They buried her the following week, just the two of them. Joanne couldn’t deal with anyone else. She couldn’t deal with anything. Nick said, ‘It’s not your fault, it’s not anyone’s fault.’ Then Nick said, ‘It’s my fault. I should have taken more paternity leave. I should have been there for you both. I knew how tired you were.’ Nick said, ‘We will get over this. We will.’ Nick said, ‘I love you, Joanne. I love you. Please, don’t cut me out.’ Nick said, ‘Maybe you should think about therapy.’ Nick said, ‘I can’t go on like this.’

  And then, one day, five months after Maisie’s death, sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s surgery, hoping to be prescribed some antidepressants strong enough to block out all the pain, Joanne saw Toby’s advert in Private Eye. She picked up her pills from the chemist, she went home and she composed a letter full of lies. When Toby wrote back and offered her the room, she packed a bag and she left. It was a Saturday morning. Nick was at the barber’s. She left him a note that said, ‘Don’t try to find me.’ There was a march down her street in support of the legalization of cannabis. A man dressed up as a cannabis leaf smiled at her as she loaded her suitcase into the boot of a taxi. ‘Peace, man,’ he said. ‘Peace.’ He pressed a small unlit spliff into the palm of her hand and he carried on his way.

  She settled into Toby’s house and started temping. Every week a different company, a different role. Everyone seemed to want to employ an out-of-work actress. People seemed happier to think that someone creative was filing their paperwork or entering their data or answering their phone. And Joanne loved the freedom that the anonymity of temping gave her. She could be anyone she wanted. She made up stories. I live in Chelsea. My husband’s an art dealer. I live in Chiswick with my sister – she’s a hairdresser. I lived in LA when I was twenty-one, slept with Christian Slater. She took each job as if it were a role in a film. She planned her costumes, researched her part, learned her lines. Every day when she left Toby’s house she became a different person and, every time a temp job finished, so did the person she’d created. The clothes she’d worn would be laundered, ironed, folded up and put away and a new wardrobe would be purchased. Sometimes a job didn’t last long enough to wear everything she’d bought, and clothes would stay unworn in carrier bags, cosmetics unopened in drawers.

  And then, one day, she’d been walking home from the Tube station and a tall, fair man had grabbed her elbow. It was Nick. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he said. ‘I thought you were dead.’ She packed a bag and she checked herself into a small hotel in Bloomsbury. She stayed there for two weeks, until she ran out of money, then she came back to Toby’s house. Toby had changed. His hair was cut brutally short. He had a black eye. He seemed harder, more substantial. He made her talk to him. It was the first time she’d talked to anyone, as herself, as Joanne Fish, in more than two years. It was very strange. Toby gave her a note from Nick. It said, ‘Please come home. I haven’t moved on and I can’t until you’re back where you belong. Nothing in this world makes any sense without you. I love you.’

  She didn’t know what to do, what to think. She’d put Nick in a box when she moved into Toby’s house and she’d imagined that he’d have done the same with her. She thought about him occasionally, imagined him with a new wife, a new baby, getting on with his life. And who could blame him? She couldn’t imagine why he’d ever have wanted to be with someone like her in the first place, someone whose body was raddled and old before its time, whose arms were scarred by years of drug abuse and stained with the ink scribbles she’d endured to prove her worth in prison. She’d failed as an actress. She’d failed as a mother. She’d failed as a human being. But for some reason he still wanted her in his life.

  She kept the note close to her at all times. She pulled it out of her handbag and read it at work. She absorbed its meaning word by word, day by day. And every time she read it, she let a little bit more of her old self trickle back into her soul. And then Toby called a meeting, told her something she’d never thought possible. He was selling the house, kicking her out. He talked to her in his room, told her she was turning into a freak. She’d suspected as much, but to hear it put so frankly, so directly, was like having a bucket of iced water poured over her head. She went to bed at midnight that night, full of wine and thoughts and feelings. She glanced round her room, at the shadowy lumps of unworn clothes and the ghostly images of her dead mother and father in the frame next to her bed. She picked up the picture and peeled off the back cover. Then she pulled out a picture of Maisie and held it to her heart, hot, steady tears flowing down her cheeks.

  69

  Ruby started packing on Tuesday. Tim had signed a contract on a two-bedroom penthouse flat off Carnaby Street and they were moving in on Thursday.

  She pulled a box off the top of her wardrobe and blew a thick layer of dust off it. That box had been there since she’d moved in. She couldn’t even remember what was in it. Ruby’s possessions didn’t circulate. She didn’t have clear-outs or spring cleans. Ruby put things down and they stayed there. The box was full of school books and report cards. She opened one, randomly:

  Tracey Lewis. Class 3A.

  Tracey has had a challenging term. Her levels of attention in class and general attitude remain uneven, but she is showing a pronounced improvement in other areas, such as music studies and English literature.

  She smirked and put the card back in the box. She’d been a troublesome student. Lazy, insolent and too clever by half. None of her teachers had known what to do with her and she’d left school with three O levels and a bad reputation.

  She looked round the room, taking in all the detail, the cornicing, the layers of dust, the tendrils of old cobweb, the boxes covered over with pieces of cloth, the cheap furniture buried under layers of her possessions. She’d been here, in this room, since she was sixteen. She’d written countless songs, practised countless chords, slept with countless men. She’d eaten her supper up here, she’d cried up here, she’d got drunk with her friends. She’d sat on the balcony in her bikini on hot summer days, buried herself under her duvet with a bottle of Benilyn when she had the flu. She’d lived here longer than she’d lived at home. This was her home. It had never really occurred to her that she’d leave. She’d never imagined that Gus would die, that Toby would change, that she’d be packing away the contents of her room and leaving here for ever.

  There was a gentle knock on the door. She sighed.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ruby, it’s me. Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The door opened and Toby walked in. He was wearing a really quite nice grey crew-necked sweater with really quite nice jeans. With his short hair and his clean-shaven face he looked strangely, almost unnervingly good. Ruby didn’t like it. Toby changing his image had stripped yet another layer off her sense of normality. Toby wasn’t supposed to look good. He was supposed to look like Toby. This house wasn’t supposed to have sexy bathrooms and a designer kitchen. It was supposed to be tatty and unkempt. And Ruby – well, Ruby wasn’t supposed to be moving into a flat with a nice but fundamentally dull banker called Tim. She was supposed to be unconventional. She was supposed to live on the edge. But right now her options had dried up. Right now Tim was all she had.

  ‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ said Toby, handing her a steaming mug.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘thank you.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘how’s it going?’

  She shrugged. ‘Only just started,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a big job, I reckon.’

  He nodded and smiled. ‘I am not looking forward to doing my room.’

  ‘It’s tempting just to throw it all away,’ she said. ‘Start afresh.’

  ‘Well, then, why don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t. I’ve got nothing else to call my own. If I throw this lot away, I might just evaporate.’ She tried for a smile, but didn’t quite make it. Toby threw her a concerned frown.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ he said. ‘About moving in with Tim?’

  She nodded, defensively.

  ‘Because you don’t have to move out right now, you know? You’ve got a couple of weeks. You don’t have to rush into anything.’

  ‘A couple of weeks?!’ she said. ‘Oh, well, why didn’t you say?! A couple of weeks? That’s plenty of time for me to get a job and earn enough money to put down a deposit on a flat and sort my entire life out, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ruby, I’ve been trying to encourage you for weeks now, ever since you and Paul split up. I’ve been saying to you that you must take responsibility, grow up. You could have gone out and found a job, but instead you went out and did what you always do – found a man.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s all right for you. Your rich daddy bought you a big house and now you’re cashing in. You’ll be fine. But what have I got? Nothing. Nothing but a nice body and a good voice. And if I can’t earn a living from my voice, then I have to fall back on the only other thing I’m any good at.’

  ‘No, Ruby. You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re capable of because you’ve never tried. You’ve never pushed yourself. You came here sixteen years ago as a talented singer/songwriter with a penchant for booze and seedy men. And nothing’s changed. You haven’t changed. Because you’re too scared to see what else you can do in life.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘I’m not scared. I’m not scared of anything. You’re the one who’s sat in his room for fifteen years, wasting your life. I’ve been out there. I’ve been living. It’s not my fault things haven’t worked out.’

  Toby sighed, dragged his hand down his face. ‘No. It’s not. It’s not your fault. It’s my fault.’

  She looked at him, questioningly.

  ‘I made life too easy for you. I made excuses for you. I should have been tougher. I should have seen what was happening and done something to stop it.’

  ‘What was happening?! Christ – you make it sound as if I’m some kind of failure.’

  ‘No,’ he shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t think you’re a failure. I think you’re incredible. I’ve always thought you were incredible. I just wish you believed that, too, instead of just pretending to.’

  Toby crossed the room, and kissed the top of her head, before turning and leaving, closing the door silently behind him. Ruby sat for a moment, thoughts going round her head like a cyclone. Then she picked up a book and hurled it at the back of the door.

  On Thursday morning, Ruby and Tim filled a hire van with Ruby’s accumulated clutter. Tim bought a magnum of Bollinger which he left in the fridge as a thank you to the house and they left. Nobody saw them off. As the van pulled away from the house, Ruby glanced up towards Toby’s window and saw him there, a pensive figure, staring sadly down into the road.

  Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat and concentrated instead on the road ahead, on her new life in Soho, on the man by her side, on the future.

  70

  Toby met Leah outside Park Road baths on Thursday afternoon. It was a blustery, wet, miserable day with the nasty bite of a chill north wind. Toby’s cheeks felt raw and exposed without their furry covering and he brought the collar of his coat up high round his face to protect himself.

  In his carrier bag he had a brand-new pair of trunks, purchased that very morning from his new favourite menswear shop. They were black with a grey stripe down the sides and made of a very unembarrassing cotton fabric that didn’t cling to anything at all. Leah looked windswept and dishevelled when she arrived a moment later, but she was smiling widely and greeted Toby with a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Nasty day,’ said Toby, following her towards the entrance.

  ‘Vile,’ she said, smiling at him over her shoulder. ‘Perfect day for a swim.’

  Leah was already in the pool when Toby emerged from the changing rooms a few moments later, clutching his towel to his chest. He watched her for a minute or two, moving effortlessly up and down the pool with strong, languid movements. She smiled when she saw him watching her and patted the edge of the pool. ‘Are you coming in?’

  He nodded, marvelling at the solid slope of her bare shoulders, the domed sheen of her wet hair.

  ‘Just be careful,’ she teased. ‘No stunt dives this time.’

  He put the towel down on the side of the pool and carefully picked his way to the shallow end. He lowered himself onto his bottom and let his legs dangle in the lukewarm water. He heard a distant memory echo in his head, a teacher calling to him, ‘Dobbs! I want to see ten lengths, breast stroke. Get that gangling body in the water now!’ Toby shuddered slightly and let himself slide into the pool. Leah swam to him and got to her feet. Water cascaded off her body. She was wearing a black swimming costume that gleamed in the fluorescent light. Toby tried not to let his gaze wander too freely around her impressive form, tried not to let it linger too long on her firm round breasts, on her strong thighs, her armpits, her knees, her collarbones, her groin… but it was impossible. She looked astounding. She looked so good that he wanted to throw her over his shoulder in the manner of a caveman and make love to her in the undergrowth. He gulped and tried to turn his attention to the matter in hand. To the matter of getting his whole body under the water and afloat in some mode that wouldn’t humiliate either himself or Leah.

  He started off on his back, having some vague recollection that that was easier than swimming on your front. Leah smiled encouragingly at him. ‘Are you OK?’ she mouthed. He nodded, causing water to flood over his brow and into his mouth. He flung himself over onto his front and choked. He really wasn’t designed for this. If the optimum aerodynamic design for swimming was, say, the dolphin, then Toby was more of a newborn giraffe. Leah, on the other hand, was sleek and solid and built for the water. She smiled as she swam back towards him. ‘Why don’t you just splash around in the shallow end for a while, wait until you’ve got your fins back.’

  ‘My fins?’

  ‘Yes, everybody’s got fins. They’re invisible. You just have to work out how to operate them.’

  ‘Right,’ Toby nodded, unconvinced, and flipped himself over onto his back again. His ears filled with water and he closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation of being partially cut off from reality. He floated there for a while, his hands and feet rotating gently under the water, listening to the gurgle of underwater movements, the muted echoes of shouting children, and considered his next move. Because he hadn’t come to the swimming baths today with Leah to swim. He had much grander plans for the afternoon than a bit of splashing around inelegantly in piss-filled municipal water. Today he was going to take another big step towards his future. Today he was going to shape his destiny. Today he was going to do something utterly amazing, but potentially devastating.

  He drifted across the pool, his head full of plans, his eyes closed, oblivious to the existence of anybody else until his head hit something hard and he realized that somehow or other, without even really trying, he’d reached the other end of the pool.

  *

  Toby had a lot of news to fill Leah in on in the pub over the road. She listened rapt as he told her all about Con and Daisy getting back together and Ruby moving out with Tim. She was moved to tears when he told her Joanne’s story and delighted when she heard that Jack had invited Melinda out for dinner and that Melinda was bouncing round the house like a lovesick teenage girl.

  ‘So it’s nearly all come together?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Just got to get the house finished and I’ll be ready to move on.’

  ‘To Cornwall?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘or maybe Devon. Look.’ He pulled open his carrier bag and took out a sheaf of papers. ‘I printed these off today, for you to see.’ He handed her the papers and watched her while she flicked through them. They were properties he’d found on the Internet. Fishermen’s cottages and Georgian townhouses and windswept bungalows and barn conversions. They had landscaped gardens tumbling towards the sea, courtyards filled with hanging baskets, manicured lawns that stretched to the horizon, paddocks, outbuildings, driveways, workshops. They were small; they were large; they were compact; they were rambling. Each one represented a dream of some kind or another, a suggestion of a lifestyle, of an existence.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that living in London is the biggest rip-off known to man. I mean, look at this one –’ She pulled out the details for a double-fronted cottage facing the sea in a fishing village in Devon. ‘That’s probably what my flat’s worth. A piddling little one-bedroom flat in Finchley? Or a gorgeous three-bedroom cottage facing the sea?’ She shook her head. ‘These are amazing. Completely. I could happily live in any one of them.’

  ‘You could?’ he said, his heart starting to race lightly beneath his ribcage.

  ‘God, yes. Oh, wow, look at this one. Look at the garden. And that kitchen. And it’s even got a shop…’

  Toby smiled and pulled the page from her hand. ‘Do you like that one, then?’

  ‘It’s amazing. Imagine living there, running your own little shop. How lovely would that be?’

  ‘I think it would be the loveliest thing imaginable,’ he said. ‘Completely perfect.’

  ‘So, wow, which one are you going to buy?’

  ‘I’m going to buy,’ he said, ‘the one that you like the best.’

  ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘it’s your dream. You have to decide.’

  Toby glanced down at his beer, then back up at Leah. Her hair was still damp from the swimming pool. Her face was clear of make-up. She was so vital, so healthy, so alive. He could imagine her throwing sticks for dogs on beaches, cycling up a hill to get the papers, going for a bracing dip in the sea in the middle of winter. He could see her running stewed fruit through a muslin cloth into an empty jam jar, collecting apples in a basket, sitting in a low-beamed pub drinking something local. She was a country girl trapped in an urban existence. She would thrive in the country. She would blossom. And so would he.