Split Second - страница 3

The bus trundled on and she sat, just like the rest of them, isolated and dumb, wanting to be anywhere but there.

Louise

‘Brilliant!’ Louise clapped as her daughter’s voice faded along with the backing track. ‘Dead good!’

Ruby was flushed, her brown eyes glittering, a sheen on her face from the exertion making her coppery skin glisten.

‘Yer nan’d be proud of you.’ Louise got up from the sofa, ready for a cup of tea.

‘You always say that.’ Ruby switched off the sound system.

‘’Cos it’s true.’ Louise had spent half her childhood applauding her mother, who’d made a living as a singer, fronting a twelve-piece band and crooning ballads or belting out show tunes. She’d spent the other half of it pining for the woman off criss-crossing the ocean singing for her supper on the cruise ships. Now she was here cheering on her daughter; the musical gene, the exhibitionist gene, had skipped a generation.

‘Did Dad sing?’ Ruby asked quietly.

Louise paused in the doorway to the kitchen. It had been ages since Ruby had spoken about her dad Eddie, who’d died suddenly at the wheel of his taxi when Ruby was only four years old. Heart attack.

‘Yeah, he did, he loved it. Couldn’t hold a tune for toffee, though.’

Ruby grinned.

Louise went on, ‘He’d sing hymns and football songs. Didn’t matter to him which. He’d sing to you – d’you remember?’

Ruby shook her head, disappointed. Four was so young to lose him, Louise thought, so few memories to cling to.

‘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.’