Chapter 38
Jack came back at the end of the summer with a new contract for the next season.
He had money to invest in the Academy and, he said, he should think about getting a place of his own.
I turned to Lucy and said, ‘Jack doesn’t want to live with us any more.
’ She cried loud and long, and he had to rock her to sleep.
‘I don’t want you to go either,’ I said tentatively.
‘I’m grateful to you, Rubes, but I feel like a teenager in a single bed, and I’m in your way.
You’re young and beautiful and should be on the dating scene by now.
’ He had never said I was beautiful before.
Nobody had. I was taken aback. I reached out and stroked his beard.
I could see his surprise and then a smile that lit up his face.
‘Jack, would you like to go on a date with me?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Wicked serious.’
‘But I thought you weren’t interested … when I moved in, you said –’
I hushed him with a kiss on the mouth.
‘I’m interested,’ I said.
He put a waking Lucy gently on the floor and wrapped his arms around me.
‘I’ve loved you from the day you gave birth,’ he said. ‘You were incredibly brave, determined to do it all on your own. You have guts, Ruby, but I thought as soon as you were properly sober that you would never settle for someone like me. I mean, socially, we’re poles apart.’
I recalled sometime in the long-distant past eavesdropping on a similar conversation between Milo and Erin in the kitchen in Boston, but I banished the thought from my mind. Memories like this took root sometimes. Those were the days when I might have a slip and drink again.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you were made for me. Besides, you didn’t think Isobel Lucas was out of your league.’
He blushed. ‘I was trying to distract myself from you. You have no idea how hard it has been to keep my distance –’
‘Oh my God, how much time have we wasted?’
Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Ages,’ she said like a little old wise woman who was resigned to our mutual blindness.
To give and receive love from a partner was a new experience for me.
I’d always found Jack attractive, but a relationship was a whole new level.
I finally understood what love was. Sex in a committed relationship was a new thing for me too, and I realized now that one-night-stand sex was the worst type of sex a girl could have.
There was never any effort by those men to please me.
With Jack, the first few times were almost frenzied because we had been holding back our hunger for each other, but gradually we got to know each other’s bodies and what we liked and didn’t.
One time, Jack said that he never wanted to touch me the way I had been touched during the incident.
I froze, which turned out to be the correct response, and he apologized and held me, and we never mentioned it again in the bedroom.
Six months later, we were married. We kept it small, a registry office affair.
We didn’t even tell my parents. Jack’s family consisted of one uncle with whom he had no contact, but Svetlana came to be his best woman, and his sponsor, Graham, came along.
Jane and Sinéad were there as witnesses and some of our friends who were actors and teachers from the Academy came too.
We went for dinner after the ceremony to the Trocadero, in true theatrical style.
We made Lucy central to the ceremony. It was Lucy that bound us together. My little angel child.
Afterwards, I called Mom and then Dad and then Erin.
Mom and Dad were doubly disappointed. They had both met Jack and liked him well enough, but I hadn’t told them we were dating.
They also would have liked a church wedding.
They would have to get over themselves. Erin wished us luck, but it was the mildest of congratulations.
We took a short honeymoon in Florida, a week in Walt Disney World, Orlando.
It was as magical for us as it was for Lucy, walking hand in hand, the three of us, stopping for kisses and ice cream.
We availed ourselves of the hotel’s Kids’ Klub babysitting service and had romantic dinners in outdoor restaurants by ourselves.
Jack wanted to adopt Lucy. It turned out to be more complicated than I thought.
I had to produce a death certificate for Lucy’s birth father.
This was not going to be possible. Jack had casually asked a few questions over the years about the identity of Lucy’s dad, and I had shut down the conversation, but a few months before the wedding I was able to admit to Jack that Lucy had been conceived at the height of my addiction and I did not know who her father was.
He understood – he had also had a few encounters with women he could not recall.
We told Lucy that she could call Jack ‘Daddy’ if she wanted.
We tried to explain that he wasn’t her real daddy.
She was too young to understand everything, but ‘Jack’ was quickly replaced by ‘Daddy’.
I gladly took Jack’s surname, Brady. If I were Ruby Brady, I no longer had to hide like Ruby Cooper.
I had avoided social media and photographs and I had adopted Ruby Bean for my stage name, a little homage to my hometown, even though no self-respecting Bostonian would call it Beantown.
Ruby Cooper wouldn’t be tagged in any photo, but I lurked online.
I had accounts under fake names which I used to watch friends, ex-friends and enemies.
Poor Isobel Lucas, she occasionally popped up in made-for-TV movies, years after our encounter.
If only I’d known that Jack already loved me.
Another life ruined, at least temporarily.
She went back into rehab according to TMZ and later married a producer and moved to LA.
She’d also made a new career for herself as a screenwriter.
She was happy. It all worked out in the end – I probably did her a favour.