Читать книгу Who Killed Ruby? онлайн | страница 17

When they’d arrived, the house had been very large and beautiful, surrounded by rolling countryside. Vivienne, told to wait at the gate, had watched as her mother traipsed up the long drive, approached the door and knocked. A grey-haired man had answered, and Viv never knew what was spoken between them, only that minutes later the door had slammed shut, Stella had returned to where she waited and said in a voice as heavy as stones, ‘Get up, Vivienne. There’s nothing for us here.’

They’d made the return journey mostly in silence, her mother lost in thought and unreachable. It was late when they got back to their cottage and for some time they had stood staring at the front door, the moonlight revealing what was painted there in vicious foot-high letters: LIARS.

It was a few weeks after that when Vivienne’s life in Essex came to an abrupt end. Viv had returned home from school one day to find Stella packing their one and only suitcase. ‘We’re moving to London,’ she’d said as Viv watched her, wide-eyed. ‘Take that uniform off and throw it in the bin.’ Then she’d tossed her Ruby’s little green rucksack. ‘Put whatever you can fit in there, the rest we’ll leave. Let that pig of a landlord deal with it.’

They left there and then, taking a bus to the nearest station to catch a train to a new life. She had sat across from her mother, her bag of belongings on her lap, and tried to make sense of it all. Were they leaving because of Jack’s family? Or because they had no money left to pay the rent? She had sneaked a glance at her mum, and thought she understood: Ruby’s death was too sad, too terrible, to do anything else but run from.

For the first few months of their new London life they’d moved from place to place, to the spare beds or sofas belonging to ‘friends of friends’, or the sister of someone Stella used to work with. Sometimes Viv thought about the toys and bedroom she’d left behind, she thought of her friends and the people she knew in their village, but then she remembered the cold dragging misery of Ruby’s funeral, the cross bearing her and Noah’s names, the mound of earth covered in irises, her sister’s favourite flower, and she knew she never wanted to go back there again.