A Girl Like Her (Ravenswood Book 1)

by Talia Hibbert

  Evan arched a brow. “Why? Are you going to steal all my shit and hide it in your lair? Also known as the flat next door?”

  “Maybe,” she said lightly. “I mean, I might steal your bed.”

  “You don’t need to steal my bed.” After dragging on a shirt, he leant down to kiss her. Her lips were soft and warm, gliding over his with aching gentleness, and when he pulled back, she was smiling.

  “Are you saying I can use your bed whenever I want?” She teased.

  “Yeah. But also because I’m gonna fix yours after work.”

  Ruth’s jaw dropped. “Fix it?”

  “Yep.” He found a jacket and slung it on. “Just need to drill the slats into the frame and cut you a new support beam. There’s a lumber yard next to the forge. I can probably grab something there.”

  “But..” She spluttered. “You said you couldn’t fix it!”

  “No I didn’t. I said you could sleep with me.”

  “You… prick!”

  He grinned. “I think it was a very charitable offer. It’s not like I could’ve fixed it last night.”

  “Charitable,” she repeated, giving him a look. But he heard the laughter in her voice and saw the tilt of her lips that she tried so hard to suppress.

  “Yeah. Listen, I have to go,” he said, searching for his wallet.

  “You walking?”

  “At this rate, I’d better drive.”

  “Great,” she said. “You can take me home later.”

  Evan paused in his search, turning to stare at her. “Home as in…?”

  “Home,” she repeated. “From town. I’m going in this afternoon to do some things.”

  He blinked. “You are?”

  “Yes.” After a moment, when he continued staring, Ruth rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you running late?”

  Right. He spotted his wallet on the dresser and snatched it up. “Just… be careful.” Don’t get into fights with Amazonian women.

  “In case I get chased with pitchforks, you mean?”

  “Something like that.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “Text me when you… well, text me on a regular basis.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  He snorted. Said goodbye. Tried not to worry, and failed.

  Ruth took her time getting ready that morning. Which is to say, she dozed for an hour or three after Evan left, helped herself to Earl Grey and English muffins, and, just for the hell of it, used a shit-ton of his lemongrass body wash.

  Because she could, because he wouldn’t mind, because he’d given her his key.

  He loved her. Funny how that knowledge left her both sober and elated all at once.

  It was around midday when she finally dragged herself over to her own flat, locking Evan’s door carefully. She hung his key up on a coat peg beside her own before heading to her bedroom.

  There was a tense moment when she forgot that her bed was a rickety heap, tried to sit down on it, stopped herself halfway, and thought she might go toppling into a stack of comics as she twisted. Luckily, she just landed on her arse instead.

  It was, she decided, as good a place as any for this phone call.

  Hannah answered the phone with a bright and chirpy, “He-llo?” Which told Ruth that she had company.

  “Where are you?” Ruth asked.

  “You’ve just caught me on my break,” Hannah said. Her voice was still unreasonably perky. She was probably sitting by a manager or something.

  Hannah liked to put her best foot forward. Continuously. Even at a minimum-wage waitressing job she desperately wanted to leave.

  “Right. You working tomorrow?”

  “I am available tomorrow afternoon, from around five o’clock,” Hannah said smoothly. “Can I help you with something?” What do you need?

  Ruth smiled slightly. “I just thought we could go somewhere. Out.”

  There was a pause. Then Hannah said carefully, “I am only available in the evening.”

  Because Ruth didn’t really go out in the evenings. She occasionally went out during the day, when most people were at work. In the evenings, Ravenswood was really busy, and things like… well, things like that nightmare with Hayley occurred.

  Ruth forced herself to shrug, even though Hannah couldn’t see. She was method acting, or something along those lines. She was doing a Hannah; behaving as if she was already who she wanted to be. “That’s okay.”

  “It is?” Hannah sounded dubious.

  “Yeah. I go where I want now. It’s this new thing I’m trying.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said finally. “Well, that would be lovely. I approve, actually.”

  “Cool. I’ll call you later.”

  Because right now, she had plans to attend to.

  After fixing her hair, Ruth rifled through her wardrobe for an embarrassingly long amount of time. Usually, her choice in clothes revolved around the way a fabric felt against her skin, whether the cut would make her feel like she was suffocating in strangeness. On the rare occasion the she left the house, she had to take all of that into account, and also try to look…

  “What?” She mused out loud. “Try to look what? Respectable?” A slight smile curving her lips, she shook her head. That wouldn’t do at all.

  And just like that, her choice was obvious. She pulled out an old, worn, Captain America tee and a soft pair of leggings. She’d go about her business, as she had a right to, and she’d look like herself while she did it.

  The library fell silent as Ruth entered.

  Actually, no; she was probably imagining that. Definitely imagining that. It was a bloody library. It had been silent in the first place.

  She kept her spine straight and her footsteps steady as she approached the front desk. Penny Clarke was there, tapping away at the computer, her gaze occasionally flicking to a handwritten list on the desk beside her. But Ruth knew that, soon enough, Penny’s customer service Spidey-senses would kick in.

  Sure enough, a moment later, Penny looked up. Her smile was bright, welcoming, and an automatic reflex that faltered as soon as she saw Ruth.

  Just keep going. One foot in front of the other.

  Ruth plastered a polite smile onto her face as she approached. “Hi, Penny,” she said quietly.

  There was a pause. A pause in which Ruth worried that this arguably reckless decision was going to backfire awfully. She became acutely aware of the pressure of eyes on her, all around her—from the old Hykeham sisters by the audiobook section to Tim Mosely, fluttering his paper loudly by the window.

  But Ruth focused on Penny. And so, she saw the exact moment when Penny’s shock dissolved into… pleasure?

  “Ruth Kabbah!” She cried. Except Penny was more soft-spoken than anyone Ruth had ever met, and so her cry was at the level of the average person’s murmur. “Fancy seeing you,” Penny continued, her round face splitting into a smile.

  She flicked off the brake on her chair and began wheeling around the counter. Ruth, moving as if in a dream, found herself bending to accept her old mentor’s hug.

  “I haven’t seen you in an age,” Penny said. She kept a grip on Ruth’s arm even after they separated, her grasp firm and motherly. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “Nowhere,” Ruth said, honestly enough.

  “I suppose not! My Norm said he was round just the other day, seeing to your shower. I said, ‘Did you tell her?’ I’m always asking after you, I am. He says—”

  Penny, like her husband, was a talkative woman. Despite being quiet, she said a lot. She couldn’t exactly be called a gossip, because she wasn’t ever malicious; rather, her mouth often ran away with her. Ruth let the reported conversation wash over her in soothing waves.

  When a lull finally arose, Ruth dredged up the words she’d practiced. “Penny, I wanted to talk to you about…” She cleared her throat. “About volunteering. Again. I don’t know if you need anyone—”

  “Ooh, yes,” Penny beamed. “Of course we do! You know we always need volunteers, especially
since you girls, ah, left.” Her beaky nose wrinkled. “Nasty business, that.”

  For a second, Ruth’s heart stopped and her sisterly hackles rose, but then Penny added, “The bloody council, so old-fashioned. We could’ve had a qualified nursery nurse running Toddler Time! But nooo, five minutes behind bars and all of a sudden she’s useless.”

  Ruth didn’t bother to correct the behind bars comment, or to point out that the council had no control over the law. Truthfully, she couldn’t exactly speak. So she hummed agreeably instead.

  Penny tutted as she returned to the desk, pulling open a deep drawer. She heaved out a huge file and rifled through its alphabetised sections until she found the correct form. “Here you are, my love. You know how to fill it out.”

  Ruth stared. She hadn’t expected… well, she didn’t know what she’d expected. She’d vacillated between envisioning a warm welcome and a complete freeze-out, caught between her knowledge of Penny’s character and her soul-deep certainty that no-one would want to oppose the collective opinion of Ravenswood.

  She’d begun to suspect, recently, that her certainty in these matters was… well, wrong. And here, she supposed, was the evidence.

  As she filled in the application form, Ruth considered the wild possibility that Penny might be utterly oblivious to the town’s general attitude. She checked boxes and signed dates and thought that maybe the last two years had simply… passed Penny by.

  But when she returned to the front desk to hand in the form—which, amongst other things, confirmed her consent to undergo a legal background check—Penny leaned forward. Her voice even lower than usual, she said, “I’m glad you’re back, Ruthie. Me and the girls missed you. Bugger what anyone else has to say.”

  Ruth blinked back unexpected tears. They had snuck up on her, and now they were close to breaking free in the middle of the town library. Good Lord. How absolutely mortifying.

  She shoved them down ruthlessly and murmured, “Thanks.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome, love. You’ll hear back about that DBS check.”

  Ruth nodded, sobering. She’d pass the DBS check, and soon enough, she’d be volunteering again. Introducing the town’s kids to comics and fantasy novels the way she’d used to. But Hannah, whose entire life had revolved around working with kids, wouldn’t be able to.

  Some problems could be fixed. Others couldn’t.

  Chapter Thirty

  Ruth wandered around town aimlessly. She could’ve gone somewhere—the Greengage, maybe—but it had been a while since she’d walked through Ravenswood just for the pleasure of it. And really, if one ignored the large number of irritating inhabitants, it was a beautiful place. She’d missed it.

  Plus, she had time to kill.

  So she wasted an hour at the park, studying the blooming tulips and following the paths drawn through the thick, verdant copse. By the time 5 p.m. drew near, Ruth had counted seven grey squirrels. No red. She and Hannah had a twelve-year-long bet about who would be the first to see a red squirrel, and apparently, Ruth would not win that bet today.

  But the thought of Hannah made Ruth pause to lean against an oak’s wide trunk and pull her phone from her waistband—no pockets.

  Most people would say that Ruth should call her sister. And, while Ruth disliked phone calls—it was hard to really hear someone’s words, when you couldn’t see their face—she made them often enough.

  Well; not often. But she could, was the point. If she wanted.

  Only, she didn’t want to now. Hannah was at work anyway, and one phone call per day was quite enough, and—

  Well. Ruth wanted to say something important, and important things were so much easier to write down than to say out loud. So she texted.

  What you said on Sunday was right. I’m going to do better.

  She paused for a moment, pursing her lips, looking down at those words as she organised the next few in her mind.

  I think I’ve been selfish. I concentrated on feeling guilty about you instead of actually helping you. And I isolated myself without thinking about how that would affect you.

  Yeah. That sounded right. Ruth read over the message again and felt pleased; the words actually conveyed what she wanted them to. That didn’t happen very often.

  She added the most important part.

  I’m sorry and I love you.

  Then she sent it.

  After a last look around the park, Ruth reached down to pluck one of the tulips that had so captured her attention. She felt slightly bad as she snapped the crisp stem, but the things literally carpeted the grass. No-one would miss this single bloom. More importantly, it would grow back. It would recover.

  Things usually did.

  Hannah rarely used her phone at work, so Ruth wasn’t expecting a reply for hours. She got one within ten minutes, though.

  Hannah: I love you too. So much.

  Ruth wound her way to the outskirts of the town’s industrial estate, following the low wall that circled the Burne & Co. forge. They had a showroom in town, but this was where the blacksmiths worked. She knew because, once upon a time, she’d been forbidden to come here by Daniel.

  Well, Daniel could get fucked.

  She searched out Evan’s crappy old car and perched on the wall beside it, waiting for him to appear. As she waited, Ruth rolled the tulip’s bright green stem between her fingers. Its sunshine-yellow bell was streaked with scarlet. The colours reminded her of ripe fruit.

  As she trailed a finger over one silken petal, a shadow fell over her. Ruth tensed.

  She looked up to find a vaguely familiar man standing before her, his hands in his pockets. She studied his dark hair, his pale skin and piercing eyes, for a long moment before placing him.

  “Zachary Davis,” she said, speaking the words aloud as they came to her.

  He smiled. It was a cute and crooked tilt of the lips that made him look almost boyish, despite his size. Apparently, Burne & Co. only hired enormous people.

  “I didn’t think you knew my name,” he replied.

  Oh, she knew his name. She knew his name because he was the town’s male equivalent to Ruth—though, being a man, he was tacitly approved of rather than ostracised. She remembered his name because, despite his reputation, he had never tried to get in her pants. Or lied about getting in her pants.

  Which made him unusual for a young, single man in Ravenswood.

  But instead of admitting any of that, she tilted her chin defiantly and said, “Of course I do. Don’t you know mine?”

  “Yep.” Ah. She’d walked right into that. But then he said, his explanation unexpected: “You’re Evan’s girlfriend.”

  She blinked. “Am I?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  She twirled the tulip. He’d taken the words as denial, when really they’d been shock.

  You’re Evan’s girlfriend. He’d said it so casually. Imagine that. She was with Evan, really with Evan, and it was not a secret.

  “Yes,” she said finally, firmly. “I am.”

  His little, crooked smile became a bigger, crooked smile. “I was in the year below you at school,” he said.

  Ruth, conscious of the typical escalation of polite conversation, was confused by the subject change. But still, she said, “I know.”

  He leant against Evan’s car. “I always thought you were cool.”

  Nothing could’ve possibly shocked her more. Ruth was impressed with herself for not falling off the wall. She maintained her composure and her seat, and said with clear scepticism, “You did?”

  “Yeah. You always used to iron Storm patches onto your rucksack. And you had those cool glasses.”

  Ah, yes; her thick, turquoise, milk-bottle glasses. She thought they were cool too. No-one else had.

  Except Zachary Davis, apparently.

  “My mother ironed on the patches,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to use the iron.”

  His lips quirked, and she realised that she’d given unnecessary personal information. Oops. It wa
s his fault for being so… non-threatening. He was kind of like Evan, without the intimidating sex appeal.

  Although, she thought wryly, Evan’s sex appeal didn’t seem so intimidating anymore.

  “Hey,” a familiar voice called. Zach stepped aside to display Evan himself, coming through the forge’s front doors with a wide smile on his face. He reached the car with a speed that belied his easy stride, elbowing Zach in the ribs. “You chatting up my girl?”

  “I’m confessing my childhood hero-worship,” Zach said. “It was nice to… officially meet you, Ruth.”

  Because in this town, you could know someone without ever actually talking to them.

  She smiled. “You too.”

  Then Zach clapped Evan on the back and said, “See you later, mate.”

  “Say hi to your mum for me.”

  Zach nodded and wandered off. He seemed to do everything with an oddly casual air. In fact, she wondered if he knew where he was going, or if he was just… walking.

  Then he stopped by a grey Golf and unlocked the door. Apparently, he had indeed known where he was going.

  Ruth hopped off the little wall and moved closer to Evan, feeling herself smile. It was a ridiculous and involuntary smile that she wasn’t in the mood to stifle. In fact, after her success at the library, she felt more relaxed than she had in a while.

  He slid an arm around her waist and kissed the top of her head. “You’re cheerful.”

  “I suppose I am.” She held up the flower. “Want this?”

  “Is it for me?”

  Ruth bit her lip on a smile and shrugged.

  Evan’s grin widened. “You got me a flower. How romantic.”

  “Don’t get carried away.”

  “I think I’ll press it,” he said, a teasing glint in his eyes, “and treasure it forever.”

  “Behave yourself. Are you busy tomorrow night?”

  Evan plucked the flower from her fingers before unlocking the car. “Me and Zach were talking about a drink after work. Why?” He opened her door, waiting for her to get in.

  “Well, I wanted to go somewhere with Hannah. Somewhere in Ravenswood. Like, the Unicorn.”

  Evan nodded and shut the door behind her, holding up a finger. He was opening the drivers’ door moments later, sliding into his seat. “I see. Did everything go okay today?”