Ruby Tuesday

Chapter twenty two

    *****

    “Ruby, I still think it’s rude of you.”

    I sighed, taking the liberty of being able to roll my eyes without my mother seeing as we were on the phone. Jack was down at the studios before going off to a Christmas gig so I was left to spend the afternoon talking to mum. “I’m sorry, we already organised everything before you asked. It would be rude to cancel now.”

    “I’m your mother it wouldn’t be rude, I’m sure they’d understand.” She huffed; I could basically see her pouting while checking her reflection in the mirror. I knew she was experimenting with very heavy eye make up at the moment; she was favouring lime green eye shadow for some ungodly reason. Bright green eye shadow and a sickly orange dress, it was enough to make me shudder at the thought.

    “Yeah no that’s not going to happen,” I said as lightly as possible, “I’ve made plans and I’m going to stick to them.”

    “Good girl Rubes, I’ve raised you right.”

    You could have heard a pin drop at the silence her stupid comment made. What made it even more awkward was how we both started talking very quickly at the same time and broke off again simultaneously. “Won’t it be more romantic with you and Charlie sharing your first married Christmas together alone?”

    “Yep-yup-yes,” she laughed falsely. I changed the subject pretty hastily after that. Mum was desperately trying to get me to visit her but I rejected her invitations, partly because there was only so much mum-dosage I could handle before she blew my fuse and also I was pretty busy in London.

    Angie kept making me tag along with her to various photo shoots and because I was dating the famous Jack Flash the stupid photographers kept snapping pictures of Angie and me chilling together, unprepared to be snapped. I kept telling them that I wasn’t the damn model that it was Angie but they just smirked and tapped their camera winningly, it was too late for me to moan about it.

    Angie was considering going over to America to help further her modelling career although she was still hanging in the balance over it. She’d been to a lot of places but she’d never been to the big old USA and I could tell that it was daunting for her. I told her it would be a fantastic experience; Jack was going to take me there one day.

    When Christmas day arrived Jack woke me up by kissing my neck and then slipped under the satin covers kissing every inch of my skin that he could get his lips onto. I was unprepared at first, waking up with bleary eyes but as soon as I clocked on I laughed.

    Jack’s mother had sent over two knitted jumpers for us both to wear and after unwrapping them we shared a look, each of us with a raised eyebrow. “Is she serious?”

    “Afraid so,” he replied and pulled a mortified face before shoving the post box red jumper over his head, messing his hair up. It was difficult to tell what exactly the picture was on the front of Jacks’ jumper but after a minute I decided that it was supposed to be presents which made us both crack up laughing. Mine was a draining dark blue with a wonky Christmas tree.

    “Bless her for trying though,” Jack laughed loudly as he lit up a cigarette for us both.

    I had to agree, “On the upside they’re not scratchy. The jumpers my grandma used to knit for me were awful; I used to come up in rashes because they scratched me that much!” Jack shook his head in guffaws before we cracked open a bottle of sherry. I got Jack several jazz and blues records which he seemed to adore and I also got him several new shirts which were brightly patterned. Not quite as eccentric looking as Brian’s attire yet pretty whacky nonetheless.