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For my very own superstat, Lily
Thank you to Stella Paskins, Gillie Russell and all the team atHarperCollins Children’s Books for their support and enthusiasm.
And extra special thanks to my very own focus group—Polly Harris,Laura Day and Emily Fettes—for their excellent opinions and thoughts,and for the gratis promotional work they did on Ruby Parker’s behalfwith all of their school friends. I appreciate it very much.
29 Windhouse Street
Brighton
Sussex
Dear Ruby,
I wanted to write and thank you for the letter you sent me, and anyway you said for me to let you know how I am doing so I thought I would. When I wrote to you I was feeling really low and getting your letter really made me feel better. I took your letter and showed it to my mum and when she read it she looked sort of surprised and cried. I was worried at first but then she gave me a big hug and it was as if she suddenly realised how much her and Dad splitting up was affecting me too. Things are still hard, and I wish it wasn’t happening, but at least they are trying to sort things out in a more friendly way now, and Mum lets me see Dad without getting angry.
I read in Teen Girl Magazine that you have left Kensington Heights. I am sorry you won’t be playing Angel any more, she was my favourite character in Kensington Heights, the only one who seemed really real. I am glad that Angel had only gone to America though. Maybe one day you will come back and be in the show again. I know you used to get loads and loads of letters from Kensington Heights fans. I expect the show’s fan club will get a lot less mail now. I think it will be nice for you to have a break from writing all of those replies! Maybe you should have your own fan club? I wonder what you will be in next. I will definitely watch it whatever it is.
Thanks again.
Lots of love
Naomi Torrence
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Dear Ruby
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Also by Rowan Coleman
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
“If there’s one thing I know about this business we call show business,” Sylvia Lighthouse told me when it was my turn for her inspirational pre-audition pep talk, “it’s that success is never down to good fortune alone—you do realise that, don’t you, Ruby?” I nodded. I did know, mainly because I knew exactly what she was going to say next. She had been seeing all of us girls who were about to audition for a part in the Imogene Grant movie, The Lost Treasure of King Arthur, individually and in alphabetical order. I was last because poor Selena had chicken pox really badly and hadn’t stopped crying since she found out she wouldn’t be allowed to audition. (I don’t blame her, I would cry too if I discovered I was missing out on such an important audition because of chicken pox, even if at that moment a nice warm bed, a pile of DVDs and a bottle of Lucozade did seem like more fun.) Anyway, it meant that I was last, so Nydia, Anne-Marie, Olivia and Scarlett had already told me what she was going to say, complete with dramatic pauses and eye rolling.
“Good,” Sylvia Lighthouse continued, “because success is perhaps ten per cent luck, maybe even ten per cent talent…” She leaned across her desk and fixed me with her steely glare. “…But do you really know what makes a performer successful?”
“Hard work and lots of it,” I answered automatically, before realising that the question was supposed to be rhetorical and I wasn’t supposed to answer at all but let her tell me. “I mean, probably…” I added hastily, “I don’t know really…um…what do you think, Ms Lighthouse?” Sylvia Lighthouse arched an orange pencilled eyebrow at me.
“I do hope you are not too confident, Ruby,” she said, as she examined me. I shook my head energetically. “Acting in a so-called ‘soap opera’ and auditioning for a movie are two entirely different things. Your experience on Kensington Heights means nothing at all here.”
“Um oh, right,” I said, trying to swallow as my throat tightened in fear. “Well, I know that, Ms Lighthouse, and I’m not too confident, not even a bit.” And then I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say either so I added, “But I’ll give it my best shot.”
I wanted to tell her that all I could think about was that very soon I’d be standing in front of award-winning film director Art Dubrovnik about to audition for a part in his next movie, quite a big part, with quite a lot of scenes that would be watched in cinemas all over the world. And that every time I thought about it my heart started thumping, my tummy turned to jelly, my mind went completely blank and I started to come out in stress-related blotches. It was almost exactly the same as the first time I had kissed Danny (only without the blotches luckily). Sylvia Lighthouse drew her lips together and looked at me down her very long nose.
“I hope you don’t think you have any advantage over the other girls, Ruby,” she told me sternly, “just because you were once a TV star. It’s a level playing field out there, you know. And, besides, fame is a very fickle thing. I should know.”
“I don’t,” I told her. “Honestly, I don’t, Ms Lighthouse. I’m nervous, I’m really, really nervous—look!” I pulled open the collar of my school shirt and showed the bright red marks that were flowering on my skin. She looked at them and wrinkled her nose slightly.
“Well, that’s good,” she told me a little less harshly. “Fear is good as long as you use it. Don’t let it stifle you, Ruby. Just remember that this is your moment. This is your chance to be the best that you possibly can be.” She stood up as she finished speaking, flourishing her hands and gazing over the top of my head as if she had just performed the last lines of a play.
I blinked at her. That part hadn’t been in everybody else’s pep talk.
“I will, Ms Lighthouse,” I told her steadily. “I promise.”
She smiled at me then, which looked almost as much like a scar as when she frowned.
“Jolly good,” she said. “Well off you go then! You don’t want to be late!”
When I walked down the front steps of the academy everybody else was already in the minibus. I looked at their faces peering out of the windows and I knew that I had exactly the same expression on my face—as if we were about to be driven to our certain doom, and not to take the chance of a lifetime.
“Remember,” my mum had said that morning, “if you don’t get it, it’s not the end of the world. You’re still only a little girl after all.”
“I know,” I said, letting the whole “little girl” thing go, because secretly she was just as nervous as me. But it was still hard not to think of it as the potential end of the world. What would the world be like if I didn’t get the part? Almost exactly the same as it had been before, which was not too bad a world—a world with a mum and a dad that were at least talking to each other and getting on quite well since Dad moved out. A world with good friends and a very nice, funny boyfriend. A world with a big fat cat, dancing and singing lessons in the morning and acting class right after maths. An ideal world for a lot of people.
But it would still be a different world in one important respect. If I didn’t get this part, it would be the first time I had ever failed. Nobody outside the academy had ever really tested my talent before, not even when I was on Kensington Heights. I’d never done another real audition, and I had never expected my first one to be quite so big. So although I did know that it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t get the part, it certainly didn’t feel that way.
“All set, girls?” Miss Greenstreet called out, as I climbed on to the bus and slid into the seat next to Nydia. She picked up my hand and squeezed it.
“Yes,” we all chorused weakly, glancing at each other anxiously.
“Excellent,” Miss Greenstreet said. “Off we go, driver!”
None of us really knew what to expect when it came to movie auditions, me least of all. After all, I had only ever auditioned for Kensington Heights when I was six. At the time I thought I was just playing dressing-up, so I didn’t exactly feel any pressure. And I had been in Kensington Heights playing the part of Angel MacFarley, the world’s most average girl, ever since, until last summer. It was then that I decided to leave, because I realised that playing Angel wasn’t really acting, it was just being me in front of a TV camera. I wanted to stretch myself, to experience new challenges and take new chances.
Except that morning on the bus I wasn’t quite sure about any of that. Challenges and chances and all that stuff didn’t seem half so appealing just then. In fact, just then, a career as a librarian seemed much more my sort of thing, as really, out of all the girls on the bus, I was the least experienced in auditions.
Anne-Marie had done quite a few commercials, and just recently Nydia landed her first TV part in Casualty as “girl with food poisoning” (She was completely brilliant by the way.), so they both knew more about what might happen than I did.
I thought we might have to stand on a stage in a theatre a bit like when we did audition practice at school, or maybe even go to Mr Dubrovnik’s suite in some posh hotel. But we didn’t. The minibus stopped on Wardour Street in Soho, and Miss Greenstreet smiled at each of us and patted us one by one on the shoulder as we filed out on to the pavement and then up some dark and narrow stairs to the rehearsal rooms which were above an Italian restaurant.
“I thought it would be more glamorous than this,” Anne-Marie hissed in my ear as she glanced around her.
“Being an actor isn’t about being glamorous,” Nydia said, repeating one of Ms Lighthouse’s favourite phrases, “it’s about creating it.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. Nydia and Anne-Marie shrugged simultaneously. Sometimes Sylvia Lighthouse’s pearls of wisdom could be, well, rather mysterious to say the least.
At the top of the stairs there was a small waiting room with five orange plastic chairs that were probably older than each one of us who were lined up against the wall. The fluorescent lighting flickered every now and then, and hummed loudly. A lady with wiry orange hair, and with thick black-rimmed glasses perched on top of a long pointy nose, magnifying a pair of scarily pale blue fish-like eyes, was waiting for us. She was wearing a very short tartan kilt and green holey tights, and was armed with a clipboard and a scowl that knitted her thick brows into one.
“Hi, I’m Lisa Wells, assistant director on The Lost Treasure of King Arthur,” she said briskly in an American accent, leading me to guess that she must be American. “This is how it’s going to be. I hope you are all properly prepared and that you know your lines because I’m going to be sending you in one at a time in alphabetical order.” I sighed inwardly. That meant I would be the last to go in again. And the one with the longest time to get nervous and blotchy and forget my lines.
“You go in,” Lisa continued, “stand on your mark, and deliver your lines to the camera. Don’t worry, I’ll be in there to read with you.” Somehow knowing that didn’t make me worry any less. “And that’s all you do, OK? I don’t want any procrastination, no preamble, and certainly none of that chit-chat you Brits are so fond of. No one here cares whether or not you can do ballet or tap, or recite Juliet’s soliloquy, OK? You do your lines, you move on. Anything that might waste Mr Dubrovnik’s very precious time will result in you being automatically disqualified.” Lisa Wells paused for a moment to eye each one of us closely, just to make sure she knew we understood her. “Once you’ve done, I’ll show you the way back out to your teacher. I don’t want any discussions or giggling going on out here, OK? I want total silence from all of you, except the one who’s reading. Any questions?” We all looked at each other, but nobody spoke. Probably because if the others felt anything like I did, they had all lost the power of speech entirely, too.
“Don’t worry, girls,” Miss Greenstreet said kindly, “I’ll be in the café just across the road with a hot chocolate waiting for you when you come out.” She shot Lisa Wells her best attempt at a cross look, which wasn’t very good because Miss Greenstreet is one of those people who is never actually cross with you, just disappointed. “I’m sure it’s not going to be as frightening as you think it is,” she said, trying to reassure us.
“Oh, it is,” Lisa Wells said, her voice as sharp as her nose.
She scanned her clipboard. “Now, who’s first? “Nydia? Which one of you is Nydia?”
Nydia sat perfectly still for a moment as if she hoped that she might blend unnoticed into the orange chair.
“Go on, Nyds,” I told her. “You can do—”
“No talking!” Lisa Wells interrupted me. “Nydia, go in now or go home!” Nydia took a deep breath, winked at me and disappeared through the door into the audition room. I scowled surreptitiously at Lisa Wells and wished that I was more like the character I was auditioning to play, Polly Harris aka Ember Buchanen—initially prim and proper, when faced with danger, her character became fearless, cool, calm and collected, even after she finds out that she’s not really who she thought she was. In fact, her father isn’t her father at all, but an evil historian who kidnapped her as a baby and is planning to murder her on her fourteenth birthday. Polly/Ember was a brave-sassy-no-nonsense-adventurer. She would have just gone up to Lisa Wells and told her what she thought, and quite possibly even kicked her in the shins…
But I, plain old Ruby Parker, did not do any of that, because I never have been any good at rebelling. I just sat on my plastic chair and waited quietly. I watched Nydia, Anne-Marie and the others go in and come out again without even looking at me, until I was the only one left.
“Ruby Parker,” Lisa Wells said inevitably. “It’s your turn. Go!”
Chapter Two
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think it was,” my mum said kindly, putting a steaming bowl of risotto in front of me. It was my favourite comfort food. My mum only ever made it for me on special occasions, or when I was feeling really fed up. I stared at it, feeling the heat coming from it brush against my already flaming cheeks.
“The only way it could have been worse,” I told her in a small thin voice, “was if I had actually thrown up on Mr Dubrovnik.” I screwed up my eyes and felt every internal part of me curl up and shrivel too. I just couldn’t believe what had happened. I couldn’t believe I had actually been literally sick with nerves. In public.
“But you read the lines, didn’t you?” Mum said, sitting next to me at the kitchen table. “It’s not as if you didn’t deliver the scene, and I bet you were fabulous.”
“I was terrible,” I groaned, banging my forehead with the heel of my hands. “Like a five-year-old in a nativity play.”
My cat Everest had hauled himself up on to the table top and was eyeing my risotto hopefully. Normally Mum would have shooed him off the table, but he was taking advantage of her concern over me and edged a little bit closer.
“Well, you finished the scene and that’s the main thing,” my mum said unconvincingly. “And remember, we said it wasn’t the end of the world if you didn’t get the part. All we have to do is work out what made you feel so terrible and make sure it doesn’t happen again next time.” I closed my eyes and forced myself to replay the scene one more time.
I had walked into the room, which was much bigger than I had expected, with many more people in it. It was a large room with whitewashed brick walls and a dusty wooden floor. Three sides of the room were lined with floor to ceiling mirrors and ballet bars. Maybe that was what made my nerves worse. Maybe because it seemed like there were thirty people there instead of just ten. Maybe because I could see myself from all of my not-so-brilliant angles.
Or it could have been the camera. After all those years on a soap I didn’t think the camera would freak me out at all, but I was wrong. It wasn’t the same kind of camera I was used to working with on Kensington Heights: big and clunky and friendly. It was just a digital camcorder on a spindly tripod. I knew exactly how I looked and sounded on a digital camcorder from when my dad sent a home videotape into Before They Were Famous a couple of years earlier. I was furious because I looked terrible—dumpy and awkward—and my voice sounded all stupid and high and not at all like it sounded in my head.
I had made myself look at Mr Dubrovnik, who was sitting in the middle of a row of four people, a man who was a bit older than my dad but with longish sandy hair and the kind of clothes I would have thought were far too young and trendy for my dad. And he was wearing a baseball cap, indoors, so I couldn’t really see his eyes. But his face was pointed in my direction and he seemed to be the only one of them looking actually at me. All the others were looking at a monitor that was showing them how I looked on digital camcorder. Which was rubbish.
I stood on my mark and waited for what seemed like ages before I remembered that Lisa had told us just to read without waiting to be cued.
“I don’t know who…” I began my first line just as Mr Dubrovnik spoke.
“You may begin,” he said at exactly the same time.
“Er, s…sorry,” I told him, stumbling over my words. “It’s just that she said that I…” I trailed off as I remembered what else Lisa had said about “chit-chat”. I took a deep breath and looked right down the barrel of the camera.
“I don’t know who you think you are!” I more or less shouted my first line.
“I’m your sister, Ember. Don’t you remember me at all?” Lisa replied, reading from the script completely deadpan without a trace of emotion. I struggled to stay in character, which was hard, as I felt like I was trying to have a heated argument with someone who expressed about as much emotion as a pre-recorded answerphone message.
“You!” I exclaimed haughtily. “You’re not my sister! I’m Polly Harris, daughter of Professor Darkly Harris—the chief curator of the British Museum.”
“No. No, you’re not,” Lisa continued as if she were reading the back of a packet of cornflakes. “You’re my little sister and you were stolen from our parents when you were just a baby. I’ve been searching for you all these years and now at last I’ve found you.”
The flatter and more disinterested Lisa’s voice seemed, the more over-the-top and loud my acting became. I knew I was bad, but it was like being at the top of a rollercoaster: I couldn’t stop myself from plunging further and further down into over-the-top acting.
“You’re lying!” I cried out so loudly my voice rang in my ears and echoed off the painted brick walls.
I did get to the end of my scene without forgetting any lines, that was true. I felt my legs shaking and my stomach wobbling and I delivered the last line with everything I had.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” I shrieked so loudly I think the mirrors shook.
The sound of my own voice ringing in my ears gradually died away, and when it was gone there was complete silence.
And that was when I threw up. On my feet. On digital camcorder. In front of Hollywood’s hottest and most influential director and his entourage. I was as sick as Everest choking up a mammoth-sized hairball.
I don’t even know where it came from; it wasn’t as if I’d had anything to eat that morning. But suddenly, without any warning, I was bent over double and my stomach was heaving, and I heard this horrible rasping sound and realised it was coming from me.
I didn’t wait for Lisa Wells to show me out. I clamped my hand over my mouth and ran out of there as fast as I could, and when I was finally outside I collapsed against the first bit of wall I could find. I stood there for a moment, my forehead grazing the brick, and I waited until I could breathe steadily and the pavement stopped shifting beneath my feet.
I would have liked to have stayed there all day but I knew I had to go back to the café where the others were waiting. Laughing probably, and talking excitedly without a care in the world because none of them, I was fairly certain, had finished their audition in the same way I had. With retching.
“How did it go?” Nydia exclaimed when she saw me. The whole table stared at me, and I realised that the stricken look on my face might be giving the overall picture of how it went but had failed to fill in the necessary details.
“Bad,” I managed to say as I scraped back the remaining empty chair they had been saving for me. “Really bad.”
“No, it didn’t! I’m sure it didn’t,” Miss Greenstreet said kindly, patting the back of my hand. “I’m sure you were wonderful. I’m sure that all of you girls were just wonderful.”
It was then that I burst into tears.
“So remember what we said?” Mum said, picking up my fork, piling it high with risotto and then aiming it at my mouth. She did this, my mum, sometimes: when things were especially difficult, she’d forget the intervening twelve years and ten months since my birth and treat me like a baby again, even down to spoon-feeding me. I looked at the fork and then at her, and she laid it back in the bowl.
“What did we say?” she said gently, refusing to let go of babying me completely.
“That it’s not the end of the world,” I recited, seriously unconvinced.
“Because you did your best, didn’t you? And that’s all you can do, isn’t it?” Mum added in the slow, soft voice she used to comfort me with when I grazed my knees.
“I know,” I said darkly.
“And there will be other chances,” Mum said. “Lots of them.”
“Yes,” I said heavily. “There will be other chances.”
“And after all,” Mum seemed determined to wade on through her pep talk despite my total failure to be pepped up by it, “you have to get used to lows as well as highs if you want to be an…”
“An actor!” I snapped. “Yes, I do know, Mum!” I sighed and slumped in my chair, pushing my bowl of risotto away from me so that it slid to a stop by Everest’s neat little paws. He licked his lips.
There was no point in being angry with Mum. She wasn’t the one who had messed up the audition so badly that it could well go into the number one slot of the Top Ten All-Time Most Messed-up Auditions Chart.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” I said. “It’s just, well, I know all about taking rejection and getting used to it and picking myself up and dusting myself off and getting ready for the next challenge; we have classes on it at school. After all, one of the reasons I left Kensington Heights was so that I could experience all of that—stretch myself, find new challenges. But, well…I suppose I didn’t expect it to happen to me. Not really.” I chewed at my bottom lip. “Maybe it means that I can’t act. Maybe I’m really rubbish, after all. I only ever really played myself in Kensington Heights.”