Free The House by Princes Park by Maureen Lee Page A

so easily into rich people’s ways, though she didn’t talk posh like Mrs Dangerfield.
    The kettle boiled. She got up, switched it off, and made the tea. ‘Do you take sugar?’
    ‘Two spoons, ta. How did your mam and dad die?’
    ‘I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. Sister Cecilia said I wasn’t even a day old when I arrived at the convent.There was a note to say I was called Ruby O’Hagan, that’s all.’
    ‘O’Hagan sounds Irish. Ruby’s nice.’ Jacob blushed.
    ‘So’s Jacob. Would you like some pie?’
    Jacob nodded. ‘I’ll have to be going soon. I’m meeting someone in the pub for a drink.’ He didn’t say it was his future father-in-law.
    ‘Oh!’ Ruby pouted. ‘I thought you’d come for longer. You can come again next week. Come whenever you like, ’cept when Emily’s here. You can tell if the car’s in the drive.’
    ‘OK, ta.’
    The pie finished, Jacob left by the rear door. When he got to the front, he heard music. Looking back, he saw Ruby bending over the gramophone. Suddenly, she turned and began to dance. Jacob stood watching for ages and ages, and it was all he could do to tear himself away.
    From that week on, life for Ruby was no longer dull. Two, three, sometimes four times a week, whenever Emily was out, she would catch the train to Exchange station and explore Liverpool – the centre of the city and its environs. She discovered the Pier Head where ferries sailed across the Mersey to Birkenhead, Seacombe, and best of all, New Brighton where, if she had enough money, she bought fish and chips, ice cream, and made herself pleasantly sick on the fairground.
    ‘I hope you’re not coming down with something,’ Emily would say in a concerned voice when she couldn’t eat her tea.
    ‘I’ll eat it later.’ She usually did, better by then. Her appetite was voracious, though she never put on weight. Emily remarked she was growing taller.
    She went by tram to every possible destination: Bootle, Walton Vale, Aigburth, Woolton, Penny Lane, getting off along the way, or at the terminus, where she roamed thestreets, envious of the way people lived so closely together. A few times, she strolled along the Dock Road, possibly the busiest and most frenziedly noisy place of all, with its foreign smells, hooting, blaring traffic nose to tail, the funnels of enormous ships soaring over the dock walls. The pavements were packed with people jabbering away in languages that were rarely English. She had to push her way through, heart lifting at the exhilerating strangeness of every single thing.
    The Dingle remained her favourite place, perhaps because she’d gone there first. A few of the tram conductors got to know her and greeted her as a friend.
    The money for fares Ruby found in Emily’s large collection of handbags where there were always a few coins that would never be missed. It wasn’t stealing. She knew, if asked, Emily would give her money to buy sweets or comics or coloured pencils from the post office, but possibly not to travel the length and breadth of Liverpool by various means. It seemed less troublesome to help herself to money than tell a lie.
    Sometimes Emily arrived home before her and when she got in Ruby would say she’d been for a walk.
    ‘In the dark, dear!’
    ‘It was light when I left. I didn’t realise I’d walked so far.’ Emily didn’t notice she always made the same excuse.
    Jacob usually turned up in the evenings when Emily was out. Since the night he had seen Ruby dance, Jacob had discovered that sitting in the Wainwrights’, as he did most nights, with Audrey, her mam and dad, and two younger sisters, talking or playing cards, drinking tea and eating Mrs Wainwright’s rather dry home-made scones, then retiring with Audrey to the stuffy parlour to exchange a few chaste kisses, had lost what little thrall it had. It had never held much, but seemed the thing to do when you were courting.
    He still felt uncomfortable in Brambles with its