‘It was nothing,’ Beth sternly told herself before lowering her head and splashing cold water against her cheeks.
She was still thinking about the song, about Joanne Rowles. At least she’d died from smoke inhalation rather than being burned alive. That, Beth reasoned, was some small mercy.
Straightening up, she locked eyes with herself again. Droplets hung to her eyelashes and the tip of her nose, which in profile she was always told ‘looked Roman’. ‘I’m Beth Belmont,’ she said loudly, squaring her shoulders and raising her angular chin. ‘I’m Beth Belmont and I’m fine. I’m safe.’
Nine
‘Will she come?’ Ruby kicked out her legs and then swiftly drew them back in again, pretending she was on a swing instead of back on an itchy sofa.
‘We’ve spoken about this.’ The bespectacled woman was frowning behind her glasses, hand frozen mid-notation as she looked across at the young girl in the denim dungarees.
Ruby kicked out again, remembering how good it was to feel the wind against her bare legs. In here, there was no wind, just the arid air of the office, laced with stale coffee and cloying lavender perfume.
What time was it? She scoured the three walls within her line of vision, tracing the length of the walnut bookcases and the framed certificates which hung behind a nearby desk. There was no clock. Of course there wasn’t. Everyone was conspiring to take time away from Ruby, to make her forget how many seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks had slid by since she’d been pulled through the front doors thrashing and screaming, begging to go home.
‘But you asked her, right?’ Ruby cocked her head at the woman and tried to smile sweetly, remembering her grandmother’s old adage: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Not that Ruby thought the woman a fly, but she wanted results. And fast. If they expected her to talk, then they needed to give her something in return.
With an exaggerated sigh, the woman put down her notebook completely and folded her plump hands in her lap. ‘Ruby, do we really need to go over this again?’
‘I just …’ Ruby looked down at her kneecaps, which had become so knobbly, so fragile-looking. Alone in her room. She didn’t eat right. When her meals arrived on a white plastic tray, her hunger was always replaced by loneliness. Would it be so bad to let her sit in the canteen with the others, just once? Ruby cleared her throat and dropped her hands into her lap, mimicking the woman’s posture. ‘You want me to talk; I want to see my mum. It’s that simple.’
‘If only it were.’ The woman’s lips lifted into a sympathetic smile. Today, she was wearing an unflattering shade of plum lipstick which washed out the rest of her face. ‘I told you last time, when you requested a visit, that we spoke to your mother and she declined the offer to come here.’
‘But it’s been weeks. Maybe she’s changed her mind. Maybe––’
‘Ruby, I know this is difficult, but you need to accept your mother’s decision.’
‘Her decision to not see me?’ Ruby felt the words breaking within her throat, getting clogged down by the mounting sorrow that had been festering in her stomach and was now rising like bile. How was it possible that her mother didn’t want to see her? Was she too drunk? As Ruby sat talking to the bespectacled woman was her mum sprawled out on a very different sofa, caked in her own vomit? ‘When you last asked her, she might have been drinking. My mum can be mean when she’s had a drink. You should try her again, you should––’
A hand had been raised, plump and silencing. ‘My job is to do what’s best for you.’
‘Right.’ Ruby threw up her hands, abandoning her former pretence of civility. ‘And a mother’s job is to be there for her kid. Not once has she been here to see me. Not once!’
‘Ruby?’
‘Doesn’t she miss me? Doesn’t she want to see me?’
‘You know that it’s a complicated situation.’
‘I’m her daughter!’ Surely it was all simple; a mother’s job, her duty, was to be there for her children. Linda Renton had numerous faults, but she tried to be a good mother, Ruby had always seen that in the heaving sobs that followed a night’s bad drinking. As the vodka slipped out of Linda’s system, the guilt returned. She once told Ruby that it was like choosing whether she wanted to stand on hot coals or sharp knives.
Rain splashed against the nearest window, soft and persistent. Today, the sun was not shining. The sky had darkened and, according to Dexter, a storm was on the way. Ruby wasn’t sure she wanted to lie on her hard little bed and listen to nature rage outside. She didn’t feel safe in her room, despite the locks on the door.
‘Maybe …’ Ruby shook her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts. Once again she’d brought too much emotion into the room. She knew that she needed to stop doing that. She wanted to show the woman in the other chair that she was calm, collected … mature. Maybe then they’d let her go home. Because this was all a test, wasn’t it? ‘My brothers …’ Ruby rubbed at her eyes, knocking any tears that dared to present themselves back into their ducts. ‘Maybe they can come and see me if my mum won’t.’
‘I don’t think so.’ The answer came swift and stern.
‘But they’re my brothers and––’
‘The last time you saw them they assaulted you, do you remember?’ The notebook was being retrieved. Ruby watched as the woman made a fresh imprint upon the open page.
‘What, no, I––’
‘Before you came here,’ the woman ploughed through Ruby’s mumblings, ‘they assaulted you, broke your right arm in three places, dislocated your left shoulder and your jaw. Plus damage to your ribs. You spent four days in hospital before coming here. Do you remember?’
Ruby did and she didn’t. The events which the woman mentioned existed in her mind like an old dream, or a movie she couldn’t quite remember watching. Aspects of it were familiar – like the time in hospital and arriving here with a cast covering her arm. But had her brothers really done that to her? Weren’t they supposed to protect and watch over their little sister? Why would they take it upon themselves to snap her little bones like twigs?
‘It’s in your best interest that we sever all ties with your family.’ The woman ceased writing to once again peer at Ruby, plum lips sagging down at the corners as though she understood the gravity of the death sentence she was giving. ‘Our aim in here is to help you heal, truly heal, and overcome what happened whilst learning to understand it.’
‘I …’ Ruby felt like she was alone on a deserted island, watching a boat full of her family and friends slowly drift out to sea, not even bothering to raise their arms and wave goodbye as they abandoned her.
‘We’re going to get through this, Ruby, I promise.’
‘Sometimes …’ she had to blink furiously to hold back tears. ‘Sometimes my jaw still aches. Especially when I eat.’
‘It will,’ the woman nodded. ‘But in time it will pass. All things heal, Ruby. Even you.’
Ten