Split Second - [3]

‘What did he sing to me?’

‘Hymns and football songs,’ Louise said wryly.

Ruby laughed, then swung round to face the mirror on the wall. ‘What about my hair?’ Her voice now leaking frustration. In the gene stakes, she had won her dad’s Caribbean features: dark brown eyes, a wide nose and full mouth and tightly crinkled hair that she regarded as a total nightmare. They spent a small fortune on hair products: relaxing treatments, straighteners and the like. Louise, of Irish descent, with blue-white skin, wore her own wavy dark brown hair scooped back in a barrette. She saw little of herself in either of her children. Though they both had her fingers, thin and spidery, and her large feet.

‘You could get it plaited, cornrows, like before.’

‘Then I’d be stuck with it.’

And we’d be sixty quid worse off, Louise thought. But she didn’t want to play that card now. Ruby was auditioning for stage school. She had wanted to act, to sing and dance all her life. Every spare penny, the precious few they had, went on ballet and tap and modern dance lessons, leotards and pumps. Now fourteen, Ruby was stunning, slender and gamine, with Eddie’s high cheekbones, her teeth naturally white and straight. She moaned about being flat-chested, but all Louise saw was her beauty. And her drive, the ambition that Louise supported to the hilt.

‘In a bun, then? Like it is but higher?’ Louise suggested.

‘A chignon?’

‘Whatever they call it. Or wear something over it.’

‘A paper bag,’ Ruby slung back, and they both cracked up laughing.

‘One of those…’ Louise put her hand above her head, waggled her fingers.

‘A fascinator.’ Ruby curled her lip.

‘You’ll have to decide soon,’ her mother cautioned. ‘First week of January – and if you do want it styling, some places will be closed over the holidays. Now – I need a cuppa.’

‘Get us a hot chocolate?’

Louise raised an eyebrow.

‘Please.’ Ruby curtsied. She began to practise one of her dance steps, the furniture around the edge of the room juddering as the floor shook.

‘Watch the china,’ Louise said.

‘Cheek. Where’s Luke?’

‘Out,’ Louise answered as she walked into the kitchen.

‘Where?’

‘God knows,’ she called out. ‘I told him to be back by eleven.’ She filled the kettle. She peered through the window. It was snowing. Maybe they’d have a white Christmas.

‘I don’t know why you bother.’ Ruby came into the kitchen.

Louise didn’t reply. She switched the kettle on. ‘When we get the tree up, you’ll have to practise upstairs.’

‘My room’s too small.’

‘Use mine, then.’

‘Cool. When are we getting it?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Louise said. ‘Carl’s bringing one down.’

‘Is it big?’

‘Big enough.’ She got the drinking chocolate out.

‘That means it’s titchy.’

‘Wait and see.’ Louise smiled. She’d paid for a six-footer. It would look great. And she was off Christmas Day.

Carl was at the agency with her, home help, social care. Closest thing she had to a boyfriend, but she kept it casual. She liked the company, someone to share a meal or a laugh or a bed with, but nothing more serious. He was a nice bloke, a bit dim, but well-meaning, sociable. Polish. The agency work was crap money really, but for Carl it was way more than he could make back home. The job itself was okay: cleaning, shopping, feeding, changing, a lot of listening. Some of the people Louise had been calling on for years, knew more about them than their own families did. But the agency was always trying to screw as much as they could from you.

Louise looked back out at the garden. Some of the snow had settled, on the grass and the shed roof, but the path was gleaming wet. Be nice if it did stay. Course, it caused problems, people falling and fractures and buses not running, but it looked lovely.

‘Or a wig?’ Ruby said. ‘Like a dead bright colour, yeah? Red, like my shoes.’

Andrew

He thought he heard something over the noise of the shower. Banging? Perhaps Jason had forgotten his key. More than likely. Andrew tipped his head back, let the water play on his face. In fact it was unusual for Jason to remember his key. A dreamer. It drove Val round the bend, her son’s lack of focus, his apparent ineptitude.

‘Is it a boy thing?’ she’d demanded of Andrew one day when Jason was about six. Still struggling to tie his shoelaces, still forgetting his book bag, his games kit, his permission slip, to brush his teeth, to turn the television off.

‘He’s just made like that, I guess,’ Andrew said.

‘All I do is nag,’ she complained. ‘And if I don’t, nothing happens.’

‘He’s only little.’ Andrew pulled her to him, kissed her. ‘D’you want me to nag?’

She shook her head, still exasperated.

‘Maybe he’ll never be the world’s most organized person, but he’s bound to get a bit better.’

‘You think?’

‘I hope.’

But Jason’s absent-mindedness had persisted; his relationship to the practical, physical world had never become one of mastery or precision, though he was skilled in other areas. He could play any instrument he picked up, despite never having had a lesson in his life; he’d overcome his moderate dyslexia to get four A levels and a place to study geography at Durham.