Chapter 4
Ruby
The music is flowing through my veins. It’s filling me from head to toe and making me want to move. I dance without thinking. I just let myself fall.
The feeling is glorious.
I know that today is going to have serious consequences, but right now, I don’t give a shit. I want to enjoy this moment for as long as it lasts.
I spin around again. Alistair cheers, also dancing around the room.
“Whisky’s great!” I announce, turning toward him. He raises the bottle to me. I have no idea where his glass has got to.
“You never spoke a truer word,” he agrees. “You’re very wise when you’re drunk, Ruby.”
“Excuse me,” I say. “I’m very wise all the time.”
Alistair grins. “Again, very true.”
I don’t know how it happened, but right now, Alistair seems to be the nicest person in the world. I feel so at one with him. It feels as though we have things in common that I was far too blind to notice in a sober state.
“Wren,” I say, pulling my phone out of my blazer pocket. “Take a photo of Alistair and me.”
I hold it out to him. He takes it with a grin.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Hold on,” Alistair calls, flinging his arm around me. The two of us beam into the camera. “Now.”
“One, two…three.”
I pull out of Alistair’s embrace and head over to Wren to look at the photo. It turned out great, although it’s a bit blurry, as we evidently weren’t able to hold still.
I thank Wren, about to slip the phone back into my pocket.
“Erm, you have approximately two hundred messages and missed calls,” he says softly. “Maybe you should take a look at them before people go out of their minds with worry.”
The seriousness in his words gets through to me, booze or no booze, and I pause.
Hesitantly, I lift the phone up again. The screen seems blurry, and I have to blink a few times before I can register what it’s showing me: five calls from Ember and Lin, three from Mum and Dad. And a total of seven messages.
“Crap,” I mutter. I’m swaying slightly as I try to jab the first message with my finger to open it.
I heard what happened. Want to talk? Shall I come round?
I gulp hard as I read Lin’s words. I know I ought to answer her, but I can’t right now.
This is the first time since the morning that I haven’t felt like bursting into tears on the spot.
The alcohol has helped me repress the terrible day, and if I speak to Lin, she’s going to want to analyze every last detail of it.
Same goes for Ember, who has also texted me.
Sorry, I was busy! What happened? And where are you?
I don’t want to tackle the problems that are waiting for me at home. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And at this moment, I don’t want to know.
I shake my head and slip the phone back into my blazer without reading the rest of the messages. I avoid Wren’s pensive gaze as I throw the blazer down on the sofa. Then I roll up the sleeves of my blouse.
Alistair comes over, takes my hand, and gives me a twirl, as if he’s sensed my change of mood.
I can’t help grinning, despite myself. He spins me around again and smiles back at me.
He seems to understand exactly what I need right now.
Maybe he has his own stuff to repress, I think, as I follow his eyes, which are resting, for the thousandth time this afternoon, on Keshav’s back.
For the first time in ages—or even ever—I let everything go.
I shut my eyes and move to the music. I’m not holding on to what happened today, and I’m letting Alistair help me to forget it all.
After a while, I’m not even thinking about it—my movements are happening of their own accord.
I can faintly hear scraps of conversation between Wren and Keshav in the background, but apart from that there’s only the melody and the feeling of weightlessness.
I don’t know how long Alistair and I dance for. I’ve lost all sense of time—and of how much whisky I’ve drunk.
“Another slug?” Alistair asks, holding up the bottle. I’m about to hold my empty glass out to him when a voice breaks in on us.
“What’s going on here?”
I whirl around. James is standing in the door to Alistair’s room. Wren must have let him in, because a brief moment later, he appears behind him. “It’s nothing to do with me, just so you know,” he murmurs, walking past him to the armchair where he was sitting earlier.
James’s gaze rests on me, and for a heartbeat, we only have eyes for each other. I can see all the emotions on his face.
Guilt. Regret. Anger. Grief. Fear.
My heart clenches painfully. I’m longing to bridge the distance between us and give him a hug. And at the same time, I want to yell at him and to finally find out who manipulated those photos of me and Mr. Sutton and sent them to Lexie.
“Come in, bro,” says Alistair, and James walks into the room, taking off his coat and draping it loosely over his arm. I remember that gray coat. He was wearing it the day I introduced him to my parents. The memory brings a lump to my throat.
James comes to stand a little way away from us. He looks at me uncertainly. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I reply.
His nose wrinkles slightly, and he eyes the glass in my hand. “You both reek of whisky.”
“Your sense of smell is impressive, my friend,” says Alistair. “Ruby and I have been drinking our cares away.”
James has no reply to that statement. Instead, he nods toward the sofa, his eyebrows raised questioningly. I only hesitate a moment.
The euphoria I felt just now has evaporated, and the whisky has turned from a golden elixir stirring up my body into an almost unbearable burning in my stomach.
Kesh turns down the music as we sit. James puts his coat on the floor beside the sofa, leans back, and runs both hands over his face. He looks desperately tired as he turns his face to me and looks at me with dark eyes.
“I took those photos of you and Sutton,” he begins. “At the Back-to-School party last year. Before we knew each other.”
I nod.
“You knew about Lydia, and I didn’t know what you might do with that knowledge. I thought I needed leverage over you.”
“Knew what about Lydia?” Kesh asks with a frown.
James exhales deeply. “It wasn’t Ruby having an affair with Sutton.”
Alistair lowers the whisky bottle. “Lydia and Sutton?” he asks in disbelief. He must have at least double the amount of booze in his veins that I do, but he can put two and two together astonishingly quickly. “Seriously?”
“Is that why your dad flipped like that?” Keshav asks.
“Yeah.” A short pause. “That and the fact that Lydia’s pregnant.”
“James!” I exclaim, because he’s just blurted out her secret like that. But at the same instant, I realize that he would never have said that if Lydia hadn’t given him permission. She must have known that he’d be coming here to talk to us.
James puts his hand on mine and holds it tight. His thumb strokes gently over my skin. “Lydia asked me to tell you all,” he adds, turning to Alistair and Kesh. “Dad threw her out and sent her up to our aunt in Beckdale.” I feel his body tense.
“Fuck,” says Alistair. He holds the bottle out to James, who just shakes his head.
“How did he even find out?” Wren asks with a frown.
“Cyril.” James practically spits his name out.
My eyes dart up from our linked fingers in surprise. That’s news to me too. “What? When?”
“He saw Lydia with Sutton on Saturday. You can guess how he reacted, seeing that he’s never got over her.
I went round to his to try to talk to him about it.
And he stole my phone.” James shakes his head, like he can’t believe it himself.
“I wanted to be there for him. And he threw it back in my face. He sent the photos to my dad, so that he would get Sutton out of Lydia’s life.
” He looks at me. “And you out of mine.”
So that’s what the Beaufort “B” on the envelope meant.
Mortimer Beaufort was the one responsible for the altered photos of Sutton and me, and he sent them to Lexington, to get rid of us both.
“Two birds with one stone,” I say hoarsely.
“I don’t believe it,” Wren murmurs. “Cyril can’t have sunk that low.”
“People are capable of all sorts of shit when they’re unlucky in love,” Keshav replies, his expression dark.
“What do we do now?” asks Alistair. “We can’t just let Lydia be sent away and Ruby be thrown out of school!”
My affection for Alistair is growing by leaps and bounds.
“I have to get Cyril to tell the truth,” says James.
Then he turns to me. “You will go to Oxford.” His voice is firm, like he has no doubt that his words are true. “Whatever I have to do to get you there.”
I look at James, who is staring at his friends over my head.
There’s gratitude in his eyes, and I can practically feel the bond between them, built up over their years of friendship.
The four of them exude confidence and an absolute team spirit.
And suddenly, my situation doesn’t feel quite as hopeless as it did a few hours ago.
James
The throbbing in my temples has intensified in the past few hours. Not even the tablets that Alistair dug out of his mum’s medicine cabinet for me have done any good. Far from it. I feel like my headache is getting worse and worse the longer I’m on my feet.
I can hear Lydia’s sobs ringing in my ears. I don’t want to go. The echo of her words has been following me for hours. Don’t let him send me away, James.
I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose in an effort to ease the pressure behind my eyes. But that doesn’t work either.
I’ve failed. Totally failed. As a brother and as a boyfriend. If I could, I’d go to Beckdale in Lydia’s place. And if I could, I’d let Ruby take my place at Maxton Hall so she can do her A levels. But wishful thinking isn’t going to help this situation.
“James,” Ruby whispers.
“Yes?”
“I’ve been suspended.”
I lower my eyes so I can look into Ruby’s face.
The streetlights are bright enough to show her huge pupils and bright red cheeks.
I asked Percy to drop us off at the edge of Gormsey, in the hope that the walk would sober Ruby up a bit.
If I’d taken her home in the state I found her in at Alistair’s, I’d have been in her parents’ bad books for all time, I’m sure.
Her body trembles slightly. I don’t hesitate, just slip off my coat and wrap it around her shoulders. I don’t have words. All I can do is rub her arms and try to warm her up.
She makes a sound that might have been intended as a giggle, but then turns into a sob halfway through. “Me. Suspended. Kicked out of school. Can you believe it?”
My chest tightens. No. I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. Any more than I want to believe that it’s all my fault. Will Ruby ever be able to look at me again once she’s slept it off and realized that it was me who caused her all this heartbreak?
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispers.
Her voice is muffled. “With this on my record, no other school will take me. And I can’t go to uni without A levels.
I’ll have to get a job so as not to cost my parents money.
” She blinks rapidly, but it’s no good. The tears run down her cheeks.
Ruby takes a shuddering breath, and I can feel every bit of her pain.
“I’m so sorry for letting you down again,” I murmur urgently.
I stroke a strand of hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear, then I rub my thumbs gently over her cheeks, wiping away her tears.
“I meant what I said at Alistair’s. I’ll do whatever it takes for you to go to Oxford. I promise you.”
Never in my life have I meant a promise as seriously as I do this one.
My feelings for Ruby developed slowly, and then broke over me like a storm.
There are no masks or facades when I’m with her; she’s the only person I give my whole self to.
And that’s terrifying. I couldn’t deal with losing her again.
Not after we’ve got over such huge hurdles.
Not now I know that she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
“Since I met you, my life has been so fucked up,” she croaks. “I don’t know how I’m meant to believe it.”
My hand on her cheek shakes. “I understand that. But I’ll believe it for both of us until you get there.”
Ruby swallows. And then, in slow motion, she lets her head sink onto my collarbone.
She takes a deep breath, and at the same moment, her hands slide to my hips.
She holds tight to me, as though at this moment, I’m all she has to cling to.
I don’t know if she really believes my words, or if the whisky has just made her sleepy.
But I lift my hand and stroke the back of her head.
When Ruby is this close to me, I stop feeling like I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders. It feels more as though I’m holding the entire world in my arms.