Chapter 3
Ruby staggered away from the main road. She couldn’t quite remember why, but it felt important. She’d been about to cross, to catch a bus, but she’d changed her mind.
It would take another ten minutes for another number nine. There weren’t enough of them on the route at the best of times, everyone said so, now they’d be down one. Would they bring in a replacement? They could take one from a lighter-used route? She should write in, suggest the idea.
She fumbled in her bag for a notepad. Suddenly it seemed very important to write. They’d thank her for it.
‘Ruby?’
She looked up. A face in the crowd.
‘My God, you’ve been hurt.’
He pulled a hankie from his pocket as he moved towards her.
She stepped back, confused. It didn’t fit, seeing him here, with the screaming behind her from Piccadilly, and the ringing of the bell from the fire engine, already making its way to the scene, and above all of it the siren – redundant surely now the attack had arrived.
‘Let’s get you home,’ he said, taking her arm, a firm grip. Ruby recoiled but the grip didn’t yield.
The car door closed with a clunk. A heavy car. Expensive. The inside smelt of leather and petrol and something else, talcum powder perhaps. Ruby felt for the door handle as he bustled round to the driver’s door, but it didn’t work, just pulled towards her without any click.
‘Let’s get you somewhere safe,’ he said, as he started the engine. ‘Get you cleaned up. What luck I was here.’
The world was spinning. There was a tartan rug, folded neatly on the back seat.
Ruby laid her head on the scratchy wool.
There was a distant explosion, and the car rocked, but it carried on.
Soon it was threading its way through rights and lefts, and Ruby let herself give way to sleep, or at least a version of sleep, in which she dreamt she was a doll being shaken by an angry child.
She’d be late for Frankie’s party, but at least she’d get there. Her mum would take care of her, make it better.
A tear slipped down her cheek as she thought of Frankie. She’d let him down on his birthday. Not the first time she’d let him down, not by a long shot.