Belinda Bauer - The Facts of Life and Death

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 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.

The crush was so great and the air so thick that every handshake was damp and every face red and shiny. Ruby was clammy and itchy, and, under the fried onions from the burger van, she could smell the bodies of the other people in the crowd.

They went along the row of little stalls selling all things for lepers. There were anti-leprosy crystals, leper begging bowls, and one-armed, one-eyed rag dolls. Mummy had given Ruby two pounds to spend and they stopped so she could buy fifty pence’ worth of pus fudge, which was green with red swirls.

The man with one leg from the King’s Arms swung past them on a rough wooden crutch, ringing a bell.

‘Unclean!’ he called every few strides. ‘Unclean!’

‘Look at his stump,’ whispered Ruby, wide-eyed.

‘Show-off,’ said Daddy.

The sun set, although nobody could tell – the clouds on the horizon were so thick and black.

IT WAS UNCOMMONLY quiet for a Saturday at Bideford police station and the night-shift were playing canasta in the incident room.

Calvin wasn’t. He was just enjoying the peace and quiet. Not only was it quiet here, but when he got home it would be quiet there, too. Or as noisy as he wanted to make it. The choice was his – that was the point. If he wanted to, he could spend the whole night watching porn and listening to Motörhead and eating all the crisps in the flat, which – after yesterday’s demob-happy supermarket sweep – was a lot . He’d got to the checkout feeling as high as a kite, and watched in cocky rebellion as the checkout girl had put through the beer and the snacks and the frozen pizzas and the DVDs with guns on their covers. He’d thrown in a Fifa soccer game from the bargain bin and he didn’t even have a PlayStation! He’d get one though. And an Xbox too, if he wanted it. All around him, Calvin had felt the envious eyes of married men burning into him and he’d felt like beating his own chest at the dearth of vegetables in his trolley.