‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’ Ruby’s toes slipped on the rain-slick railings as she slung her hand over the bar and heaved. Her upper body strength was non-existent though, and two seconds later she was dropped back on to her feet on the wrong side of the park gate. For the tenth time. She was never going to get into the Serpentine section of the park. Why hadn’t she thought this through? The bloody gated area was over eight-foot high. She should have bought a step ladder.
‘Fuck a duck!’ she murmured, feeling defeated. And hating it.
‘I certainly wouldn’t advise that or you’re sure to get busted.’ The laconic comment – in a far too familiar American accent – gave her such a shock she let out a small shriek.
Luke Devlin stood behind her looking solid, and steady and smug.
‘If you’ve come here to gloat, go ahead,’ she managed, having lost all sense of decorum in her abject misery. ‘Then you can piss off.’
All she’d wanted to do tonight was finally lay Matty to rest, the way he’d wanted, the way he’d asked her to. Why couldn’t she even achieve that much without making a tit of herself? But then she seemed particularly adept at making a tit of herself in front of Luke Devlin.
But Devlin wasn’t laughing, she realised, as he tilted his head to one side and studied her. ‘I’m not here to gloat. I’m here to apologise.’
‘What for?’ she asked, because there were about a million and one things she could think of.
Why did he have to be so detached? So unfeeling? So pragmatic? So broad and solid and hot? Okay, scratch that last bit, so not the point.
‘For making this even harder for you than it needs to be,’ he said.
He actually sounded sincere – and just like that her righteous anger deflated like a popped party balloon. Unfortunately, the anger had been keeping all of her misery at bay fairly effectively, which happily rushed in to the fill the vacuum.
‘Apology accepted,’ she said, turning back to the railings and ignoring him. ‘Now you can piss off,’ she added under her breath.
She gripped the railings again with numbed fingers and heaved herself up. She struggled and slipped and cursed and battled with the gate for a further two minutes, which felt like ten years, all the while assuming he’d pissed back off to his hotel and his flight.
But then the dry voice reverberated down her spine. ‘Why don’t you just dump the ashes in the park?’
She slumped against the railing, her forehead connecting with the cold slippery metal, perilously close to tears.
‘Because that’s not what Matty wanted. He specified the Serpentine.’ She pushed her finger through the locked gate at the dark expanse of water beyond. ‘Which is through there.’ She still hadn’t figured out why Matty had asked for this particular ritual to be carried out. But she was too numb and disheartened to care about figuring out the why. Suddenly, all the things she wasn’t going to be able to do for him anymore – like laugh at his rubbish jokes, make the popcorn to his lemon-tinis, or keep The Royale afloat – loomed large around her. This was one thing she refused to fail at, or compromise on.
She glanced through the gathering dusk at the road that ran through the park and the bridge in the distance that stretched over the lake – illuminated in waves by the headlights of passing cars.
‘Perhaps I could scatter them from the bridge?’ she thought aloud.
Getting over this bloody gate was not going to happen. And the thought of having to come back tomorrow with a stepladder felt too overwhelming.
‘Not a good idea,’ said Mr Pragmatic and Emotionless from behind her.
Why hadn’t he buggered off already?
‘There’s a lot more ashes than you think, it takes forever to scatter them. And you’ll be super exposed there.’
She let go of the railings and turned. ‘You’ve done it before?’
‘Sure,’ he said, frowning. ‘I scattered my old man’s ashes.’
‘You scattered Falcone’s ashes?’ she whispered, the thought – that she was standing less than a foot away from a person who had such an intimate connection with her cinematic idol – so shocking and yet epic she completely forgot to be pissed off with him.
‘Yeah. My mom asked me to.’ His shrug was stiff and unyielding and defensive, not unlike the look on his face when he’d sat under the Boy Blue poster in Matty’s flat on Friday night. Yup, there was definitely a story here and it didn’t look particularly Walt Disney. ‘And it took forever.’
She leaned against the railings to study him. Absorbing the strange situation she was in – standing outside the Serpentine in the almost dark, trying and failing to scatter Matty’s ashes with a man who was Rafael Falcone’s son. The son of the icon she had idolised through all of her lonely fatherless teenage years. His face a facsimile of the poster she’d had pinned to the door of her childhood bedroom so she could gaze at it while she fell asleep to the sound of her mum shouting at her latest boyfriend, or banging the bed against the wall in the bedroom next door in rhythmic thumps.
Maybe it was the Prosecco and the heartache talking, but it all suddenly seemed so surreal. ‘This is so bloody weird.’
‘What is?’ he asked, his frown deepening.
‘You sound just like him in all of his movies, you know?’
It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it instantly because his gaze became wary and tense, where before it had been pragmatic.
‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, not sounding remotely impressed with the observation. What was the story? Because she was exhausted and down-hearted enough to wonder about it now – mainly so she didn’t have to wonder about how she was going to scale an eight-foot high gate.
‘You’ve been told?’ she said, not even attempting to hide her astonishment. ‘You don’t know? Haven’t you watched any of Falcone’s movies?’ Surely he must have. His father had been one of the greatest actors of his generation. If not the greatest. Hailed as the successor to Brando and Dean and on par with De Niro and Pacino. A rare talent who had blazed across the screen like a comet, captured the zeitgeist and the hearts of millions, won an Oscar, been nominated for several more, changed the face of screen acting and then faded and died far too soon.
‘No,’ he said, the cutting tone slicing through her Falcone reverie like a machete.
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘They’re all brilliant. Well, apart from The Tangri-La, but that was just a blip. And he was your father, Luke,’ she added, going the full Darth Vader. But seriously, this man was the only child of a legend and he’d never even seen any of his father’s movies? It felt like a crime, somehow, a crime against everything she and Matty had held dear.
Instead of answering her perfectly valid question, though, his frown eased and he tucked his hands into the back pocket of his jeans. His lips curved in a cynical half smile as he tilted his head to one side – studying her in a way that didn’t feel entirely complimentary. ‘Funny, I didn’t spot you for one before now. But I guess it goes with the territory.’
‘Spot me for what?’
‘A Falcone nut,’ he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘Never ceases to amaze me how many of you there still are, even sixteen years after the old ham died.’
Old ham? What the fuck?
Ruby’s tongue swelled, her outrage on behalf of movie lovers everywhere choking her.
‘Well, of course it amazes you,’ she replied. ‘How could you possibly know how cool and incredible he is? I mean was?’ she corrected herself, feeling oddly flustered. She knew Luke Devlin had none of his father’s brilliance or sensitivity, but this whole scenario felt a bit too close to Mia Farrow’s predicament in The Purple Rose of Cairo when Jeff Daniels had literally stepped out of a cinema screen and invited her to Egypt. Surreal, Ruby decided, didn’t even begin to cover it. ‘Especially if you’ve never actually bothered to watch any of his movies?’
‘Uh-huh! And how would you know what a self-absorbed asshole he was,’ came the lookalike Falcone’s deadpan reply. ‘If you never actually met him?’
***
‘Your father was an asshole? Really?’ The mossy green eyes widened, Ruby’s avid curiosity making them even more luminous than usual. And Luke wanted to kick himself hard in his own ass.
Never engage, never discuss. Not with the Falcone nuts.
How had he forgotten the law he’d laid down when he was a thirteen years old? Ever since the last time he’d sat in the lobby of his mom’s LA mansion, on a sunny Saturday morning, with his soccer boots on and his heart bursting with excitement and pride and a foolish sense of hope that this time would be different. Sure the great Falcone would have to show eventually, because he’d promised Luke on the phone only the day before that he would.
But then he’d waited … and waited … for two endless hours, while the Falcone nuts amassed by his mom’s gate – also waiting – shouted at him to ask when his father was arriving.
It was the last of the many no-shows. And after that he’d finally had the sense to tell his mom he didn’t want to schedule regular meet-ups with his father anymore. On the rare occasions he did show, they had to sneak around and do everything in secrecy anyway – to avoid the paparazzi and the Falcone nuts. He’d rather be playing with his friend Mitchell down the block. Or even his hyperactive kid brother, Jack. Hell, he’d almost rather kick a ball about with his toddler sister, Becca, who was only just out of diapers, than be caught dead waiting for a man again who half the time – no, three-quarters of the time – never bothered to keep his promises. And when he did …
He pushed the bitter memories aside. Yeah, definitely not going there. Especially not in front of a Falcone Nut. Time to change the subject.
He glanced past Ruby at the eight-foot high gate. ‘Move aside,’ he murmured, because getting arrested for dumping the ashes of some guy he didn’t know seemed like a much better option than reminiscing about his asshole of a father.
Ruby dutifully stepped back and he ran at the gate. Grabbing hold of the top bar he strained the muscles he’d first begun developing years ago at Harvard, flung his leg over the top, scrambled up and over and landed heavily on the other side – luckily, without breaking anything.
The rattle of the gate didn’t drown out her astonished shout.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Excellent upper body strength courtesy of Varsity crew,’ he said, as he shoved his hands through the railings and formed a stirrup. ‘Now it’s your turn. I’m not getting arrested on my own.’
‘We won’t get arrested,’ she said, as she puffed out her chest, grabbed the bars and stuck her muddy boot into his palms.
He boosted her up and she managed to get her foot over the top but was then perched precariously on the gate, her legs dangling.
‘Bloody hell.’ She leaned forward, trying to steady herself, he guessed, so she didn’t tumble off headfirst. ‘It’s a long way down.’
‘Don’t look.’ He grasped her ankle, above the boot. Her short skirt had ridden up. Damn, he could see … He squinted into the darkness. Not nearly enough. ‘Bring your other leg over,’ he instructed. A nearby street light was shining on her cascade of curls like a spotlight. He’d noticed a cop when he’d headed into the park after her. And while there didn’t seem to be anyone about now, if the cop chose to do a tour of the park they’d both get busted.
‘But if I do that I’ll fall off,’ Ruby squeaked, sounding a lot less sure of herself. Clearly, she wasn’t a habitual felon.
‘I’ll catch you.’ He placed his hand as high as he could reach on her thigh, to reassure her. Mostly. The muscle bunched and quivered beneath his fingers. Ruby worked out. Either that or managing a movie theatre was more strenuous than he’d thought. Because her thigh felt toned and warm and hot as hell.
‘Really?’ She peered down at him, still holding the gate in a death grip, but the look on her face – wary but full of hope – sent a ripple of sweetness through him to go with the heat. Not cool.
‘Ruby, get down here! Now!’ he demanded, trying to concentrate on his impatience instead of that damn ripple.
The commanding tone worked because seconds later he had his arms full of warm, breathless woman. Her scent – citrus and roses – filled his nostrils as his face was covered by a cloud of hair. His hands grabbed a hold of something soft and fleshy as he staggered backwards, struggling not to drop her on her butt while her giddy shriek deafened him.
After a few major wobbles, and some hand and limb adjustments, at last they stood, safe and reasonable steady, together, a few feet from the edge of the water – her head buried against his neck, her hair making his nose itch and her arms wrapped so tightly around his shoulders she was close to strangling him.
But weirdly, he didn’t care.
‘You okay?’ he asked, enjoying the soft, pliant weight of her way too much.
She lifted her head. The shadows cast by the trees and the dying light made it impossible to see her expression, but her delighted chuckle gave him all the answer he needed. ‘Yes, thank you.’ Her peppermint-scented breath whispered across his mouth as she sighed. ‘Did you learn how to catch in Varsity crew, too?’
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘That would be shooting hoops with the college basketball player who shared my dorm room.’
Although he couldn’t see it, he could hear the smile in her voice when she replied. ‘Upper body strength and great hand-eye coordination. Who knew a university education could be so useful?’
Was she hitting on him? It sure sounded like it and it occurred to him he should put her down now. He certainly didn’t want to encourage any flirting. It also occurred to him that he really didn’t want to put her down.
He flexed his fingers on her soft flesh, inhaled the fierce, floral scent that clung to her hair one last time, then forced himself to let her go. He held on to her waist a nanosecond longer than was strictly necessary but then she stepped back. Her face caught the light of the street lamp. A wrinkle had formed between her brows, and her eyes were even wider than usual.
If she had been flirting, she already regretted it.
‘I guess we should get this over with,’ she said with a sigh, as she smoothed her little skirt down and then hauled a large plastic container out of her pack.
She sent him a weary smile and he watched the dark cloud of grief settle over her again. ‘Really, thanks for doing this with me. It means …’ The words choked off.
He sunk his hands into his pockets, uncomfortable again. Emotion really wasn’t his thing.
‘Where do you think we should do it from?’ she asked.
He turned, to examine the layout of the lake, or what they could see of it in the dark. There was a building on one side that he guessed housed some changing rooms, a wide path that circled the lake at the water’s edge and a small jetty which led out to what looked like a bathing platform. ‘You think you can make it out there in the dark?’ he asked, pointing towards the platform. ‘It’d probably be best to scatter them as far out as we can get. That way if there’s blowback, he won’t end up on the grass.’
‘Good thinking, Batman,’ she said, the plucky tone like that of a GI about to jump off a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. ‘Matty definitely would not want to end up getting stepped on by the Serpentine Ladies’ Bathing Club tomorrow morning,’ she added, marching off towards the jetty with her container.
He followed, preparing to stand back and give her space to say her final goodbye. But after she had unscrewed the lid and dropped it on the backpack, she turned towards him, the container clasped to her chest.
‘Do you know the words to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t sing along during the screening, but I just wondered if you might know the words anyway?’
‘I guess,’ he said, because didn’t everyone know the words to that song?
‘It was Matty’s favourite show tune.’ She paused and gulped in a breath. ‘He liked to hum it while he was doing difficult or scary stuff, such as The Royale’s VAT return or skydiving over the Grand Canyon. He said it made him feel brave and bold and happy no matter what. Would you …’ She sniffed. ‘Would you sing it with me while I scatter his ashes?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
She smiled at him then, the curve of her lips sad but genuine and his throat became kind of tight.
Then she began to sing.
She had a rich, melodic, pitch-perfect voice which trembled over the lush, true notes of the tune. He joined in the choruses he could remember about bluebirds and chimney tops as the grey remains of the uncle he’d never met – but now kind of wished he had – swirled into the air and spread out over the glassy surface of the lake.
The final notes of the song died as the last of the ashes sunk beneath the dark water. They stood in silence together, the intermittent swish of rain-slicked tyres and the rumbling hum of engine noise from the cars on the bridge the only sound.
He swallowed to dislodge the raw spot in his throat.
Her breath hitched, loudly. And he braced himself.
But she didn’t cry, or sob, or crumble. She simply stared at the water, drew in another sharp breath, then whispered. ‘Bye Matty, you silly old sod. I love you to bits. And I always will.’
Two seconds later, they got arrested.