Blood Ties by Sam Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

fashionable cut flowers. None of this unimaginative rubbish. He trailed his fingers through the thin, colourless petals and then Ruby emerged from the toilets looking every part the new girl.
    ‘Come here,’ Robert laughed. ‘The tag’s still on your collar.’ He pulled the label off the grey and green blazer and brushed lint off her shoulder. ‘Bloody fantastic,’ he said and glared at the shop attendant as she stared at them while chewing gum with an open mouth.
    ‘Dad.’ Ruby giggled. ‘Don’t swear.’
    Robert felt a surge of warmth in his heart whenever she called him Dad, which was rare. Mostly it was Robert. If only he could get through to his wife in the same way.
    Robert ushered Ruby into the car and drove her through the traffic to Greywood College. Before he escorted her inside the imposing building, he said, ‘I’ve got a big surprise for you and your mum tonight. Something that’ll put a smile on your faces.’ He’d do whatever it took.
    ‘Oh Da- ad ,’ she said, grinning. She slammed the car door and skipped up the steps of the grand entrance. Robert watched her go, digging his fingernails into his leg, trying to counter the pressure in his throat, wondering exactly how he would tell his wife that he had overruled her. And now he would have to come up with a surprise.

SIX
    It’s strange but I don’t know how I got pregnant. No, really. You can ask, but I shan’t say. Of course, I know what’s meant to happen when you want a baby although I won’t be telling tales of a boy ever putting his thing inside of me. Mother thinks it was Jimmy, the not very smart kid who lives at the end of our street. Father blames all the boys at my school and wrote to the newspaper damning every male teenager in our neighbourhood.
    The first I knew of it was when my school skirt wouldn’t reach round my waist, when my belly had become so sore and stretched I thought I was becoming a fat person. Mother warned me about being one of those, saying greed was a sin, and took me to Dr Brigson to fetch some diet pills. I went along silently, knowingly, hoping they wouldn’t prise the truth out of me.
    Dr Brigson made me get on his examining couch – without changing the paper cover, I might add, which was all damp and crumpled from the last person. He lifted my sweater and pushed his fingers into my belly so deep that I wanted to cry out. But I daren’t make a fuss. He’d have probably walloped me. He asked me some questions that I wouldn’t answer then he sent me out of his poky, smelly room and whispered to my mother that I was going to have a baby. She slapped me when we got home. My father didn’t look at me for a month.
    It’s Christmas Eve today. All the snow has melted. Some kids from school are hanging out on the pavement below my window. I can see them, their faces all lit up and glowing orange from the flickering street lights. They’ve been going from house to house, singing carols, jangling their collection box, tickles in their tummies because it’s Christmas Eve. My tummy churns but not because it’s Christmas.
    Our house is next in line for carols but they won’t come here. They won’t dare do the Wystrach house but are happy to loiter outside, perhaps to catch a glimpse of me at my window. They want a peek at the girl who got pregnant. The girl who caused the biggest scandal of the decade at Biggin End High. The Year 10 girl who screwed around.
    I draw the curtains to shut them out, to obliterate their happy Christmas, and lie down on my bed to sleep. It helps pass the time.
    Sometimes I dream of how it happened and I wake up panting with a lake of cold sweat on my chest. If I’ve got any treats under the bed, stuff that I’ve smuggled, like Horlicks or sometimes icing sugar, I’ll take comfort in that, perhaps by dipping my finger into the malty powder and sucking it off. Then I’ll have nice dreams, such as the Easter parade at school – the posters made by the junior classes, the