“Hello Dan, it’s Joe here…I hope you’re keeping well…it’s the twenty-first of December…now they’re ringing the last bell…if I get good behaviour…I’ll be out of here by July…won’t you kiss my kids on Christmas Day…please don’t let them cry for me…”

Paul Kelly drifted out of the backyard as Ruby and I walked up her parents’ driveway, the two of us carrying a small stack of neatly-wrapped presents apiece. Ruby also had one of her calico shopping bags hanging from her shoulder. Over the music I could hear the sound of kids laughing and a dog barking.

“Sadie sounds like she’s having fun,” I commented as Ruby jabbed at the doorbell with her right elbow. “Should be nice and worn out by the time we head home.”

“Hope so, because I’m going to bed as soon as you drop me off this arvo,” Ruby said. “I can’t wait until I don’t have to say that anymore.”

“Nearly two weeks to go,” I said, and shifted my stack of presents into my left hand so that I could slip my right arm around her shoulders and give her a quick, one-armed hug. I could feel her leaning close to me the whole time, and if not for the front door swinging open within minutes of the doorbell ringing I knew we could have stood there like that all day.

“Grandma!” Ruby almost yelled when we saw who had opened the front door – an older woman with short grey hair who looked strikingly similar to both Trish and Ruby. Judging from Ruby’s reaction, her grandmother was the one person she hadn’t expected to come to Christmas lunch. As soon as the door was open I took Ruby’s stack of presents so that the two of them could embrace. “I missed you, Gran.”

“I missed you too, Ruby dear,” Ruby’s grandmother replied. As soon as the two of them had broken apart, she fixed a steely gaze on me. “Who’s this, then?”

“My boyfriend, Taylor,” Ruby replied. “Tay, this is my grandma.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs.-”

“Wallace,” Ruby whispered to me.

“Mrs. Wallace,” I finished.

I earned a smile and a nod of what I took to be approval for this. “It’s very nice to meet you too, Taylor,” she said. “And call me Margaret – if Ruby is bringing you to Christmas lunch, then as far as I’m concerned you’re as much part of this family as my grandchildren are.”

I just managed to hold back a sigh of relief. As far as I could tell, at least one of Ruby’s grandparents liked me. Lunch would have been very uncomfortable if they disliked me straight away. I could only hope her grandfather liked me as well.

“Is Grandpa here?” Ruby asked as Margaret ushered the two of us inside. I left my shoes on just long enough to deposit the presents I was carrying under the towering Christmas tree that sat in a corner of the lounge room, across the room from the kitchen bench, and quickly doubled back to the foyer to untie the laces of my sneakers and toe them off so they sat next to Ruby’s thongs, tucking my socks inside for safekeeping.

“He’s outside at the barbecue with your father and brothers,” Margaret replied. “Will you be helping your mother with lunch?”

Ruby shrugged. “If she needs my help. All I got to do last year before she banished me to the lounge to watch TV was top and tail beans.”

Margaret gave Ruby a pat on the shoulder. “Go on. I’m sure your grandfather will be happy to see you.”

And sure enough, Margaret was right. No sooner had Ruby and I stepped out of the sunroom’s sliding door onto the back patio that an older man I didn’t recognise got up from his seat next to a Weber barbecue with Colin, Troy and Ben and came over to us. “Ruby Therese McCormick, come here and give your old grandpa a hug,” he said.

“You’re not old, Grandpa,” Ruby said as she wrapped her arms around her grandfather. I hung back by the sunroom door with my hands shoved in the pockets of my jeans, feeling unsure for the first time since I’d met Ruby’s family. It wasn’t a feeling I liked.

After what had felt like the longest minute of my life, Ruby stepped back and gently guided me forward, just as I’d done with her the day she’d met my family for the first time. “Grandpa, this is my boyfriend, Taylor,” she said. “Tay, this is my grandpa.”

I could almost feel Ruby’s grandfather sizing me up as we shook hands, as if he was deciding whether or not he approved of me sleeping with one of his grandchildren. “Musician?” he asked, and I knew he’d felt the calluses on my fingers from playing my guitar.

“Grandpa plays the banjo,” Ruby said, and I relaxed just a fraction.

“Guitar and piano, sometimes drums,” I replied.

He seemed to be considering this for a moment or two, before nodding in much the same way Margaret had. “Call me Arthur,” he said, and clapped me on the shoulder before going back to his seat.

“So I guess your grandparents like me,” I said, feeling a little stunned that meeting Ruby’s grandparents had gone so well. I’d half expected her grandfather at least to write me off as soon as I’d admitted to being a musician.

“I knew they would,” Ruby said, sounding very satisfied.

“Oh you did, did you?”

“Mmm-hmm.” She draped her arms over my shoulders, raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed me, my hands automatically moving to her waist. Behind me I could hear one of her brothers making a choking sound, and I felt Ruby raise one of her arms just long enough to throw what I guessed was the forks in their direction.

“Can you not pash in public, please?” Ben asked, sounding vaguely grossed out.

Here Ruby stopped kissing me, and I felt her prop her chin on my left shoulder. “First of all, Benjamin, we’re not in public, we’re in Mum and Dad’s backyard. So therefore I’m not pashing my boyfriend in public. And secondly-”

“All right, that’s quite enough,” Colin said loudly. “Benjamin, your sister has every right to kiss her boyfriend wherever she likes. Ruby, stop teasing your brother.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Ruby and Ben chorused, not quite in unison.

“Colin, did you need a hand with anything?” I asked as Ruby drew back, turning around just in time to see Colin lifting the lid of the Weber. Inside it were a large turkey and a leg of lamb, the sight of which was enough to make my mouth water.

“No, I think we’re good,” he replied as he set the lid back down. “But I’ll give you a yell if we need an extra pair of hands.”

This seemed to be Ruby’s cue, and she grabbed hold of one of my hands. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

The two of us ended up in Ruby’s old bedroom, just off to the left of the house’s main living area. Even if I hadn’t been told it was her room, I would have been able to guess who it belonged to – it was Ruby all over, from the pale purple walls and the deep violet quilt on the bed to the collage of photographs on the corkboard that was hung on the wall above the desk. As soon as the two of us had stepped across the threshhold, Ruby slid one of the doors of her wardrobe open and started digging around inside. I sat down on her bed to wait for her to find what she was after, which after a somewhat frantic-sounding search turned out to be a large, bright pink book that had her first name spelled out in stickers on the front cover. She set the book in my lap before sitting down next to me.

“I’m showing you this now so that Mum can’t do it later and potentially embarrass me,” she said. I couldn’t help but notice that she sounded very nervous.

“What is it?” I asked as I opened it.

“My baby book. Please don’t laugh.”

I looked over at Ruby and bit down on my bottom lip. She looked terrified at just the thought that I would laugh at whatever was inside her baby book. So instead of diving in straight away, I put the book to one side and shifted myself so that I was looking at Ruby in profile, and I carefully tucked a few stray curls behind her ear.

“Ruby, if there is one thing I will never do, it’s laugh at you,” I promised her. “Literally the only time I would ever come close would be if you did something to make me laugh, and even then I wouldn’t be laughing at you. Okay?”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I know you’d never laugh at me. I guess I’m just a bit sensitive right now, that’s all.” She gave me a small smile that I immediately returned before picking the book back up again.

It took us nearly an hour to go through the whole of the book. By the time we were done, with the very last page holding Ruby’s preschool class photograph, Trish was knocking on the doorjamb. “Time for presents,” she said as I closed the book.

“We’ll be out in a bit,” Ruby said. As soon as Trish had disappeared back into the house’s main living area, Ruby let out a quiet groan before easing herself to her feet. “This is going to be fucking insane,” she said as I got to my own feet. “I almost wish I could sleep through it like I did last year.”

“You slept through Christmas?”

She shrugged. “I was tired.”

I let out a quiet chuckle and slipped an arm around Ruby’s shoulders, and planted a quick kiss on the crown of her head. “Good excuse.”

She grinned. “I should hope so.” I felt her square her shoulders a little. “Ready?”

“When you are.”

Ruby hadn’t been lying when she’d said presents would be insane. We left the relative quiet of her bedroom and walked straight into a wall of noise that almost sent me cross-eyed – Ruby’s nieces and nephews chattering about their presents, the tearing and rustling of wrapping paper, and in the background Tim Minchin singing about white wine in the Christmas Day sun. I allowed Ruby to lead me over to the two-seater lounge that sat beneath the lounge room window and sat down next to Taleah. “Bit mad isn’t it?” she said as Ruby picked her way over to the Christmas tree through a sea of colourful wrapping paper.

“Just a bit, yeah.” I cast my gaze around the room. “Not quite as crazy as my family’s Christmases though. Almost, but not quite.”

“You should have been here last year. Mum’s side of the family came over for lunch so we had our cousins and their kids running around the place too. Ruby, though, she goes and falls asleep on the lounge, and somehow manages to sleep through presents and lunch. I’d almost be jealous if I didn’t know she had a good reason for it.”

Just as Taleah said this, Ruby was coming back over to the lounge with a pile of wrapped presents in her hands. She handed the present on the top of the pile to Taleah before setting the rest down at my feet. “Merry Christmas, Leah,” she said. Right before she clasped her hands behind her back, I could see her very quickly crossing her fingers. I knew she had agonised for ages over what to buy Taleah for Christmas – I’d done my best to reassure her that Taleah would like what she’d bought, but neither of us would know for sure until she opened it.

When I saw the way Taleah’s eyes lit up at the sight of what was beneath the wrapping of her present from Ruby, I knew that Ruby had picked well.

“Ruby, this is incredible,” Taleah said as she picked up a handmade dreamcatcher. It had been made out of a length of cane that had been twisted into a circle, with the dreamcatcher’s web made out of white yarn and strung with clear crystal beads. Hanging off the cane circle were seashells tied onto strips of leather. “Where did you find this?”

“Markets in Crown Street Mall,” Ruby replied. She ducked her head a little. “I found the jewellery in Auckland just before we came home.” She looked up. “Do you like them?”

“I love them.” Taleah moved the dreamcatcher and jewellery to the armrest of the lounge next to her, got to her feet and pulled Ruby into a hug. “They’re perfect. Thank you, Ruby.”

I could see Ruby flushing bright pink as Taleah said this. “You’re welcome, Leah.”

It wasn’t until after lunch that Ruby and I got around to the presents we had bought each other. Nearly everyone else had gone down to the nearby beach, and almost as soon as the side gate had swung closed Ruby had led me to the sunroom at the back of the house. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or something else entirely, but I could have sworn Ruby was even more nervous now than she had been when she was waiting for Taleah to open her present.

“So who’s going to go first?” I asked once the two of us had sat down on the lounge that sat against one of the walls of the sunroom, near the long table where we’d eaten Christmas lunch.

“Flip a coin?” Ruby suggested. She unlocked her phone and navigated to a coin flipping app that she had installed.

“I’ll take tails.”

“So heads I go first, tails you go first.” She tapped a button onscreen to flip a dollar coin. “Looks like it’s tails.”

Almost as soon as Ruby had finished speaking, I leaned down and carefully picked up the wrapped box that sat next to my feet. The last thing I wanted to do was drop it and break what was inside. I carefully set the box down on the lounge between Ruby and I and shifted back against the lounge’s armrest so that she had plenty of room to open her present. The first thing she took out of the box was a taped-closed gift bag that had four boxes of tea and a tea infuser in the shape of an elephant inside.

“You remembered what tea I like,” Ruby said as she took each box of tea out of the bag and looked it over, sounding both surprised and pleased at the same time. I had gone up to Sydney a couple of days after we’d come home from New Zealand so I could go to the T2 shop in the Queen Victoria Building, picking out a box of chai, two boxes of peppermint tea and a box of green tea to go with Ruby’s main present. “And this is fucking adorable,” she added as she examined her new tea infuser. It was bright purple, the end of its raised trunk curved like a hook so that it could hang off the rim of a mug or a teacup.

“Of course I remembered,” I said, and reached into the box so I could tap on the last thing that Ruby had yet to unwrap. “They all go with this.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm-hmm.” I held onto the box so that Ruby could ease the last part of her present out of it, and moved the box onto the floor to give her plenty of space.

“Oh…” she breathed when she saw what had been inside the larger box. It was a teapot in the shape of an elephant, its raised trunk serving as the teapot’s spout, and a set of matching teacups.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it,” she replied, and leaned over to kiss me. “I’ve been wanting a proper teapot. Where did you find it?”

“Ordered it online. I thought you might like something of your own in our kitchen, seeing as all of what’s in there at the moment is mine.”

“You are so good to me.” She gave me a bright smile before leaning over the lounge’s other armrest to pick up two presents – one was a long, narrow box, with the other a much smaller and thinner parcel. “This one first,” she said, and she placed the smaller present in my lap. I gave her a quick smile before unwrapping it to find two books of Powderfinger sheet music – one for their Dream Days At The Hotel Existence album, the other for their final album Golden Rule.

“You are amazing,” I said as I quickly flipped through the books.

Ruby went bright pink at this. “I know you love Powderfinger, that’s all,” she said with a small smile, before passing me the second half of my present. As she did so I saw her cross her fingers for the briefest of moments. “Hopefully you’ll like this too.”

“It’s something you bought me, Rue – of course I’m going to like it.” I squeezed her hand and unwrapped the box, lifting the lid to find a guitar strap. My mouth dropped right open as I took it in. “Holy shit…”

“One of my uncles is a leatherworker,” Ruby said. I carefully took my new guitar strap out of its box and ran a thumb along it. It had been made from leather coloured the same deep red as my electric guitar, with the characters from my tattoo and the outline of an origami crane engraved on one end. “I sent him a photo of your electric guitar and told him I wanted it to be the same colour, or as close as he could get it.” She leaned over and guided my hand down to the engravings. “I couldn’t get a photo of your tattoo, but I remembered what you said it meant. I looked it up in a Japanese dictionary before I sent it to my uncle, so it should be the right characters. And the crane is for all the ones you showed me a couple of months ago.”

“Ruby, this…” I trailed off, almost lost for words, and replaced the strap almost reverently back in its box for safekeeping before leaning over to kiss Ruby on her forehead. “This is one of the best presents I’ve ever gotten. Thank you.”

Ruby went bright pink again and ducked her head. “You’re welcome, Tay.”

---

I carried the last box of Ruby’s belongings out of her caravan’s annexe and set it on the ground next to my car with a quiet groan. Her car was already over at our place, neither of us having seen much point in driving separate cars home when we were both pretty sure all of her things could fit into my car’s boot and back seat.

Today, the sixth of January, was moving day. Ruby was leaving the caravan park that she had called home since she had moved out on her own, with her new home being my place in the next suburb over. It was going to be something of an adjustment for both of us, especially as outside of the previous year’s regional tours and our jaunts around New Zealand we’d mostly only seen each other at TAFE, but to be honest getting to wake up next to her every morning was going to make it all worth it.

When the two of us had started to pack the caravan and annexe up, almost immediately after we’d come home from New Zealand, I’d been shocked to find out how little Ruby actually owned. She’d told me that most of what was in the caravan and annexe had been there when she had moved in, including all of the pots and pans in her little kitchen. All the belongings she had accumulated in the seven years since she had moved out of home had fit into a bunch of cardboard boxes that I’d swiped from the bottle shop in Corrimal Court, her washing basket, a couple of suitcases, her overnight bag and her backpack. Even the presents she had got for Christmas nearly two weeks earlier had taken up just a couple of boxes.

“So you’re the one who’s taking our Ruby away from us,” a voice said from behind me, the sound startling me, and I managed to bang the back of my head into the doorframe of the rear right passenger door. “Oh dear, are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” I said. I very carefully backed away from the side of my car and straightened up, and gingerly touched the back of my head. It was already starting to ache, but as far as I could tell it hadn’t started bleeding. “Oh, that’s gonna leave a mark,” I commented.

“William, can you grab me a tea towel and the peas out of the freezer?” the voice called out, and I carefully looked back over my shoulder to find a petite woman with long, greying curly hair pulled back under a colourful headband standing behind me – Ruby’s next door neighbour. She gave me an apologetic smile.

“Loretta, hey,” I said, right as my vision whited out a little. “Okay, I think I need to sit down.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Loretta said, her tone brooking no argument whatsoever, and I allowed her to guide me over to the wooden bench that was outside her caravan. Almost as soon as I’d sat down she was pressing something ice cold against the back of my head. “Now you hold that there,” she instructed, and I moved my left hand to hold the bag of frozen peas against the back of my head. “I’ll get you some Panadol.”

“Tay, I got the last bits and pieces packed up,” Ruby was saying as she carried her washing basket out of her caravan’s annexe. She nearly dropped it on the ground when she spotted me. “Holy shit, are you all right?” she asked.

“Loretta startled me,” I explained as Ruby set the washing basket down and hurried over as fast as she could. “Banged my head on the doorframe of the car. Hurts like blazes but I’ll be okay.”

“You’re sure?”

I glanced over at Ruby. She had sat down next to me with her right knee pressed against my left, worry in her eyes. “Considering that the last time I hit my head that hard I ended up unconscious and split my head open right here?” I traced a line along my hairline that started above my right eyebrow and ended down near my right ear. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Just making sure.”

“I know. And I appreciate it.” I gave Ruby a smile that she quickly returned.

Right at that moment, Loretta came back out of her caravan with a glass of water in one hand and a packet of Panadol in her other. She set them down on the bench next to me before reaching behind me and taking the bag of frozen peas away from the back of my head. “How does your head feel?” she asked as I lowered my hand.

“Better,” I replied as I picked up the Panadol packet and took out one of the blister packs of tablets, popping two out into my hand. “Though it’ll probably start hurting again once it stops feeling so cold.”

I quickly took my painkillers, skolling the rest of the water once I’d washed the tablets down, and cautiously prodded the back of my head. It felt a little tender, but the worst of the pain was gone for now.

“It’s a shame you can’t take Nurofen,” Ruby commented as I eased myself back to my feet. “Couple of those with the Panadol you just took and your head wouldn’t be hurting for at least the next six hours.”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately I break out in one hell of a rash if I do take it,” I said with a wry smile. “Found that out the hard way after I broke my arm. I’m better off not taking it.”

“Ah well. All the more for me, I guess.” She gave me a quick grin and stood up. “All my stuff is out of the caravan,” she continued as I got to my feet. “Just have to drop off the keys at the office and pick up the last of my mail, then we can go.”

“You look after yourself,” Loretta said as she and Ruby embraced. “And you look after her,” she added as she poked my right shoulder.

“We’ll look after each other,” Ruby promised. Her hand found mine and squeezed it tightly.

“Good. Don’t either of you be a stranger, either – our door is always open. All right?”

Ruby nodded mutely – from the way she was biting her bottom lip, I could tell she was trying to stop herself from crying. “Thanks, Loretta,” I said.

The drive home from the caravan park was a quiet one. After Ruby had dropped her old keys in at the park office and collected her final mail delivery, she had got back into the car without saying a word. I knew better than to pester her to talk when she was in a quiet, introspective mood. Instead, I had put the car into drive and driven out of the caravan park, leaving Ruby’s old home behind us.

“Am I being stupid?” she asked a few minutes later, just as I was approaching the 7-Eleven on the corner of Pioneer Road and Towradgi Road.

“Stupid how?”

“It’s just…” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ruby slouching a bit in the passenger seat, almost as if she was trying to hide. “I shouldn’t be crying over leaving that place. Only reason I lived there for as long as I did was because there wasn’t anywhere else I could afford to rent on my pension, not without moving in with a bunch of strangers, and I didn’t really want to move back home with Mum and Dad. It’s just…”

“You lived there for a long time,” I said with a small shrug, and Ruby nodded. “I get it. When I moved down here in 2007, at first I was horribly homesick – I think I subconsciously expected it to be like uni or the hospital, and that I’d go home after a little while. When it finally hit me that Wollongong was home until I decided I’d had enough…well, let’s just say that I was more than a bit mopey for a little while.”

“I’m glad you didn’t pack it in early,” Ruby said. By now I had stopped at the intersection next to the little white house with its dark grey tiled roof that had been my home for the last six and a half years, and that was now Ruby’s home too.

“Yeah, me too.” I flicked on the left blinker and turned into the side street, and made another turn into my driveway. “Well, here we are,” I said, and looked over at Ruby. “Welcome home.”

It didn’t take us long to move all of Ruby’s things inside, the two of us deciding to store everything bar her suitcases near the back door for the time being. There would be plenty of time for us to unpack everything once she was fully settled in.

“You want a hand with dinner or anything?” Ruby asked as I turned the oven on so that it could preheat. I looked over at the kitchen island to see her leaning against it with her hands shoved in the pockets of her jeans.

“Only if you don’t mind,” I replied.

“I never mind helping out,” she reminded me. “Plus this is my kitchen now too. Just tell me what to do.”

“In that case…” I turned away from the oven and thought for a second. “In my office, there’s a steel mixing bowl that’s got a tea towel over it – can you grab it?”

She gave me a quick, two-fingered salute. “On it,” she replied, and she headed out to the front hall, returning a minute later with the bowl I’d put on my desk an hour or so earlier. “What’s in it?” she asked as she set it down on the island, and I lifted the teatowel off so she could see what was inside. “Oh, we’re having pizza?”

“Yep,” I replied. “I figure that seeing as that’s how we originally met, it might be nice to have it for dinner.”

“I like that idea.”

“I thought you might.” I smirked. “At least this way, there’s very little chance of you falling on your backside right in front of me.”

She went bright red at this. “I am never going to live that down, am I?”

“Probably not.” I gave her an apologetic smile. “If it ever happens again, I’ll catch you.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

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