The Truth about Ruby Valentine

by Alison Bond

  Tomas nudged her on the hip and pointed towards a stairwell which led up to the roof proper. ‘Fancy some air?’ He held out his hand for Kelly to take and, curious, she did.

  It was dark on the roof, and if she peered over the edge she could see the crowd milling a storey below them, but they had the empty roof all to themselves. Alone at last.

  Her heart was beating fast in her chest. She searched for some stars in the sky to rein in her feelings, to remind her of home, but it was a cloudy night. It seemed ridiculous that only a fortnight ago she had been looking for the same stars back in Wales, wondering if she was the kind of girl who would ever have adventures, and now she was here, and the only stars were the ones who were guests at the tribute. She was looking down at the Los Angeles skyline with the hottest man she’d ever met. She spoke in a whisper, even though there was no need.

  ‘I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here.’

  ‘No,’ he said. We’re not. Don’t you like breaking the rules? Taking risks?’

  ‘Not really’ She liked playing it safe. But what was safe about being in a foreign country, among hundreds of strangers, and wearing red to a memorial tribute? It was a risk to admit that her life wasn’t turning out to be everything she’d hoped and search for answers. It was a risk to be alone with Tomas. Playing it safe, she decided, was overrated. ‘Look,’ she said, and pointed.

  In the distance, standing out against the black hills, the Hollywood sign kept watch over all of them and suddenly, above it, flaring crimson fireworks lit up the night, explosion after explosion forming chrysanthemums of blazing red until the smoke haze surrounding them seemed to stain the clouds a perpetual pink. It was a gaudy, magnificent display.

  Kelly’s neck ached from looking upward and she rested her head on Tomas’s shoulder, not thinking of anything but how he was broad enough to make her feel deliciously feminine. He started to hum in her ear, a sweet tune she vaguely recognized, and slowly moved his feet so that they were dancing.

  The explosions continued and she could hear the applause of the people below, but all she could feel was his warm breath in her ear and a heartbeat that could have belonged to either of them. He cupped her chin in his hand, lifted her face to his and then kissed her. She froze. He pulled back and laughed at the expression on her face.

  Kelly couldn’t hide her shock and started to babble. ‘I wonder how much they cost, the fireworks, it’s a lot of money that’s basically going to go up in smoke, isn’t it? I wonder if they charge per firework or what?’

  ‘About a thousand dollars a minute,’ said Tomas, amused. ‘They charge by the minute.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at the weatherproofed surface beneath her feet – who would have thought that a flat roof would be littered with so much crap? Cigarette butts and soda cans, a gym shoe, an empty egg carton… anything so that she didn’t have to look up at his face.

  He bent to kiss her again. ‘I have a boyfriend,’ she blurted. ‘That was him, downstairs. Jez. He’s my boy friend.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So I can’t.’

  ‘He never has to know’ Tomas pressed his lips down on hers and clamped her arms firmly by her side. She twisted her head away from him. His eyes didn’t look twinkly and suggestive any more, but cold and mean.

  ‘But I’d know,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I think I get it,’ he said. ‘You’re not as sophisticated as you like to make out, are you? You think you can keep up with Sofia but really you’re a little prick tease, just like all the other Californian girls.’

  He pushed himself closer into her and she started to feel nervous. She struggled against him. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I thought you wanted to have a good time tonight?’

  She was scared for about three seconds and then she remembered all the people downstairs who would hear her if she were to scream. It would be a race to see who got to her first, security or the press. She strenuously reclaimed a few inches of personal space to have a bit of room to manoeuvre and then she slammed her knee into his groin as hard as she could. He instantly released his grip. ‘Bitch!’

  Kelly fled.

  She took the stairs two at a time. What had she been thinking of? She was so stupid. She could flirt with him, dance under a starless sky and pretend that she was a different kind of woman, but it was all romantic nonsense. She didn’t know him at all and after what had just happened she could tell that he was no Prince Charming. And she was no princess. She wasn’t red satin and priceless rubies. She was jeans and a t-shirt. She was walks in the countryside and dodgy old films on cable; she was a cup of tea, not the perfect espresso. A pint down the pub, not a first-class air ticket to New York. She’d been happy that way and she hadn’t even known it.

  This wasn’t real, none of it was. Who was she trying to kid? Maybe what she’d had back home was as happy as it got for a girl like her. She didn’t deserve anything more. No wonder her mother had left.

  Kelly started to cry. She wiped the tears away impatiently. She didn’t even know who she was crying for. Jez? Ruby? Or the lost chance of being a princess?

  She ducked past the remnants of the crowd in the dining room and found herself in a dimly lit hallway, the more private part of the hotel. At the end a door was ajar. She slipped inside.

  It was a library. A few tables were dotted around the warm space, looking out on to floodlit gardens. She needed a place to get her head together, to think about who she was and what she wanted to be. There was so much she still didn’t know about Ruby but she was scared that even knowing everything about her would still not fill the gap she had always felt in her life. Perhaps the gap had less to do with her mother than she thought. Perhaps she was just another twenty-something starting to feel as if life was progressing down a one-way street taken only by chance.

  Kelly could only see one other person in the library, sitting alone at a table in an alcove. She could see the back of his head. He had an open bottle of brandy beside him. She knew it was Max.

  She sat down opposite him. ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

  Max looked up as if he had seen a ghost.

  ‘My dad told me you’re the only one who knows what really happened.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was born, when she left.’

  Max slowly picked up the brandy and poured himself a glass. A movement of his hand made another glass magically appear from an unseen waiter. He poured some for Kelly. ‘Your dad,’ he said, ‘Sean Coltrane, how’s he doing these days?’

  ‘Please tell me,’ said Kelly. She was frustrated by Max’s evasiveness. ‘Tell me where I came from.’

  ‘Your dad saved her life, did you know that?’

  ‘I want to know everything.’

  25. Ruby Coltrane 1980

  News of Dante’s spectacularly unglamorous death spread like wildfire. So quickly that the source was most likely the chambermaid who’d found his body, wrapped around the body of a cheap blonde who turned out not to be a stripper or a hooker or a drug dealer but an under-age girl from Minneapolis whose parents were still hoping she’d be back home soon. The picture that all the newspapers printed of the girl was as wholesome as home-baked bread.

  The beach house was surrounded by reporters. Cameramen set up camp with stepladders and huge telephoto lenses. They brought snacks. The tourists came later, hoping for a first-hand glimpse of suffering.

  Inside it was possible to hear the crowds. Ella was managing to keep the children distracted. But they all knew their father was dead. They were old enough to understand what that meant, but not old enough to know why all the people had gathered outside and wouldn’t go away. Vincent and Octavia kept asking for their mother.

  Ruby had barricaded herself in to the bedroom and wouldn’t answer Ella’s increasingly frantic knocks on the door. ‘Please, Ruby, say something. You’re scaring me.’

  Ruby lay flat on her back on the bed, tears casc
ading over her cheeks and drenching the cool white sheets beneath her. She wasn’t aware of Ella knocking, she couldn’t hear her voice. There was a rushing in her head which began when the police officer told her that her husband was dead and had not stopped since. It was like being permanently on the edge of blacking-out, except the release of unconsciousness never came.

  Ruby systematically considered the best way to commit suicide. Nothing with blood, she wouldn’t do that to Ella. Pills then, except she might not have enough to do the job. If only they lived in a penthouse she would have jumped. Ruby had always struggled to believe in heaven but suddenly she had faith that there was an afterlife and that’s where she would see Dante again. She could not comprehend living in a world where he wasn’t.

  For hours she lay completely still thinking of all the years they had spent together. Trying to recall every single time they had made love, starting in London, ending here, as if meditating on his spirit could bring him back. There was an ache in her belly as though she hadn’t eaten for days. Had it been that long? Or was the pain she felt the flight of her soul which surely had left with him?

  Good morning, Ma’am, I’m afraid we have some bad news… You might want to sit down… A hotel room in Santa Monica… Dead.

  There was a loud crash and the bedroom door flew open. Ella stood there, slightly out of breath, rubbing her shoulder. She’d rammed the door. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You’re alive.’ Octavia and Vincent ran into the room. Octavia threw herself into her mother’s arms and began to cry. Vincent, too, hurled himself on to the bed.

  Ruby looked down and could hardly recognize her own children. For some abstracted reason she wasn’t sure where these little parts of Dante came from and why they were still here when he was gone. She only knew that she couldn’t bear to have these arms around her, she didn’t want to share the bed, their bed, with anyone but him.

  ‘Get off me!’ Their faces crumpled as Ruby pushed them away.

  Ella looked on with horror as Ruby shoved Octavia so hard that the little girl fell from the bed. She hustled the children from the room and said to Ruby as she left, ‘I was worried about you, that’s all. We all were.’

  Ruby turned back to stare at the ceiling and said nothing.

  After several days the press outside grew restless. In the absence of any hard news or photographs of Ruby they started to delve into Dante’s past and dragged out a number of women who were also grieving but were willing to share their feelings with the wider world. A picture was painted of a bad husband and a worse father. The children, when they returned to school, were teased about their junkie dad.

  For weeks Ruby couldn’t even think of Dante without the searing pull at the back of her throat warning of imminent tears. She felt as though she was rotting from the inside out, collapsing into her own black heart.

  Ella forced her to eat and gradually she was able to find a few moments’ release from the gut-wrenching pain. She would do this by focusing on a time when she was happy, to remind herself that she was once capable of being so. She would think about her first haircut in London, or her first job in Los Angeles. She would remember winning the Oscar or how she felt at the end of a hard scene well done. Most often she delved further into the past, back when she was a child and everything was simple and happiness could be found in a butterfly skipping past your face on a summer’s day. A time before fame, a time before Dante.

  This temporary respite only ever lasted for a few moments. No matter how hard she tried not to think about Dante it was impossible. She felt as if she was losing her mind, but the thought of escaping from reality was oddly comforting. It would be better if she had never loved him.

  She planned to kill herself as soon as she had the energy to do so.

  Ruby was vaguely aware of a ringing sound in the room. Several seconds went by before she realized it was the phone. A few seconds after that she remembered how phones worked and picked it up.

  ‘Ruby Valentine, you’re one tricky lady to find.’

  ‘Who is this?’ she said, instantly alert to strangers.

  ‘It’s Sean. Do you know, I had to speak to three different people before I got this number from Ella?’

  Sean? Did she know somebody called Sean? She thought she might have done many years ago, back when she was someone else, someone free.

  ‘Sean Coltrane?’ he prompted.

  ‘Sean.’

  ‘That’s all the hello I get? Jesus, Ruby, it’s been years.’

  She knew who he was, she did, but had it really been in this lifetime that she’d known simple pleasures like friendship?

  ‘I’m so sorry about Dante,’ he said. ‘Ruby, it’s awful what happened. He was an amazing person, a great artist and a friend. I’ll miss him.’

  She didn’t know what to say to such a genuine expression of regret.

  ‘I felt bad about missing the funeral,’ he continued. ‘I was away. My thoughts were with you.’

  Ruby had left her bed briefly for the funeral, but she wouldn’t be able to tell you the name of a single person who was there or what prayers were said.

  ‘Ella thinks you need a break.’

  She started laughing then and the tears that fell down her cheeks were half relief and half hysteria. It felt good to laugh. Out of the ordinary. A release.

  Sean waited until her mirth had subsided. ‘What’s so funny?’ he said.

  ‘A holiday will fix me? Is that what Ella thinks?’

  ‘I’m here for you,’ he said. ‘We were friends once. I’ve rented a massive house, miles away from anywhere – come and stay for a while. Get some space.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘My sweet girl, you can do anything.’

  She hung up and yanked the plug from the socket.

  When Ella next brought her food Ruby confronted her. ‘You spoke to Sean about me?’

  ‘I had to talk to someone, you can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’re hurting yourself and you’re destroying the children. I hate seeing you this way.’

  ‘Then leave. This is my house, mine and Dante’s.’ Just saying his name caused a fresh stab of grief.

  ‘I would never leave the children with you while you’re in this state.’

  ‘Take them then, I don’t care.’

  ‘You don’t understand what I’m saying. You need to go. The children can’t take much more of this.’

  ‘The children, the children, think of the children,’ parroted Ruby. ‘What about me? I lost my husband.’

  ‘And they lost their father. For Christ’s sake, do you think you’re the only person that loved him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please, Ruby. I would take them away if I had anywhere to go.’

  ‘You’re asking me to leave my own house?’

  ‘Yes, and if you don’t I’ll talk like this every day until you do.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’ Let Sean deal with the after-math of her suicide; he was a man, it would be better that way.

  26

  Ruby flew to London where she checked into the Dorchester under an assumed name and called Sean Coltrane.

  ‘I’d be glad to have you,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be needing warm clothes.’

  He drove all the way through the night to collect her. He didn’t ask any questions on the long journey west into the Welsh valleys, like how long she would be staying or how she was feeling. She was glad of this because she wouldn’t have been able to give him any honest answers. He simply chatted about his plans for the new house, his latest photographic subjects. Topics that required her only to nod from time to time. And when the scenery outside grew ever more wild and extreme, highlighted by the rising sun, he said nothing at all and allowed her to drink in nature’s gifts through the car window and feel peace shyly try to enter her closed heart.

  How fitting it was that Sean had rented a house in Wales. Ruby was reminded of the last time she had travelled through
this scenery, on the train to London all those years ago, convinced that she was going off to make a better life for herself. Full of disdain for the choices her parents had made, wrapped up in a superiority complex that insisted she could, and would, do better than this. She had been convinced that there was nothing there for her. But the reality was that all she had found in the big bad world were larger failures and greater disappointments which had eventually led her all the way back home.

  Life could have been so much easier if she had never left. She felt bitter about how arrogant she had been then. What had she been so afraid of? That she would end up the same as everyone else? That she would be normal, ordinary and dull? She would gladly give up all the highs if she could escape the lows. She would give her Oscar away for a bit of normality. She’d been happy as a girl. What went wrong? When had her ambition turned into self-destruction?

  Arriving at Sean’s house, she remained silent. It was shabby and in need of attention. Unloved. It made her feel sad. Objectively she could see that it was a lovely old house with a spectacular view but she took no satisfaction from the landscape. It was as if she’d lost the part of her soul that could feel pleasure.

  Sean led her upstairs to one of the guest rooms. She didn’t notice how beautifully he’d furnished it for her, nor how her room was the only one from which you could see the sea. She just closed the door on him and went to bed.

  After a deep, dreamless sleep she awoke at noon and stole into the kitchen where she saw a bottle of whisky on the kitchen table. She picked it up without thinking and supplemented the tea that Sean seemed to think would cure all her ills with generous slugs from the bottle for the rest of the day, going back to bed and snoozing until she passed out.

  Maybe it was because Sean had known her before she was famous, or maybe he was simply careless, but he didn’t pay her much attention. You’d think if an old friend, a movie star to boot, turned up, out of her mind with grief, you would watch her closely. But apart from asking her once if she had everything she needed he ignored her. He would smile if they passed on the stairs and that was it.