LITMIR.BIZ

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up with Lesley’s husbands. What’s the difference between them?’

      Ruby started to laugh. The laughter took hold until she was coughing and shaking with it, and it infected Iris too. They wheezed and wiped their eyes and finally Iris sank back against her cushions. ‘Oh dear. Well, is there a difference?’

      ‘Yes. Totally. Sebastian, that’s my real dad, thinks he’s quite cool. He knows lots of well-known writers and people, and although he’s quite fat these days he wears sort of youthful clothing. Not quite bad enough to be embarrassing or anything, but always with a nod to what’s in, if you know what I mean?’

      ‘I’m afraid not.’

      ‘Uh, wacky scarves. Logo T-shirts. Beanie in the winter. And in the week, designery suits and no tie.’

      It was plain that Iris understood almost none of this, but she was enjoying the faces that Ruby made and the way her hands fluttered and nipped to describe the outlines of her father’s clothes. Ruby liked it when Iris was amused because it made her feel that she was welcome, and maybe even useful.

      Their idea of Ruby capturing Iris’s memories had made little progress so far. Whenever Iris did start to talk, the stories seemed to be just that – stories, about ancient nightclubs and games of polo and the army. It was quite hard trying to memorise the details of such unfamiliar things. And then Iris’s voice would slow down and grow vague, and Ruby would look into her eyes and see that she had gone missing again. Now she talked to her as if she were the one who was telling a story.

      ‘Dad and Mum separated when I was three. He’d come to take me out at the weekends and we’d go to the park and things. I was little, so I can’t remember what it was like when he did live with us. Anyway, he had a girlfriend, quite young, and she didn’t like kids so I didn’t see that much of the two of them together. It was just Sebastian and me, and even I could tell that was pretty boring for him.

      ‘Then, after quite a long time – it seemed a long time – suddenly Mum started going out with Andrew. They got married, I was a bridesmaid. I had to wear pink stuff, a whole matching outfit, a dress with puffed sleeves and fake rosebuds in my hair. I hated it and at the reception I picked all the flowers off the headband and threw them at people. When I was eight and a half, my brother was born.’

      Iris nodded. ‘Did you mind?’

      Ruby shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so, but it was happening to plenty of other people as well. Most of my friends, you know.’

      ‘Was it? And this one, Andrew, what does he wear?’

      Now Ruby’s hands chopped a series of straight lines and boxes.

      ‘Ah, I see.’

      They were laughing again.

      ‘He’s a businessman. Management, accountancy. That sort of thing. And he likes sailing, he’s got a boat.’

      ‘Go on.’

      Ruby looked at Iris. Her head was resting against the cushions but her eyes were bright. When she laughed she did look younger, as though she could have been any age at all.

      ‘It’s not boring? Really? Let me think. OK, when I was about … eleven, when Ed was getting to the age when he wasn’t a baby anymore and was always climbing into everything and being a pain, and I was supposed to be working for exams to get into a good school but I was doing really badly, Andrew started thinking that he and I should be doing some bonding. So he decided that he’d teach me to sail, right? There was one weekend, we went off down to the boat together, just the two of us.’

      Now Ruby stretched her face, rolled her eyes and pressed her fingertips into the hollows of her cheeks.

      ‘Oh dear,’ Iris murmured again.

      ‘God, it was worse than oh dear. It was quite rough and windy, and the Solent seemed to me it was like the Pacific Ocean or something. Andrew could sail the fucking boat quite well on his own, OK, but he was doing this big pantomime number about how he needed a crew and we had to work as a team and rely on each other. So it was all this yelling and splashing, and me tripping over the ropes and him shouting Ready and Going about, and the boom banging above my head and the sails flapping and cracking. Wherever I put myself I was always in the wrong place. There’s this big sail like a parachute that goes at the front, and I really liked it because it was bright colours, but when we tried to put it up it got wrapped round the forestay and we had to sail round in circles in the opposite direction to try to unwrap it. Andrew was yelling No, no, no and I was completely certain we were going to capsize and drown.’

      Ruby was taken up with the momentum of telling this story. She jumped to her feet and mimed the frantic winding of winches and stumbling from side to side of the cockpit under her stepfather’s command.

      ‘What happened?’

      She undulated her hand sharply to indicate the height of the waves.

      ‘I got seasick and puked everywhere. Andrew turned the boat round and we sailed back to the marina, and as far as bonding goes the glue didn’t work. He never suggested doing it again, anyway. Not that I’d have gone, I hate sailing. Wouldn’t you? He and Lesley go quite a lot, but actually I don’t think Mum likes it much either.’

      Iris nodded. There was still a smile in her eyes. ‘No, it doesn’t sound particularly enjoyable. I enjoyed hearing about it, though.’

      Ruby sat down again and took her grandmother’s hand. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

      Slowly Iris tapped her fingers against her mouth, as if memories were about to spill into words. Ruby waited patiently, saying nothing. She had already learned that trying to prompt her only interrupted the ghost train of her grandmother’s thoughts. A minute passed, then another, liquid with the small splash of the fountain. They both lost track of time.

      ‘Amethyst,’ Iris said softly at last.

      Nothing followed and when Ruby looked up from watching the patterns of silvery drops she saw that she had fallen asleep. She unlaced their fingers and settled Iris’s hand back in her lap, then adjusted the rug over her knees and stood up. It was as if Iris were a child, she thought suddenly, and she were the mother.

      This idea took root and grew, casting a shadow like a dark finger pointing right across the garden and up the turquoise tiles lining the opposite wall. Ruby felt afraid of what she couldn’t quite understand. She wished she knew where she was going or what would happen next month, or even next week.

      She would have liked to talk to Jas about being disorientated and not knowing where you stood, but Jas was dead.

      Ruby left Iris to sleep and wandered through the dim spaces of the house.

      In the hall she trailed her fingertips over the table and raked faintly shining lines in the dust veil. Away from the sound of the water, the thick walls trapped silence and the smoky scent of incense that must live in the cracks of the stonework because she never saw Auntie or Mamdooh burning it.

      Her aimless wandering brought her to the door of the kitchen. She put her hand to the heavy panelling and pushed.

      Auntie looked up at once. ‘Mum-reese?’ she asked, pillowing her cheek against her folded hands.

      ‘Yes, she’s sleeping.’

      ‘Ah.’ The old woman put down the knife she had been using to slice vegetables and came round the table to Ruby. She reached up and pinched her cheek, gently, shaking her head and smiling at the same time so that her pale gums and isolated teeth were all on show. She murmured something in Arabic, the tone of her voice so soft with sympathy that Ruby’s eyes stung with sudden tears of self-pity. She sniffed furiously and pulled out of Auntie’s grasp.

      Auntie pointed to the comfortable chair near the stove. It was padded with cushions made out of worn carpet strips in shades of faded garnet and copper, and it seemed to hold the substantial print of Mamdooh’s body.

      ‘Me?’

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