2
Ruby watched Con leaving for work from her bedroom window. He moved with the slightly lolloping gait of a teenage boy in trainers. His dark hair was slick with product and his jeans hung somewhere short of his waist but not quite below his buttocks. He was a lovely-looking boy, clear-skinned, well proportioned with startling indigo eyes. But Ruby didn’t find him attractive. She didn’t appreciate younger men. She liked older men. Not old men, just men who were slightly used, a little creased, like second-hand books. In the same way that you might look at a small child and try to envisage their adult face, she liked to look at a mature man and imagine the young man who’d once inhabited his features.
‘What are you staring at out there?’
Ruby turned and smiled at the man in her bed. Paul Fox. Her slightly creased forty-five-year-old lover.
‘Nothing,’ she teased.
She sat on the edge of her bed. One of Paul’s feet was poking from the bottom of the duvet. She picked up his big toe between her thumb and forefinger, put it between her front teeth and bit down on it, hard.
‘Ow.’ He pulled his leg back under the duvet. ‘What was that for?’
‘That,’ she said, ‘was for ignoring me last night.’
‘What?’ His brow furrowed.
‘You know what. Eliza walked in and suddenly it was as if you didn’t know me any more.’
‘Oh, Christ. Ruby – she’s my girlfriend.’
‘Yeah, I know. But it’s still not very nice, is it?’ Ruby and Paul’s relationship had always been an informal mix of occasional business and no-strings pleasure. He got her the odd support slot for one of his acts, they got together once or twice a week for sex or drinking or both, and he paid her what he jokingly referred to as a ‘salary’, a small monthly cheque, just to keep her ticking over, just to keep her in tampons and vodka, because he could afford to and because he wanted to. It was easy-come, easy-go, a bit of reciprocal fun that had worked for both of them for the past five years. Ruby didn’t expect anything more from Paul. But at the same time she couldn’t help feeling a bit gutted that Paul had failed to fall in love with her throughout their five-year relationship. And she couldn’t help feeling a bit cheated that six months ago Paul had fallen in love with a forty-two-year-old earth mother from Ladbroke Grove with two kids, her own business and a vineyard in Tuscany.
‘Look,’ sighed Paul, sitting up in bed, ‘I had no idea she was going to show up last night. She said she couldn’t get a babysitter –’
‘Sorry?’
‘She’d originally said she was coming to see the band and then her babysitter let her down and –’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Fucking charming.’
‘Jesus, Ruby –’
‘Jesus-Ruby-what? I’m sick of this. This whole thing is fucked.’
‘Ruby. Come on.’
‘No. I will not come on. You and I. We used to be equals. We used to be the same. But ever since you met Eliza it’s like I’m just some bit of crap who follows you around plugging the gaps in your life.’
‘That is so not true.’
‘And don’t talk like that. Like some American teenager. You’re forty-five years old. You sound ridiculous.’ Ruby winced inwardly as the words left her mouth. She was being a bitch, but she couldn’t help it.
She glanced at herself in the mirror. Ruby had an image of herself that she carried around in her head. It was an image of a smoky brunette with black eyes and creamy skin and a look about her as if she’d just had sex or was thinking about having sex. Generally speaking the mirror reflected back exactly what she expected to see. Every now and then it didn’t. This was one of those moments. Her make-up was smudged under her eyes. Sometimes when her make-up was smudged under her eyes it made her look sexy and dangerous. Right now it made her look tired and vaguely deranged. Her hair was dull and dirty – she should have washed it yesterday, but just couldn’t be bothered – and she had a big spot on her chin. She wondered what Eliza looked like first thing in the morning and then realized that it didn’t matter what Eliza looked like first thing in the morning because Paul was in love with her and to him she would look beautiful no matter what.
There was a knock at the door. Ruby breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her dressing gown together.
‘Ruby. It’s me, Toby.’
She sighed and opened the door.
‘Hi. Sorry, I was just, er – oh, hi, Paul.’ He peered over her shoulder and threw Paul a stiff smile.
Paul put up a hand and cracked an equally stiff smile. He looked silly, arranged between Ruby’s marabou-trimmed cushions and fake leopard-skin throws with his big hairy chest and his mop of greying hair. Silly and like he didn’t belong here. He looked, Ruby suddenly and overwhelmingly realized, like a silly handsome man having a silly adulterous affair. She gulped silently.
‘Yes, I was just wondering about the rent. Just wondering if maybe you could give me a cheque today. It’s just, there are some bills, and if I don’t send a cheque by the end of the week, then, er, well, there’ll be no hot water. Or heating. That’s all.’
‘Fine,’ sighed Ruby, ‘fine. I’ll give you a cheque tonight.’
‘Yes, well, you did say that last week, and you didn’t. I haven’t had any rent off you since the end of November, and even then it wasn’t the full amount and –’
‘Toby. I’ll give you a cheque. Tonight. OK?’
‘Right. OK. Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘Good. Right, then. See you. See you, Paul.’
‘See you, Toby.’
Ruby closed the door, and turned and smiled at Paul. He peeled back the cover and smiled at her invitingly.
‘Sorry, mate.’ She flipped the duvet back over his naked body and picked up an elastic band from her dressing table. She pulled her hair back into a topknot with it. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
Paul threw her an injured look. ‘Not even a quickie?’ he said.
‘No. Not even a quickie.’ She winked at him, softening the bluntness of her rejection. She wasn’t in the mood for another scene. She knew there was a Big Conversation waiting to happen, but she didn’t want to have it now. Right now she just wanted to have a shower. Right now she just wanted to feel clean.