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