69

Ruby started packing on Tuesday. Tim had signed a contract on a two-bedroom penthouse flat off Carnaby Street and they were moving in on Thursday.

She pulled a box off the top of her wardrobe and blew a thick layer of dust off it. That box had been there since she’d moved in. She couldn’t even remember what was in it. Ruby’s possessions didn’t circulate. She didn’t have clear-outs or spring cleans. Ruby put things down and they stayed there. The box was full of school books and report cards. She opened one, randomly:

Tracey Lewis. Class 3A.
Tracey has had a challenging term. Her levels of attention in class and general attitude remain uneven, but she is showing a pronounced improvement in other areas, such as music studies and English literature.

She smirked and put the card back in the box. She’d been a troublesome student. Lazy, insolent and too clever by half. None of her teachers had known what to do with her and she’d left school with three O levels and a bad reputation.

She looked round the room, taking in all the detail, the cornicing, the layers of dust, the tendrils of old cobweb, the boxes covered over with pieces of cloth, the cheap furniture buried under layers of her possessions. She’d been here, in this room, since she was sixteen. She’d written countless songs, practised countless chords, slept with countless men. She’d eaten her supper up here, she’d cried up here, she’d got drunk with her friends. She’d sat on the balcony in her bikini on hot summer days, buried herself under her duvet with a bottle of Benilyn when she had the flu. She’d lived here longer than she’d lived at home. This was her home. It had never really occurred to her that she’d leave. She’d never imagined that Gus would die, that Toby would change, that she’d be packing away the contents of her room and leaving here for ever.

There was a gentle knock on the door. She sighed.

‘Yes?’

‘Ruby, it’s me. Can I come in?’

‘Sure.’

The door opened and Toby walked in. He was wearing a really quite nice grey crew-necked sweater with really quite nice jeans. With his short hair and his clean-shaven face he looked strangely, almost unnervingly good. Ruby didn’t like it. Toby changing his image had stripped yet another layer off her sense of normality. Toby wasn’t supposed to look good. He was supposed to look like Toby. This house wasn’t supposed to have sexy bathrooms and a designer kitchen. It was supposed to be tatty and unkempt. And Ruby – well, Ruby wasn’t supposed to be moving into a flat with a nice but fundamentally dull banker called Tim. She was supposed to be unconventional. She was supposed to live on the edge. But right now her options had dried up. Right now Tim was all she had.

‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ said Toby, handing her a steaming mug.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘thank you.’

‘So,’ he said, ‘how’s it going?’

She shrugged. ‘Only just started,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a big job, I reckon.’

He nodded and smiled. ‘I am not looking forward to doing my room.’

‘It’s tempting just to throw it all away,’ she said. ‘Start afresh.’

‘Well, then, why don’t you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t. I’ve got nothing else to call my own. If I throw this lot away, I might just evaporate.’ She tried for a smile, but didn’t quite make it. Toby threw her a concerned frown.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he said. ‘About moving in with Tim?’

She nodded, defensively.

‘Because you don’t have to move out right now, you know? You’ve got a couple of weeks. You don’t have to rush into anything.’

‘A couple of weeks?!’ she said. ‘Oh, well, why didn’t you say?! A couple of weeks? That’s plenty of time for me to get a job and earn enough money to put down a deposit on a flat and sort my entire life out, isn’t it?’

‘Ruby, I’ve been trying to encourage you for weeks now, ever since you and Paul split up. I’ve been saying to you that you must take responsibility, grow up. You could have gone out and found a job, but instead you went out and did what you always do – found a man.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s all right for you. Your rich daddy bought you a big house and now you’re cashing in. You’ll be fine. But what have I got? Nothing. Nothing but a nice body and a good voice. And if I can’t earn a living from my voice, then I have to fall back on the only other thing I’m any good at.’

‘No, Ruby. You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re capable of because you’ve never tried. You’ve never pushed yourself. You came here sixteen years ago as a talented singer/songwriter with a penchant for booze and seedy men. And nothing’s changed. You haven’t changed. Because you’re too scared to see what else you can do in life.’

‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘I’m not scared. I’m not scared of anything. You’re the one who’s sat in his room for fifteen years, wasting your life. I’ve been out there. I’ve been living. It’s not my fault things haven’t worked out.’

Toby sighed, dragged his hand down his face. ‘No. It’s not. It’s not your fault. It’s my fault.’

She looked at him, questioningly.

‘I made life too easy for you. I made excuses for you. I should have been tougher. I should have seen what was happening and done something to stop it.’

‘What was happening?! Christ – you make it sound as if I’m some kind of failure.’

‘No,’ he shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t think you’re a failure. I think you’re incredible. I’ve always thought you were incredible. I just wish you believed that, too, instead of just pretending to.’

Toby crossed the room, and kissed the top of her head, before turning and leaving, closing the door silently behind him. Ruby sat for a moment, thoughts going round her head like a cyclone. Then she picked up a book and hurled it at the back of the door.

On Thursday morning, Ruby and Tim filled a hire van with Ruby’s accumulated clutter. Tim bought a magnum of Bollinger which he left in the fridge as a thank you to the house and they left. Nobody saw them off. As the van pulled away from the house, Ruby glanced up towards Toby’s window and saw him there, a pensive figure, staring sadly down into the road.

Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat and concentrated instead on the road ahead, on her new life in Soho, on the man by her side, on the future.