The girl gives a sudden smile. Without the glower she looks even younger.
I make my way to my own room. When at last I am lying down with the white curtains drawn around the bed, the longing for sleep of course deserts me. I lie staring at the luminous folds of muslin, seeing faces and hearing voices.
Majestically disapproving, Mamdooh led Ruby downstairs again. A little old woman, about five feet tall, with a white shawl wrapped round her head and neck, appeared in the hallway. They spoke rapidly to each other.
‘You would like to eat some food?’ Mamdooh asked stiffly.
‘No, thanks very much. Had some on the plane.’
‘Go with Auntie, then.’
Ruby hoisted her luggage once more and followed the old woman up the enclosed stairs and through the shadowy galleries to a small room with a divan under an arched window. Auntie, if that was the name she went by, showed her a bathroom across the way. There was an overhead cistern with a chain, and the bowl was patterned with swirling blue and white foliage. There was an old-fashioned shower head as big as a dinner plate and a slatted wooden board over the drain, and a blue-painted chair with some folded towels.
‘Thank you,’ Ruby said.
‘Ahlan wa sahlan,’ Auntie murmured.
When she had gone, Ruby peeled off her clothes and dropped them on the floor. She got under the thin starched sheet just as she was, and fell instantly into a dreamless sleep.
‘No, no, don’t worry at all. I just wondered if she and Chloe might be together … Yes, of course. Is she? In Chile? How marvellous. Give her my best wishes, won’t you? Yes, that would be lovely. I’ll give you a call. ’Bye.’
Lesley replaced the receiver. ‘She’s not there either.’
Her neat leather address book lay open on the side table, but there were no more numbers left to try. She had been through them all and none of Ruby’s friends or their parents had seen her recently. None of Ruby’s friends who were also known to her mother, at least. There weren’t all that many of them.
Andrew was sitting in an armchair in a circle of lamplight, a pile of papers on his lap. A vee of wrinkles formed in the centre of his forehead as he stared at her over his reading glasses.
‘She’s nineteen. It’s really time she started taking responsibility for herself. You can’t stand in the firing line for her for ever.’
‘I don’t think I do,’ Lesley answered mildly. ‘Do I?’
Andrew exhaled sharply through his nose, pulling down the corners of his mouth to indicate disagreement without bothering to disagree, and resumed his reading.
Looking away from him, at the pleasant room that was arranged just how she wanted it, with the duck-egg blue shade of the walls that was restful without being cold and the cushion and curtain borders exactly matching it, Lesley felt anxiety fogging the atmosphere. Concern about Ruby distorted the room’s generous proportions and made it loom around her, sharp with threatening edges. The air itself tasted thin, as if she couldn’t draw enough of it into her lungs to make her heart beat steadily. Lesley knew this feeling of old, but familiarity never lessened the impact.
Where was Ruby? What was she doing this time, and who was she with?
One day, Lesley’s inner voice insisted, the unthinkable will happen. She shook her head to drive away the thought.
She never experienced the same anxiety about Edward, Ruby’s half-brother. Edward was always in the right place, doing the right thing. It was only for Ruby that she feared.
Justifiably, Andrew would snap.
Lesley closed her address book and secured it with a woven band. They had eaten dinner and she had cleared it away. The dishwasher was purring in her granite-and-maplewood kitchen, the central heating had come on, the telephone obstinately withheld its chirrup. Ruby had been gone since yesterday afternoon. She had slipped out of the house without a word to anyone.
Just to break the silence she asked, ‘Would you like a drink, darling? A whisky, or anything?’
‘No thanks.’ Andrew didn’t even look up.
‘I’ll go and … see if Ed’s all right with his homework.’
Lesley went slowly up the stairs. At the top she hesitated, then tapped on her son’s door: ‘Hello?’
Ed was sitting at his table. The television was on at the foot of his bed, but he had his back to it and she saw an exercise book and coloured pencils and an encyclopaedia open in front of him.
‘How’s it going?’
‘OK.’ His thick fair hair, the same colour as his father’s, stuck up in a tuft at the front and made him look like a placid bird. He was the opposite of Ruby in every single respect. He rolled a pencil between his thumb and forefinger now and Lesley was aware that he was politely waiting for her to go away and leave him in peace.
‘No word from Ruby,’ she said. ‘I really thought she’d ring this evening.’
Ed nodded, looking thoughtful. ‘You know, I don’t think we should worry. She’s probably staying in town with one of her mates. It’s not like it’s the first time she’s just forgotten to come home, is it?’
For an eleven-year-old, Edward was remarkably well thought-out.
‘No,’ Lesley agreed.
‘Have you tried her mobile again?’
Only a dozen times. ‘Still turned off.’
‘Well, I think we should just tell ourselves that no news is good news. She’ll probably ring you tomorrow.’
‘Yes. All right, darling. I’ll pop in later and say goodnight.’
‘OK.’ He had his nose in his book again before the door closed.
Lesley went along the landing to another door at the far end. The thick sisal matting, expensively rubber-backed, absorbed the sound of her footsteps. She leaned against the handle for a moment, then walked into the room.
It was dark and stuffy, and the room’s close smell had a distinctly brackish quality to it.
Lesley had already looked in here two or three times during the day but the otherness of Ruby’s bedroom, the way it seemed to rebuff her, never failed to take her by surprise. She felt cautiously along the wall for the light switch, then clicked it on.
The smell was from Ruby’s collection of shells. She had lost interest in adding to it at least eight years ago but the cowries and spindles never quite gave up the traces of fish and salt locked in their pearly whorls. The wall cabinets that Lesley had had put up to display them contained a jumbled, teetering mass of sandy jars and broken conches. The collection had never been properly
