The Truth about Ruby Valentine Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  The Truth About Ruby Valentine

  Alison Bond has worked in the film industry for ten years. She started her career at ICM as an assistant to a maniacal boss with a superstar client list and was later an agent: at the Casarotto Company representing writers and directors. Her first novel, How to be Famous, was published by Penguin in 2005. This is her second novel. Alison lives mostly in London.

  The Truth About Ruby Valentine

  ALISON BOND

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2006

  4

  Copyright © Alison Bond, 2006

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Judith Murdoch whose insight and enthusiasm help me to be a better storyteller. Thank you to the good people of Penguin, especially Louise Moore, Mari Evans, Clare Pollock, Claire Bord and everyone who made this book look so damn sexy. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been picked for your team. Rebecca Winfield and Camilla Ferrier, thanks for all your efforts. I’m not sure I would have made it to the last page without a few people – Manny, your suggestions and tea-making skills are invaluable to me; Mum and Dad, my biggest fans (despite the rude bits); Pat and Mike Cowan, who told me inspiring tales of the swinging sixties just when I needed them most. Thanks also to Sarah Valentine, it’s all about you.

  1

  Whenever Kelly Coltrane wanted to feel good, deep down inside, she thought back to the moment when she’d first laid eyes on her boyfriend. Back when he was a stranger to her and full of infinite possibilities. Back before she spoke to him, before she started going out with him, and before reality kicked in.

  Kelly and Jez met for the very first time on a deserted beach at sunrise. Kelly was perched on a ragged rock at the high-tideline watching the pale sky slowly take on the colours of the summer day that was to come. She saw him before he saw her. He had his head down like a beachcomber and she was able to study the curious spectacle of his erratic, long-limbed strides as he picked his way through rock pools in the ghostly half-light. He was concentrating hard and she found it endearing, catching her breath if he stumbled or slipped. He held out his hands for balance like a tightrope walker and when he wobbled she willed him not to fall with all the mental powers she possessed. She wondered what he was like.

  By the time Jez looked up and saw her he was close enough for Kelly to admire the green flecks in his brown eyes. She was about to say something – hi, good morning, something – when he smiled at her and suddenly Kelly felt as if she didn’t have to say a single word. There was a whole conversation in his smile. Hello, lovely morning, I’m a nice guy, is this seat taken?

  He sat beside her and together they watched the golden globe chase away the pre-dawn cool. The grey sky gently bloomed into delicate pastel shades that in turn gave way to the blue. She kept expecting him to speak but as the shared minutes went by and he didn’t, she got excited. It was romantic, and she was enjoying the mystery. She could feel the warmth of his body inches away from hers. It was as if they were cocooned in a magic spell, one that she didn’t want to break with prosaic words.

  Then he kissed her and she let him, because moments like that don’t come around very often. A perfect first kiss, the early birdsong and the lulling waves the only sounds for miles around. She felt as though they were the last two people alive in the world. Two wandering souls finding each other at daybreak. It was by far the most romantic thing that had ever happened to her. It was as if he was her destiny. She felt like the star of her own private movie.

  The truth was far more mundane. Kelly was only out so early because she’d drunk way too much the night before with the girls after work, crawled home and into bed before the ten o’clock news and woken at four in the morning feeling wide awake, bursting for a wee and slightly hungover. Once she’d navigated the bathroom she was even more alert, with an empty fridge and a desperate craving for a bacon cheeseburger. She knew she would not be able to get back to sleep unless she had one. So she’d driven down to the all-night garage and bought one of those microwaveable burgers, which had tasted sublime, and then she’d decided that a bracing walk down to the sea might clear her fusty head and alleviate the nausea in her belly.

  Jez was only out unusually early because he’d been rudely awoken by the gruesome sound of someone having an enthusiastic shag in the room next door to his and had been so depressed by his flatmate’s success with women compared to his own that he’d slammed out of the flat, hoping to piss off Darren, the flatmate, and hopefully interrupt his stride, so to speak.

  These people were the real Kelly and Jez. The pair on the beach didn’t yet know that about each other.

  The kiss ended and when they pulled apart Jez said, ‘I’m Jez.’

  ‘Kelly,’ she whispered.

  That was almost a year ago. They’d been together ever since. They had some sweet moments, they had some good times, but Kelly had never been able to re-create that feeling on the beach when the world seemed enchanted and her life suddenly overflowed with promise. Sometimes, ridiculously, she resented the fact that they’d had their starry-eyed first encounter, because everything that followed that morning was bound to be a disappointment. Maybe if they’d just met in a club or something she wouldn’t feel so heavily invested. It wasn’t that he did anything wrong, it was just that when she looked at him her thoughts were not of passion and romance and happy ever after. Mostly when Kelly looked at Jez, she thought: is this it?

  *

  Wake up!’ said Kelly, kicking Jez in the shin as she hunted under the bed for her missing boot. She had to find it or she’d be going to work in her socks. Even though she spent most nights here with Jez (and Darren and whoever Darren was sleeping with that week), officially she still lived at home and so most of her clothes still lived at home as well. Lately she’d been wondering which would be more tragic, living with Jez and Darren in their eternal student squalor or living at home with her dad at the grand old age of twenty-five.

  Under the bed Kelly’s fingers dipped into something squishy and unpleasant. She flinched and then withdrew a plate o
f half-eaten super-noodles. Last week Jez had suggested that she move in officially and they should start splitting the rent. Was it any wonder that she couldn’t bring herself to do it?

  Beneath the covers he moved. ‘Get up,’ she said. ‘You’ll be late for work.’

  ‘Notgoinin.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not going in,’ he said. His dishevelled dark blonde hair appeared above the duvet, shortly followed by his smiling face. Jez still had his utterly disarming smile. She loved it. If only she could move in with a smile. If only she could love the rest of him.

  ‘Since when?’ she said.

  ‘Since there was hardly enough work for one person, let alone two. Glynn told me to take the rest of the week off.’

  ‘Paid?’

  He looked at her as if she was stupid. ‘Well, no, of course not paid. Don’t worry, I’ll manage.’

  Jez worked at a vintage video store. He described it as a niche market. Kelly tried not to think of the money that she’d lent him when he hit zero at the end of last month. She should just kiss it goodbye. Or him. Or something. But not today. She was running late.

  Her hand closed around the shiny leather of her elusive boot and she was momentarily elated. ‘Got it!’ And she still had thirty minutes to get in to work on time. It was practically possible.

  ‘Make us a cup of tea?’ said Jez, smiling. And she did.

  While she was waiting for the pot to brew Kelly tried to work out what kept them together, but it quickly got depressing so she stopped. He was a nice guy. That should be enough.

  Kelly couldn’t stand it when people complained endlessly about their jobs. She was a put-up or shut-up kind of girl. As a result she rarely complained about hers, even though she hated it with a venomous passion and felt as though it was slowly and painfully draining away what remained of her soul. She had a recurrent fantasy of walking in and telling her overbearing supervisor, Chartreuse, exactly where she could shove her poxy job. Except the money was pretty good for this part of Wales and inspiring job opportunities for unskilled non-graduates with poor Α-level results and a patchy CV were few in Newport.

  Kelly worked for a financial management company, a fancy way of saying debt collectors, which was really just another way of saying bailiffs. Every day she fielded phone calls from people all over the country, up to their eyes in debt and up to their necks in sand. They were usually upset or very, very angry and either way they took it out on her. Kelly had been verbally abused, her life had been threatened and she had endured endless tears and tirades from people who got hopelessly carried away on charge cards and then acted put upon when they received a court summons, or worse – men turning up to take away the widescreen television.

  Kelly was only three and a half minutes late but Chartreuse raised an eyebrow just the same. An exquisitely shaped eyebrow which Chartreuse had painstakingly plucked around a template supposedly based on the perfectly shaped brows of Elizabeth Hurley. Kelly knew this because Chartreuse had told her. At length.

  Chartreuse tapped on the dial of her pink swatch and then went back to lazily flicking through the pages of a gossip magazine, all the while chatting down the phone on what was obviously a personal call.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kelly, except she wasn’t.

  She plugged in her headset and answered the blinking call. Chartreuse could have answered it but there was a rumour that she hadn’t answered an incoming call since 1998 and so, just to add to the fun, this caller would have been on hold listening to a synthetic version of ‘Greensleeves’.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘First Fiscal, this is Kelly, how can I help?’

  ‘Finally! I need somebody to please tell me what the hell is going on,’ said an angry, slightly posh voice. ‘I miss one bloody payment. It’s an outrage… daylight robbery… making good people feel like criminals…’

  ‘I see. And do you have an account number?’ Kelly went through the motions of the call, keeping her voice low and under control, not reacting no matter what he threw at her, just as she’d been taught. ‘Every caller is a learning experience,’ Chartreuse was overly fond of saying. ‘If you feel pressured, refer to the handbook.’ The acceptable response to every possible query was written in an exhaustive handbook; Kelly hadn’t looked at hers since her first week on the job. ‘Remember, there’s no such thing as the perfect call,’ Chartreuse would say, and Kelly always felt like saying, ‘Like you’d know?’

  Chartreuse received an extra five grand a year to be their supervisor – correction, team leader – but she didn’t actually seem to do anything special other than organizing the rota, which had been the same for as long as Kelly had worked the nine to four shift. Which felt like for ever. Maybe she should ask to switch to the two to nine, just for a change.

  Kelly sighed. Was that the most exciting thing she could think of? Switching earlies for lates? Woo-hoo. Wild. But Kelly didn’t expect too much out of life. A nice view or a filthy bacon cheeseburger was often enough to raise her spirits. There were, after all, plenty of people in the world who never got the chance to enjoy either. One day she wanted to have adventures, but she was only just getting the hang of being a responsible adult and there never seemed to be enough time in the day to make any serious decisions. So she stayed in a job she didn’t much like, and with a boyfriend she wasn’t sure about because, really, what was the alternative? Being unemployed and alone? One day maybe, but not today.

  *

  At twelve noon precisely Chartreuse left the office for a two-hour lunch. Sometimes three hours if she went to the cinema, which she often did. She’d come back into the office having just seen the new Tom Cruise or whatever, and have the gall to tell them about it, usually spoiling the ending in the process. Or she’d go shopping and put on a fashion display when she got back. Sometimes it was all Kelly could do to stop herself from admiring the woman’s nerve. Chartreuse was incredibly thick-skinned, whereas Kelly spent far too much time worrying that she’d offended people or embarrassed herself, often for months or years after the fact.

  As soon as the door closed behind their leader, the First Fiscal team relaxed palpably.

  ‘Bags I get her magazine,’ said Kelly, and dived into Chartreuse’s desk drawer before anyone else had the chance. Around her people turned on their mobiles and started texting their mates or surfing the Internet, all the while answering the calls as they came in. If only Chartreuse weren’t there, this job would be much more bearable.

  Kelly got lost in the lush pages of the celebrity magazine. It was senseless really, she knew, her relentless interest in the lives of strangers, passing judgement on their relationships or outfits or the inside of their houses as if it really mattered in the larger scheme of things. She occasionally used the excuse that her father, Sean Coltrane, had been a celebrity photographer back in his day, though Sean’s black and white art was a world away from the latest picture of Christina Aguilera papped without her makeup on. But more often she happily admitted the guilty pleasure she took from paddling in the shallow end. It was fun. Kelly had a healthy appetite for tales of the rich and fabulous and she didn’t feel the need to hide it.

  And judging by the brief tussle for the magazine when she’d finished it, neither did the rest of the girls.

  ‘How’s Jez?’ said one of them.

  ‘All right,’ said Kelly. ‘How’s Dave?’

  ‘Pissing me off as usual.’

  Kelly didn’t really like it when people complained about their boyfriends either but she laughed anyway.

  A few desks away a girl was having an argument on the phone with her mother. You could tell it was her mother by the way she spoke to her, impatiently and with more than a touch of teenage histrionics. When the call was over the girl slammed down the phone, sighed deeply and said to anyone who might be listening, ‘My mum is a total bitch to me.’

  Kelly particularly didn’t like it when people complained about their mothers. It was just her and Sean at home. There hadn�
�t been a mother in the picture for as long as she could remember. People who complained about their mothers didn’t know how lucky they were. At least they had someone to complain about. Kelly could have said as much, but she didn’t. In her experience the tale of a runaway mummy encouraged the worst kind of pity and she didn’t need anyone to feel sorry for her. On hearing such a story people invariably think of how it would feel to lose their own mother and how awful that would be, but it wasn’t like that for Kelly, and people found it hard to understand. Kelly had no sense of loss because it was impossible for her to miss what she couldn’t even remember.

  Kelly was totally fine.

  Okay, so her job and her boyfriend and her living situation were not what she might have hoped for when she was a little kid. Back then she had imagined a much more interesting life for herself, but wasn’t it that way for everyone? As a child you dream of what you are going to be and nobody says, ‘When I grow up I want to work in an office,’ but thousands of people end up doing exactly that. As the years go by you forget what it was you wanted to be in the first place. She was happy enough. Growing up without a mum only felt as if she was being short-changed once in a while; most of the time she was content. And the gnawing sense of dissatisfaction with her lot was nothing to do with the fact that she thought about her absent mother every single day. Okay?

  Just before three o’clock Chartreuse blew back into the office with an armful of Warehouse carrier bags – she must have driven all the way to Cardiff – and she was obviously very excited about something.

  Kelly tuned her out. Probably some bloke had called her and for the rest of the afternoon it would all be: ‘… he said and then I said…’ and Kelly would hate the poor guy even though she’d never met him. Then she noticed that the rest of the office were caught up in Chartreuse’s excitement and someone was plugging in the old television in the corner of the room, moving the ailing spider-plant gathering dust on top of it, and trying to get a decent picture. Something was happening and bigger than their team leader’s love life, because as much as Chartreuse might have wanted it to, her love life wouldn’t make the news. That was the difference between them: Chartreuse read her magazines and felt maliciously jealous; Kelly read them and felt sickened and appalled, but in a good way, the way one might after gorging an entire family bar of Dairy Milk chocolate.