For today’s post I’m going to take one of the characters of my new novel for a quick test drive, to see how we get along with one another….

It was a clear day; sunny and warm, the seemingly endless blue sky punctuated by infrequent puffs of white cloud. Camden Lock was thriving with people; predominantly foreign students and punks with brightly coloured spiky hair and platform steel toe-capped boots.

Ruby loved the diversity of the crowd, the way it ebbed and flowed around her like the tide. She shrugged off her black leather jacket and let it fall onto the guitar case at her feet. Running her slender fingers through her coarse blond hair she yanked it away from her face, securing it without ceremony at the nape of her neck with a hair tie and pulling the ponytail out of reach of the guitar strap around her neck.

She’d bought the guitar with the last of her savings, not long after she’d arrived in London. At the time it had seemed like madness to part with all that she had, but she’d trusted in the providence of her musical ability, and whilst it hadn’t yet paid dividends it was at least keeping a roof over her head. Well, that and the job at the frozen yoghurt parlour – and Max’s hospitality, of course, though the true motives for his generosity were plainly evident, if not to him then everyone they knew.

She wouldn’t play for long now. This impromptu set was just to warm her vocal chords up ahead of the main event; her first live gig with the band. Tonight’s competition at Barfly would be the culmination of five years of hard work and determination, and failure was not an option.

This is the lead singer of Slow Club, who was the inspiration for Ruby’s character (though any similarities between the two are purely coincidental).