Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

Three friends have become four. But that’s only the beginning.

Ruby, Evie, Mollie and Chelsea were the bad girls at school. But Ruby was the baddest. Evie fought her anger, Mollie fought her mother and Chelsea…well, Chelsea just fought. But Ruby set her sights on a bigger stage. And together, they dreamed of a future where Ruby could sing, Evie could make art, Mollie could bake, Chelsea could dance – and all of them could finally feel at home.

A decade later, the girls are reunited for the funeral of Ruby Tuesday, the girl who took the world – and the charts – by storm, before fading too soon. And Evie doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she learns that Ruby has left them a house on Camden Square – the perfect place for them to fulfil their dreams. But does she dare take the plunge, and risk it all for one last shot at the stars?

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday is Book One in A.L. Michael’s new series, ‘The House on Camden Square’

Praise for A.L. Michael

‘I know it’s a good book when I shut the Kindle cover and sigh with contentment. The Last Word totally did it for me.’ 4* from Angela*

‘This is a funny, funny book.’ 5* to The Last Word from Rosee**

‘Fresh, fast and … had that magical romance feeling and a bit of hotness that you just can’t help but love. Absolutely brilliant!’ 5* to The Last Word from The Book Geek Wears Pajamas

‘I LOVED THIS. I laughed, I cried, I fell in love. All of the emotions were felt in the reading of this book and it is definitely one of the best Christmas releases that I’ve read this year.’ 5* to Driving Home for Christmas from Erin’s Choice**

‘I laughed, I cried and I was left with that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you read something wonderful.’ 5* to Driving Home for Christmas from That Thing She Reads

‘The story put a huge smile on my face and it’s just a feel-good with a bit of spark, glimmer, friendship, heart, fun and love. I couldn’t put it down!!!’ 5* to My So-Called (Love) Life from Simona**

‘My So-Called (Love) Life was one of those books I just happened to read at the right time which completely lifted my mood and made me feel and smile and want to start reading again.’ 5* to My So-Called (Love) Life from Sophie*

*Review from Goodreads

**Review from Amazon

Also by A.L. Michael

Also by A.L. Michael

The Last Word

Driving Home for Christmas

My So-Called (Love) Life

If You Don’t Know Me By Now

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

The House on Camden Square

A.L. Michael

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016

Copyright © A.L. Michael 2016

A.L. Michael asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9781474054447

Version date: 2018-07-23

A.L. MICHAEL

is a twenty-something writer from North London, currently living in Watford. She has a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing, an MA in Creative Entrepreneurship (both from UEA) and is studying for an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. She is not at all dependent on her student discount card. She works as a creative writing workshop facilitator, and copywriter, and is currently working on her new series. She has an alarming penchant for puns, is often sarcastic when she means to be sincere, and can spend hours watching videos of corgis on Buzzfeed. But it’s all research, really.

Thank you to the wonderful network of supportive writers I have around me, constantly there with cake and commiseration or congratulations and bubbles.

To my lovely work friends in my first ever 9-5, thank you for allowing me to steal your hilarious one-liners.

And huge, sparkly, endless thank you’s to my excellent editor Clio Cornish, who is as talented at correcting a plotline as she is at cushioning my poor, writerly ego.

For my friends.

We have moved on from WKDs, school trips and parties at Abercorn.

But you guys are just as awesome.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Praise

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Extract

Endpages

About the Publisher

Chapter One

When Evie Rodriguez woke that morning and put on her smartest black dress and oversized dark sunglasses, she did not think she would end her day sitting in a damp deck chair with a four-pack of cheap lager hanging from her fingertips. That said, maybe she should have.

She had already wrestled another two chairs from the shed, the lock still broken after all this time. Droplets of sweat ran from her hairline down her neck and the bridge of her nose was burning in the sunshine, but she refused to move. It was a test, of sorts. And she had to believe that they’d come.

***

‘Did you know her? Did you know Ruby?’

The little town of Badgeley had never seen such a commotion. At least, not since the X Factor tour bus broke down on the way to Milton Keynes in 2007. The little stone church, which had stood in the middle of the town for centuries, was guarded by police for the first time in history. The paparazzi didn’t seem to care, snapping away, taking pictures of the mourners, and Evie twitched her lips as she noticed some of her old classmates playing it up for the cameras. The gossip queens daubing dramatically at their dry eyes, talking about what an inspiration Ruby was. The rugby boys playing it up, grinning at the cameras. They wanted the world to think that they knew the legend that was Ruby Tuesday. And it was all a lie.

Evie adjusted her sunglasses and ran a hand through her curly dark hair. She could not get angry today. She had lots to be angry about; these stupid people pretending they knew her friend, the journalists showing no respect… and the fact that Ruby was gone. She was pretty angry about that all by itself. But she had promised her mother that she wouldn’t be bad today. Evie would show up, mourn her old friend and go back to her life. That was it.

She walked quickly into the church, which was already heaving with strangers. Ruby had only had a handful of friends in Badgeley. She was a troublemaker. A firecracker. Whatever else they wanted to call a young girl with red hair who didn’t do what people expected. The rest were just there for the drama of it all, to say they were there on the day that the superstar Ruby Tuesday was buried. Evie closed her eyes briefly, feeling the cool air in the church soften her nerves just a little. She saw her mother up in a pew near the front, beckoning her, her dark hair shaking with the movement.

‘How are you, my darling?’ Maria Rodriguez stroked her daughter’s cheek, scanning her face for a trace of something. Instead all she found was a blank mask.

‘I’m fine.’

‘She was your friend, you’re not fine,’ her mother insisted.

Evie shrugged, ‘She was my friend ten years ago, and only for a little while.’ Her voice didn’t shake but she refused to take off her sunglasses.

‘I’m surprised your father didn’t make it,’ her mother said softly, a look of disappointment gracing her features briefly.

‘Why?’ Evie tried to keep the malice from her voice, hissing a little in the church.

‘Because he always liked Ruby. He thought she was talented. He always said she’d be famous.’

And he’d want to be here to cash in on the chump reporters offering a few hundred quid for a story about her when she was younger. Evie bit her lip and said nothing, shrugging. Thank goodness he hadn’t turned up. There were enough people making money out of Ruby’s memory today. She couldn’t handle Bill being one of them.

She heard people quieten, almost felt them as they turned around in their pews to look at whoever had walked in. Was it one of Ruby’s famous boyfriends? Someone off EastEnders or from a boyband? A few of them were dotted about the front rows, heads down, dark glasses on. Evie turned, hating herself for caring. Instead she saw Chelsea, and a wry smile appeared on her face against her will.

Chelsea Donolly had shocked them all. Growing up like Evie and Ruby on the estate, everyone was convinced she’d amount to nothing. Maybe because her mother was a nasty piece of work and her stepdad had some dodgy business dealings. Maybe because she used to pull back her striped blonde hair into a tight ponytail and wear huge hoop earrings. Chelsea had a way of raising an eyebrow and jutting her hip that made you want to shit yourself with fear. That much hadn’t changed at least.

She waltzed in. Her hair was beautiful, a razor sharp platinum bob, her expensive black shift dress fitted tightly, and the red soles of her Louboutins screamed ‘local girl done good’. Evie wasn’t sure if Chelsea was trying to compete with their dead friend in that way. Chelsea scanned the rows for a space; and zeroed in on Evie, a half smile gracing her lips as she nodded. The last time she’d seen Chelsea was just before they’d gone their separate ways – Evie had gone to art college, and Chelsea was off to Oxford, desperate to show the people in this town that she was better than they knew.

A little part of Evie wasn’t sure if she hated her for that. If it was jealousy or failure speaking, she didn’t know. All she knew was that the woman in the Louboutins was not the Chelsea Donolly she had grown up with.

Evie watched as Chelsea tilted her head, waiting for people to let her in to one of the pews. At least that action was recognisable. She slipped into a row with some of the older townspeople, most of whom had thought Ruby was a little shit. Chelsea’s eyes seemed to scan the crowd and Evie watched as her eyes settled on Mollie, who sat primly in her black smock, her long, golden hair tied neatly back in a ponytail. Her daughter Esme sat beside her, like a mini doll version of her mother. Chelsea widened her eyes and looked back at Evie, raising an eyebrow.

Evie nodded, yes, that’s her kid.

Shit, Chelsea’s eyes seemed to say, and Evie watched for signs of judgement. Chelsea simply put her dark glasses back on again and looked straight ahead.

So it began. The songs were slow and solemn. It was a perfect June day, and the light filtered in through the stained glass windows. The priest spoke about Ruby’s fire and her passion, which was funny because he’d called her the devil incarnate more than once. Especially that time Ruby had convinced them to sneak into the graveyard to look for ghosts, and he’d found them gathered around an old grave singing Led Zeppelin. Evie had thought the old man was going to have a coronary. They’d scattered, giggling and squealing, jumping the fence. Evie had faced the disappointed eyes of her very Catholic mother for that one.

Old Father Hypocrite droned on, even citing Ruby as a ‘lyrical genius’.

‘She made music that really said something, that reached out and touched people. I think we all sensed that when Ruby was a young girl here, she was reaching out. She always wanted to touch people.’

Evie tried not to snigger, biting her lip as she looked at Mollie, whose own mouth was twitching. Ruby had started her career as a burlesque dancer in London. The priest was making her sound like Mother Teresa. And as for the lyrics, well he’d obviously never heard her first number one hit: Atheist Sucker Punch.

The service went on, the heat of the day filtering in among the bodies, and Evie realised this really had nothing to do with her friend at all. Ruby’s foster parents, who she’d lived with for the two years she’d been in Badgeley, were obligated to do something. But they never really knew their charge. Then again, Evie thought, did she even know Ruby Tuesday? She knew Ruby Montgomery – the person who stole art supplies for her because she knew she couldn’t afford to go to the classes. The girl who flirted with every taken boy, just to see who was enough of an arsehole to forget about his girlfriend. The girl who brought together Evie, Mollie and Chelsea, three ‘bad girls from the estate’ who had never really been given a chance in their tiny town.

Evie remembered that they’d been sitting on the hill in the park, drinking cans of coke and chewing on pick’n’mix, doing their homework when Ruby pointed out ‘they’re always going to think you’re bad girls, no matter how good you are’. She’d gestured at the homework, ‘You may as well earn the title.’

They were never really that bad, Evie smirked, just a little… mischievous. Ruby was a terrible influence though. Those two years were the most fun they’d ever had. And then she was gone.

The music started, and the procession commenced. Evie’s eyes didn’t water, not even a little. Maybe because it didn’t feel real, or perhaps because already she could see the women around her adjusting their make-up, aware of the roar of the paparazzi outside. Ruby deserved more than this. If it was going to be a circus, it should at least be a splendid circus, one with drama and colour and craziness. Ruby would hate to think she was mourned without some sort of grandeur. She would have wanted girls wailing and boys shaking their heads, champagne corks popping and balloons being let off in her memory. Hilarious stories shared with loud, dirty laughter. She would have wanted to be celebrated.

They filed out quietly, emerging into the harsh sunlight, and immediately the cameras went off again – the journalists clamouring for a good story, desperately hoping for some pictures of tearful mourners. Evie would not give them the satisfaction.

‘Evelyn!’ a voice called out behind her, and she whipped round, unsure of who exactly had ever called her that name. It was Ruby’s foster mother. Evie had never learnt her name, she was just that sour-faced older woman who so often just sighed and shrugged as they carried on.

Her eyes were also dry, Evie noted, and her lips were a thin line. This was more about obligation than any real affection for Ruby. Ruby was dumped on them after the care system realised they existed. They never made her feel loved or appreciated, and at that moment Evie wanted to hate the stiff-lipped old woman with the deep frown lines.

She pushed a letter into Evie’s hands, ‘This was found with her things, I’m assuming it’s for you.’

Evie looked down at the letter, a pale pink envelope speckled with gold glitter, edged with Japanese style stickers of unicorns and crescent moons. In the middle, in bright blue ink, it simply said ‘For my girls’. It was heavy and lumpy, holding something far more than just words. She pressed her fingertips along the ridges.

‘Are you sure this is for us?’

The woman shrugged, ‘No one else claimed it. Plus, there’s initials on the back.’ She walked off without looking back, glaring at the camera men.

Evie flipped the envelope, and true enough, at the bottom right-hand corner, in tiny writing it said:

(E, C and M)

Well, that made it a bit more obvious.

Evie looked around for Mollie and Chelsea, but was being swarmed by people leaving the church, and the demands of the journalists were getting louder.

‘Did you know her? We’ll pay for a story!’

‘Bet all the boys swooned – any of you date her? Bet she was a saucy one, eh?’

Evie couldn’t stand it any longer, marching over to the loudest one, a cigarette hanging from his mouth as he looked at her eagerly.

‘Did you know Ruby, love? Wanna get in the papers?’

Evie pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stamped on it.

‘She was my friend. And now she’s dead. Show some fucking respect.’

She barged past him, ensuring he dropped his voice recorder on the ground. The swearing behind her was faint consolation.

Her mother looked over and raised an eyebrow. Evie lifted up her hands as if to say I didn’t touch him. Her mother shrugged. She had to get back to work anyway and Evie needed to move, get beyond the fakeness of all of this.

She walked intuitively, not even thinking about where she was going. She just got out of the churchyard, down the high street, and then she could breathe. She’d been working really hard on her anger issues; taking up kickboxing, mindfulness, anything to stop that flash of red when something happened. And today her friend was gone, and a stranger was being both idolised and crucified in the papers. She knew what they’d say – drug overdose, mysterious circumstances, money worries. A four-page spread on the latest member of the Twenty-Seven Club.

Evie walked into the corner shop, picked up the lager, threw down the cash and walked out, not up for the cashier’s comments about how ladies don’t drink beer. She trudged along the school fence until it turned into hedges, thick and overgrown. She counted three steps and turned left, poking an arm through a small gap in the hedge, sighing before she chucked the beers through and wiggled through after them.

‘No graceful way to do that,’ she said to herself, pulling twigs out of her hair and surveying the scratches down her arms.

The grass was dry and overgrown, a wasteland when it had once been an oasis.

She’d been sitting for about half an hour when the hedge rustled and Mollie fell through the gap in the bushes, ‘Ow! That was much harder than I remembered it being!’

She’d changed into her jeans and a black floaty top, her hair tied back into a loose blonde ponytail now. She had less of a Mother Teresa vibe now, but that could be the fact that she had twigs in her hair and was holding two bottles of pink Lambrini. Mollie rolled up into a seated position, arching like a cat, ‘Sorry about the bevvies but it’s all I could grab on my way out. Plus, it’s kind of fitting, right?’

That had been their drink of choice, when they first met Ruby and found The Oasis; Mollie would sneak out bottles of Lambrini, the only thing her mum was never bothered about. Later, Ruby would flutter her lashes and get some of the local boys to buy them stronger stuff, but Evie quite liked the innocence of those days. Four girls with oversized straws in a fizzy pink drink, spinning around and giggling about how the stars became shooting stars if you spun around long enough.

‘So, do you think she’ll come?’ Mollie asked, dumping the bottles next to the beer.

Evie shrugged, saying nothing.

‘She wouldn’t have bothered coming back if it didn’t mean something,’ Mollie said lightly, relaxing back into the ancient checked chair.

‘People change,’ was all that Evie said, her eyes focused on that gap in the hedge.

‘This place doesn’t though,’ Mollie shrugged. ‘You can’t be angry that she got out, Eves, that was always the plan, for all of us. She and Ruby did it, and we didn’t –’ Mollie made a face, ‘– just the way it is.’

There was another rustling from the hedge, but further down, not in the same space she and Mollie had entered through. A hand appeared, clasping a bottle of prosecco, a platinum blonde head arriving after. Chelsea squeezed through with difficulty, rolling her eyes.

‘That was more difficult than I remembered,’ she grinned up at them, continuing to wiggle.

‘Because it’s not the bloody entrance,’ Evie rolled her eyes, pointing, ‘it’s over there.’

‘Well, that makes sense,’ Chelsea shrugged, looking around. ‘You’re seriously telling me none of the kids in this town are curious enough to make this their hangout?’

‘You kidding? They’ve got a skate park and a pavilion, there is no need for our shitty fairy circle with an old shed,’ Mollie laughed, looking around with affection at their sanctuary. At the back there was the caretaker’s shed, which was mostly full of pointless tools that had been forgotten about, but they’d stored deck chairs there, and a little cheap gazebo from Argos that they’d put up to keep out of the rain. Chelsea looked on, unimpressed with the chairs, dusting them off with a tissue from her bag, but still had half a smirk in place as she looked at their little oasis, overgrown and somehow so much smaller now.

‘I brought booze,’ Chelsea held up the bottle of prosecco, her eyes drawn to the pile in between them, ‘… and so did you.’

Evie didn’t like the way her voice flattened as she looked at their offerings. She couldn’t work out what it was that was pissing her off about Chelsea, itching beneath the surface of her skin. Whether it was the designer clothes, the perfect hair or the fact that she’d really been hoping Chelsea was going to turn up, stick her tongue out and brandish a blue WKD. Instead, she talked like she’d swallowed a polo mallet and had turned up to toast their friend with middle class bubbles. Like she didn’t remember them at all.

‘God, this place doesn’t change, does it?’

Evie followed her gaze, ‘Nah. Nothing ever changes, and nothing ever happens. Except the funeral of the terribly famous Ruby Tuesday.’

Mollie frowned, ‘Some things change,’ she said pointedly, raising her eyebrows.

‘Well yes, sorry,’ Evie said coolly, ‘we got a skate park, the corner shop now stocks decent biscuits and Mollie made a pretty awesome human being.’

Chelsea nodded, her face pinched, ‘I saw. Congratulations.’

Mollie raised an eyebrow, ‘Judgy Wudgy was a bear.’

‘A bear that didn’t get stuck in this shitty place and forget all about his dreams, no doubt,’ Chelsea said primly, tucking her hair behind her ear. Mollie’s smile dropped a little, but she shook it off.

‘She’s a great kid.’

‘I’m sure she is,’ Chelsea reached for her hand and squeezed, ‘how old is she?’

Mollie went to answer but Evie got there first, her voice a little higher as she stared at Chelsea’s designer shoes and bag, ‘We didn’t forget about our dreams. Life happened. We had responsibilities.’

‘I know, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry. It just seems like a waste. You were a talented artist. And Mollie was a great actress.’ Mollie nodded, holding up the Lambrini bottle in thanks.