The Lost Sister, Kathleen McGurl [best desktop ebook reader txt] 📗

left the room. She held little hope of being able to get through to Ruby. Her sister had not even welcomed her home.

Upstairs, she found Ruby lying on her back on her bed, in the room she and Ruby used to share. That meant Lily was still in the small room, and if Emma was to share that with her it’d be a tight fit. Best not to complain, though, and risk Ruby shouting at her again.

‘Rubes? Can I come in?’ Emma tapped on the open door.

‘Suppose you can.’

Emma slipped through the door, closing it behind her. She’d caught a glimpse of Lily’s face, wide-eyed, peeking out from her room. She wanted to talk to Ruby alone, first.

She moved a pair of boots off an old bentwood chair and sat down. ‘Rubes, what’s happening? Ma seems unhappy. Is there anything I can help with? I don’t want to be … bossy … but if I can help at all?’ She let the sentence tail away, hoping it might encourage Ruby to open up.

‘You can’t help. I’m just trying to have a life, that’s all. You’ve got one – you’re away on your ship, having adventures, seeing the world. I’m stuck here in dull old Southampton, working my fingers to the bone scrubbing floors in that grotty old hotel, coming home to do the same here as well as play nursemaid to my sister. All I does, that makes Ma so despairing of me, is go out after work with a few friends, when I can.’

‘Going out where?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business, but we goes out for tea, or for a walk in the park, or sometimes to a pub.’ Ruby lifted her chin high on the last word.

Ah, Emma understood now. It was the idea of Ruby, who was still just 17 even though she looked much older, going to a pub that Ma would be objecting to. Pubs were for men. Working men, with dirty clothes and blackened hands, men who went for a few pints after their shifts ended, before going home to their worn-out wives and snot-nosed children. Men who kept everything going – miners, shipbuilders, road-menders, labourers. Men whose work was essential, but who were not what Ma considered suitable companions for her daughters. Pa had been that little step up – having a ‘clean’ job as a hotel porter – and now Ma liked to think she was better than the other women in the street, better than the wives of those men. And yet she worked as a laundress and had encouraged her daughters to work in hotels, as chambermaids.

‘It’s the pub that’s upsetting her, is it?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘That and the crowd I goes with.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Some people from the hotel. And some people they knows. Big crowd.’ Ruby turned away, and it was clear Emma would get nothing more from her now.

‘All right. Well, I’ve done what Ma asked and had a chat with you. Maybe all that’s needed is you tell Ma if you’re going to be late home so she doesn’t worry. I can’t see what’s so bad about going around with a group of people, or going to the pub with them now and again. Just maybe try not to do anything that makes Ma worry, especially if Lily’s having a bad day.’ Emma tried not to let her tone become bossy, but as the eldest sister it was her place to advise her younger siblings and help them steer a safe path through life. She wanted only what was best for them.

But Ruby, it seemed, was taking her good intentions the wrong way. She was staring at Emma, a look of disdain on her face. ‘Ems, you have no bloody idea, and no right to go telling me what to do. If you’ll kindly leave me alone now, so’s I can sleep. And hurry up and bugger off back to sea, out of my life, would you?’

Emma stared back at her sister, wondering where she’d learned to swear like that, but realised there was nothing she could say to make things better. She stood wordlessly and left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

On the landing Lily was hovering, half in and half out of her room. Her eyes widened as Emma came out of Ruby’s room, and she beckoned Emma across into her room – which had an extra bed crammed in under the window. Emma realised that was for her, as Ruby had said she would no longer share a room. ‘Ruby’s like that all the time now,’ Lily said. ‘Won’t talk to anyone. Gets really cross if you ask her who her friends are. Hates doing anything for me, and I wasn’t even that ill this time. Ma’s been trying to hide it all from me, but I’m not stupid and I can see what’s happening. I thought Ruby might talk to you – I’ve been longing for you to come back.’

‘She won’t talk to me,’ Emma said.

Lily nodded. ‘I heard. Wasn’t listening, Ems, but couldn’t help but hear.’

‘I’ll try again in a day or two. Maybe she’ll talk to me before I go back to sea.’ Emma sat down on the extra bed and smiled at Lily. ‘Meanwhile, it’s going to be fun sharing a room with you, isn’t it?’

‘Midnight feasts and pillow fights?’

‘If you’re well enough …’

‘Course I am!’ Lily grabbed her pillow and swung it at Emma, but Emma had anticipated this and managed to get the first hit, eliciting a squeal of excitement and a retaliatory bash with Lily’s own pillow. As the fight escalated Emma resolved to enjoy her stay at home as much as possible. If Ruby wouldn’t take any well-intentioned advice then so be it. She’d just have to find her own way in the world.

Chapter 7

Harriet

‘It’s odd,’ Harriet said to Sheila on the phone the day after the phone call from Davina, ‘the effect finding those photos and the other stuff has had