Belinda Bauer: The Facts of Life and Death

‘OK,’ said Ruby warily.

Adam lowered his voice. ‘And nobody… ever … saw him again.’

The words hung in the salt air between them.

‘Where did he go?’ whispered Ruby.

‘Nobody knows,’ Adam whispered back. ‘His donkey was still there in the morning, but all the pedlar’s stuff was gone, and his money too. Someone stole it all.’

‘Who?’ said Ruby.

Adam shrugged mysteriously, then went on. ‘This is the good bit. Like fifty years later, when the old sisters died, another man bought this house and was going to fix it up, but he started to hear noises from upstairs, when there was nobody there.’

Ruby glanced nervously at what was left of the ceiling. ‘What kind of noises?’

‘Banging. Moaning. Ghost noises, y’know?’ said Adam breezily. ‘And one night he went up to see what was going on, and the bedroom door slammed shut behind him, even though he was alone in the house, and he couldn’t open the door, even though the key was on the inside.’

Ruby stared at Adam, her mouth suddenly dry.

‘And then something in the room attacked him.’

‘What thing?’ she breathed.

‘Nobody knows,’ said Adam solemnly. ‘He was a grown man, but he screamed so loud that people ran up from the village to see what was happening, but none of them could open the bedroom door, and all they could do was stand there and listen to him screaming and crying until morning.’

‘What happened then?’ said Ruby, her voice cracking with dread.

‘In the morning the door suddenly swung open all by itself, and they found the man inside, all bloody and stuff, shaking under the bed. He’d been beaten up, but there was nobody else in the room with him.’

‘Sssshhh-it,’ Ruby said, even though she wasn’t allowed to.

‘He’d screamed so hard he couldn’t even speak any more. And then,’ said Adam, propping himself up to better effect, ‘and then he runs out of the room past them, and down the stairs, and starts digging in the fireplace with his bare hands, all through the ashes that were still hot from the night before, but he didn’t care and he dug until his hands were all bloody and his nails fell off.’

Ruby was cold with fear. She couldn’t encourage Adam any more; she only stared, unable to look away from his sombre face.

‘And under the ashes and the flagstones he found a hiding place dug out of the earth, and in there was the skeleton of the pedlar.’

Adam left room for her to gasp, and Ruby did.

‘Those old ladies had murdered him and stolen all his money and stuff, and it was his ghost that was so angry that he, like, lured the man up there and sort of put it into his head where to look for his bones, so that his body could be found and given a Christian burial.’

Ruby shivered and Adam did too, even though he knew the story already.

‘Wicked, hey?’ He grinned.

But Ruby only looked over his shoulder and said slowly, ‘ That fireplace?’

Adam rolled over to follow her gaze.

The fireplace stared silently back at them, squat and square and grey, with ashes in its middle, and blackened all around by centuries of scorching.

All cold now.

The waves crashed and hissed below, and the stones rumbled, and Ruby was suddenly very aware that the only thing between them and the sea was an inch of rotten wood and a one-hundred-foot drop.

She scrambled to her feet. ‘I want to go home.’

‘Don’t be scared,’ said Adam. ‘It’s only a story.’

‘I know that,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m not scared. I have to do my homework.’

‘Me too,’ said Adam, and got up.

Both of them avoided looking at the fireplace, and Ruby knew for sure that if they weren’t scared, they would even now be sifting through the ashes and lifting the flagstones to find the secret hiding place that was big enough to hold the body of a murdered man.

‘You’re shivering,’ said Adam.

‘I’m cold,’ said Ruby.

‘Do you want to wear my hoodie?’ It was thick and red with BIDEFORD COLLEGE on the back.

Ruby nodded, and Adam took it off and Ruby put it on. She didn’t try to zip it up in case it wouldn’t fit and Adam saw how fat she was. Still, its fleece lining was cosy, and it smelled like detergent and warm boy.

They went less cautiously than usual down the brambly, muddy steps into the village. At the steepest part, Adam reached up and took her hand.

When they got to the gate of The Retreat, she gave his top back to him and said thank you.

‘No problem,’ he said. He didn’t turn and leave though. He lingered.

‘Don’t tell anyone I told you that story, OK?’

‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘Bye then.’

‘Bye,’ he said.

When she shut the door, Ruby noticed he was still standing at the gate.

MUMMY HAD GONE to work and left a chicken pie and a note about how to heat it up. Ruby looked up at a noise from her parents’ room. She’d thought Daddy was fishing, but when she went upstairs, there he was.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Cleaning the house,’ he said. ‘Want to help?’

‘OK,’ said Ruby, and went in and sat on the bed and watched him take stuff out of the wardrobe, look at it, then put it back exactly where he found it. He only threw away about three things, and that was all make-up that Mummy didn’t need.

Ruby saw a little book with ‘Diary’ on it.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I have a diary!’ She opened the diary to see what kinds of things Mummy wrote in hers, but there was only boring stuff like ‘School, 4.40. Double shift Thurs/Fri. Knickers for R.’

She was R. She remembered getting the knickers from the market in Bideford – they had the days of the week on them and Friday was spelled ‘Fiday’. She always hoped she didn’t get hit by a bus on a Friday.

‘Let’s see,’ said Daddy.

She gave him the diary and he flicked through it while she carried on cleaning. There was a first-aid box with some old plasters, a bottle of Calpol from when she was little and a box of Paracetamol.

‘Can I put a plaster on?’

‘Sure, Rubes.’

She chose a cute round one from the box and stuck it on her face so it looked as if she’d been shot with an arrow.

There was a crumpled plastic bag that held a few old boxes containing necklaces and things. Mummy didn’t wear jewellery because it made her look cheap, and she didn’t have any good stuff anyway. Not like Maggie’s mother, who dripped with jangling gold and wore a big ring on every finger. All Mummy had was one pair of small diamond earrings in a blue velvet box with a crown on the inside and the word Garrards , and a matching necklace in another box, except oblong this time, not square. The diamonds were tiny and the inside of the lid was covered with white silk and someone had written on it with felt-tip: Think of me when you wear this, baby girl. Ruby frowned. She hoped the necklace wasn’t for her. Sometimes Mummy tried to girlify her by buying her a pink top or a flowery clip for her hair. Christmas was coming in a few months and she didn’t want a boring old necklace.

Inside the third box was a brooch. It was shaped like a fish, covered with diamonds for scales and with rubies for eyes. It was cute, but it wasn’t even Mummy’s; on the box it said it belonged to someone called Tiffany. Ruby stuffed the bag back where she found it and opened a shoebox filled with loose photographs of people she didn’t know.

‘Who’s this?’ She held up a photo of a pretty young woman with dark hair. She was wearing a white summer dress, and was holding the hand of a little boy in a cowboy outfit.