Bill’s eyes widened, and Chelsea couldn’t fight the smile that appeared as she took another step forward. ‘You remember Jez off the estate, right? Rumour had it he was responsible for that limp when you couldn’t pay up on a bet. And when you tried flogging those dodgy phones. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I called him and said I finally knew where you were, well, he’d be thrilled. He’s wanted to… catch up with you for a very long time, Bill.’
She paused, watching as the older man thought it through. Always thinking on his feet, always a way out for Bill Davis. Except that one time, that one time the scariest man on the estate got tired of his bullshit.
‘So what do you say, Bill? Shall we give my dear old stepdaddy a call?’ Chelsea’s voice was perfectly pleasant but the threat was clear.
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary, love…’ He stepped back, and it was like the group exhaled at once.
‘And the next time you want to sell a story about Ruby, maybe you should make it one that was true. Like how she stole your whisky, or the time she threw a brick through your car window.’
‘I did bring her to London!’ Bill insisted tiredly, ‘The little bitch flirted and batted her eyelashes until I gave her a lift down here, and when I pulled in for petrol, she disappeared. With my wallet. I only want what I’m owed.’
‘It’s a shame that life isn’t fair then, isn’t it?’ Chelsea twitched her nose, the apologetic tone fake and tinny, ‘So as lovely as this has been, you’ll be on your way now, and I’ll happen to forget to tell Jez where you are. Especially as my good mates at the paper were so nice as to check the address your cheque was sent to.’
The older man’s face grew pale, and his eyes widened before he smiled, shrugging.
‘Always worth a try, girls. Always worth a try.’
‘Well you did, and now you’re done,’ Chelsea said simply, her face stony, ‘I’m sure there’s a bookies open on the high street just calling out your name.’
She put an arm around Evie’s neck, and Evie squeezed her waist, trying to hide the fact that her hands were shaking.
Her father looked at her soberly, trying to think of something to say. ‘One day you’ll understand, kid. You’ll see there are two sides to every story and it’s not just the bad guy and the good girl. Some people just have bad luck.’
‘And those aren’t the people who turn up to blackmail their daughters for money,’ Evie said firmly. ‘You threaten my happiness again, I will end you. With or without Jez’s help.’
Bill shrugged and walked out of the door, silence surrounding him as every single person in the place looked at him in disgust. Chelsea pulled Evie in for a hug and whooped a little. ‘Haha! We win! The old sod is gone!’
Evie pulled her closer, breathing in the same smell of shampoo that Chelsea had always had, resting their heads together briefly as she waited for her hands to stop shaking.
‘That was fucking terrifying,’ she breathed.
‘Are you kidding?! You’re such a badass!’ Chelsea beamed at her, tucking a strand of hair back from her face, ‘And look at you not punching your dad, not giving in!’
‘I wish I had punched him. It would have felt more like closure.’
‘You made the smart choice, and he couldn’t win. That’s closure enough,’ Chelsea nodded sagely, and looked across the room to find Kit, who was noticeably absent. Her face fell briefly, then she shook her head and straightened her back.
‘Well, if I was worried about how to subtly bring up my past I needn’t be now. I just intimated my stepdad’s a gangster.’
‘He won’t care,’ Evie smiled, looking at her, ‘besides, it can do for the terribly privileged to be afraid sometimes.’
‘Well, he’s gone, is that afraid enough?’ Chelsea tried to laugh but her throat caught.
‘He’ll be back,’ Evie smiled softly.
Chelsea nodded uncertainly, desperately hoping she was right. They stood quietly, looking out across the room as people chatted and took in the excitement, the journalists looking overwhelmed with how many angles they had on one story.
‘Hey, Chels, there you are,’ a voice came from behind them, and there was Kit, smiling at Chelsea like she was something else. Which, really, she was.
‘I thought you’d left,’ she said. Evie started to edge away, letting them have their moment.
‘No, I went to go buy you stuff. I need to make offerings to this big bad gangster stepdad, right?’ he shrugged, looking in the blue plastic bag from the corner shop, ‘Sadly all I could find was a pack of Haribo and a can of Special Brew. Can I join the club?’ He grinned at her, holding up the items.
‘Lifetime membership,’ she laughed, pulling him close.
Evie turned round to find Killian waiting for her patiently.
‘That was some show,’ he smiled gently, then laughed at the site of Chelsea and Kit. ‘A couple of shows. You okay?’
‘I’m… I’m very okay,’ The shock showed in her voice. ‘I can’t believe how okay I am. I mean, I have all this energy, like I need to run, or skydive or–’
‘Or sneak away upstairs with me whilst everyone’s distracted by the sing-song on the piano that I may have suggested?’ Killian grinned at her, nodding his head to the door, ‘Whatcha think?’
‘I think that sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all week!’
Creeping back downstairs later, they needn’t have worried that they’d be missed. What had started as a dinner was a party in full swing. The beautifully decorated table had been left abandoned, and instead chairs were circled around the piano that Jack had insisted he loan to the gallery. People perched on sofas or sat on the floor, gleefully wiping up the last bits of sauce off their plates with thick slices of homemade bread. Evelyn was singing, an old tune that Evie couldn’t quite recognise, but as they snuck in and grabbed drinks, she looked around at the people who had come to support them. She saw Chelsea, perching in Kit’s lap, smiling openly in a way she hadn’t seen in a long time. Jack and Petunia waltzing around the room lazily, barely moving in that way that people who have danced together for years knew how to do. Mollie sat with Esme, talking about all the things other people didn’t understand, but looked up briefly to smile at Evie, to widen her eyes in that excited way she had.
‘We did it!’ she mouthed.
She was right, Evie realised, as Killian placed a hand gently on her back and swayed where they stood. It didn’t matter whether the gallery was a success or not. They had built a life here now, a life that Ruby had led them to. But somehow, she had a feeling that this was going to work. As she curled into Killian, moving softly back and forth, she looked to the picture above the front door, where a gold-framed picture of four smiling faces had pride of place. On the back of that picture, in blue, scratchy biro it read:
‘Just four girls from the estate… who can do anything.’
***
It was a night out with her uni friends, overpriced pints in a dingy venue in Kentish town, the music blared and the warm sweaty bodies were pressed up against each other. The crowd was throbbing, excitement in the air, and Evie could barely breathe. Then the lights on the stage flashed suddenly, illuminating a small figure with huge red hair. She wore a green silk corset and black silk shorts. Her heels were green sparkles, like Dorothy’s ruby red slippers had been seduced by the powers of Oz. She had no introduction, but a simple piano tune flickered, and her voice cut through the crowd, somehow hypnotised. She sang ‘Feeling Good’ and it was only when Evie heard that voice that she knew without a doubt who it was. That pale face staring out, unsmiling, into the crowd, until the music crescendoed, and she strutted forward, that huge voice coming from such a little body… and she was transformed. The light glowed on her skin, which glittered as she winked and smirked at the crowd, twisting her body and crooning like she knew she was a star.
Evie listened to that set with a mix of emotions, but never with any doubt that Ruby was a star. She imagined finding her after the show, ca
tching up, those skinny freckled arms around her waist as they laughed about their dreams. Pure joy seemed to escape from her on that stage, like there was nowhere else she should be. She’d been right, Evie realised, all those years when she was so certain about what her place in the world should be… she’d been absolutely right.
As her set ended, the crowd erupted into cheers and whoops, as if they knew just how important she was going to be, how big a star she was going to become.
She beamed out at them, glossy red lipstick in place and held up her hands, ‘I’m Ruby Tuesday, and you have been wonderful!’ With a bow and a bum wiggle, she was gone, and Evie stood there frozen, suddenly so sure that Ruby Tuesday was a girl with a wonderful future, who didn’t need a reminder of her past.
She had shone, glowed with the beauty of someone on the cusp of brilliance, doing exactly what they should be doing, and Evie took that as inspiration – they could all reach their dreams if they were as stubborn and difficult and full of joy as Ruby Tuesday in that moment. It was all so possible, and even though the feeling of doubt settled in her stomach on the night bus home, her friends chatting about the wonderful performance they’d seen, Evie sat there with a smile on her face. She’d done it.
Epilogue
The opening was, of course, a terrific success. Nothing could dampen the day. Not even Bill’s nasty attempt at selling stories to every paper around. Everything he could possibly come up with – they suggested Evie was Ruby’s lesbian lover, and that Esme was Ruby’s lovechild who had been raised by her childhood friend. Anything he could make up, he did. But it didn’t hurt them. In fact, it just made people want to visit the gallery more; and when they got there, they forgot what the papers said.
Mollie started teaching a kids’ baking class on Saturday mornings, Evie did jewellery classes in the evening for local mums, funded by the borough. They started collaborating with charities and schools, trying to reach anyone who wanted to make something, anyone who’d been told they were unrealistic dreamers. Chelsea started to dance again. She went to evening ballet classes, and the joy that poured out of her was endless – she just seemed to glow the minute she started dancing again.
Evie had never felt freer, free from Badgeley and anger and disappointment. Instead she spent every day making something, reminding young people to dream, and falling quietly – and powerfully – in love.
Can’t wait to head back to The House on Camden Square? Keep reading for an extract from Chelsea’s story, Nice Day for a White Wedding!
Chapter One
‘Alright babe?’
Chelsea shook her head, feeling foolish as the words escaped into the empty cemetery. Ruby’s grave wasn’t as bedazzling as it should have been, even with the sunflowers she’d brought brightly clashing with the black marble of her headstone. Time had passed - the flowers and teddy bears and cards from little girls who wanted to grow up to be Ruby Tuesday had gone. Rain soaked and stinking, they had disintegrated in the summer storms, until eventually someone had cleared them all away.
Ruby would never have wanted such a drab headstone, plain and …appropriate. It should have been carved from a lump of garnet, showered with sparkle. Chelsea’s fingers itched with the need to improve it, to make it real in some way. She wanted to grab a glue gun and affix diamonds around the edges, but that would be wrong, disrespectful. At least to anyone who didn’t really know Ruby.
She could hear her friend’s voice in her head, ‘go on, you’re not going soft on me, are you babe? You never cared about right or wrong before.’
And she was right, that imaginary voice. Chelsea had done whatever the hell she wanted when she knew Ruby. But things had changed.
The ground was damp beneath her feet, but the summer sun was bright and glaring, like Badgeley was punishing her for never coming home often enough. The whole town felt muggy, like there was no air, and the little that was left was stale. It seemed weird that Ruby should have been buried here, instead of in London, near her penthouse flat where people still left notes and flowers. No-one in this little town gave a crap about Ruby Tuesday anymore.
Chelsea wanted to sit cross-legged on the ground and put her head against the cool stone, conjuring memories of those teenage days resting her forehead against Ruby’s, pretending they could read each other’s minds, and freaking out the little year 7s. But the ground was wet, the air was dry, and things were different now.
She patted the cool headstone in a silent apology.
‘See ya later, babe.’
Chelsea pulled her handbag over her shoulder, clutching at the handle as she strode down the road, head held high. Confidence was everything on the road down to the estate. The hazy heat of summer had the kids of Badgeley looking for fun, evidenced by the beer cans placed on the wall of the cemetery, and piled up by the bus stop, fag ends on the floor. Summers growing up here had seemed endless, and not in a good way. Day after day of the same shit, the same life, over and over. They’d spent their time hanging around in the park, working on their tans and talking about their escape plans. One day they’d make it out, make it to London. Every sixteen year old in Badgeley probably had the same dream, even now.
Chelsea visualised London now, where Kit would be getting in from work, rolling his shirt sleeves up and making lasagne, singing along to some classic rock album she’d never heard of. Further across the city, Evie and Esme would be sitting at their kitchen table, whilst Mollie tried to show Killian how to make a basic meal for the hundredth time that summer. That said, Chelsea mostly subsisted on avocado on toast these days. Further down in London, there was her office, her lovely big office with a view of the river, only granted her days before, along with a raise and a new title that she had worked for the last three years to get.
And here she was, in fucking Badgeley.
Okay, so she was doing her sisterly duty, and bringing birthday presents for her little brother wasn’t such a chore. Neither was stopping by to visit a dead friend. It was just that these visits made her chest contract a little more every time, and there was a reason they became more sparse as the years passed.
She adjusted her handbag, grabbed tighter at the plastic bag of presents as she turned right onto the estate she’d grown up on. She couldn’t decide if it looked smaller and harmless, or scarier and sprawling. Nothing had changed, she realised, recalling the multiples times she’d narrowly escaped trouble. She had a knack for attracting it then. You felt invincible when you were a kid. There was the time Leah Thomas decided Chelsea had flirted with her man. That’d had been a big one. Chelsea had managed to head-butt her and knock Leah’s two front teeth clean out. She was called gap tooth from them on, and it got shorted to GT as the years went on. She probably still lived here.
She walked across the centre of the grassy verge, remembering the time one of her mum’s boyfriends tried to knock their front door down, because he was convinced Tyler had nicked his stash. He probably had too, but all Chelsea could remember was laughing and taunting him whilst he went mad outside, and they pushed a cupboard up against the front door until he went away.
So many years of screaming and squaring up and desperately being a smart arse, because if you were just funny enough, someone might give you a break.
She took it in, the light sky of summer of the concrete. A couple of boys were standing around, topless in the fading light, jeans low on their hips as they stood smoking, staring at her. She instantly recognised Ty, his pimply teenage skin and shaved head, atop a skinny body. His eyes widened in warning: ‘don’t you dare come over here in front of them.’
She hated to admit it, but Tyler was pretty much a lost cause. It might have been her fault. She got out, got a job and forgot about him. She left him with her mum and Jez and the little ones. Chelsea had convinced herself that maybe she’d inspire him, show him that he could do it too, go to college, uni, do whatever he wanted. Those first few trips home had been full of impassioned speeches about following your dreams and all that bollocks.
Ty wasn’t buying it. Which was fair enough, because the person who had washed his clothes, helped with his homework and made sure there was dinner every night had up and abandoned him without a backwards glance.
Chelsea frowned, nodded at her brother and ducked her head as she marched over to her mum’s front door. She heard the whistles and cat calls from behind her as Tyler’s friends realised she was going to his house.
‘Ty, your stepdad send over a posh prozzie?’ one asked.
‘Yeah, present for your little brother’s birthday yeah?’ another cackled.
She turned and Tyler just stared at her, chin raised defiantly as their eyes met.
‘Nah, it’s just my hoity toity bitch sister.’
The ‘oohs’ of the teenage boys was low as they watched Chelsea for her reaction. She had purposefully softened her look, her blond bob clipped back at the sides, her jeans and plain t-shirt. The bag didn’t have a designer label, and her shoes were cheap. But they could see it as well as she could - she didn’t belong here anymore.
She stared at Tyler, a dead blank stare until he shrugged and turned away. The old Chelsea would have marched over and punched him, grabbed his ear and dragged him inside the flat. But it was too late for that now. She had lost that right a long time ago. She turned back to the black door with a sigh. The peeling paint, the crap dumped out the front, it seemed to look worse every time she came back. She knocked, hard, the sound of the tinny TV booming in the background.
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday Page 24