The Bow Wow Club by Nicola May

and he walked passed Piaf’s. Well, whoever it was walked past Piaf’s. I swear, Rita, it was the spit of our George. Same height, same hair, same gait. I thought maybe I was just seeing things, as evidently that’s quite common when someone dies, but even Tony said he could see the resemblance.’ Ruby took a sip of tea. ‘Honestly, it could have been him.’
    Rita leaped up, saying, ‘Well, this won’t get the house bloody cleaned, us chatting like this, will it?’ Ruby was quite startled at her reaction. ‘I must get on, love. Pop in again, won’t you?’
    Ruby clicked the front gate shut feeling slightly perturbed. Here’s your hat, here’s your coat, what’s your hurry? This was so out of character for her mother-in-law, who would usually sit happily for hours and discuss ‘their’ George.
    Maybe it was her new way of coping, and talking about him wasn’t therapeutic any more. Grief was such a difficult beast to handle.
    Ruby headed to the bus stop making a mental note to visit again next week. Reaching into her pocket to check for her Oyster card, she found the fortune cookie that Tony had given her. She pulled it out of the golden wrapper and broke the crumbly biscuit in half. The piece of paper inside fell to the ground. She didn’t see the man in front of her in the bus queue go to pick it up too and they bumped heads.
    ‘ Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind ,’ the man read aloud, looking up straight into Ruby’s eyes and then down the full length of her body.’ Well, I’m not so sure.’
    Still seeing stars, Ruby rubbed her head, then realising who it was, had to be steadied by the man’s arm.
    ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve obviously got a thicker skull than you,’ the posh shires accent added.
    Ruby remained mute, because there standing right in front of her, with the exception of a small mole on his left cheek, was the George look-a-like she had seen outside Piaf’s just days before.

– Chapter Thirty-Six –
    With a heavy heart, Michael put the key into the door of his poky flat. He felt sick. He threw his coat on the sofa, put the kettle on and clicked open his laptop.
    A Ring for Miss Ruby by Michael Bell
    Chapter 22: She had taken her ring off. A bare finger. No wedding band. A significant move for a widow - and what had he gone and done? Told her he didn’t want to see her any more. Had he made the right decision? Only time would tell. He sighed deeply. Why was love so difficult? Why couldn’t we be born with a homing device that drew us to just one person with whom we should spend the rest of our lives? Just put your finger on a touch screen and it would locate your match. They could be anywhere in the world. Any creed, colour, size. You would just be instantly attracted, fall in love and have babies and live happily ever after. But then again, would life be boring like that? Wasn’t half the fun meeting new people, touching new bodies, experiencing different characters, places and circumstances?
    No, sod all that. At this moment Michael would be quite content with a homing device stuck on Ruby Ann Stevens’s forehead with his name on it.
    Her green eyes had filled with tears earlier; those tears for her dead husband had made him just want to scoop her up and protect her forever. Dead husband. You couldn’t even say ‘ex-husband’. This dying young business wasn’t easy to get your head around, that was for sure.
    Michael pushed his chair back and got up to make a cup of tea. He plonked it down on his desk and spilled some on the scraps of paper dotted all over it.
    ‘Bugger!’ To his surprise, he felt tears pricking his eyes. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’ He sniffed loudly and went to the kitchen drawer to see if he could find another stray cigarette.
    Coming back empty-handed, he took a deep breath and set his hands on the keyboard in readiness. He would wait for as long as it took. He had to submit his review on the Ferry Boat Inn to get a few quid in. Then he