Post by Ruth Parker on Aug 14, 2012 15:45:02 GMT -5
| [atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 460px; background-image: url(http://i44.tinypic.com/34fb0ns.jpg);-moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; border: 4px ridge #9c5f5b, bTable][tr][cs=2] ruth hannah parker. forty-nine. dress-maker. rachel weisz. | |
[rs=2] | Ruth Parker could easily pass for a black and white film star: think Katharine Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman over Mae West or Marilyn Monroe. It's a fitting comparison actually, because growing up in rough inner city London borough to a single working mother, an old television and some battered video tapes of old films were often the only things little Ruth came home to, and the contrast they offered to the mundanity and poverty of her own life was awe-inspiring and almost incomprehensible. It was a gateway to a lifestyle that Ruth longed for, and yet that also seemed completely and utterly unattainable to the little girl. But first, let us go backwards in time a little. It's the summer of 1973, and Donna Parker is a bit of a hippy. Aged 19, she's been rebelling against her suburban parents for as long as she can remember. She ran away from home at the age of 16, leaving her hometown of Ilfracombe in Devon behind her and heading for the bright lights of London city, where she ended up joining a commune. Spending most of her time stoned, and espousing the values of free-love to a tee, Donna embraced her new life with gusto, and the few stories that filtered back home were wild enough to become gossip amongst the neighbours for weeks at a time. She spent as much of her summers as possible at music festivals, making and selling dreamcatchers and bracelets in order to get by, which was how she wound up at the Windsor Free Festival in 1973. There with a group of friends from the commune, she instantly caught the attention of Wilf Harrison, a good-looking boy a couple of years older than Donna who lived 'somewhere up North'. They took drugs and made love behind the stage whilst the Global Village Trucking Company were playing, and never saw each other again. Four months later, back in London once more, Donna realised that she was pregnant. The prospect of bringing a child up in the commune was disillusioning to say the least, and so Donna left, creeping away in the middle of the night without an explanation. She headed back to her parents, but a baby whilst nineteen and unmarried was finally one rebellion too far for the conventional Parkers, who firmly requested that she leave. Donna, not knowing quite where else to go, caught the next train back to London, but could not quite make herself return to the commune, for whatever reason. By sheer luck, she found a job as a cleaner and a bedsit cheap enough to just about afford, although the rent was sometimes (actually, most of the time) late. Money was tight, and when her baby arrived a few months later, the financial situation only (obviously) got harder. Ruth Hannah Parker was born on the 18th of May, 1974. It was a relatively quick and easy labour, and mother and baby were soon dispatched home. Donna went out to work the next day, tying baby Ruth in a scarf and taking her with her. She had no other option - she had no maternity pay or allowance, so if she hadn't immediately continued to earn a basic wage, the tiny family would have been thrown out onto the streets to starve. She took on extra jobs as much as she could - within eight months of giving birth, she had four cleaning jobs (one industrial cleaning job at a supermarket, and three at rich homes) and took in mending and sewing in the evenings. Wherever she went, Ruth was taken too. Life for Donna was a struggle, and her carefree, hippy days seemed like they were someone else's experiences now. Yet she loved Ruth with all of her heart, and given the chance to go back and not get knocked up, Donna wouldn't have taken it. As Ruth grew up a little, she became an exceptionally pretty toddler. It was clear that she had father's genes in abundance, and her dark head of curls could often be seen peeking out from behind her mother's legs as she chatted to accquaintances. As she got older, she became more aware of her and Donna's circumstances, although she'd never known anything different. Donna, always a little bit of a hopeless romantic, brought man after man home to meet Ruth, and the little girl saw the aftermath each time anyone left her, and they always did. Her mother never cried in front of anyone except Ruth - she never made a scene when she was informed that her 'services were no longer required, and that she was therefore regretfully being let go', or when she was dumped, or when final demands for the rent came through, or when her boyfriends drunkenly hit her and tried to swing for her daughter - but at night-time, when she thought Ruth was asleep, she'd sit on the floor of the tiny kitchen and weep for the life she once could have had. For Ruth, young eyes peeking through a crack in the door, the sight left a lifelong impression. The message was clear: never show weakness, never let down your guard, never let people in. By the time Ruth started at the local primary school, that mantra was engrained into her psyche. She didn't make friends easily, in case they left like her mum's friends. She liked her lessons well enough, but was quiet and subdued at all times, regarding the world seriously. She was never noticed enough to be cause for concern for the teachers, not even when she came in with suspicious bruises, or when her mother simply couldn't afford to give her lunch so she went without. She never had pretty clothes like the other girls, and desperately envied them, never quite plucking up the courage to talk to them and try to strike up a friendship. With her mother still working all hours of the day, earning little more than a pittance to try and enable their survival, Ruth had to make her own way home from school at the age of four. She had to stand on a milk crate to let herself into their home, and again on a chair to get whatever her mother had left out on the counter for her for tea. Being a little girl home alone in a rougher part of Hackney was often terrifying, and so little Ruthie would pull all the curtains shut, turn on the rickety old television that had been a gift from one of her mother's former admirers, turn the volume up and lose herself in Casablanca or Top Hat. They were odd films for a four-year old to be watching, but they were all the Parkers had, and they provided Ruth with the distraction she needed. Even then, Ruth's sole ambition was to get out, and to take her mother with her if she could. When she was five, strange things started happening to Ruth. Once, her mother working later than usual, she heard someone trying to break in through the front door. Obviously terrified, Ruth hid under the bed she shared with her mother (their bedsit only had one bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom), waiting for someone to come in. No-one ever did, and when her mother returned home, it was to find the would-be burglar tied to the railings in the stairway outside with the string of Ruth's winter mittens. Ruth was still hidden under the bed, and had to be coaxed out gently. The man was babbling incoherently, and Ruth swore that she'd had nothing to do with it, and that she had no idea why her mittens weren't still strung through the sleeves of her coat. In truth, her mother had no idea either - she could see that it was very unlikely that tiny Ruth had restrained a huge man, armed with a crowbar, but how else had he fastened himself to the railings? Donna tried her best to put it out of her mind, but incidents like that kept occurring whenever Ruth was in danger. It wasn't a completely out-of-the-blue shock, then, when on Ruth's eleventh birthday, an oddly dressed man - Professor Dumbledore - came to explain that Ruth was different, that she was magical, and that he could offer her an education far away from the borderline poverty her mother could offer her. Not wanting her only daughter to grow up to be one of the prostitutes she walked past every day on her way to school, or a worn-out, worn-down cleaner like herself, Donna accepted with alacrity, before she'd even worked out how she'd fund it. Luckily, Professor Dumbledore explained about the fund for disadvantaged potential pupils, and so when summer rolled around, he escorted Ruth and Donna to Diagon Alley, showing Ruth how to get into the Alley in order to purchase her equipment for the school year. For the first time ever, Ruth was able to buy the same - new! - clothing as everybody else, and it was beyond liberating. The whole experience of shopping with a purseful of gold was enough to make them both giddy, despite the fact that they had to purchase all of Ruth's books and school equipment aside from her robes second-hand. Her familiar, a cat named Tibbles (embarrassingly) was a stray cat that Donna and Ruth rescued. The following September, Ruth's mother kissed her goodbye on platform 9, and then watched as her daughter seemingly walked through a wall, a bewildering experience for both Donna and Ruth to say the least. Quiet as always, Ruth spoke to no-one on the train, but sat silently to one side trying to understand everything that was going on around her so that she could report it back to her mother in as much detail as possible. The entirety of the journey - from the hordes of children on the train to the trip across the lake to the first site of the imposing but beautiful castle that would be her home - was beyond anything she could ever have imagined, and for the first time little Ruth felt like perhaps - just perhaps - the things that she dreamed and longed for might just come true. This was a world in which she and her mother could be happy. Ruth was sorted into Slytherin relatively quickly at the start of term feast, the Sorting Hat recognising her ambition and thirst for success. She didn't make friends that easily in her House at first, but nor did she try to. Ruth had never been anything but self-sufficient, and that was not about to change now just because she was away from home. She was known not to be Pureblood, or even half-blood, and the shoddiness of her second-hand textbooks and school equipment told an adequate enough tale of her financial status, and as a result certain class-obsessed and rather more materialistic students from her House looked down on her, and ostracised her for it. She was bullied for the first couple of terms because of this, and it was the most miserable she had ever been. The memories of her mother sobbing on the kitchen floor were still fresh for Ruth though, and so she stoically bore the teasing, never deviating from her mantra of "never show weakness, never let down your guard, never let people in". She learnt from this that if you were poor, you didn't discuss it, nor did you show it; if you were sad, you did likewise, and the same with anger. The bullies, eventually (mercifully) became tired of picking on the one girl practically guaranteed never to react in any way, and she began to garner a certain amount of interest from her classmates, because she was quiet, yet seemed to exude an aura of confidence rather than appearing merely shy. Those who spent enough time with her to get her to open up a little discovered that she had a dry, biting wit (never quite verging on cruel), and an instinctive knack for using sarcasm effectively. If engaged in a battle of wits (something she could rarely be drawn into), she could win in a matter of a few sharp and well-aimed words, and a certain dumb insolence carried her through most other disputes. Even they never felt like they truly knew Ruth, however, and though she had friends and acquaintances to sit with at lunch and in lessons, she never confided anything of real importance to them. As she grew up, her exceptional prettiness turned into striking beauty, and as she got older, she only seemed to get better looking, and a steady stream of boys soon began to express an interest in her, attracted both by her looks and by her introverted nature - oddly deemed 'mysterious' by her admirers. In Ruth's fifth year, Donna was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, brought on by her use of cocaine in her hippie days. She didn't tell Ruth until she came home for the summer, not wanting to worry her daughter whilst she was away from home. Ruth's world collapsed around her - her mother was going to die, when all she'd ever wanted was to improve her life enough to better Donna's as well. The Ruth that returned to Hogwarts the following year was just as taciturn, but rather more disillusioned than she had ever been before, and as always, she confided none of her turmoil in anybody. By Easter of sixth year, Ruth was firmly established as somewhat of a femme fatale, exploiting her still-continuing repuation as 'mysterious' with startling effect. She could often be found with a bottle of Firewhisky, smoking muggle cigarettes on the top of the astronomy tower of a clear night-time, often accompanied by a boy, though rarely the same one more than twice. Her brittle, blank but beautiful façade was more than convincing, and it was this year that she truly perfected the emotionless mask that would be in place for most of the rest of her life. The boys never asked her out, and that hurt more than they ever knew. She was just never 'that type of girl', she had an unattainable air about her that meant she was never going to be the one anybody took home to meet their mother. She got good enough NEWTs, especially under the circumstances, although by no means were they completely astounding. If she'd tried, and applied, and turned up to her job interview looking pretty, she'd have probably just about scraped a job in some ministry department, but she had just enough pride not to do so. As her mother's health continued to ail, she turned her attention towards the Muggle world once more, in order to care for her. She got a job at the bar in the seedy strip club around the corner from her mother's house. Aged nineteen and suitably gorgeous, she spent her evenings getting leered at by sleazy old men (she tolerated it because she needed the money, and tips always came in handy) and her days caring for her sick mother. It was not a life that she would have wished on anybody. It was whilst Ruth was working at the strip club that she first met Christopher 'Knuckles' Turner, a bouncer on the door of the club. He found her otherworldly and captivating, and she was more than flattered by his attentions. He began to walk her home of an evening - something Donna very much approved of - and eventually asked her out for a drink one night, an invitation she accepted. Christopher was very handsome, in a rugged kind of way, and the attraction was very much mutual. Their dalliance was very much an on-off kind of affair, in a remarkably non-dramatic way. They would go out a few times, have lots of sex, and then it would fizzle out, only to resume a couple of months later. This wasn't something that bothered either Christopher or Ruth: she had bigger problems, and he, well, according to his mates down the pub, he'd got the best deal in the world. The chance to shag a bird as hot as Ruth, without having to bother about the relationship side of things? Score, lad! Ruth never even told him when her mother died. It was the 19th of June, 1995, and Ruth was twenty-one. Donna had refused transplantation or dialysis to manage her established renal failure, and Ruth had known that her mother would die in the relatively near future right from the very beginning. That did not mean that Ruth - to all intents and purpose, still 'little Ruth' inside - was prepared for the death of her mother, the only human being she had ever fully trusted or loved. It was devastating, but nobody who met her - whether at work or socially - would have realised the trauma she was going through. Never show weakness, never let down your guard, never let people in. Needless to say - and rather understandably - Ruth and Christopher's relationship took an 'off' turn for a few months around this time, and when they picked up again, it was just before Christmas. The fizzle had mostly gone out of their relationship by this point - they'd forgotten why they were friends, although the sex was still good. They limped on a little further, neither particularly wanting to spend the holidays alone (although neither would admit that, ever), and then it was nearly Valentine's Day, so it made sense to carry on a bit further. In fact, Valentine's Day was the day that Ruth's eldest son was conceived. In a last-ditch attempt to convince themselves that their relationship was working, Ruth and Christopher had pooled their meagre funds and booked a bus trip and two nights in a hotel in Brighton for the weekend. It was a weekend of bickering, quarrelling and 'make-up sex', although they were never really genuinely making up, more just getting on one another's nerves yet more. Christopher was rapidly discovering that Ruth wasn't the 'perfect woman' that his friends had built her up to be: she had feelings, emotions and faults that were at odds with her flawless appearance, and her inability (or refusal) to share any of what she was thinking or feeling was beginning to get to him; and Ruth was getting bored with Christopher's lack of ambition or aspiration. On the bus home, rather maturely, they agreed to call it a day, though they'd done that so many times that neither was really sure that it was the actual end. Three weeks later, Ruth found out she was pregnant. She told Christopher, sure that he'd at least want to be involved in some way, because even if they were over romantically, she knew he was a good man who would want to do the right thing - not necessarily to propose marriage or anything, but to be a part of his baby's life in some way. In fact, he did the opposite, completely bolting in the opposite direction. Ruth was furious, and terrified. In a rare loss of control, when she got home she threw her hairbrush at the mirror on what had been her mother's dresser, hard enough to make it shatter. She repaired it easily enough, but was angry at herself for letting Christopher rile her to such a display of emotion, although no-one had been there to see it. She resigned herself to the fact that she'd have to go through this alone, and cut all ties with Christopher: despite the fact that they both worked at the same place, she proved remarkably adept at avoiding him. Some would perhaps comment that it was almost magical how she did so for so long... The baby was born on the 5th October, 1996. Ruth named him Joshua Arthur Parker, and as soon as she saw him, she knew everything had been worth it. Ruth loved Josh more than she'd ever thought it was possible to love anything in the whole world, and her focus in life suddenly shifted to creating a better future for her newborn son. She soon realised that her current place of work wasn't really suitable - morals or hours-wise - for a young, single mother, and accordingly handed in her notice, instead taking a job waitressing at a grotty old cafe. She worked as many hours as she possibly could, never complaining about having to work a long shift after being up all night with a screaming, teething baby, or when she couldn't scrape enough money together to pay the rent on time. It was not in her nature to do so, because the last thing she wanted was to seem weak and vulnerable in front of her peers, including and especially men, so she hardly, if ever, let her emotions show.[1] Money, as always, was tight. It felt to Ruth as if all she was doing was following her poor mother's footsteps: a tiny London flat, a baby, working all hours of the day, no husband, nothing spare for nice things. It was demoralising, to say the least. She spent her days wiping tables and dreaming of a life where she didn't have to work and could wear truly pretty dresses, and raise a family with a husband she loved. It was a childish fantasy - it perhaps could've been demeaned as sexist and reverting to gender stereotypes by some - but it had been all Ruth had ever wanted, ever since the poverty of her own childhood. She was determined to achieve as much of it as possible for her son, to give him the best background in life that she could. Constantly exhausted, however, it was a dream that seemed a long way off, and Ruth's life was a struggle whichever way you looked at it. She went without food in favour of cigarettes, then forced herself to quit smoking in order to afford food for Josh when money got really scarce. To those who saw her out and about, lugging a heavy pushchair up and down three flights of concrete steps to take Josh out for a walk whenever she got a spare half an hour (which was relatively rarely), it was clear however that Joshua was the most important thing in her life, and her evident love for her son - though she'd never be classed as a 'mumsy mum' - garnered her a certain amount of begrudging admiration in the neighbourhood. Ruth, as ever, kept herself to herself though, and so the general good feeling was tempered somewhat by mutterings of "bit high-and-mighty though, isn't she?" and tuts about her young age and (lack of) marital status. When Josh started at the local muggle primary school, Ruth took on another job, and managed to persuade the muggle teenager who lived next door to pick up and look after Josh after school: Ruth didn't want Josh to have to invent a world to hide inside the way she had at his age. She wanted him to live a childhood as free and untainted as their circumstances would allow. Ruth made sure that Josh was well-presented and impeccably turned out as he left for school each morning, as meagre as their finances were. She knew the importance of appearances in creating good impressions, and wanted Josh to fit in as easily as possible. She wanted him to have real friends, and he did. This act caused more animosity towards Ruth at the school gates though. Whereas Josh enjoyed school and made friends easily and quickly, Ruth was eyed distrustfully. She was too young a mother to be truly respectable, and deemed too snooty to be worth talking to. Ruth was aware of the whispers of the mothers of Josh's friends, but never retaliated or even gave any sign at having known or heard about her reputation, aside from making sure that her signature scarlet lipstick was always firmly in place before she left the house. That, her pride, her composure and her son were all she had in the world in her favour - in the least shallow way imaginable, her appearance was all she had to trade on. As Josh got older, she began to think that he might need a father figure, and so she accepted a couple of the many propositions various blokes offered her, getting a babysitter and putting on her good dress - severely cut, black, ridiculously flattering - and the string of pearls that were her one real legacy from her mother, and heading out for dinner. Very few made it to a second date, and the mere mention of Josh's existence, they tended to run for the hills. It tended help that after her disaster with Christopher, she was only more choosy and ice-maidenish, although, to be fair, with perfectly good reason. She was always honest with Josh about who she was going out with, and where; she didn't see that dishonesty would serve her in any way at all, and she trusted Josh's ability to handle the situation completely. She always made sure to say good-night and to kiss him when she got home though, despite the fact that it was generally past his bedtime and that he was usually asleep. When Josh was eight, one of Ruth's few friends persuaded her that a double date set up by her friend's friend would be 'fun'. Ruth was highly sceptical, but allowed herself to be persuaded to go along. It was then that she met Robert Archer, commonly known to all and sundry as Bobby. He wasn't even her date, he was her friend's - she can't even remember the name of her own now - and Ruth didn't particularly like him. Luckily (or unluckily, depending upon your perspective) for future events, Ruth's friend wasn't overly keen on him either. The double date was a disaster, to put it bluntly, although Ruth and Bobby both struggled valiantly to try to keep the conversation afloat. It was the beginning of an unlikely friendship. Ruth pronounced Bobby to be rude, obnoxious, arrogant and embarrassingly vulgar, and his loud, crude jokes only made her cringe. He, on the other hand, informed her that she was frigid and stuck up her own arse. Despite this, there was an evident spark of some kind, and coincidence kept bringing them together in the unlikeliest places - the queue in the supermarket, the same bar on the same night. Eventually Bobby mustered up the guts - or bravado, at least - to ask out the beautiful, brilliant, intimidating Ruth, and she declined him flat out. Undeterred, and his ego apparently still intact, began to appear at her work, looking infuriatingly smug and confident in his ability to get her to go out with him. It was only out of frustration that she eventually ceased to shoot him down and exasperatedly deigned to give him a chance. Surprisingly, she really enjoyed their night out. It was nothing fancy, fish and chips followed by a bit of a stroll, but it was nice. He already knew she had a son, and didn't seem fussed, and that in itself was so amazingly wonderful that she didn't know quite how to cope with it. Their date was followed by another, and another, sometimes dinner, sometimes a trip to the cinema. He was still crude and vulgar and as obnoxious as before, but now she knew him a little better she found herself laughing rather than sneering at his jokes, and bit by bit she fell in love with him, and he reciprocated. Ruth thought that Josh seemed surprised by the fact that her nights out had increased, but more so by the fact that it was the same man, and so she brought Bobby to meet him, something that had never happened with any of Ruth's dates before. It was initially a success, Bobby played football with Josh, swung him around, joked with him and gave him chocolates. In short, everything Ruth was looking for on Josh's behalf. They made quite the happy threesome for a few months, until Ruth fell pregnant. She felt more prepared for it this time, she had a man who loved her, and her life in general was slowly beginning to stabilise. She told Bobby, and then Josh immediately after. It was rather a day of confessions and news, because it was also the day she knew she had to tell Bobby about her being a witch, and the thought that that of all things might scare him off when a pregnancy hadn't genuinely terrified her. In fact, it all went rather smoothly. He didn't believe her at first, and she had to set his jacket (laying on a chair on the other side of the room) on fire to convince him, but instead of being freaked out by it, he was proud and amazed, and Ruth fell in love a little bit harder. It was agreed that Bobby should move in, and that was where it began to all go wrong. The strain of being together all day every day with the imminent prospect of a family together was too much for Bobby and Ruth's relationship, which was still relatively new, despite how much they loved each other, and the pressure only brought out the worst in both of them. Bobby became lazy, no longer helping out around the house as he had done when they were merely dating, but instead lazed around in front of the television, cracking open beers. His apathy extended to his working life, and he was fired for continually arriving late and being rude to his manager. Ruth was furious - money was tight as it was, and they were going to have a baby to support as well as themselves and Josh - but in her normal manner only expressed that by pursing her lips tightly as her face whitened. She insisted, quite reasonably, that he should go make the effort to find employment once more, but at first he simply refused. When at last he did go, it was only after a 'proper' argument between the pair. At four months pregnant, it was the first time that Ruth realised precisely how volatile her partner could be, and the first time that she actually scared of him. He got the job, but it paid even less than the first, and their finances became even more stretched. Ruth didn't want to seem weak or vulnerable in the eyes of anybody, not even Bobby and especially not Josh, and so as she got more worried about the future of their increasingly dysfunctional little family she became more withdrawn, her only form of lashing out in little, bitter side-swipes at Bobby's attitude. She took up smoking again, and could often be found up at night, miserably and impatiently tapping her fingers against the scrubbed plastic of the cheap dining room table rather than returning to bed with Bobby. Hardly the picture of a glowing mum-to-be, she ended up with large dark circles around her eyes, her only reason for keeping it together the son she loved more than anything else in the world. After a tense nine months, William Joseph Archer entered the world. Ruth would have rather named him Parker, but she wanted him to grow up with a father unlike herself and Josh, and granting him Bobby's last name seemed one more way to secure the two together. After William's birth, Ruth suffered from post-natal depression. She felt apathetic and unable to cope, and did not immediately bond with little Will as she had done with Josh. She felt like a complete failure of a mother, especially in comparison to Bobby's obvious and blatant adoration at being a father, and so, put under more pressure, their relationship deteriorated yet further. The insomnia that had begun to develop during her pregnancy became more exacerbated, and so she began to feel more tired during the day time, often coming home from work of an afternoon and laying in bed, staring blankly at the wall, whilst in the room next door, Bobby cooed delightedly over Will's cradle. One of the very very worst memories she has - and there are a few to choose from - is Josh coming home from school one day, finding her in bed for the third time that week and getting angry. He roused himself into a childish fury, telling her to get up, to listen to him, to take care of them, to please just wake up. She couldn't make herself move, or even acknowledge him at that moment, but it cemented her status in her own mind as Bad Mother, the one thing she vowed she'd never be. She'd tried so hard to make a better life for herself and Josh, but all she'd done was make it worse. He eventually shouted himself hoarse and left her room, and she sobbed all night at could-have-beens and should-have-beens. To this day, she has no recollection if Bobby even came to bed that night. The next morning, she got up, forcing herself back to reality if it killed her. She looked tired and haunted, but when Josh came home from school the next day, she'd scrubbed the kitchen top-to-bottom and was making him beans on toast, baby Will bouncing on her hip as the wireless played out an old song in the background. Her heart broke at the relief on his face, and she drew him close, kissing the top of his head and telling him that he was a good boy, and thank-you - it was the closest to an apology or an acknowledgement of his rage as she managed to get. Relations between Ruth and Bobby gradually improved once more, and things were pretty much back to normal by the time Will had grown into a cheerful toddler and Josh turned eleven and was waved off to Hogwarts. Ruth dealt with it in her usual inimitable style, telling Josh that she knew he'd be fine, so he shouldn't be worried, and generally showing very little emotion, but the secret grief she felt about sending away her first baby was the catalyst for the conception of her last. Lara Rose Archer was born on the third of June, when Josh was twelve and Will was four, and Ruth saw her as her chance to make amends for her prior mistakes. She adored her sons, but Lara was her only daughter, her fresh start. Will was evidently taking after his father, and whilst the two could be found slumped quite happily in the sofa together, Ruth would be tending the baby in the other room, too frightened of Will or Bobby hurting her to leave them alone with her long, as irrational as she secretly knew it was. Bobby's love for Will was still evident - he'd still take him out and show him off to his friends, carrying him everywhere on his shoulders - and, in contrast, he was relatively disinterested in his daughter, something that Ruth tried a little too hard to overcompensate for. Preoccupied with a newborn, Ruth didn't keep as close an eye on Josh that summer as she later wished she had, and he got into a bad company. He was left to his own devices a lot, and managed to fall in with a gang of sorts, spending his time drinking, smoking and intimidating the local neighbourhood. She's not sure how or when she realised what her oldest son was up to, but with that realisation came the reignition of the problems between Ruth and Bobby. The atmosphere in the little flat grew tense once more, something furthered by Will's professed desire to follow in his brother's footsteps, and his threats of beatings to those he disagreed with as a result. Bobby and Ruth fought about what to do with Josh: for Ruth, Josh's welfare would always come first and foremost, but Bobby, who had no such biological attachment was in favour of harsher punishments for minor misdemeanours. The tension blossomed into harsh and ugly fights on the two occasions that Josh was arrested, and nothing Ruth said to either was to any avail. In the end, it wasn't until Josh sorted out whatever he needed to sort out within himself in his fifth year that he broke away from the gangs, completely pulling up his grades in the process. The issues at home however, now that the seeds were sown once more, did not go away so easily. When Josh was home for the holidays, the atmosphere was less strained, but when he was at school, the very air was tense and stilted. It was clear that this situation was no longer tenable, but neither Ruth nor Bobby was willing to give up on their fantasy of a family just yet, although it was practically killing them. The day Josh got his NEWT results still registers as one of the proudest of Ruth's life: 10 Outstandings, and her boy was a grown-up. He moved out, and began to pursue a career in Wizarding Law. Ruth's ambitions for her son had finally come true, he was going to be able to make something of himself, and if he could, then so could Will and Lara, so maybe everything would be alright after all. She was so overcome with pride that she cried, and it was the first time that any of her children - or even Bobby - had ever seen her cry. Yet by this point Bobby had started staying out, not coming home some nights. When Will started school in the September, he didn't even come to see his son off. Ruth was furious, furious enough to tell him so, and it ended in a stand-off, neither talking to the other whilst poor little Lara was stuck in the middle of it. Lara grew up detached and aloof, more so that Will was not there to deflect attention towards himself with his antics both terrible and hilarious. She cloistered herself in her room her hours on end, devouring her books as Ruth worked more shifts to try to keep them afloat, Bobby having stopped contributing as much of his salary to the general running of the household. He came home less and less, and the only person Ruth confided her worries in was to Josh, and even then only sparingly. Everything came to a head when he was nineteen, Will was twelve and Lara eight. Unimpressed when Bobby returned after an absence of several weeks over the summer with no explanation, Josh uncharacteristically started a fight with Bobby, instructing Will and Lara to leave the room. He was oddly calm in his outward demeanour, but Ruth recognised the signs - perhaps that particular way of dealing with fury was actually hereditary. Will was livid at this, and took it out on his mother, blaming her for Bobby's absence and accusing her of wanting to destroy their relationship now he'd come home at last. Ruth took it stoically, but the words hurt more than Will could ever have imagined, and so Josh continued to take charge, informing Bobby that no one, especially Ruth, needed or wanted to deal with his shit any longer, and kicked him out of the house, which wasn't taken well by him because although he was finally being rid of his responsibilities, he didn't enjoy being told off by a twenty year-old who wasn't even his own biological son. Will wanted to leave with his father, but Josh prevented him. In contrast, Lara was ecstatic at her father's departure. Ruth was in too much shock to do anything except lean on the kitchen windowsill, shakily taking a drag on a cigarette and wondering what on earth the neighbours would think. She was grateful to Josh for doing what needed to be done - of course she was - but despite everything, against all reason, she was in love with Bobby Archer, and that sort of thing doesn't vanish instantaneously. Josh moved back into the flat for the summer, and by and large, things seemed to be getting back on track. Lara came out of her shell a little, spending more time in the kitchen with Ruth and a little less in her room; and Josh worked hard at his studies, as usual. It was only Will who was dreadfully unhappy, and his blatant misery was enough to make Ruth forget even her own heartbreak. He blamed Ruth entirely for the events of that day, and would scream at her for it, whilst she refused (as usual) to respond, having no other coping mechanism when all she wanted to do was secretly break down and cry, something that she never even considered as a real option. Towards the end of the summer, Josh told her that he was moving to America. He left unsaid a lot of things, but she understood them anyway - things like I love you, and I hope you and Will are okay and I want to stay and look after Lara. She didn't try to dissuade him from his path - this was what he needed, and what he deserved, and she was so fiercely proud of him. Josh didn't want to tell Lara and Will right away, and Ruth respected that, not letting anything slip until he told them himself. Lara reacted - or failed to react - as quietly as usual, and Will found yet something else he could blame on his mother. Ruth kept in contact with Josh in his time abroad, trying to minimise the difficulties at home as much as she realistically could in their correspondence, although she couldn't hide the fact that stress was still high between her and her middle son. She was sure he was doing the same regarding his own situation, and that made her a little sad. Josh was the first she told when she managed to get a job as a dress-maker at Madame Malkins, and when she eventually got another boyfriend, a one Samuel Hawes. She met Samuel, a bit of a Ministry big-wig, when he came to get some robes fitted, and he was instantly smitten. He asked her out for dinner, and, still jaded not only by Christopher now but also by Bobby, Ruth initially refused. Samuel knew how to woo a woman, however, and proceeded to do so, having flowers delivered to Ruth's work, and showering her with compliments whenever he met her. She caved quickly, accepting his invitation to dinner. It was as wildly different to her first date with Bobby as one could possibly imagine: dinner at a fancy restaurant, followed by dancing. Ruth felt like a princess, like she'd wanted to as a teenager, for the first time in years. She agreed to go out with him again, and again, and he couldn't believe his luck. Ruth, on the other hand, was desperately trying to muster up romantic feelings for this wonderful, wonderful man who deserved them so much, but to no avail. Ruth got in too deep to extract herself without hurting him, and she's tried desperately to convince herself that it's okay that she's not in love with him: beautiful by birth, and resilient by experience - she's had to cope with so much, with two men who treated her like shit, three kids and a hard life. Whatever she had until she met Samuel was entirely her own doing, she has literally dragged herself and her kids up inch by agonising inch. And then along came Samuel, and just as she was so completely tired of everything. Tired of trying to cope with Will and Lara on her own, and tired of worrying over Josh, because even though he was in America, he's still her baby, they all are. And she was tired of working flat-out just to stay floating, and she was tired of just struggling so much for so long. And it sounds crude, but he had money, and he was definitely nice enough, and now one of her best friends, and after all, all Will wanted was a father, and she presumed the others felt the same and perhaps this was her opportunity to make everything a little bit better for all of them. So she tried to convince herself that it didn't matter that she didn't find him overly attractive, because she's getting older, it doesn't matter as much, it can't matter as much. And maybe - in comparison to her innate ambition and poise and beauty - he is boring and dull, but that also means stable, and she wanted security for her children more than anything else, so she still tried to make herself believe that it doesn't matter that he loves her more than she does him, because she was relatively fond of him, and maybe she'll grow to love him. But she's not in love with him, and deep down she knows she never will be. She's never told him any of this though, and desperately hopes that he thinks that she loves him properly. She moved in with him when he asked her to, taking Will and Lara with her to his big manor house. It would have been wonderful, and she could forgive her own misgivings if it wasn't completely obvious to her that her children loathe and detest this man for no apparent reason. Lara had the decency to keep her feelings to herself as much as she possibly could, but it was not in Will's nature to do so, and he clashed almost incessantly with Samuel. It was just after they'd moved in with Samuel that Ruth's relationship with Will broke down a little further. Initially refusing to even stay in Samuel's house, when he did come back, he took his frustration out on his mother, as had become the norm. He accused her of just being with Samuel because she wanted fancy things, and yelled at her for never writing to him, and for not letting him do what he wanted to do. He lashed out at Samuel when he tried to calm him down, and for the first time since Bobby had left, Ruth showed some emotion in a confrontation with Will. Standing up, she ordered him to her room, tears threatening to choke her voice. It hurt because it was hurting Samuel, who didn't deserve any of this when he'd taken them in and let her take her time in trying to love him without even knowing it, and it hurt because Will couldn't see that she'd done this for him, to give him the father figure he'd always wanted. Will's behaviour spiralled downwards after that summer, and Ruth tried her best to let it slide on the whole - after all, hadn't even Josh been one of the biggest partiers in his year, and he'd done fine? She couldn't turn a blind eye in aid of 'letting him do what he wanted' for too long though, and after his sixth year she, heavily encouraged by Samuel who was in turn worried about her as a result of the worry she felt about Will, issued Will with an ultimatum: he had to change his behaviour and grow up (the unspoken words she was sure were 'like Josh'), or he had to find somewhere else to live the next summer. Furious, and unwilling to wait a moment longer, Will ransacked Ruth's belongings until he found an old address book of hers. In it, he located Bobby's address, scrawled on a scrap of paper and tucked into the binding. It was information Ruth had never given Will because she couldn't bear to see him hurt in the way she knew he would be. Ruth doesn't know for sure that he went to see his father, just that he disappeared for a few hours, and that the scrap of paper with his address and some money from her purse also went missing at the same time. If she ever finds out for definite, and finds out what that bastard did to his son, then whatever Will thinks of her at that moment in time will be nothing compared to what she thinks of the man she once loved. Will returned home only to bid goodbye to Lara and to pack his belongings. For the first time in a while, after Lara had took herself off out into the hills at the back of the house and Samuel had gone to bed, Ruth sat at the kitchen table and cried until the wee hours of the morning, mourning a son who hadn't died, and a daughter who it seemed would never learn to love fully, and the fact that it was all ultimately her fault. Ruth's relationships with her children are beyond complicated, but despite appearances, they are the most important people to her in the entire world. The only thing that offers any prospect of familial hope to Ruth is the fact that Josh hopes to return soon, although she doesn't think even he knows how far things have deteriorated in his absence. |
cassie. 18. some years roleplaying. gmt. |
ROLEPLAY SAMPLE HERE. DO NOT FORGET.
