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PART TWO
About a Boy (2002)
Ruby Graham’s verdict: A coming-of-age movie featuring some top tips on how to survive life:
1.) If you’re an island (even Ibiza) the FOMO you feel is real
2.) If you’re just not that into your family or they you, find a new one
3.) Never enter a school talent show with a Roberta Flack song
4.) If you’re a massive wanker make sure Hugh Grant plays you in the movie, because then at least you’ll be a hot massive wanker.
Luke Devlin’s verdict: Suicide is a really crummy thing to do to your kid.
Chapter 5
Hendon Magistrates’ Court was not the most salubrious place to be spending a morning, especially if you’d had to fly all the way from New York for the privilege, Ruby thought miserably. She watched Luke Devlin arrive in the crowded ante-chamber flanked by an elegantly dressed older man wearing a gown but no wig, a younger man in a pin-striped suit busy talking on his mobile and a woman in ice-pick heels, her arms laden with file folders.
‘Looks like he’s brought the cavalry with him. Surprised he bothered to come all the way from Manhattan,’ Jacie whispered in her ear.
So was Ruby, really. She’d assumed when she’d last seen Luke Devlin getting into a taxi on Kensington High Street, after they’d been booked at the Hyde
Park police station by a particularly eager young officer of The Royal Parks Police, that she was never going to see him again.
All things considered, he’d taken the arrest surprisingly well. Or she’d assumed he had, because he’d barely spoken once the officer had apprehended them.
Devlin’s gaze landed on her from across the room and he gave a terse nod of greeting. Then he ignored her, as he listened to the man in the robes, who had to be a barrister.
‘Perhaps we should have bought a legal team, too?’ Jacie said. ‘I thought this was just a formality.’
‘What legal team?’ Ruby murmured. ‘We don’t have one and we can’t afford to get one. And it is a formality, as I’m pleading guilty and falling on the mercy of the court.’
‘You can’t go to prison can you?’ Jacie hissed.
‘No, it’s only a misdemeanour.’ Or at least she had assumed as much, not really understanding any of the charges listed on the paperwork the police officer had given her over three weeks ago. How was singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ disturbing the peace? Maybe she’d been a little off-key – but it was hard to remain on pitch when your heart was shattering into a billion pieces.
Perhaps she should have checked what permits were needed to scatter ashes, and waited to do it in the daylight. But that’s not what Matty’s will had asked her to do. And she refused to feel bad about carrying out Matty’s wishes. She didn’t even feel bad about the inappropriate shivers which had sprinted up her spine when Luke’s deep voice had joined hers, or that his hands had closed over her bum when she landed on top of him after taking a header off the gate.
Although she did feel bad about delaying Luke’s departure and then dragging him back to London and into court three weeks later. Any hope she’d had of persuading Devlin to invest in The Royale to help cover their debts was surely deeper in the duck poo than Matty’s ashes now.
When the clerk finally read out their names – a whole hour later – the inappropriate shivers had turned to guilty recriminations.
She really hoped she couldn’t be sent to jail for singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ off-key in a Royal Park. She had their gala screening of About a Boy – the next film in Matty’s Classics season – to host this weekend. And they had all been working their bums off over the last three weeks to get The Royale into profit again. She and Jacie had gone over the accounts each evening, trying to find savings that didn’t involve cutting any staff jobs and they’d discovered quite a few. But there was still more to do. She did not have time to do time.
She filed into the court beside Jacie. But Luke didn’t meet her gaze this time, and her heart plunged even further into her chest cavity.
He probably hates you now.
The overly bright fluorescent lighting and an abundance of blond wood in the décor made the courtroom look like a cross between an IKEA showroom and a Dickens novel, but nowhere near as intimidating as In the Name of the Father, which Ruby had been braced for. The three average-looking people – two men, one woman – who sat behind the high bench at the front of the court weren’t even wearing gowns or wigs.
Ruby was actually a tad disappointed. She’d been hoping for an experience to at least make this calamity worthy of a decent anecdote. But the setting and the participants – apart from her fellow defendant – looked decidedly ordinary.
She scanned the faces of the three magistrates as the usher led her past the long table where the prosecutor and the defence solicitor sat. But as she stepped into the box, her gaze snagged on the rotund elderly man in the middle of the bench.
It took a moment, but as the court proceedings began, and the clerk read out the charges, recognition finally struck.
Benjy?
