Читать книгу Who Killed Ruby? онлайн | страница 13

Until then Vivienne’s experience of men had been confined to the ghostly, forbidden spectres of her and Ruby’s unmentionable fathers, her teacher Mr Kendal, or the kindly dads of her friends, or even Morris Dryden, the butcher’s grown-up son whom everyone said was soft in the head but whom Viv liked best of all. But Jack was different. Even at eighteen he oozed a complicated, threatening thing that was linked somehow to that new light in Ruby’s eyes, and the time Viv caught them kissing, Jack’s hands up her jumper as though rummaging for change. Slowly, however, Ruby began to alter, her usual glow and happiness seeming to ebb away until bit by bit it had disappeared completely.

Their mother hated Jack, she remembers that too; how she’d hear her and Ruby argue, Stella saying he was a thief and a troublemaker and that everyone in the village knew what he was like, what he and his brothers got up to, fighting and stealing and causing trouble. And Viv would think that her mother didn’t know the half of it, that when she went out to work Jack’s oily smile and fake politeness vanished and the real him would appear, like worms slithering from under rocks. She would see how he would change, a black mood creeping over him like the sun had gone in, how Ruby’s voice would turn pleading and tearful at his meanness and his temper. He was always cross with her about something: about how she’d looked at one of his friends or spoken in a way he didn’t like. And yet Ruby loved him, wanted to make him happy, her voice appeasing, cajoling, desperate to the end.

When Ruby got pregnant their mum said Jack Delaney was never to set foot in her house again, but as soon as Stella went off to the care home she worked at, there he’d be, Vivienne sworn to secrecy. He seemed to get worse, the bigger Ruby’s belly got. Viv would sit in the living room in front of the black-and-white TV and listen to their arguing; his rough, bullying voice, her sister’s tearful apologies, and her little hands would ball into fists, willing it to stop.