Ruby Parker: Soap Star

Chapter Five

“It’s very simple,” Nydia said the next afternoon as she unpacked the contents of her bag on to my bed. “They don’t think you’re pretty enough, right?”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes. It was obvious Nydia thought we were in a film when this sort of thing actually happens and actually works.

“Sooooo…” Nydia held up a packet of Blonde Beauty permanent hair dye. “So, we show them! We make you over today! When you go in there tomorrow you’ll knock their socks off and they won’t kill you. OK?”

I shook my head in disbelief! “Oh no. No, no, no, no! You aren’t getting anywhere near me with that! My hair will go all green and fall out! Haven’t you ever seen Hollyoaks, Neighbours or Family Affairs? It always goes wrong – especially when you’re thirteen. No. No way.” I crossed my arms and tried to look stern, which is hard with Nydia because she always makes me laugh by rolling her eyes and crossing them in the middle.

“I knew you’d say that,” she said with a sigh. “You’re the one who tells me off for believing in happy endings and yet you believe all the bad stuff that happens on telly. You’re the same as me, just in reverse. It’s only a soap, love! Anyway, knowing how terrible you are at rebelling, I brought you this instead.” She held up a lemon. “I read about it in a magazine. We squeeze it in your hair, sit in the garden for the whole afternoon, and the sun will turn your hair blonde again.” She peered out of my bedroom window. “Good job there’s global warming: it’s really hot out there. And then when we’ve done that, we’ll pluck your eyebrows. Don’t look at me like that! It’s easy – I’ve got a magazine article about it. Then we’ll do your make-up and find something cool in your wardrobe. It’s just a shame you don’t wear glasses, because then we could get you some contact lenses and everyone would be like, ‘Wow!’”

I took the lemon from her and slumped down on the bed.

“I don’t think your plan is going to work, Nydia,” I said.

“Yes it is!” Nydia sat next to me. “I mean, it might do, a bit. And if not, it might still make you feel better, and at least it will take your mind off things for a bit.” She put her arms around me and gave me a big hug. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I did try to think of a plan that would really help, but the only other thing I could think of was storming the ten o’clock news and holding an on-air protest, which I think might just make things worse. Obviously one day I’ll be a mega superstar and everyone will do what I say, but until then this was the best I could come up with to try and help you feel better. Don’t you think lemon in your hair might make you feel better?” I hugged her back and looked at the lemon.

“You make me feel better,” I said, smiling at her. “Come on, let’s go and squeeze this and I’ll try not to worry any more.” We walked out on to the landing and Mum was there, just standing there holding her hands together really tightly. She sort of jumped when she saw us.

“Oh,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Um, do you want anything, girls? A drink or a snack or something?” I looked at Nydia, who shook her head.

“No thanks, Mrs Parker,” she said with her best parents’ smile. Mum nodded and knitted and unknitted her fingers.

“Um, Nydia, were you planning to stay for tea?” she asked. “It’s just that, well, um, today’s not the best day…”

“Mum!” I protested. It wasn’t like her not to let Nydia stay as long as she liked, and I really needed Nydia to help me keep my mind off everything. And besides, I felt like while she was here nothing else could happen. “Why not?” Mum looked at me anxiously, and back at Nydia.

“Because your father and I want to talk to you,” she said, and I knew it was bad. Whenever she refers to my dad as “your father” it’s bad: like when Granddad died, or when, last year, Dad went away and stayed in a hotel for a week to “think about things”.

“What about?” I asked her. “What do you want to talk to me about? What’s happened, Mum?” Mum shook her head and pressed her lips together again.

“We’ll talk again later, OK? Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of other times for Nydia to come to tea, OK?” She was blinking a lot as she said it. “You don’t mind, do you, Nydia?” Nydia shook her head; her parents’ smile had faded.

“No, I don’t mind, Mrs Parker. No worries!” She looked at me and bit her lip.

“Right, well. I’ll bring you some biscuits then, shall I?”

“Will you squeeze this for us?” I held out the lemon. I felt stupid asking, but Mum nodded and took it, turning her back on me as we headed to the kitchen.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “It has to be.” Nydia took my hand and led me down the stairs and out into the garden.

“Maybe not,” she said as we sat down on the grass. “Maybe it’s the trial separation again, or maybe they’re going to sell the house because your dad’s got a secret gambling addiction or something…”

“That’s from the show!” I said with half a smile. I looked around the garden and listened to the bees in the grass and the sound of the neighbours’ toddler in the paddling pool, and I shut my eyes tightly for a second and waited for the tears to go back inside my head. “I know,” I said to Nydia. “Let’s talk about our film; we still haven’t thought of a really good ending. So far we’ve only got up to the bit where Justin and I are in the jungle lair of the evil alien who’s about to take over the world…”

And for the next couple of hours we acted like nothing was going to happen. Luckily for me, we’re really good at acting.

3 Briar Walk

Berkhamsted

Herts HP4 3BL

Dear Angel,

You are so brave. I wish I was as brave as you were when you tripped up that trained assassin trying to kill your uncle and bashed him over the head with a priceless antique vase. You saved his life! I really think he should have been more grateful and worried less about the vase.

I am not brave. I am scared of most things. Dogs, spiders, the dark, thunder and cheese. But I can’t say I am because all my friends would laugh and call me a baby. So if I see a dog or a spider, I just pretend not to be scared and try to be brave like Angel, even though I’m not really.

Lots of love,

Lucy James (aged 11)

Ruby Parker

Dear Lucy,

Thank you for your letter, but actually I think you are a bit wrong. I think you are very brave indeed. I know grown-ups (my mum) who are so scared of spiders they can’t even stay in the same room with them!

It’s easy to be brave when I’m playing Angel – because she isn’t afraid of anything. In real life I’m afraid of a lot of things like you, and I bet your friends are too really – why don’t you ask them next time you have a sleepover? Anyway, from now on, if I’m worried and scared, I’m going to think about you and try to be just as brave as you are!

Best wishes

Ruby x

Chapter Six

I knew when I went down to tea that I was going to have to be as brave as Lucy, maybe even braver. It was bound to be bad because Mum made chicken risotto, and she only ever makes that when we have guests or if I’m sick or something, because it takes her hours and she has to stir it until her wrists go funny. I sat at the table and watched her stir and stir, her face tipped down into the steam as if she could see something else apart from risotto in the saucepan. Everest sat at her feet and gazed up, trying his best to psychically levitate some of the chicken out of the pan and into his paws.

“What is it, Mum?” I finally asked her. I was pulling my fingers through my hair, which, although it smelled nice, was not any blonder than it had been this morning. Mum looked up at me and smiled, but it was one of those upside-down smiles that are really more like frowns. Like a mixture of both the comic and the tragic mask in the school badge.

“Dad’ll be here in a minute and then we talk about things,” she told me carefully. “We just need to talk about things, Ruby, about how things are at the moment and how things are going to be.” I felt my stomach knot up and tighten again. When she said “things” she meant us, she meant me and Mum and Dad and how we were going to be.

“Things are fine, though,” I said, trying to stay casual, as if a nameless dread wasn’t beginning to boil up again in my tummy. Gradually, in the garden with Nydia, in the middle of our film, in the middle of the jungle with Justin swinging me through the trees on vines to save us from giant man-eating ants, my tummy knots had untied themselves and gone away. I told myself, and so did Nydia, that I’d been worrying over nothing – that I was over-imagining the way I was feeling again, and getting everything out of proportion, like I did when I thought this lump on my foot was cancer and it turned out to be an insect bite. But even if it hadn’t been for the chicken risotto, I knew that what was coming was bad when I heard Mum’s voice. When she spoke her voice sounded as if it was stretched very, very thinly, as if she were speaking from a very long way off.

Another universe, practically.

And then Dad came in and Mum went sort of stiff and nobody looked at me for a long time. They went about just doing normal stuff, only it wasn’t normal because normally they weren’t ever in the same room as long as this. Dad hung up his coat and took off his tie. Mum put out the cutlery and poured out drinks and didn’t ask me to do anything – so definitely not normal. And neither one of them told Everest off for sitting right wherever it was they were trying to walk and for making them trip and stumble. Dad didn’t even tell me his joke of the day. They just moved around like robots.

Then we all sat at the table and Mum put out the food. I looked at it steaming on my plate; it looked delicious, but somehow not real and I couldn’t eat any. My stomach was too full up with worry.

“Ruby, do you want some…” Mum passed me over the cheese, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t stand this abnormal normalness for a minute longer.

“Just say it!” I snapped at her. My words popped the clingfilm of tension that had suffocated the room and suddenly the kitchen was crowded with emotion. “Just say whatever it is you’re going to say. Please. Just say it.” I felt frightened then, and very small. Mum and Dad looked at each other and there was a moment of silence. I felt Everest come and sit on my feet: his fat, warm body made my toes tickle and I told myself it was because he was on my side and not because he was just after scraps.

“Well…” Mum almost looked at Dad. “You tell her, Frank, I think that – well, I think it’s you that should tell her.” The way my dad looked at my mum then – I’ve never seen him look at her like that before, or anyone. He looked at her as if he didn’t even know her, like she was just some strange woman in his house telling him what to do. He looked at her as if he didn’t like her, not even a little bit.

“Ruby, you know that things have been difficult at home for a while, don’t you…” I shook my head vigorously; just like Mum he was talking about “things” again. I wanted to ask him, why didn’t he say what he meant? Why didn’t he talk about me, Mum, us? We’re not “things”, we’re living, breathing people.

“No. No, I don’t know that. I think THINGS have been fine. Really fine,” I said. “So don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Is that all?” Dad bit his lip and took a breath. He picked up his fork and put it down again. Then he swallowed as if someone had made him take some really bad medicine. I watched his face for any sign of what it was he was about to say, but it was almost as if my dad wasn’t in there.

“Ruby, I’m sorry,” he spoke at last. “Your mum and I, we don’t get along like we used to. We’ve been making each other…unhappy…for a long time now.” My mum huffed out a breath of air as if “unhappy” wasn’t nearly a good enough word to describe how my dad made her feel. I looked at them both, from one to the other. My mum and dad: the two people who put me here in the world. It was them loving each other in the first place that made me happen. If they hated each other, then what about me? Did they hate me too? I tried to make them see.

“Are you sure?” I said quickly. “Because I don’t think you’re as unhappy as you think you are. I mean, when you say a long time, how long do you mean? We were happy at Christmas, weren’t we? And that’s only a few months ago. We were happy on holiday. We’re happy every day, aren’t we?” Neither one of them would look at me. “Well, aren’t we?” I pressed on. “It’s about working it out, isn’t it? And anyway, you don’t make each other unhappy because, Mum, Dad got you that perfume you really wanted at Christmas, didn’t he? And you were happy that day, weren’t you? And you’re happy when Mum makes a big roast, aren’t you, Dad? You love a big roast, don’t you?” Mum looked at her hands.

“Well?” I said to them both. Mum reached across the table and picked up my hand, her skin felt hot and dry.

“We were, darling, but you’ll understand this better when you’re a bit older. Being happy for one day a year, or just sometimes – it’s not enough.” She screwed her eyes shut tightly for a second and then looked at me. “And sometimes…sometimes it’s easier to pretend to be happy.” I shook my head in disbelief. Mum was holding my hand, but it felt like I was slipping away from her, from Dad, from everything I knew and trusted about my life and into an unknown darkness.

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