Dead to Me Read Online Free

said.
    Verity realized that meant having a baby, but she didn’t know babies could come without a couple being married. Until last Christmas she wouldn’t have had the least idea of how they got a baby either – or even wondered about it – but because of what had happened to her, she was now fairly sure it was something like that which made babies.
    ‘You seem to know about so much compared with me,’ Verity said, deciding that she was never going to learn anything new unless she admitted her ignorance.
    ‘I bet you knows loads of stuff what I don’t,’ Ruby said with a little grin. ‘All about other countries, the kings and queens of England, and what makes a “lady”.’
    ‘I suppose I do,’ Verity agreed. She had never been able to understand what point there was in being able to recite the list of kings and queens, long turgid poems, or knowing about the mountains in Africa or the longest river in the world. But knowing about how babies came or what the police did when they found a body could be very useful. ‘Most of the stuff I’ve learned at school seems pointless to me, but maybe there are bits that would be good for you.’
    ‘I’d like to talk nice like you,’ Ruby said wistfully. ‘And to look clean and neat the way you do. Reckon you could make me ladylike?’
    Verity looked hard at her new friend for a moment. Shewas wearing the same boy’s tweed jacket and dirty dress as the day before, but she had made a real effort to look better. Her red hair was combed, she’d even tied it back with a strip of cloth, and her face looked well scrubbed. She wasn’t what anyone would call pretty, but there was something very arresting about her. Maybe it was her green eyes that sparkled with mischief, the few freckles across her small nose, or the way her plump mouth turned up at the corners, as if she was smiling constantly. It was certainly a good face.
    Verity knew that a properly fitting jacket, dress and shoes would transform Ruby. She could easily smuggle these things out of the house for her, but she was reluctant to offer them in case she embarrassed her.
    ‘I’d love to help.’ She reached forward and took Ruby’s hand. ‘If you’d allow it, I’d bring you some clothes and some ribbons for your hair next time we meet, but I’m afraid that might make you feel bad.’
    To her surprise Ruby laughed. ‘It wouldn’t make me feel bad, but if I went ’ome with new togs, ma would ’ave ’em down uncle’s soon as look at you.’
    ‘Why take them to your uncle’s?’ Verity asked.
    Ruby shook her head, as if amused at the question. ‘’E ain’t my uncle, it’s what we call the pawnshop. Don’t suppose you know about that neither. We get money there by taking in things of value. We pay more to get ’em out again.’
    ‘You take clothes into such a place?’ Verity was horrified.
    ‘People like me ma that needs a drink do,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll show you one today, if you like.’
    An hour or two later, Verity had learned about a great many more new things, including pie and eel shops, music halls, and potato and hop picking in Kent. Jellied eels sounded disgusting, but she would like to go to a music hall, and Ruby had made potato and hop picking sound like fun. She’d also peered through a very dusty window of a pawnshop and seen men’s suits, polished boots, a trumpet and assorted jewellery amongst mountains of clothing, bedding and books inside.
    Some of the more conventional sights Ruby had shown her – Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and the statue of Eros in Piccadilly – she’d seen many times before. Also, some of the theatres Ruby pointed out, speaking excitedly about the actors and actresses who had performed there, were ones where Verity had seen plays or shows with her parents. But she got a different perspective by hearing Ruby’s thoughts on them.
    ‘I loves to stand outside theatres and watch the toffs arriving,’ she said outside the Haymarket Theatre.