Читать книгу Who Killed Ruby? онлайн | страница 23
She feels him watching her as they get into the car. Oh, God, does he fancy her? She doesn’t really get that vibe, though she’s not quite sure what vibe she does get, exactly. Perhaps he’s just a bit lonely: she never sees any friends dropping by, no one who looks like family for that matter either. She finds herself hoping very much that he doesn’t fancy her; there’s something about his high-pitched giggle, his eager-puppy eyes that creeps her out a little. Immediately she feels a twinge of self-reproof: You’re not exactly beating them off with a stick yourself, Viv. And then she thinks of Shaun and cringes.
There’s a short warm-up before the match starts so Viv decides to wait in the car. The icy rain that had begun to fall on the journey over there begins to pick up pace and she turns up the heater, savouring these last moments of warmth and dryness before she’s forced out into the freezing cold to watch her rosy-cheeked daughter run around the sodden sports field, happy as a pig in mud. Cleo certainly hadn’t inherited her love of sport from her.
She changes the CD she’d been listening to and idly thinks about what to cook for Samar and Ted later when they come over for lunch – something she’d organized to distract herself from the looming anniversary of Ruby’s death. Before long her thoughts turn to the café and the refurb she’s planning, and she feels a pleasurable tug of excitement.
She sometimes has to pinch herself when she considers how well her life has turned out. A beautiful daughter, her own house and business. For a terrifying time, it had seemed likely that she might not make it through her twenties alive – in fact, if it hadn’t been for Stella and Samar, she doubts she would have done.
In 1991, when she was fourteen, she had received completely out of the blue, a letter telling her that both her maternal grandparents had died and left all their money to her. An astonishing sum of £500,000, to be held in trust until her eighteenth birthday. Half a million pounds! She had called for her mother, remembering the journey they’d made to her grandparents’ beautiful home, senseless with grief and shock, in the aftermath of Ruby’s murder. How her mother had told her, ‘There’s nothing for us here.’