Iris and Ruby. Rosie Thomas

a bed swathed in white curtains and a couple of wooden chests. A telephone stood on the table on one side of the bed, and on the other there actually was a framed photograph of a man and a woman. Managing not to stare at it, she walked deliberately round to the opposite side and picked up the receiver. After two or three attempts, she was listening to her mother’s mobile ringing.

      Lesley answered immediately, of course.

      ‘Ruby? Ruby, are you all right? Thank God you’ve called. Tell me, what’s happened? Where are you?’

      Ruby spoke, briefly.

      Her mother’s voice rose. ‘You are where?’

      She closed her eyes.

       CHAPTER THREE

      When I replace the receiver I see that my hands are shaking.

      I return to the other room where the child is waiting for me.

      ‘What did she say?’ she asks.

      The anxiety in her round face tells me how much she does not want to be packed off back to England. I sit down to collect my thoughts and she fidgets with impatience, twisting her legs and picking at the stud in her nose.

      I can give her the gist of my conversation with Lesley, but there is so much else that I would find harder to put into words.

      ‘Leave your nose alone or you will set up an infection. Your mother has been worried about you. I told her that I thought you would be safe enough here.’

      At once, the anxious expression breaks up into a smile that contains glee and satisfaction and a measure of triumph.

      I am beginning to understand that Ruby’s innocence is shot through with calculation. Maybe the innocence itself is calculated. And I realise that the notion interests me more than anything has done for quite a long time.

      ‘So I can stay for a bit?’

      Our separate conversations with Lesley have had a further curious effect, of course. That she is in opposition to both of us makes partial allies out of Ruby and me.

      ‘I would like a drink. A proper drink, I mean. Will you call Mamdooh?’ I say.

      I am stalling for time because with part of myself I fear the loss of privacy that having her here will inevitably mean. I want to be alone to concentrate on the past, in order to hold on to it for as long as I can. Yet maybe the offer of help that Ruby made is less naïve than it sounded; maybe there is something in her idea.

      Wearing his disapproval like an extra robe, Mamdooh brings in a tray with two glasses, a jug of water and a decanter with a couple of fingers of whisky in the bottom. I have no idea when I last drank Scotch.

      ‘Mum-reese, you will have plenty water with this?’

      ‘No, thank you, I’ll take it neat. And a decent measure, please. That’s better.’

      Ruby accepts her glass with small enthusiasm. ‘I don’t really like whisky.’

      ‘What do you drink?’

      ‘Depends. Vodka and Red Bull?’

      ‘What’s that? I’m sure it’s disgusting. I don’t have anything of the kind anyway, so you’ll have to make do with Scotch.’

      We both laugh and Mamdooh peers at us in surprise.

      When we are alone again she draws up a stool and sits close to my chair. The sun has set, the street outside is noisy once again with shouts and music as people prepare the iftar. It is already twenty-four hours since Ruby arrived.

      As I taste my drink – rolling the unaccustomed spirit in my mouth – I am thinking about Lesley.

      It is some time since I have spoken to my daughter, I can’t remember how long exactly, but it must be months. Whenever we do talk there are always polite words that fail to build a bridge. And the space between us, that has always been there. From the very beginning.

      Lesley was born in the middle of a grey, sad English winter. My pregnancy had been unplanned, my husband and I hastily bought a house to be a home for our unexpected family. From the windows there were views of sodden fields, and ponds mirroring the weeping skies. In this house, the baby and I spent long days alone together while my husband was working in the City.

      Lesley cried unceasingly, for no reason that I could discern. I had completed my medical training by that time, and raw as I was as a doctor I knew for certain that she was not ill or even failing to thrive. I couldn’t feed her myself, although I persevered for almost a month, but she accepted a bottle. She gained weight and passed the developmental milestones at the right times, but she was never a placid or contented baby.

      I don’t deny the probability that she absorbed my unhappiness and reflected it back at me. I tried to hold the infant close, tried to soothe her yelling by rocking her in my arms as I paced through the silent house, but she would not be pacified. Her tiny body went rigid and her screams were like scalpel blades slitting my skin. When Gordon came home he would take her from me and she would whimper and nuzzle and then fall asleep, exhausted. The silence came like a blessing.

      As soon as I could, I found a nurse for her and took a job at the local hospital.

      And from there we have gone on.

      ‘Well?’ Ruby demands. ‘Can I stay?’

      I turn my glass, looking at the dimples of light trapped within it.

      ‘Can I?’ she repeats.

      ‘What did your mother say to you?’

      An exasperated sigh and a shrug. ‘She said she was about to call the police and report me missing. She said I am irresponsible, and thoughtless, and if I can’t think of her I could perhaps consider my little brother, who was worried sick about me. I don’t think he was, by the way. Worrying about people’s so not Ed’s thing. She said I should go home and behave better and get a job and dah dahdah, be a different person. Get a personality transplant maybe. I’ve heard it all before, about five zillion times.’

      ‘She was worried,’ I repeat.

      I’m on unsafe ground here, caught between what I know I ought to say and what I feel. Which is recognition and a certain amount of sympathy.

      We look at each other over our whisky glasses.

      ‘You see, the trouble is that I’m crap at everything,’ Ruby quietly says. ‘At least, all the things that Lesley and Andrew rate. Not that I’d admit that to very many people, actually.’

      ‘I don’t think you are,’ I tell her.

      ‘Thanks.’ Her tone is dismissive but her eyes implore me.

      ‘All right,’ I say slowly, because it is dawning on me that I do rather want her to stay. At least, I don’t want her to go right now. It’s not that I am lonely, but I would like to hear her talk some more. ‘I will telephone Lesley again, and ask if you may have her permission to spend a few days with me.’

      She hugs her knees and rocks on the stool. ‘Fantastic.’ She grins.

      I finish my whisky first. My hands are steady now.

      Lesley answers the telephone. ‘Hello?’

      ‘It’s Iris,’ I repeat.

      ‘Mummy, tell me what’s really going on?’

      I never felt comfortable with mummy; it was Lesley who always insisted on it.

      Into the space I say careful sentences about it being a pleasure to meet Ruby, how Lesley would be doing a favour to me if she were to allow her to stay for a few days in Cairo. Now that she’s here, I say, we might as well turn it to advantage. The Egyptian Museum. An outing to the Pyramids