The Facts of Life and Death by Belinda Bauer Read Free Book Online

cover, then tore it open with her teeth and took out the light. It was small and round and had a clip, and a button on the back that, when pressed, started it flashing red.
    ‘Wow!’ she said out loud, even though she was alone.
    She wriggled out of her backpack and clipped the light to the plush pony’s ear, like a rosette. Then she set off down the hill.
    As the light grew dim under the trees, she wondered what the LED looked like on her back. Just past the chapel, she balanced her backpack on the tarmac and trudged back up the hill a-ways before turning around to look at it.
    ‘Wow!’ she said again. The tiny little light was like a beacon – flashing brilliantly, even in what passed for daylight in this miserable summer.
    She hurried to pick up her backpack before it could soak up the rain from the road.
    There were no ponies in the paddock, but Ruby hung on the gate anyway, reluctant to walk away in case one suddenly appeared.
    Starlight would be a good name. Or Pegasus if it was white.
Grey
, she corrected herself.
Pony & Rider
said there was no such thing as a white horse.
    A car pulled up behind her. She turned and saw Mrs Braund.
    ‘Jump in out of the rain, Ruby!’
    Limeburn people never passed someone on the hill without offering a lift, whether they knew them or not. The road was so steep that it was a difficult walk up
or
down. Mummy often got a ride down the hill from the bus stop on Thursday nights with Mr Braund, because that was when he was on his way home for the weekend from his fancy job in London.
    Ruby opened the door of the big 4x4 and climbed in beside Adam in the back seat; Chris was in the front because he was the eldest.
    ‘Hi,’ she said.
    ‘Hi,’ they said.
    Adam and Chris didn’t go to her school. They went to a private school and they never caught the bus. They wore striped ties, and grey blazers with red shields on the pockets. She looked at Adam’s knees. Usually they were covered by denim, or bare and tanned in khaki shorts, but today they were in black school trousers. They made his legs look like a man’s.
    The back of Chris’s head looked more grown up than the front.
    In the cage behind Ruby, the dogs whined because they were close to home. They weren’t Jack Russells or collies like normal people had, they were matching brown Labradoodles called Tony (blue collar) and Cleo (red), and their birthday was celebrated in the Braund house just like the boys’ birthdays were, with balloons around the front door and a cake. April the twenty-ninth. Even Ruby knew the date, although she wasn’t sure any of the Braunds knew the date of
her
birthday.
    Mrs Braund smiled at her in the mirror. ‘That light’s a good idea, Ruby. Makes you easy to see in the shadows.’
    ‘I just got it free on my magazine,’ she said.
    ‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Braund.
    She was a pretty woman, Ruby thought, with hair so blonde it was almost white, except for that curious dark bit down the middle, like a reverse badger, and she wore lots of make-up and jewellery. Ruby had never seen Mrs Braund in dirty old jeans or a bad jumper. Even the welly boots she wore when she walked the dogs were fancy brown leather things with laces at the top. Chris had told her once that they cost £200 but he was a liar because nobody would pay that for wellies.
    ‘What’s your magazine?’ said Adam.
    ‘Pony & Rider.
’ She showed it to him.
    ‘Do you have a pony?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Do you ride?’
    She hesitated. ‘No.’
    Chris laughed without turning round, and Ruby felt herself going red.
    ‘So what?’ said Adam at the back of Chris’s head. ‘You read
FourFourTwo
but you don’t play for Arsenal, last I heard.’
    ‘Yeah, but—’
    ‘Now, boys,’ said Mrs Braund, and Chris shut up and they drove on in silence.
    Slowly, Ruby pushed her feet as far under the driver’s seat as they would go, so that Adam wouldn’t see her muddy socks.

    The Retreat was unlocked, which meant that Daddy was home.
    Ruby