Pushing the door to the kitchen open, a wave of delicious smells and steamy air hit her. Mel laughed and caught Ruby wiping her glasses on her apron, the skin either side her nose red from where they usually sat. She’d never seen Ruby without her spectacles on before. She looked strange.
Barney was curled up in her basket and wagged her tail a few times as a greeting before sinking her chin back against the wicker.
“Something smells amazing,” Mel said as she rounded the table to peek into the large saucepan. Both daughters were sitting at the table; Chloe playing on her phone, and Jasmine had a small hand mirror out, applying lipstick. She wears lipstick before a dinner at home? Should I have worn make-up and made more of an effort?
Ruby shoved her glasses back onto her face and blinked rapidly. “That’s better. My glasses always steam up if I open the oven too quickly.” She pointed down towards their knees. “Garlic bread.”
“Yummy.”
“We’re having the special pasta,” Jasmine said, and Chloe rolled her eyes. “It’s totally cool for if you want to lose weight. It was recommended in Heat.”
“The magazine,” Ruby clarified.
Mel nodded, then looked around the room, her eyebrows furrowed exaggeratedly. “But that’s really weird. I can’t see anyone in this room who needs to lose weight.”
Giggling bashfully and beaming from ear to ear, Jasmine leant her head on one hand, her elbow on the table. “You’re really skinny, Mel. How do you keep so slim?”
“I do CPR for about half an hour per shift,” Mel explained, shrugging. “You’ve no idea how good a workout that is.”
“Ever been to a murder?” Chloe asked, a wicked grin on her face. Her eyes flicked to her sister, who pulled a face.
“Ew, Chlo, that’s so gross.” Jasmine sat up straight and brushed down her top like it had wrinkles in it. An air of superiority floated over her whole body. “And Mel doesn’t want to talk about that kind of thing anyway. Do you?”
Mel chuckled and winked at Jasmine before turning her attention to Chloe. “I do on occasion, yes.” She leant carefully against the kitchen counter and felt Ruby move up to her side, their arms brushing. “We went to a stabbing last week. Not very nice.”
“I’m sure,” Ruby said, and when Mel looked at her, she found tenderness filling her eyes. The hand on her arm only added to the warm feeling inside Mel’s chest.
“Did the bloke make it?” Chloe asked, her gaze curious but wary. She didn’t seem like she wanted to know any details.
“Yeah, he did. He was very lucky.”
Chloe’s stance relaxed, her face smoothed out, and she went back to looking at her phone.
“Anyway, little ’un,” Ruby said, and Mel assumed she meant her youngest as her gaze was directed at Jasmine. “What did I say about your outfit this evening?”
The girls looked at one another and shared a conspiratorial smile. “Um, actually, Mum,” Chloe started, but then bit her lip.
“We’re off out later,” Jasmine finished off for her, flicking her hair over one shoulder to expose dangly earrings.
“Out out?” Ruby asked, one eyebrow raised.
“And afterwards, we’re staying at friends’.”
Ruby looked from one to the other before folding her arms and giving them both a hard stare.
Chloe seemed to curl in on herself, her cheeks flushing crimson; Jasmine was obviously less affected. She just grinned at her mother, pointing one neatly manicured finger from Mel to Ruby and back.
“It’s, like, your first night in together, and we wanted to give you some privacy.”
“I’m going to Tasha’s.” Chloe looked like she wanted anything but to admit that the reason they were going out was so that her mother and new girlfriend could be alone. “I’m biking it. And I’ll be back before lunch tomorrow.”
Jasmine’s hand flew into the air in an arc. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“And you’re staying with whom, exactly?” Ruby asked sternly, her finger bouncing up and down in the direction of Jasmine’s cleavage.
Jasmine put a hand over her exposed throat but didn’t seem that bothered. “Laura’s. God, Mum, what do you take me for?”
“Girls,” Ruby sighed, obviously appeased by their plans. “You don’t have to clear off just because Mel’s staying over.”
Mel’s eyebrows hit her hairline. She’d told her children that Mel was sleeping over? Wow. They really do the honesty thing here, don’t they? That’s great.
Jasmine just giggled and went back to applying her make-up. Chloe shook her head and shrugged at Ruby. “It’s fine.” She set her phone face down on the table and leant forwards on her elbows. “I’ve been meaning to watch this box set with Tasha anyway, for ages. And we’re well due a girly night.”
“All right, then,” Ruby said, looking like she wasn’t entirely sure what to think.
“Thanks, guys,” Mel said quietly, and felt Ruby’s hand on her arm again.
“Thank you,” Ruby said too.
Ruby was pleased with her bolognaise, although she’d made it probably a hundred times before, and it always went down well. She shifted in her seat as Mel took her first mouthful.
Mel’s eyes closed, and she hummed her pleasure.
She chuckled when Mel tried to express herself around her huge mouthful of tomato-and-onion sauce, which nearly ended with Mel dribbling it down her chin.
“So,” Jasmine said, pointing her fork towards Mel. “What do you do?”
“What… what do I do?”
“We know you’re a paramedic,” Chloe explained. “But what do you do the rest of the time?”
Both sets of eyes looked hopefully towards Mel.
“I like gardening and hanging out with my friends, and I like cycling.”
“Oh my God, me too.” Chloe looked impressed. “What bike do you have?”
“Just a boring one from Halfords. But I’ve put better lights on it. And it has a back… thingy.” Mel made a rounded gesture.
“A rear rack? I want one of those. Be easier than a backpack.”
“They are. And a couple of bungies to hold stuff on it. Great for long journeys.”
Ruby wasn’t particularly interested in bicycles or their accessories. However, she found she enjoyed listening to Mel talk with her daughters, even when Jasmine cut her sister off and brought the conversation back to the topics she’d brought up.
“Where do you buy your clothes?”
Mel smiled, and Ruby reckoned she recognised her younger daughter’s desire to make it all about her. “I buy my clothes from loads of different places. I’m enjoying Burton’s at the moment, and the men’s department in Next.”
“You buy men’s clothes?” Jasmine asked, and her wide eyes made Mel chuckle.
“I’m tall, so men’s clothes fit better. I also have wide hips and not much up top, so men’s T-shirts fit me too.”
I’ve never noticed she wears men’s clothes. They look so good on her.
Ruby played with the stem of her wine glass and sighed as they chatted, happy to just listen and allow Mel to be the centre of attention for a while.
“You’ve been a paramedic for seven years, Mum said.” Chloe finished the last of her pasta and scraped her plate.
“Yep. Straight after university.”
“How was that? Most people that go to uni are like eighteen.”
Mel chuckled. “Yeah. Was a bit weird. Luckily the paramedic science lot tend to be a bit older. I think I was the second oldest there.”
“Did the younger ones annoy you?” Jasmine asked.
“Not really. I would hope they accepted me into their gang. There were only twenty of us.”
“Wow. Mum teaches hundreds of students.”
“I know. Her lecture halls are huge.”
“What other jobs have you done?” Chloe picked up a piece of garlic bread.
“I’ve been a teaching assistant,” Mel explained. “And I was an ECA before I was a paramedic.”
“An emergency care assistant, right?” Chloe asked, her eyebrows raising in curiosity.
“I decided to do the full degree, because I knew I’d want to do further education along the way and I had some money going spare, so why not?”
Chloe lifted her glass of wine, and Mel obliged by clinking her own to Chloe’s.
“University was okay, but I really struggled until they discovered I had dyslexia.”
“I’ve got a mate who has that. She got a free laptop when she went into sixth form. Lucky pie.”
“Yeah, it’s so much easier with a laptop than when you’re just writing stuff down. It takes me ages to read things and then when I’m making notes…” Mel shrugged and scrunched her face up.
Chloe poked her bottom lip out but then pulled it back in and nodded. “That must be well tough.”
“It can be sometimes. You want to see my crazy glasses though.”
“Oh,” Jasmine said, draining the half-glass of wine Ruby had allowed her to have. “I’ve seen those before, on TV.”
“You want to see?” Mel asked. Both girls nodded, and Mel gave Ruby a grin and a wink before reaching into her pocket.
When she put her glasses on, both girls hummed their approval. “They don’t look that bad,” Jasmine said, her fingers on her chin.
“I’m glad you think so.” Mel chuckled and put the spectacles away.
Their plates were cleaned with their garlic bread in no time, and when both her daughters decided to clear all four of the plates from the table, Ruby started to feel suspicious. “My goodness, look at that. Who are you and what have you done with my girls?”
“Mum,” Jasmine said, her eyes nearly rolling back into her head as a whine left her lips. “Not in front of Mel.” She spoke through gritted teeth, and Ruby’s eyebrows rose. Oh, that’s the deal, is it? Mel’s made a lasting impression on you, hasn’t she?
As Mel was the first woman Ruby had dated that her daughters had even spent time around, let alone been in deep discussion with, Ruby’s shoulders relaxed. She leaned back in her chair and watched Jasmine fill the dishwasher, while Chloe rinsed out the large saucepan and wiped the surfaces. As usual, Barney came over and sat down on her podgy bottom, hoping for a treat.
“Garlic and onion, not good for dogs,” Ruby stated.
“Makes them die,” both girls said in unison.
Ruby watched as they worked—a fairly well-oiled machine. “Thanks, lovelies.”
Jasmine sidled up to her mother. “Can I have a lift to—?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Really?” Ruby swept her hand, palm up, around the room, and then gestured towards Mel. “Your father may bend at will but I do not. I’m on a date, here.”
Jasmine rolled her eyes and huffed something under her breath that Ruby assumed was rude before leaving the kitchen and bounding up the wooden stairs.
“Lauren lives a five-minute walk away,” Ruby told Mel.
“Ah. Then she’ll have to use her legs.”
Chloe finished her jobs in the kitchen and kissed her mother’s cheek. Ruby leaned into her and wrapped an arm around her hip to pull her close. Chloe pretended to be embarrassed, but Ruby could tell she preferred a blush over not getting a hug good-bye.
“You off, then?”
“Yeah. I’ll text you if my plans change.”
“Good girl.”
Mel sat up straight in her chair and beamed. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Hope you have a nice time with Tasha.”
Chloe grinned and shuffled in her too-long corduroy trousers out of the kitchen. The door swung closed, but Ruby could hear her putting her bike helmet on with a click.
“I worry about those trouser bottoms,” Ruby said, tilting her head to one side and beaming shyly over at Mel. “She puts clips on, but they’re so long, she gets rising damp.”
“I don’t remember my flares being that long.”
“I don’t think they were in the seventies. Not that I’d really remember.”
“You were born in…” Mel closed her eyes and then opened them to count on her fingers. “Seventy-five?”
“That’s right. Good maths skills, Jackson.”
Mel poked her tongue out and waggled her head a bit, which made Ruby snort into her wine glass.
The front door opened and closed as Chloe, and then Jasmine, left.
It seemed very quiet suddenly, eerie almost, and Ruby looked into her wine glass for a while, unsure what she should say.
“So, did you have a plan for tonight, or…?” When Ruby looked up, Mel was sucking her bottom lip and gazing back at her.
“Not a plan, per se, no,” Ruby replied. “What do you feel like doing?”
“Backgammon?”
It took Ruby a few beats to work out she was joking. “I was thinking something a little more exciting.”
Mel’s eyebrows rose, and Ruby blushed.
She dropped her forehead onto her arms and groaned. “You know what I mean,” she mumbled into the table.
Mel laughed. “Okay, so, we could sit and talk?”
“On the sofa, please.” Ruby stood and rubbed the small of her back. “These chairs are murder.”
“Lead the way.”
“More wine?” Ruby scrutinised the bottle which had around a third left in it. At Mel’s nod, she poured them both an equal measure. Good job the girls helped us drink it, otherwise we’d be fairly trolleyed by the time we went to bed.
Bed.
Ruby gulped at the thought and figured it was probably a shame they didn’t have more wine. She felt like she could do with another glass.
Barney followed at their heels and stretched out with her legs behind her on the hearth rug, a happy little rumble coming from her chest.
Ruby sat on the sofa and watched Mel walk around the bright room, taking in various framed pictures and ornaments. Once she’d done a full circle, she turned back to Ruby, and pink crept into her cheeks. “Sorry. I like investigating how people decorate their houses. I’m curious, I suppose.”
“Do you think how someone decorates their house says a lot about them as a person?” Ruby asked, pulling her feet under her backside and getting comfortable.
Mel settled down on the opposite side of the sofa and faced her, cradling her glass in one hand. “I think it probably does.”
“What does my living room say about me?” Ruby asked, a teasing and challenging tone in her voice.
Chuckling, Mel allowed her free hand to creep across the sofa cushion and her fingers curled around Ruby’s. “I think the leaf patterns on your curtains mean you’re kind, and that you like nature.” She looked around. “The pictures of your daughters mean you’re family orientated. And that you’re passionate about keeping those connections tight.” She squeezed Ruby’s hand.
Ruby squeezed her back. “Thank you.”
Mel grinned and shrugged. “You saw my house. What did it tell you about me?”
“I only saw it for a second.”
“You’ll have to visit for longer next time,” Mel said, leaning her cheek against the back rest and gazing at Ruby.
They were quiet for a while, and the knowledge that Mel wanted to see her again, wanted to spend more time with her, made Ruby’s skin feel hypersensitive. She snuggled her back into the sofa and sipped the remainder of her wine, enjoying the fruity taste as it rolled around her mouth. When the wine was gone, they sat forwards to place their glasses on the coffee table.
Mel just smiled across at her, her eyes soft. “So, I feel like I know you, but I don’t really know you.”
Ruby rested her elbow on
her knee when she stretched her legs out along the sofa, her toes poking into Mel’s side.
Mel reached to pull off her shoes, placed them neatly to one side, and pulled her feet up too, her fingers linking with Ruby’s.
Ruby tilted her head to the side. “What do you want to know?”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Can’t you tell?” Ruby asked, her accent thick and Northern.
Mel just hummed.
“I grew up with my mum and older sister in Yorkshire. Dad died of bowel cancer when I was a teenager, so it was just Mum, me, and Maureen.”
“That must have been hard?”
“We stuck together, us girls. Dad was okay, but he worked a lot and he didn’t have much to do with us. Mum was—still is, actually—a rock. Proper matriarch. Proper scary.”
Mel chuckled and nodded.
“I met my husband at university, he was doing English while I was doing my nursing.”
“How long were you together?”
“I think Jasmine was… three? When we split up.”
Mel’s gaze on her was soft, her eyes the deep green of new grass. “Why did you split up?”
“I discovered I wasn’t really into men.”
“Ah.” Mel nodded and grimaced. “Yuck.”
“Yeah, it took me a little while, but I got there in the end.”
“How did he react?”
Ruby bit her lip and sighed deeply. “He was confused at first, then upset. He thought he’d not done enough for us, as a family, his girls. He felt like a failure. He felt like he’d pushed me away, or something, like it was his fault. I explained to him, several times if I remember, that it was literally a case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, but it took him ages to believe it.”
“How did the girls react?”
“I didn’t tell them right away. They were very young; even Chloe was just a bit too young. But I did. Actually, Chloe figured it out for herself, when she was about eight.”
Mel squeezed Ruby’s fingers again and then let her go so that she could rub her fingertip lightly over Ruby’s wrist.
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