He frowns. ‘I’m a bit scared to, to be honest. Do you trust me?’
I smile. ‘With my life.’
He nods. ‘Okay.’
I climb into the co-pilot seat, and Erik gives me the safety spiel. Nothing I don’t already know. I should be terrified about going up again. I should be suffering from PTSD. I should hate flying. But I don’t. I refuse to be ruled by fear.
Moments later, we’re speeding down the runway, Erik focused on the instrument panel. I didn’t tell Mum that I wanted to fly again. I have to tread gently with her. There are only so many risks one person can handle at once, and she’s already performed at the reunion concert and said yes to Alex’s portrait. The idea of me back in the sky might just push her tolerance to snapping point.
As the wings level out, Erik relaxes beside me. I reach out a hand and slide it over his thigh. Over the scar I know is there.
A great arc of sky stretches before us, unpolluted by cloud or smog and, below us, the unfathomable expanse of earth, holding everyone’s yearnings, losses, love and chances.
It’s time to ask him. ‘When?’
A shadow of inevitability hovers over us.
Erik looks at me a moment too long. ‘To Ireland? Tomorrow night.’
‘Which island? I’ll come and visit,’ I joke. But there’s a pit of sorrow in my gut. ‘What’ll you do with the Bluebird?’
‘I can’t give her up. Hopefully one day I’ll come back for her . . . and for you.’
He smiles sadly, and I don’t know if his sadness is for me or for him. Maybe both. But I do know that I won’t always be here to come back to. Robbie says if I prove that I’m committed to music, he’ll take me on tour with him through the UK.
‘Maybe I’ll come visit you first,’ I say.
And maybe that’s just an illusion, but it’s one I’ll hold tight to. His roots are there. Mine are here. But we all need possibilities.
‘For real?’ He grins. ‘To Ireland?’
‘You could show me all your crazy, wild places over there.’
‘You might be sorry you said that.’ His smile is unshakeable. ‘Ireland is old and haunted and most definitely wild.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘Ruby, I don’t want us to end.’
It’s the first time he’s said we’re an us, and it sounds glorious.
‘Us,’ I repeat. ‘We won’t. Whatever we are, it’s been perfect. I want you in my life always, Erik. Even if it’s from a distance. Even if it’s as friends.’
When we land, it’s that time again – seven years between goodbyes.
Erik walks me to the car, and we hover there awkwardly a moment. He kisses me on the lips, pressing me gently against the passenger side, his hands at my lower back, my hands behind his neck. I kiss him like I’m never going to let him go, because I don’t want us to end either.
A horn toots, and we break apart. The refueller guy passes on the other side of the cyclone fence and raises his hat to us.
We laugh, and I pull Erik close again, just so I’ll remember the way his body feels against mine.
‘Don’t you ever forget me,’ I say into his ear. ‘Ever.’
‘I never will.’ And I know he means it. His eyes are teary as he pulls away. ‘Love you, Ruby Matthews.’
And those are the best words I’ve ever heard. From the right guy. At the right time. ‘I love you too,’ I say. ‘So much.’
This time, Erik lets me leave him. Which is a good thing, because I couldn’t cope with watching him walk away from me twice. I drive down the road and watch him getting smaller in my rear-view mirror, one hand raised in a wave. We never did say goodbye.
On the way home, I wind down my window, letting the forest air rush into the car. I won’t be chained here much longer with the wild dogs strung from fence posts and the twisted trees that stretch their gnarled limbs to the sky. I get to make the choices in my life. About the people I allow in it, the places I will roam and the dreams I will chase.
For years, I’ve imagined being on stage, under the lights. The crowd below me.
But it turns out imagination doesn’t take account of nerves.
I stand before the mirror of my dressing room trying to be calm. Looking back is some version of me that I’ve never seen before. My hair is wild and tangled, my eyes made up dark. Ripped skinny jeans hug my legs and a white peasant top with green sleeves slips down one shoulder.
When Martha asked me about style, ‘pop princess’ wasn’t my thing. It needed to feel real. I refused to let them carve me into something I’m not. Still, standing here as this stage version of myself, I feel sick.
I’ve spent an hour hunched over the toilet with Robbie bringing me glasses of water.
‘Nerves are normal,’ Mum says. ‘You’ll be okay.’
Except my body is refusing to co-operate and the urge to hurl again scratches at my stomach.
Should it really feel like this? Maybe I’m not cut out to be a performer.
When you see a rock star, you see glory and confidence and polish. Not puke and shaking hands and a mind hammering with doubt.
‘How do you know I can do this?’ I ask.
‘Because it’s your dream,’ Robbie says.
Mum squeezes my shoulders. ‘You can do it because you’re good. And you’ll do it well because you’re Ruby.’ Her voice is calm and certain. It steels me.
Robbie and Mum stop at the side of the stage. I hear the crowd before I see it. A mass of murmurings, incoherent, indistinguishable human sounds – a low roar, coughs, babbling voices.
In the middle of the stage on a bright pink platform is the mic stand. The mic, waiting and ready for me to take it. Beside it is my Yamaha, with her slimline cutaway, waiting like an old friend.
‘Get out there, Ruby Tuesday. Do your thing,’ Robbie says.
Inside, a gear shifts into place, and a quiet strength rises up. Like Nan herself is here beside me. Nan who raised us on more music than food.
Mum nudges me onto the stage. My knees feel weak, my voice trapped inside my throat. The front and back of the stage are lined with full-length purple curtains that dwarf me. The space is enclosed, like a giant cocoon.
As I walk, I feel like I’m back in that dark, hot forest again, shuffling one foot in front of the other. I take a step, two steps . . .
I reach the top of the platform, sling my Yamaha round my neck. Her weight is comforting. As the curtain rises, I grip the mic with both hands and look for Alex. She’s out there somewhere, but I can’t see individual faces in the dark mass beyond the edge of the stage. I just know she’s there.
This is my space. The house of my father, the house of my mother. The place my nan belonged. Music is in my blood, and I control what happens here.
‘I am Ruby Matthews,’ I say into the mic. My voice echoes back at me. Even and confident. The acoustics, breathtaking. ‘A singer. A songwriter. Welcome to my show.’
A cheer goes up from the crowd.
Lights illuminate the space around me. This is it.
I let out my song and set myself free.
Life often doesn’t go to plan. This is a fact. Curve balls come our way and things block our path. So what happens when you get the kind of life nobody would ask for? How do you work with a Plan B?
In writing Ruby Tuesday, I wanted to explore what it would be like to grow up as the daughter of a woman who’d had the world at her feet, had it pulled away and then left that dream in the dust.
Celeste is a pianist because my grandmother was. She played from the moment she was big enough to climb onto a piano stool. My grandmother’s parents couldn’t afford piano lessons, so her teacher cut them a deal – she would train my grandmother classically in return for any prize money won.
As a young teen, my grandmother competed at the Town Hall in Sydney, playing the same piece as fifty-odd other students. Her mother couldn’t afford the train fare to the city – saying she was unlikely to win anyway – but my grandmother was promised her mother’s precious gold
watch if she did win.
She bravely rode the train into Sydney. She played on stage alone. She won. There was no family to cheer for her, and I never found out if she was given the watch.
By fourteen, my grandmother was playing recitals and being reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald. But when she got married at twenty-two, her dream was over. She had given up playing publicly. That was the reality of a woman’s life in the 1940s – like many others, she simply packed herself and her dreams away.
She should have been able to play at home, but although the piano remained her most prized possession I rarely heard her play it. I was never sure why. Was it her fear of ‘making a clatter’ or had the harsh words of some music critic upset her?
Friends consoled her that the music would come out in her children, but it didn’t. They said it would come out in her grandchildren. It didn’t. My grandmother passed away sixteen years ago to the sound of her favourite music. Ruby Tuesday is for her. A story about the joy and healing power of creativity. What better way to explore desire, frustration and despair, than through music’s intangible beauty?
As a mum and as someone who vividly remembers the difficulties of the teen years, I also wanted to write a novel about sexual responsibility and consent that explores some of the unspoken and awful experiences teen girls often deal with.
Ruby Tuesday has #metoo elements, but it’s not an anti-male narrative. On the contrary, it’s a story about a girl discovering, after terrible experiences, that there are gentle, kind and trustworthy people out there, and finding the strength to stand up to those who disrespect her. Most of all, it’s about finding the courage to speak out and support others.
I don’t suggest that there is always justice when bad things happen. Many many assaults and aggressions are suffered silently. Many go unpunished and unacknowledged. When Ruby has sex for the first time at a party, she’s not sure if she was raped. She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no, but she didn’t want it and the experience was brutal. This is the reality for a lot of young people.
‘No means no’ was a good starting point, but rape is defined in a myriad of ways and the idea of enthusiastic informed consent should be a crucial part of every young person’s sexual experience. Coercion, both private and public, is a huge issue. For both partners, knowing what enthusiastic consent looks like could play a huge part in reducing the alarming number of sexual assaults in our community. If Ruby Tuesday plays a positive part in that conversation for any reader, that’s a good thing.
Trust is the key to any solid relationship and the fact that Ruby learns to trust Erik when he holds her very life in his hands helps her to realise that she is far more like her namesake Ruby Tuesday than she ever knew. She is not pinned to a time, or a place, or even to the people in her life, in the way she always believed. She too has choices. She can turn her Plan B life into something spectacular.
The Bluebird is the vehicle that takes Ruby beyond her own knowledge and away from the physical world to which she’s normally chained. But for me, flying was not just a metaphor used to raise the stakes. It’s far more personal than that.
I might not be a pilot but I know a bit about flying. When I was eighteen, I bought my husband (then boyfriend) an instructional flight as a birthday present. He now flies a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Between that first flight and now, there were many years and adventures in small planes just like the Bluebird.
Flying is not without serious danger – a lesson Ruby learns and that I have also learnt. During the years of his training, my husband lost his twenty-seven-year-old instructor Justen Emmett in a plane crash. Every pilot we know has a similar story.
Writing the flying scenes in Ruby Tuesday allowed me to journey back to my first experiences with light aircraft. The vulnerability of it, the fear, the utter abandon! Flying lends a unique perspective to everyday life. From up in the clouds, I have always felt small; my problems insignificant.
When I was twenty, we flew a small plane from Bankstown Airport in Sydney all the way to the Great Barrier Reef, dodging storms and stopping to refuel at small airports along the way. A low cloud base forced us down over the town of Kempsey, right near the forest corridor of the wild dogs where I set Ruby Tuesday. An area that we would one day come to call home.
Ruby Tuesday was the kind of story that I started writing, until it took over and started writing me. Ruby gets battered quite a bit on her journey. There is more disillusionment here for Ruby than she deserved, but there is also beauty, humility and truth in her recovery. Many of Ruby’s mistakes and lessons have been my own, making this a very personal coming-of-age story.
Ruby Tuesday took four years to write.
I wrote Ruby at Varuna in the Blue Mountains, Little Meroo in the Western Ranges, Port Macquarie on the Mid North Coast, Byron Bay on the Far North Coast and even in Ireland at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. By the time she was finished, Ruby wasn’t just my story. She was the experiences, opinions and ideas of everyone who had played a part in forming her and me.
I am fortunate to have many special people in my life, and they know exactly who they are. People who make the beautiful moments more glorious and the dark moments less gloomy.
To my publishing team at Penguin Random House and my incredible editor, Michelle Madden – we got to do it again! When I presented you with the overwritten mess that was Ruby, your vision for her gave me goosebumps. Thank you for being the unsung hero of this novel. Thanks also to Marina for another blow-me-away cover. I am the lucky one to work with you all!
I still pinch myself that I’m represented by Curtis Brown, and especially by Clare Forster, my gentle, conscientious agent, who is always scouting new opportunities for my work. Thank you for taking me under your wing. Also to Curtis Brown Translations and Roxane Eduardo, for your belief in my novels.
To the hauntingly beautiful Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, thank you for accepting me for a residency and giving me the gift of time to write in a creative environment. To the Byron Writers’ Festival, for taking Ruby Tuesday on for mentorship, particularly to Marele Day with her disciplined guidance, and my fellow writers Polly Jude, Nick Westhoff and Robert Walker.
Thank you to my critique partners, who read Ruby and encouraged me as she was being written. To Dave Archbold, for always having my back, making me laugh and making me better. And Stephanie Holman-Lee, for sharing your knowledge, your time, your home and yourself with me from when I was born.
To my childhood friend Nicole Hamilton, for sharing the love of writing with me, coming to visit with your kids so we can take writing shifts and talk and read till the early hours of the morning.
Eleni Hale, my talented sister-in-writing, your friendship and honesty is a gift in this journey and I suspect that we are only beginning. May we write in many more cabins over many more years! And Conor Bowman, my brother-in-writing, thank you for walks in Ireland, for showing me your haunts, for tumblers of whisky, songs and stories and for taking me as I am, scars and all.
Thank you to Cecilie Fitzsimons for your incredibly helpful sensitivity reading about living with a spinal cord injury and for helping me to represent disability with integrity. Also to Gavin Thompson, for answering my questions on rehabilitation and being a support worker.
Thank you to Chris Vieira, guitar teacher extraordinaire, who doesn’t normally read books about teen girls (but dug into this one with enthusiasm anyway). I appreciate you checking my musical authenticity. Any errors in the book are entirely my own.
The praise of English teachers is never sung highly enough. Margaret Matthews, we both know that you were more than that. Year Adviser for six years, champion of your two hundred girls at Strathfield Girls’ High School. Thank you for your passion for both literacy and the human spirit.
To the friends who make life less lonesome, especially the incredible Brighid Armgardt, for teaching me what strength looks like, for being honest about motherhood and disabilities. Also for the high teas, the never-ending chats, and fo
r your love and dignity, especially when I’m imperfect.
To my big sister, Shelley Flanders. I will never be able to thank you enough for walking before me, holding my hand, guiding me without judgement armed with a truckload of patience and baskets of generosity. For being there from my day dot until the last full stop. Also to my little sister, Brooke Zammit, who has shared many childhood memories and enchantments with me. My humblest thanks, always.
To my mum, Karen O’Connor, the kindest landing pad and gentlest spirit, and a curious-natured and artistic-eyed photographer. The most delightful company a girl could keep. Thank you for decades of encouragement, support and belief. And to my dad, Ian O’Connor, my hero in a crisis, dependable, sturdy, humble and solid. I know you always have my back, and I cannot tell you what that means.
Finally, to my husband Chad. For all the flights over the years, for sharing your world of aviation and your dreams with me.
Most especially to my girls, Mia, Zara, Sophie, Heidi and Lacey. Be brave, my wild little women. Life will require your courage. And if Plan A isn’t on offer, carve your own Plan B. Thank you for being mine. May I make myself worthy of being yours.
Lastly, to my friends, readers and supporters, humblest, humblest of thanks for championing my work. A novel is an investment of your time and money, and I hope to earn my place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hayley Lawrence worked as a lawyer in a commercial firm in Sydney before trading city life for the coast when she married a pilot. She worked for a small law firm on the mid-north coast of NSW, until they started a family. Hayley has five daughters who continue to bring immense joy and utter mayhem to her life.
Inside the Tiger, Hayley’s first novel, was a CBCA Notable book in 2019. The manuscript won a Litlink Fellowship at Varuna, The Writer’s House, and a PIP Fellowship, and was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award.
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