Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

by A. L. Michael

  ‘Is that why it’s been easier to ignore us?’ Evie said simply, meeting Chelsea’s eyes, ‘Because we’re a connection to that world? We’re putting you at risk of being found out?’

  Chelsea shrugged, ‘Maybe it’s nice to have people around me who think it’s okay that I Google the wine list before I go to a restaurant so I sound like I know what I’m talking about, that I have to stop myself from ordering the cheapest thing on the menu and that some days, when he does something nice for me, I’m disgusted by how much it costs, and how little it means to him.’

  The girls sat silently.

  ‘I’m a fucking fraud,’ Chelsea laughed, ‘so let’s drink and forget about it.’

  It seemed that the conversation portion of the evening was over, the bottle of prosecco arrived (followed by another, and another) and the evening stopped being about talking. It stopped being about who they were and who they’d become, and what had happened in those ten years that had passed. It was about three young women dancing to the music, gripping onto each other tightly as they laughed, only worrying about the here and now.

  ***

  ‘Oi, bitch! Who the fuck you think you are, coming up in here like the Queen of fucking Sheba?’

  Evie cringed as she heard Chelsea’s voice ring out across the playground. And of course, there was Chelsea, hand on hip, hair pulled up in a side ponytail, her lank blonde hair swinging as she jutted her chin. Her fingers pointed at Leah Wilson, who turned, her own kohl rimmed eyes looking as if they were about to pop out of her head.

  ‘You better not be talking to me.’

  Chelsea smirked, swiping away a piece of hair that hung down and got caught on her bubblegum lip gloss. ‘Fuck yeah I’m talking to you. I hear you’ve been trying to stick your slutty tongue down my boyfriend’s throat.’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’ Leah raised her heavily plucked eyebrows, ‘That wasn’t what he told me. Told me you were nothing important.’

  Chelsea pulsed a little on her feet, but Evie knew she was better than that. However emotional Chelsea was, however much of a troublemaker, she never lost sight of the plan. Evie would launch herself at the girl, seeing red before she knew what hit her. But Chelsea knew she could do whatever she liked as long as she didn’t pull the first punch.

  ‘That’s funny, that’s what he said about you once he’d finished washing the smell of your skanky perfume off him and came back grovelling.’ Chelsea grinned, ‘That said, we’ve all been slumming, haven’t we?’

  Her cheeky wink seemed to be in slow motion, and suddenly Leah threw herself at Chelsea, letting out a squawk of swear words and mini-screams. Sure that everyone had seen someone else start it, Chelsea got into it, hair pulling, throwing a few good punches and sticking her nails into Leah’s neck.

  Evie considered pulling them apart, but if she got involved in another fight she’d be chucked out, no doubt. And she didn’t doubt Chelsea’s ability to school a bitch. It was hardly the first time – although she was usually more about manipulation and planning than out-and-out fighting – but she’d been let down by yet another bastard boyfriend. Chelsea was queen of the school, except when it came to trusting those same boys who told the same lies. She’d chucked him of course, beaten the crap out of him and spread sufficient rumours about having enough STDs to make his dick fall off, but still… somehow it was easier to take it out on another girl who thought she deserved to take what was yours.

  Of course, when the girls got dragged into the head teacher’s office once again to discuss the importance of “using our words”, they had no doubt that Chelsea Donolly was no better than Leah Wilson. They were both angry little girls from the estate who had the propensity to be bitches. Mr Lanyard, the head teacher, had more than once been heard bellowing that they were wasting the tax payers’ money even bothering to try and teach some of the ‘little bastards’, because the boys would end up in the army, and the girls would get knocked up and just on the estate raising kids as horrible as them. And as outraged as Evie was upon hearing this rumour, she almost couldn’t blame him. It seemed like there was no other choice but to repeat history. It would be a few months until Chelsea proved her wrong.

  ***

  When they arrived home that night, it wasn’t as late as they had thought. They’d started drinking earlier than they expected, and as Chelsea so sweetly pointed out, they were old now. Mollie and Evie made the walk back, linking arms and giggling like they were kids again. When they reached Evelyn’s house, Mollie took a deep breath and very politely asked if Esme was ready to come home. Whilst her hair was tousled and her cheeks were red, she went back into ‘mum mode’ very easily. Esme took her place between the two of them, allowing them to swing her along between them whilst talking ten to the dozen about the different books she’d looked at and the lavender cake that Evelyn made. They laughed and sang on the way back to the studio, and Evie felt her heart lighten, grinning at Mollie as Esme squeezed her hand. She was part of this little family, she wasn’t on the outside. Everything felt possible.

  They let themselves in downstairs, creeping quietly in and up the stairs. Evie listened for the sound of music coming from Killian’s door, noticing the light coming from underneath.

  ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ she whispered to Mollie, ‘I’ve left some things down here.’

  She gestured around the room but Mollie just tilted her head and smiled, before shrugging and hurrying Esme up to bed.

  Evie tiptoed across the room, listening closely to the door for a hint of music, her ear against the grain, but there was nothing.

  ‘The batteries died,’ an amused voice came from behind her. Killian was in the main area, clutching a glass of what looked like whisky. His lips twitched up, and she noticed his eyes were red, like he’d been working away on a project with no concept of time passing. His hair was peppered with sawdust, and as he lifted the glass to his lips, Evie noticed how delicate his hands were, his nails bitten down to the quick, the tips square and flat.

  ‘What would you have been playing?’

  He bit his lip and considered it, ‘Something soulful, maybe? I always play sad music at night. The day it’s all rock’n’roll, but the night feels different here. In there, I mean,’ he nodded towards his workshop.

  ‘Like you don’t want to disturb whatever magic it’s got going on,’ Evie nodded, curling a strand of hair around her finger, and then noticing her own actions with irritation. What are you, fourteen?

  His mouth twitched again, ‘Something like that. Although it would be nicer if I was certain the magic in the room was mine.’

  ‘Well, of course it is. Where else would it come from?’

  ‘The magic of London, of course! It’s seeping in from the drainage systems!’ Killian wiggled his eyebrows in a ridiculous way that made him look a lot less intimidating.

  ‘Whatever’s in the drains, I’m pretty sure it’s not magic,’ Evie snorted, lowering herself into the chaise longue, clutching her sketchbook to her chest.

  Killian just smiled and shrugged, letting the silence settle around them. He swirled the whisky in his glass, looking at the floor. Evie stared at his boots, scuffed and covered in dust.

  ‘So… I was actually looking for you. To, uh, apologise,’ she said quickly, looking resolutely at his left earlobe, instead of meeting his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, for going off on you about Mollie. You were only trying to help.’

  Killian sighed deeply, ‘It’s fine. I shouldn’t have said anything. You were right. It’s not my business.’

  Evie nodded, like that was that, ‘Well, okay, so we’ve reached a truce then?’

  ‘Well, you gave me cake. I have to be nice now. Those are the rules, aren’t they?’ He smiled, showing off perfect white teeth and dimples in his stubbled cheeks.

  ‘According to a certain ten-year-old, cake can solve any problem,’ Evie smiled softly, leaning back and lifting up her knees to her chest. Killian hovered, his hand resting on the armchair opposite her, almost as if
he was waiting to be invited to sit.

  ‘I think I agree with her,’ he smiled, and as much as Evie was enjoying the simplicity of this conversation about nothing, there were questions that were eating her up.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  He shrugged in response, his stance relaxed. He thought she was going to ask him what his favourite flavour of cake was, or something else pointless and friendly, tiptoeing across the fragile ground of their new truce. But that was not Evie’s way.

  ‘When we first got here, and you weren’t… well you weren’t exactly welcoming us with open arms, I thought it was because you hated me, you hated what we stood for and what we were going to do here…’

  Killian frowned, ‘Where’s the question, Evie?’

  ‘Did you hate us… or did you hate Ruby?’

  Killian looked like he had been deflated, ageing suddenly in minutes. He looked at the floor, tapped his heel twice and sighed. ‘Have a drink with me?’ He tilted his own glass in offering, holding it up.

  Evie nodded, and he disappeared into the kitchen, returning with two old-fashioned tumblers, overly full of whisky. Evie wasn’t a fan, but she didn’t want to ruin the moment.

  ‘Cheers,’ Killian exhaled, tapping his glass against hers, as he perched awkwardly on the arm of the chair, twisting to look at her.

  ‘Cheers,’ she sipped delicately, wincing a little. ‘So…’

  ‘Ruby was…’ he sighed, shaking his head, ‘Ruby was chaos. Pure, unadulterated chaos. Evelyn loved her, wanted to fix her. But some people don’t want to be fixed.’

  He shrugged, and Evie nodded, taking a sip of the whisky and feeling it burn pleasantly as it slipped down her throat.

  ‘Ruby loved the idea of brokenness, she thought that was what made people great. Made them interesting or beautiful. She would never have wanted to be fixed.’ Evie twitched her mouth into a half smile, ‘She thought it was a waste of time, being “whole”.’

  Killian nodded, his foot tapping on the floor, ‘I guess Evelyn told you my whole sad story?’

  Evie shook her head and he raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I wasn’t in a good place when Evelyn rented this space to me. I’d lost a lot. Ruby’s kind of chaos was just the thing I needed to implode. And for a while, I thought I wanted to.’

  Evie winced a little, even thinking about it.

  ‘Ruby was a woman who played games with people,’ Killian said ‘men especially.’

  ‘You fell for her,’ she said resolutely. It was always the same. You couldn’t help but love her. Couldn’t help but want to save her.

  ‘No, actually,’ Killian rubbed the back of his neck, ‘we became friends. I came down here one night when she was meant to be recording, and she was writing a letter. She told me about her life, about her friends and how much she missed you. I told her things about my life, things that no one else knew properly. For a while, one of the biggest rock stars in the country was my confidante.’ He laughed wearily, ‘How weird is that, right?’

  Evie smiled, knowing how it would end. How it always ended.

  ‘Something happened and she pushed the boundary, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, taking in the warmth from the room, dully lit as they sipped at their drinks. She looked at him, tried to see a man who had been lied to, who had rebuilt his life, who had known her friend. But all she saw was dimpled cheeks and a dark stare from light eyes.

  ‘I was showing some furniture to a client at the studio. It was the first thing I’d managed to get a seller for. Evelyn was a big help. It was the first step to getting back on my feet, building a business up again. The woman came round; she was young, enthusiastic. She liked my work, said she’d come back with money the next day. Ruby saw her. I guess she felt threatened.’

  For anyone else, it would seem mad, but when it came to men, Ruby didn’t like competition. She was so used to people falling at her feet. Evie guessed that if Killian was her confidante, she didn’t want to lose that either. Ruby was a ‘have your cake and eat it’ kind of girl, and if you couldn’t eat it, you spat on someone else’s cake so they couldn’t have it either.

  ‘She tried to seduce me,’ Killian looked embarrassed, ‘I guess that’s the only way to phrase it. I was horrified, tried to ask her how she was, what was wrong, but that only made her madder.’

  ‘Couldn’t stand the idea of someone not wanting her.’ Evie rolled her eyes, letting out a deep sigh as she wiped the eyeliner from her eyes, ‘That was Ruby.’

  ‘We left it awkwardly, she stormed out and when I returned to meet the buyer the next day, I found my furniture snapped and my workroom trashed. I lost the sale and I had to start from scratch again. It took more months, and more than that, I’d lost a friend. The only friend I really had.’

  Evie exhaled slowly, swirling the drink around the glass. She looked across at him, sitting there looking uncomfortable.

  ‘So that’s why you were angry?’

  Killian shrugged, ‘I was angry that my friend was gone, lost to booze and drugs and jealousy, and that I’d been so close to fixing my life only to have to start again. But most of all, I was angry that I told her she was pathetic, and that was the last thing I said to her before she died.’

  The silence settled around them.

  ‘You know, just because you care about someone, it doesn’t make them a good person,’ Evie said. ‘I should know.’ She smiled softly at him, ‘Ruby was this beautiful, wonderful person, made up of big dreams and bad attitude. Didn’t mean she wasn’t as fucked-up as the rest of us.’

  ‘I still feel like shit,’ he shrugged, raising an eyebrow at her, ‘and when I found out you guys were coming, the last thing I wanted was a reminder of just how shitty I was to your friend. The one who left you this apparently magical space.’

  ‘We’re not here to screw anything up, Killian, honestly,’ Evie said, keeping eye contact. ‘We just want to make something for ourselves. Use this chance she gave us.’

  Killian nodded, his eyes looking around the room for another topic of conversation, something lighter.

  ‘So… Esme seems happy, after everything that went on.’

  ‘Yup,’ Evie stretched her legs out in front of her, flexing her feet. ‘Back to being a little nutcase. She’s great.’

  ‘She’s into her books, I noticed.’

  ‘She’s into everything. It’s exhausting,’ Evie grinned. ‘But already, she’s coming out of her shell being here. She’s still nattering on about making a window seat. As if having a secret room isn’t enough! It’s good for her though, it’s her first real home.’

  ‘What about her dad?’

  Evie inhaled sharply, knowing to tread carefully. ‘They were really young. It was a boy from school. His parents weren’t too keen on him throwing away his bright future on a girl from the estate.’

  ‘He didn’t fight?’ Killian’s frown was deep set.

  ‘He might have, but they were seventeen. What power did he really have?’ Evie shrugged.

  ‘He should have fought.’

  Evie shrugged, ‘None of us really know what happened. Mollie doesn’t like to talk about it.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ Evie asked, frowning.

  ‘Ruby was here for the fame, Mollie’s here to make a life for her kid. What are you here for?’

  Evie sat and thought for a moment, wondering how to sum up an entire life full of desire in a single sentence.

  ‘I’m here to prove I can do something other than waste time pointlessly in a little town until I die.’

  ‘Dark and deep, mysterious girl,’ Killian grinned.

  ‘Not so mysterious, what did Ruby say about me?’

  Killian laughed, throwing back the last of his whisky, ‘She said you were a force to be reckoned with.’

  The air fizzled a little with possibility, and she watched his hands circle the glass tumbler, then still. The si
lence seemed to stretch on forever, watching his light eyes in the darkness, the soft light from his workshop making it seem as if the whole world had gone to sleep.

  ‘I… I better go to bed. Work starts properly tomorrow.’

  He nodded, ‘Well, maybe I’ll see you around for some late night music.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll find something that isn’t whisky,’ she made a face, standing up. ‘Night.’

  Her pathetic little wave made her blush, and she turned on her heel to bound upstairs, wondering how someone could change so quickly overnight, and what tomorrow would bring.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Okay, so I think we’re officially old now,’ Evie groaned at Mollie the next morning. Mollie just put up a hand, eyes half open, and handed her a cup of coffee.

  ‘I’m going back to bed,’ she croaked.

  ‘Oh, so I’ll get Ez her breakfast, shall I?’ Evie said sarcastically to Mollie’s retreating back.

  ‘You were the one who ordered that last bottle of prosecco!’ she argued.

  ‘And you were the one who pushed her out of your lady parts ten years ago!’ Evie said, but it was half-hearted, and she was just grateful for things to be back to normal.

  ‘Ez can have ice cream for breakfast at this point, I don’t care,’ Mollie laughed, threw an arm around her friend briefly and stumbled back to bed.

  After a shower and a particularly annoying perky text message from Chelsea, who was already at work after doing her morning hot yoga session, Evie decided a walk in the sunshine was in order. She had a day to start after all, and she’d had an idea for making her painting into a three-dimensional sculpture, hearing about a scrapyard where she could get hold of a variety of different found objects. She knew exactly what the space needed for the opening, and making something would be therapeutic – a balm. She stepped out in the sunshine, enjoying the quiet of the warm road.

  ‘Hey, Evie!’ a painfully loud voice called from behind her, and there, of course, was Killian, looking gorgeous in the sunshine, wearing a sawdust-free t-shirt and jeans combo for the first time since she’d met him.

  She looked down at her own ensemble – hole-ridden leggings, an oversized Guinness t-shirt she’d probably stolen from Nigel, and a pair of cherry-red cats’ eye sunglasses. She could feel the hangover hovering, as if every spare drop of alcohol was being excreted through her skin, like she was drowning in warm prosecco and regret, whilst Killian’s cheery morning persona made her want to bash herself over the head.