So I'm writing this as a form of confession. Not because I've done anything wrong but because I'm gonna stand by and do nothing.
I guess my story starts way back when I was about 6 or 7. I was out playing in the back yard with my ball. Just hoofing it about when it went flying into my neighbours. The fence between the two houses was very tall to a seven year old and the only gap in it was next to a great big tree growing in the middle of the boundary fence. The fence had been erected either side as whoever originally built the houses had obviously decided the tree was too nice to cut down. So in my determined 7 year old way I slithered in between the tree and the fence nearly getting stuck and catching my leg on a nail on the way. I popped through with one final effort and was just about to inspect my wounds when a voice from under the tree said 'You're bleeding'. On further inspection, there sat a little girl roughly my age.
This didn't come as any great surprise because I already knew about Ruby. I'd heard my mother discussing our neighbours with her friends. Apparently her dad was a drinker and her mother had run off when she was tiny. Sometimes we'd hear him yelling at Ruby when their windows were open. My mom would just tut and shake her head and say 'Poor little mite'. No one ever thought to step in though. That was just how it was.
'Come in the house and wash that cut' she said and I followed her meekly. While our houses must have been the same when they were first built, hers was dilapidated and scruffy, where mine was bright and gleaming. She was just mopping up the blood from my leg when the front door banged. She went white and froze, and before either of us had time to think, her father came storming into the kitchen. Without a word he slapped her across the face sending her flying across the room. 'Get out of my house' he growled at me and I fled, back through the yard and through the fence as fast as my legs could carry me.
That night the yelling from their house was worse. I lay in bed and covered my ears with my pillow. The next day I felt I had to find out how she was. I slithered through the fence (more carefully this time) and sat under the big tree and waited for her and in due time she came out of the house. She was looking pale but seemed happy to see me. I didn't want to get her into trouble but she explained that that morning she'd had a good long talk with her dad, and he'd agreed to stop drinking. She told me the tree was a magic tree and if you sat under it and wished hard enough the things you wished for came true. She'd wished that her dad would stop hitting her and now he wasn't going to any more. What more did I need as evidence? Plus she was a whole six months older than me as it turned out so I was slightly in awe of her wisdom.
This became a pattern for us. After school we'd sit under the wishing tree and play stupid games or as we got older we'd talk. Sometimes she'd put her head on my shoulder while I told her all about my day and other times we'd share the headphones on my MP3 player and listen to music. She always asked for Ruby by the Kaiser Chiefs. She playfully told me they'd written it for her.
I can only remember ever having one argument and that was over my 13th birthday party. When I invited her she'd promised to come but she never appeared. I even braved knocking on the door (my mom would have killed me if I slithered through the fence in my best party clothes), but her dad said she wasn't home. After the party I got changed and slithered through the fence and there she was sitting under the tree. I was hurt and said as much. What kind of friend was she any way to blow me off that way? 'Look at me Jack. I mean really look at me' she said 'I dont belong with your friends'. And I did look at her. The long wild dark hair tumbling down her back, the dark smudges that were her eyes, the clean but washed out dress that was obviously meant for a ten year old as it barely covered her butt. 'I don't have party clothes and I couldn't bring you a present. I'm sorry'
In that moment my heart thunked in my chest and I fell in love as deeply as any 13 year old can. 'One day Ill take you away from this' I promised. She sat under the wishing tree and said she wished I would.
The last conversation I had with Ruby was again sitting under the wishing tree. I was heading off for university. I asked her why she didn't leave too, but she said she had to stick around. 'I have to be here to remind my dad what a monster he is when he drinks' she said 'but one day I'm gonna be free and leave this place. I havent forgotten what you promised'
Neither had I, but the heart can be fickle especially when its living in your pants and during my time at uni I met a girl called Emma. Just before I graduated we found out that Emma was pregnant, not really part of my life plan but I was happy enough. We moved back to my folks and I got a job in my dad's factory and we married. The house next door was dilapidated and apparently Ruby's dad had died and she had gone. During the next six months I bought the house off my folks and they downsized into something smaller as neither of them were getting any younger they said.
Then things started to get a little weird. To begin with Emma and I weren't getting on very well. Marry in haste repent at leisure as they say. Then one night last summer we were sitting in the garden. My folks had put a garden swing under the wishing tree. It was no longer a thing of beauty, it was gnarled and dead. We were sitting there having one of those conversations where it turned out that everything wrong with Emma's life was my fault, when during a break in the conversation, she suddenly put her head on my shoulder and started humming 'Ruby'. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I just about leapt out of the seat. 'Oh God you're giving me one of my heads' she snapped and stomped back into the house. I thought about that a lot over the next few months. My Ruby and how much I missed her. What had really happened to her?
So yesterday things came to a head. Over the winter the wishing tree had become unstable. It was dead and during a high wind a huge branch came smashing into the yard. I'd hired someone to come take it down. It was still relatively early in the morning when I got a call at work from the police. A body had been found buried under the wishing tree. The body of a 7 year old girl. My Ruby. I flew home. It couldn't be her. I'd known her until she was much older than that. When I got home my folks were at mine. The police had called them too as they were neighbours at the time of the 'incident'.
Even my parents remembered that night. The argument after her dad had found me in the house, the screaming of a small child, they also remembered they hadn't seen her since. They had informed the authorities at the time, something I knew nothing about, but her father had said her mother had taken her away and no one could prove otherwise. I thought about her telling me he couldn't hit her any more, and that long conversation they'd had the next morning. She stayed to keep him off the drink. I guess if anything would, it would be the nagging ghost of the child you murdered. Now that her body had been found I wondered if Ruby was finally free.
So back to my confession.
Emma has been away for a few days with our little boy, visiting her parents. She said she needed some space and when she first arrived back this morning her intention was to pack up their stuff and leave me. In the space of a couple of hours I've seen a huge change in her. She's usually such a control freak and not a hair out of place, but shes in the other room now, scouring the internet for holiday destinations. Within half an hour of being back she snuggled next to me, put her head on my shoulder and asked if we could finally go away like I'd promised. Her hair is tumbling down her back and she has the Kaiser Chiefs blasting Ruby on the stereo. So what am I gonna do about it? Nothing. Take my wife to see the world like I promised her when she was 13.
