63

The first place Ruby and Tim looked at on Saturday morning was a tiny two-bedroom flat in Meard Street. It had wood-panelled rooms, an ornate marble fireplace and a kitchen the size of a Smart Car. It was very small and very beautiful.

The next place they saw was a one-bedroom flat on Brewer Street, above the organic supermarket. It was modern and slick, with an aluminium kitchen and a tiny terrace. By the time they’d seen a one-bedroom flat on Wardour Street with a hot tub on the roof terrace and a two-bedroom flat on Neal Street with a built-in dressing room, Ruby’s head was spinning.

Living in Soho was the fulfilment of a lifetime’s dream for Ruby, something she’d fantasized about since she was sixteen years old and first finding her way round London. The thought that in a week or two she’d be packing her bags and moving out of Toby’s miserable house and away from all those miserable people was all she could focus on right now.

At one o’clock they went for lunch at Bam-Bou on Percy Street. They were given a cosy table overlooking the street on the first floor. Tim was in his weekend attire – blue chinos, a rugby shirt, a cream jumper with some kind of logo stitched on the left breast. He looked out of place here, amongst the retro opulence of the surroundings, with his skinny, tousle-haired girlfriend in drainpipe jeans. He’d suggested Bertorelli’s for lunch. He’d have been happier there, in the slightly 1980s whitewashed environment. It was Ruby’s idea to come here, where it was edgier, darker, quirkier. Tim was bending himself into unusual shapes just to keep Ruby happy. He didn’t want to live in a tiny flat in Soho. He wanted to live in a huge Clerkenwell loft with white walls. He didn’t want to eat Vietnamese food. He wanted Italian.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you recommend?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been here before.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘right. I just assumed …’

‘An ex of mine used to come here. He was always going on about it.’ She pulled a cigarette out of her handbag and lit it.

Tim’s face assumed the sad kitten expression it always took on whenever she made any allusion to her sexual history. She did it on purpose. It amused her.

She ordered lightly, but expensively, and asked for a glass of champagne. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what do you think, so far?’

He shrugged and smiled. ‘I like all of them.’

‘Yes, but you must have a preference.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘on a purely practical note I’d have to say the one on Neal Street. It was the biggest and we’ll need the room for when Mojo comes to stay.’

Ruby tutted. ‘Yes,’ she said, pouting very slightly, ‘but it’s in Covent Garden. And I really, really want to live in Soho.’

‘Well, then we’ll just have to find a bigger flat in Soho, won’t we?’ He smiled at her and pulled her hand towards him. His hands were one of the things that Ruby found the most unappealing about Tim. They were very fleshy, which she didn’t mind in itself, but it was the length of his fingers that alarmed her. Very short. Out of proportion to the size of his palms. And his fingernails were tiny. She forced a smile and squeezed his hand back.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we will.’