Belinda Bauer - The Facts of Life and Death

But the girl was quick – even in socks – and nimble through the slender trees that were close-knit and had thin, stiff branches that jabbed at head and hands.

With every stride his anger grew. Once, he got close enough to touch her shoulder with his outstretched fingers, and she shrieked and ducked backwards under his arm and ran off at a new angle. He turned too fast and fell on to needles so thick they were like a prickly mattress. It didn’t hurt, but it did harm: by the time he got up she had broken the dark cover of the trees and was on the main road, crying and shouting and waving down cars – naked but for her tattered red socks.

Shameless.

He watched from behind a tree as she got into a little silver car and disappeared, then yanked off the balaclava, his blood pounding with the fury of losing her – of losing control .

He’d blown it. Both times, he now realized. It was all over too fast and brought him no satisfaction. This time hadn’t even been funny – only frustrating. And the girl had given him a load of cheek too, which made him feel like a stupid little boy instead of like a man in charge of the situation.

He scratched his head all over; it was hot and itchy from the wool.

He went back through the trees and found her clothes and her rucksack and the broken phone. There was a thick wad of money in a beaded purse, and shop-bought cheese and pickle sandwiches, which he ate as he drove out to Abbotsham cliffs. Pretty much everything else he threw into the hungry sea.

He watched her T-shirts and knickers and cotton trousers spread-eagle over the waves and felt cheated.

This time he hadn’t wanted it to end.

GIRL, 17, IN BEACH ASSAULT.

Mr Preece was changing the headlines in the little wire cage as Ruby got off the bus.

Ruby wondered what assault was. She had a mental image of a girl rolling about in the salt that the sea had left behind on the sand. The new headline was MASKED MAN STRIKES AGAIN. But then Ruby saw the poster for the Leper Parade.

The Leper Parade in Taddiport was an annual orgy of running sores and fake blood, hunchbacks, crutches, and people with their arms hidden in their jumpers. Every year there was a prize for the best leper adult and the best leper under fourteen. Daddy had entered last year, but that man from the King’s Arms always won the adult prize because he really didn’t have a leg, and that meant nobody else was in with a chance. But Ruby always imagined that one day she might be the best leper under fourteen. She’d dress in rags and put ash and dirt on her face, with tomato sauce and Rice Krispies for scabs. That’s what the other children did. Last year’s winner also had black stuff coming out of his eyes, which was amazing. She wasn’t sure she could compete with that, but she would certainly try. She must remember to ask Mummy to get Rice Krispies, because usually they only had boring old fake Weetabix.

Ruby was in for another treat inside the shop. Pony & Rider this week had a free LED safety light in a little plastic bag stuck on to the front of the magazine with a blob of clear gum. She couldn’t wait, and bought the magazine and a Mars bar without even browsing.

‘That was quick,’ said Mr Preece.

Ruby said nothing.

Outside the shop she peeled the bag off the magazine cover, then tore it open with her teeth and took out the light. It was small and round and had a clip, and a button on the back that, when pressed, started it flashing red.

‘Wow!’ she said out loud, even though she was alone.

She wriggled out of her backpack and clipped the light to the plush pony’s ear, like a rosette. Then she set off down the hill.

As the light grew dim under the trees, she wondered what the LED looked like on her back. Just past the chapel, she balanced her backpack on the tarmac and trudged back up the hill a-ways before turning around to look at it.

‘Wow!’ she said again. The tiny little light was like a beacon – flashing brilliantly, even in what passed for daylight in this miserable summer.

She hurried to pick up her backpack before it could soak up the rain from the road.

There were no ponies in the paddock, but Ruby hung on the gate anyway, reluctant to walk away in case one suddenly appeared.

Starlight would be a good name. Or Pegasus if it was white. Grey , she corrected herself. Pony & Rider said there was no such thing as a white horse.

A car pulled up behind her. She turned and saw Mrs Braund.

‘Jump in out of the rain, Ruby!’

Limeburn people never passed someone on the hill without offering a lift, whether they knew them or not. The road was so steep that it was a difficult walk up or down. Mummy often got a ride down the hill from the bus stop on Thursday nights with Mr Braund, because that was when he was on his way home for the weekend from his fancy job in London.

Ruby opened the door of the big 4x4 and climbed in beside Adam in the back seat; Chris was in the front because he was the eldest.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ they said.

Adam and Chris didn’t go to her school. They went to a private school and they never caught the bus. They wore striped ties, and grey blazers with red shields on the pockets. She looked at Adam’s knees. Usually they were covered by denim, or bare and tanned in khaki shorts, but today they were in black school trousers. They made his legs look like a man’s.

The back of Chris’s head looked more grown up than the front.

In the cage behind Ruby, the dogs whined because they were close to home. They weren’t Jack Russells or collies like normal people had, they were matching brown Labradoodles called Tony (blue collar) and Cleo (red), and their birthday was celebrated in the Braund house just like the boys’ birthdays were, with balloons around the front door and a cake. April the twenty-ninth. Even Ruby knew the date, although she wasn’t sure any of the Braunds knew the date of her birthday.

Mrs Braund smiled at her in the mirror. ‘That light’s a good idea, Ruby. Makes you easy to see in the shadows.’

‘I just got it free on my magazine,’ she said.

‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Braund.

She was a pretty woman, Ruby thought, with hair so blonde it was almost white, except for that curious dark bit down the middle, like a reverse badger, and she wore lots of make-up and jewellery. Ruby had never seen Mrs Braund in dirty old jeans or a bad jumper. Even the welly boots she wore when she walked the dogs were fancy brown leather things with laces at the top. Chris had told her once that they cost £200 but he was a liar because nobody would pay that for wellies.

‘What’s your magazine?’ said Adam.

‘Pony & Rider. ’ She showed it to him.

‘Do you have a pony?’

‘No.’

‘Do you ride?’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

Chris laughed without turning round, and Ruby felt herself going red.

‘So what?’ said Adam at the back of Chris’s head. ‘You read FourFourTwo but you don’t play for Arsenal, last I heard.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Now, boys,’ said Mrs Braund, and Chris shut up and they drove on in silence.

Slowly, Ruby pushed her feet as far under the driver’s seat as they would go, so that Adam wouldn’t see her muddy socks.

The Retreat was unlocked, which meant that Daddy was home.

Ruby stood with her back to the front door and listened for the familiar sounds her father always made before her mother came in from a shift – the scraping of fish scales, slide guitars on the CD player – but there was nothing. Only the usual background noises of the wind keening through the bathroom window, and the trees testing the bowed roof.