Blood Ties Read Online Free Page B

she didn’t return the gesture. Instead, she knocked back her drink in two slugs and excused herself, sliding out of the booth.
    Robert watched his wife order two more shots of Jack Daniels. She drank as if she was finishing a cup of lukewarm coffee, one foot resting on the bar rail, her fingers nervously pushing through her blonde hair.
    Bemused by his wife’s behaviour, he refused to allow it to dampen Ruby’s success. He held her hand across the table and played with her fingers as, amongst the child’s excited talk about Greywood College, he tried to guess what was troubling his wife. As she prepared to down yet another shot, he put Ruby’s chatter on hold and went to the bar, coiled his arms around Erin’s waist and whispered in her ear. Erin swallowed the drink anyway and twisted her face round to her husband.
    ‘Fuck it,’ she said blandly.
    Robert recoiled at her whisky-mashed breath.
    ‘Fuck everything.’ She stared hard into her husband’s eyes. ‘Sometimes, just sometimes, I’d like the brick wall not to be there.’ Erin pulled out of Robert’s grip and called across the bar. ‘Ruby, we’re leaving.’
    Robert caught up with and guided Erin as they walked along the pavement, trying to find a cab. It was Ruby who finally managed to secure one in the late afternoon rush. The child climbed in last, silently, gripping her flowers, half staring at her mother and half staring somewhere obscure. Somewhere only she knew. That place, Robert often wondered, where he thought she would rather be.

THREE
    Snow is falling. Only four days until Christmas. Perhaps it’s Jesus inside me. I’ll call him Noel. I turn onto my side because I don’t like the pulsing feeling of the baby pressing on my aorta. I learned that in biology. Aorta. The main vessel to carry oxygenated blood from the heart. Perhaps I was away on the day we were taught the facts of life. I’m not sure if this means that I’m good at reproduction, because I’m doing it, or I’m bad because I’m doing it. He’s kicking. I pull up my sweater and see the taut, almost see-through skin on my belly dancing, rippling from baby. I love him.
    Snow is collecting on the windowpanes. It’s dark outside. I am standing up now, elbows leaning on the sill, nose fogging the glass, eyes in a spin as the fat icy chips fall to the ground, hypnotising me. The baby is dizzy too, because I stood up quickly, and punches my belly. It hurts.
    Then the knock on my door. Two raps. I’ll wait a moment before answering, to make sure she’s gone. Or it could be him. Yes, it’s Friday, bridge night, so she’ll be out. I open the door and see the tray on the landing carpet. It’s chops again, and mash and carrots and just a drizzle of gravy, as if I got the scrapings from the meat tray.
    ‘Dinner, Noel,’ I say, trying out the name. I carry the tray into my room and we sit on my bed and I feed myself chops. It’s tricky because there’s no room on my knee to balance the tray so I put it on the bed and lean over, hoping I won’t spill any down my sweater. But I do. Gravy on Noel and, as I wipe it off, he kicks again.
    I’ve been in this room for nearly three months. They put a television in here for me, which was a nice thought, and I have my books. Mother brings me flowers once a week, usually on a Friday, and if I’m lucky and good, I’ll get a walk around the garden. Mother and Father don’t know it, but when they both go out I slip downstairs and steal some treats. Last week I pocketed an entire box of Milk Tray and fed myself soft, lint-covered chocolates with a glint in one eye and fear keeping watch in the other.
    Of course, I’ve considered climbing out of the window and dropping into the front garden to run away, but that would hurt Noel and, besides, where would I go?
    In two weeks I’ll have a baby. It seems as if my future ends there, as if my life beyond that point hasn’t been written yet. I don’t know what babies are like. I’ve never