20

Toby’s love for Ruby ebbed and flowed like the tide. When he’d first met her fifteen years ago he’d been consumed by lust for her. It had overwhelmed him to the point that he’d had to question the validity of every other feeling he’d ever experienced, the intensity of every emotion he’d ever felt, even for Karen. He had never in his life wanted so much to perform an act of sexual intercourse with another human being. He felt engorged entirely. There was excess blood in his arms, his feet, his eyeballs. He sweated profusely in her presence, glowed with the heat that emanated from his body, like infrared. He had to keep his hands in his pockets to stop himself from touching her, inappropriately.

On her second night in his house, she’d brought home a monstrous man she claimed was an ‘old friend’ and made love to him so loudly and for so long that Toby had had to go downstairs to sleep on the sofa. The man had then hung round for the rest of the weekend, wearing Ruby’s dressing gown and smoking everywhere he went, including the bathroom. Toby had imagined this episode to be some kind of aberration and breathed a sigh of relief when the man finally disappeared on Monday afternoon, but three days later Ruby arrived home in the middle of the afternoon with the bass player from her band, said something about reworking some lyrics, then disappeared into her bedroom with him for more than an hour of ear-shattering sexual activity. And so it had gone on, a succession of ‘old friends’ and ‘great mates’ and ‘best buddies’ all clambering in and out of Ruby’s bed – some of them once and never again; some of them on a regular basis. Some of them matched her for attractiveness; some of them were downright ugly. A couple of them had made it to the ‘boyfriend’ stage, but these were fleeting relationships, always ended by Ruby and never cried over.

The fact of Ruby’s sexual promiscuity had not, strange to say, fuelled Toby’s desire for her. If anything it had flattened it like a big bum on a whoopee cushion. What happened instead was that Toby started to look beyond the physical, his body disgorged, he stopped glowing and he fell in love with her. When it was just the two of them, watching TV, watching a band, having a drink, discussing music, when it was just Toby and Ruby, it was the best thing in the world. He learned to switch off when she was keeping male company, to immerse himself in something distracting, to turn up his music and sit it out like a forecasted downpour.

Sometimes Ruby would go without sex for a month or two, and Toby would grow hopeful – maybe she was growing up, growing out of it. Maybe now she would look at Toby and see him as a sexual being. But then, eventually, a few days later, usually in the middle of the night, the front door would open and the sound of an alien male voice would float up the stairs towards Toby’s bed and he’d pull a pillow over his head and try to get to sleep before the noise started.

Once, about six years ago, Ruby had come home from a gig at three in the morning with some girlfriends and stormed drunkenly into Toby’s bedroom. ‘Can I have a cuddle, Tobes?’

‘What?’

‘I’m really, really drunk and I want a lovely cuddle with my lovely Toby.’ She’d crawled onto his bed and draped an arm over him and nestled her head into the crook of his arm. Toby had barely moved a muscle, too scared to breathe in case she changed her mind.

‘Are you naked?’ she’d said after a minute or two.

‘Not entirely,’ he’d said.

Downstairs her girlfriends clattered round the wooden floors in their heels, plundered the fridge for snacks and put on music. Toby listened to Ruby breathing, the bitter alcoholic fumes of her breath filling the space between her head and his arm. ‘What’s this all about?’ he’d said eventually.

‘What?’

‘This,’ he gestured, ‘this.’

‘Nothing,’ she’d murmured. ‘Just want a cuddle, that’s all.’

She’d fallen asleep there, on his bed, in his arms. One of her friends had walked in a few minutes later and backed out apologetically when she’d seen Ruby in Toby’s embrace. Toby’s arm went numb about an hour later, but he didn’t move it. He slept for about an hour and woke up with the sun at six o’clock, and stared at her for another hour until she woke up and stumbled back to her bedroom where she slept until noon.

The whole experience was never mentioned again, mainly, Toby suspected, because it hadn’t meant anything to Ruby. But Toby had secretly hoped that that intimate albeit chaste interlude might have laid the foundations for something to change. But it didn’t. If anything things went downhill afterwards because it was then that Ruby met Paul Fox.

Toby hated Paul Fox.

He hated him because he had a stupid haircut.

He hated him because he was wealthy and successful.

He hated him because he called everyone ‘mate’ in his stupid mockney accent, even though Toby knew he was an ex-public school boy (it took one to know one).

He hated him because when he came he shouted, ‘Oh God oh Jesus oh fuck,’ in exactly the same order and with precisely the same rhythm every single time.

He hated him because he’d once overheard him referring to him as Mr Rigsby.

He hated him because he was being unfaithful to his loyal girlfriend, even though he’d never met her.

But mainly he hated him because he’d somehow managed to persuade Ruby to sleep with him at least once a week for the past five years.

All the other blokes were of little consequence to Toby. They came; they went; they were forgotten about. But Paul Fox hung round like a terrible memory, taunting Toby with the inexplicable power he seemed to exert over Ruby. Toby didn’t think things could get much worse than Paul Fox.

But now they had.

Ruby had slept with Con.

This represented, as far as Toby was concerned, a dramatic slip in her standards and, as such, a seismic shift once again in the way he viewed her. It was time for her to go. And, more importantly, it was time for him to stop loving her. He just wished someone could show him how.