man help a little girl find the killers of her father.

Ruby over-laughed in all the good places, but Daddy didn’t. He toyed with the glove and tried it on, but it was too big for him.

‘This was behind the sofa?’ he said.

‘Uh-huh. There’s a pen lid too. Shall I get it?’

‘No,’ said Daddy. ‘Leave it.’

Ruby snuggled up under his arm, but Daddy was restless. In the middle of the shoot-out, he made her stand up so he could move the sofa to look for the other glove.

It wasn’t there.

He stood for a moment, staring down at the carpet, then looked at the door and said, ‘Back soon.’

‘How long is soon?’

‘Not long,’ he said. ‘Be a good girl.’

He closed the door behind him and Ruby heard him picking up his fishing gear from the porch. She switched off the TV by pressing the remote-control button as hard as she could.

She’d been a good girl and it hadn’t worked.

So she went upstairs and messed with Daddy’s cowboy things.

The cowboy drawer always swelled in the damp, and Ruby got red and sweaty in the wrestle.

Once she’d got it open far enough to reach inside, she put the gunbelt on first, hitching it all the way round to the final hole, which was small and stiff. It was too big for her, but not too too big, and if she spread her legs a bit, it would stay on her hips. The holster hung to her knee.

Then the hat.

She lifted out the black Stetson and placed it on her own head like a crown.

The Jingle Bobs were complicated. She couldn’t work them out. She spun the little wheels to make them ring, and decided she’d try them on another time.

Holding the gunbelt up all the way with a casual hand, Ruby waddled splay-legged the few paces to the mirror on the back of the door.

She looked exactly like a cowboy. Her bunny slippers spoiled it a bit, so Ruby chose not to look at them.

Her right hand fell naturally to the holster and she felt a jag of disappointment that there was no gun to play with. Sticks were just fine until there was something real to measure them by. In this holster they would have been just sticks. A real holster needed a real gun.

Ruby drew her finger at the mirror. ‘Pow! Pow-pow!’

The hat fell over her eyes with the recoil.

Ruby pushed it back, then tried to catch sight of herself while she wasn’t looking, so she could see how she really looked.

Still amazing.

The tip of the fishing rod dipped and danced, but John Trick didn’t see it. He saw past it – across the pale-grey sea to the vague hump of Lundy Island on the fuzzy horizon, and beyond that to a more distant place, while the crabs made merry with his bait…

As a child, John had rarely gone to primary school, where he’d been relentlessly teased about the scars on his face. And when he had gone, he’d learned to lash out first and let the other kids ask questions afterwards – if they still had teeth that weren’t a-wobble in their heads.

But then – on his first day at big school – he had seen Alison Jewell.

She had hit him like measles.

He hadn’t stopped fighting, but he had gone to school every possible day for the next four years just to see her – just to occupy the same space. Now and then, he and the other boys would shout inappropriate things at her in a bid to make contact, but he never had the courage to say anything real , because she came from Clovelly, and he’d heard that her mother was a doctor.