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Uncle Rex? She’s up to something! I can see it in her beady eyes.’
    â€˜You kill her and who’s gonna look after your mama when they lock you up?’
    I pulled away from Mae and sat on the bed, catching my reflection in Maman’s bevelled dressing-table mirror. My eyes looked wild.
    Everyone called me Ruby, but that was my pet name. My real name was Vivienne — Vivienne de Villeray. Maman said she couldn’t remember how I’d gotten the name Ruby and it must have been because of the pretty gemstone, but Mae said it was because when I was a baby I used to scream and turn ruby red until I got what I wanted. The name stayed, although I could no longer scream for my demands.
    I turned away from my reflection. I was only seventeen and yet I felt worldly compared to Maman. Couldn’t she see that Aunt Elva was a bad woman who would steal the food off a baby’s plate if she wanted it? If I was a man I would have thrown her out, but I was a young woman who’d been brought up to ‘behave’. It was utterly ridiculous that I had to act like a charming and proper lady when we had no money to fund such genteel appearances.
    My gaze fell to the row of medicine bottles lined up on the dressing table. When I was a child, enticing crystal perfume dispensers and a silver brush set used to sit there instead. The dresser and mirror would bring us a tidy sum, but I couldn’t sell it. Maman loved beauty and I couldn’t take every last vestige of it away from her, especially not now. She was one of those fragile, sensitive souls who needed beauty the way the rest of us needed food and water.
    â€˜Aunt Elva wants to send me to the convent,’ I told Mae. ‘I heard her talking about it to Uncle Rex. She said it was the only future for a “girl in my position”.’
    Mae put her arm around me and stroked my hair the way she used to do when she was my nursemaid instead of our housekeeper. ‘Now, don’t be silly,’ she said, laughing gently.‘You in a convent? Lord have mercy on the sisters! No, your Uncle Rex won’t allow that. He likes you and your mama too much. Besides, you’re the prettiest girl in town. You’re going to find yourself a good man to marry.’
    Dear Uncle Rex. While my father had been a gadabout Southern dandy who wore his jet-black hair slicked behind his ears, Uncle Rex was stocky and wore pin-striped suits like a man of business. He spoke in measured tones and was polite without ever resorting to my father’s honeyed flattery. In my mind, he was the only reliable man in the de Villeray family and I loved him for it. After my father died, my uncle started discreetly putting money for housekeeping and living expenses in a jar on our mantelpiece. But now Maman was sick, that money wasn’t enough and Aunt Elva was watching him like a hawk.
    â€˜You don’t give these people another cent,’ she’d told him one day in front of us. ‘If Desiree can afford to make a debutante dress like that for Ruby, then she can afford to pay her own way.’
    Never mind that we’d sold our last pieces of silverware to pay for the dress material. I hadn’t wanted to debut, considering our circumstances, but Maman had insisted. ‘It’s the most beautiful night of a young girl’s life,’ she’d told me.
    â€˜It was only right for Ruby to debut,’ Uncle Rex had replied to Aunt Elva. ‘She’s beautiful and at the right age to marry.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t see any suitors from good families knocking down the door for her hand!’ his wife had retorted.
    I cringed at the memory. I loved Uncle Rex for his kindness, but Aunt Elva was correct in her summing up of the situation. To the chagrin of the other debutantes, especially Aunt Elva’s own frumpy daughter, Eugenie, I had been the belle of the ball. My dress had indeed been exquisite, far more stunning than the other