Ruby Parker: Soap Star
Rowan Coleman

For Lily

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

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

Teen girl! magazine

Ruby Parker Film Star

Also by Rowan Coleman

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

You can’t stop things changing, because other people – adults – think they always know what’s for the best. It’s like it’s sort of not officially your life until you’re grown up. As if the way you think and feel doesn’t really matter, doesn’t really mean anything: almost as if you don’t even really feel it. As if, because you are only thirteen, everything you think and feel is just in your imagination. I feel like I should have some say about what happens to me in my life, but I never do. My life just happens to me and other people make the decisions. The wrong decisions, mostly.

Just recently I’ve felt like I spend my life trying to keep things exactly the same as they’ve always been and it’s sort of felt like I’m running up a down escalator. Just when I feel like I’m getting somewhere, I lose my footing and off I go down and down until I find the energy to start going uphill all over again. Some of the things that have happened to me in my life have been amazing. Some of them have been the sort of things that other girls my age lie in bed at night and dream about happening to them. But I bet none of them dream about what happened to me this morning. It’s like a fairy tale in reverse with the happy ending at the beginning.

This morning I found out that I am officially the frumpiest thirteen-year-old in the entire history of the whole world. You might say, like my mum does, that everyone feels that way sometimes. That it’s a phase and I’ll get over it and that one day I’ll turn into a swan and boys will follow me around begging me to look at them. But it doesn’t feel like a phase any more, it feels like the end of the world. The end of my world, at least.

If I was just Ruby Parker, girl, it wouldn’t matter so much. OK I’d be doomed to a life of never having a boyfriend, but I could work on being interesting and funny instead and maybe be “unusually attractive” like the heroines of my mum’s books that I’m secretly reading. Once I got past about, say, thirty-five I expect I wouldn’t even mind that much any more.

But I’m not Ruby Parker, girl.

I’m Ruby Parker, Soap Star. And, in my world, being an ugly dumpy thirteen-year-old means the end of that, and the end of going to my school, and maybe the end of everything else I’ve been trying to hold together too.

If you saw me, Ruby Parker, standing outside the classroom waiting to go in for double maths on the first day of last term, you’d have said I’m a pretty ordinary girl. Not the sort of girl who’d be singled out for any special sort of attention, good or bad. Sort of medium height, sort of medium build (apart from the obvious, but more about those later), sort of medium hair: hair that had been shiny and blonde when I was little, but has gradually got browner and darker and danker and lanker. Average skin – you’d say not too many spots – quite a nice nose and not a bad profile.

You’d notice that most of the other girls in my class really don’t bother talking to me, although they frequently talk about me: usually in stage whispers behind my back to make sure I can hear everything they’re saying. And you’d notice that while I just hang about in the corridor waiting for Miss Greenstreet to arrive, some of the other girls are practising their ballet positions against the wall, and Menakshi Shah is reciting Juliet’s balcony speech from Romeo and Juliet, flicking her hair all around as she does it and trying to catch Michael Henderson’s eye. (Not that he’d look at her in six million years because everyone knows that he and Anne-Marie Chance will never spilt up and will be together for EVER and end up presenting a daytime chat show like Richard and Judy.)

Anyway, you’d have noticed that none of the boys talk to me either, although they sometimes creep up behind me and twang my bra strap and say things like, “Oi, Ruby, have you seen my football? Me and Mac have lost our footballs and…oh look they’re down your top! Give us ‘em back!” And they pretend to lunge at me and try and grab my boobs, then I scream and hit them over the heads with my folder and my best friend Nydia Assimin charges at them, which usually sends them packing, but shouting really nasty stuff like, “Watch out, it’s a herd of elephants!”

You’d also notice that almost all the boys are pretty well turned out for thirteen-year-olds. None of them smell and most of them wash their hair more than twice a week. Some, like Danny Harvey (who always smells of apples), wash it every day. And you’d notice that they’re all what my mum calls “natural extroverts”. You might think that all boys are always shouting and mucking about, but the boys at my school do it with excellent projection and perfect enunciation.

That’s because I go to a stage school. I go to Silvia Lighthouse’s Academy for the Performing Arts. Every single one of the kids who was standing outside my classroom waiting to go in for maths on the last day of term wants to be an actor, a singer or a TV presenter. Or all three usually.

We have all our normal lessons in the morning, and then after lunch we have dance, acting and music until four, which might sound like a laugh – and it is – but it’s hard too. Especially when your speech and drama coach is a raving lunatic, hung up about the fact that she never made it big and ended up teaching a load of snotty stuck-up posh kids instead (except for me and Nydia) which might be why she hates me more than anyone else on account of the fact that I’m on telly. But even though I don’t have that many friends, at least I have Nydia. And although sometimes it feels like I’m always working and never have time to just relax, I love the school.

School is the only place where I feel like I am actually me. The person I feel like inside and not the person everyone else sees, I mean. When I’m dancing or acting or singing it doesn’t matter that I’m not popular or very thin or don’t have a boyfriend. And although the teachers make you work twice as hard as other school kids and remind you that not everyone will make it, they do believe that sometimes dreams do come true. I don’t know many adults who do that.

I’ve been going to the academy since I was eight, but it was only when Nydia arrived on a scholarship last year that I made a real friend for the first time, because Nydia and I come from the same sort of background, the same sort of terraced house and normal mum and dad’s life. Everyone else here is super rich with parents that frequently feature in Hello!.

Nydia and I are only at the academy because she got the scholarship and I got famous by mistake, which pays fairly well as it turns out. Not that I see a penny. I have a trust fund where most of my money goes to keep it safe until I’m twenty-one. Twenty-one! That’s practically my whole life so far again before I get to see any of it! And despite the fact that I think I have quite a lot of money we have a very normal life. Mum says it’s important that I keep my feet on the ground so I don’t get into drugs and alcohol like some child stars. So I still have to ask her for stuff and she mostly still says no.

Nydia is quite an unusual girl. She’s got the loudest voice in our year and the loudest laugh you’ve ever heard, which she says is because she always has to shout to get heard over her four brothers, but I think she’s just got inbuilt “theatrical projection”. Nydia’s family originally came from Nigeria, but Nydia was born in the same hospital as me, only two months later than I was. I was on the fifteenth and she was on the eighteenth. So like we say, apart from the fact she’s black and I’m white, and the fact that we have different parents and everything, we could practically be twins. It feels like we are twins sometimes, because sometimes we just start thinking the same thing at the same time, like a joke or something, and we start laughing for no reason. Then everyone looks at us, but we both know why we’re laughing and it makes us laugh even more. It makes me feel safe and sort of warm inside to have a friend like Nydia. While everything keeps changing, Nydia and me will always be the same, because we’re like twins.

Nydia’s mum and dad aren’t rich like most of the parents of the kids that go to this school. She won her place, beating over four thousand other applicants through the Sylvia Lighthouse scholarship programme, which makes her better than probably anyone else in our year. But that doesn’t stop the other girls picking on her, calling her fat and stupid. Anne-Marie even said no wonder so many people are starving in Africa, because obviously Nydia ate all the food; but she said that in front of Miss Greenstreet and then we got lectured for over an hour about the Third World debt, so she hasn’t made that crack twice. And she’s a moron anyway, because Nydia grew up in Hackney just like I did and has never even been to Africa. But that’s Anne-Marie for you: the brains of a pile of damp pants.

And besides, Nydia is a very good actress, better than any of them. She wants to be a character actress, which Anne-Marie says means an ugly, fat actress, but if you ask me it’s better than being a characterless actress like Anne-Marie, because she looks just the same as everyone else: tall, thin and blonde, which means she’s bound to get a part on Hollyoaks. (When the current cast get too old and ugly and get sacked.) But at least they will be old, like twenty-five or something. Not only thirteen, like me.

The thing that happened to me that other girls just dream about? I got famous. Not just a little bit famous like Anne-Marie, whose dad is a film producer and who was once in the EuroDisney advert on TV.

Not just famous because my dad used to be a rock star and my mum was an ex-supermodel, like Jade Caruso’s parents.

Not famous for modelling in the Kay’s Autumn/Winter catalogue like Danny Harvey. (Who looked nice, by the way, even if he didn’t exactly smile. According to Menakshi – who obviously fancies him, as she fancies more or less ALL boys – he thinks he’s too good for everyone else at the academy, even the popular kids. She’s probably right. He used to be quite a laugh, then about a year ago he seemed to change over night.)

Anyway, I am famous in my own right. I’m famous because every year since I was six I’ve appeared in Britain’s most popular serialised soap Kensington Heights. Unless you come from outer space or something you’ll have heard of it. It’s set in the cut-and-thrust world of an auction house and it’s all about very rich, glamorous people buying antiques (and having sex with each other’s husbands, usually). Every year from mid-August to February, Kensington Heights runs once a week at eight o’clock on Wednesdays and I’m in nearly every episode, playing Angel MacFarley.

That’s how I got to be famous and not just in Britain, either. I’m famous in eastern Europe, Pakistan and Japan, and even a bit famous in America. I don’t know this for sure, but Kensington Heights runs on the BBC America channel and I read in Heat magazine the week before last that Brad Pitt watches it and is a big fan! Imagine that! Brad Pitt has seen me on TV! Which is why it’s a shame that Angel MacFarley is about as glamorous as Tesco’s-own trainers. But it’s only to be expected because, of course, I’m not even slightly glamorous. Even last year when I went to the British Soap Awards all the other girls from the show wore backless and strapless dresses and glitter and heels. I had on my black trouser suit and a blue velvet top and no real make-up, just foundation and lip gloss. Mum said I had to look my age. I said, “I don’t want to look my age, I hate my age!” And she said that the only way to get round that was to grow up, which I clearly wasn’t ready to do if I was going to make a fuss about it. Like I said, she’s pretty keen on me being normal – even when being normal makes me look stupid.

Everyone else in the soap is super gorgeous, of course, except my family, the MacFarleys, because we’re what the producers call “social realism”, although Angel’s mum, played by former model Brett Summers, is still pretty attractive – even in an M&S top. And anyhow, I don’t know that it was very realistic when it turned out that Angel’s dad had a long-lost identical twin brother who came back whilst he was away nursing his sick mother and tried to trick Angel’s mum into going to bed with him when normally she’d never cheat, because we are the only family in the soap that doesn’t do stuff like that.

In the end Angel found out about him and stopped it just in time. I got a lot of letters after that episode. You’d be amazed how many kids actually do find out that one of their parents is cheating on the other one (although only two letters concerned actual identical twins). And they get all stressed and upset and don’t know if they should say anything and it’s all horrible. I don’t know why they write to me as if I actually know anything about anything in real life, but I always write back and put in some leaflets and the number for ChildLine and suggest they talk to a teacher if they are worried. The other teenagers on the show get letters from people telling them how much they love them, especially Justin de Souza (who I’m madly in love with, by the way). All I get is people’s problems and that practically says it all, to be honest.

Mum says it’s because I’m famous that the other girls at school aren’t that nice to me. She says it’s because every summer break when I go off to film the next series of Kensington Heights they wish it was them instead. And I say, why would a load of thin, pretty girls, who actually get a holiday all summer long, be jealous of me stuck at the BBC studios filming Kensington Heights? And she rolls her eyes and tells me I don’t know how lucky I am. I suppose she’s right, because most of the letters I get from other girls tell me more or less the same thing, even if sometimes they don’t realise that Ruby Parker and Angel MacFarley are two different people.

The thing is, you don’t know how lucky you really are until it looks like everything is going to be taken away. I thought it was all right that I was just normal-looking, because my character was normal-looking.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

19 Othello Road

Shakespeare Estate

Birmingham

Dear Angel,

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. I expect you get people writing to you all of the time. I read a bit about you in Girl Talk mag and you said that when the show’s on you get nearly two hundred letters a week! Do you read them all yourself or do you have a helper to do it?

I just wanted to write and tell you that you are exactly like me, we could be sisters. My dad’s not the live-in caretaker of a posh antiques shop, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that you and me are exactly the same. I’m always overhearing people talking about things I shouldn’t and I’m often getting into trouble for saying the wrong thing. Also I have the same duvet cover that you do. Also my mum drinks a lot too just like yours. Sometimes she gets so drunk she falls flat on her face and everyone looks embarrassed. Sometimes it’s not even when there’s a party. Sometimes it’s in the afternoon. I wish had a dad like yours to sort her out (my dad says he’s washed his hands of her) and of course having a rich uncle to pay for a rehabilitation centre must be a help.

I like watching you on TV because you are so like me and when sometimes you get fed up because Caspian Nightingale doesn’t know you love him, you always seem to come through OK. I like you much better than any of the other teenagers on Kensington Heights. You are the only one who looks real.

Thank you.

Love Amy Bertram

PS Don’t worry about writing back I bet you are busy. Unless you want to that is.

Ruby Parker

Dear Amy,

Thank you for your letter. I am glad that you enjoy the show so much and that you identify with Angel’s character – she is lots of fun to play. I do get a lot of letters usually, but I haven’t had so many recently as we have been off-air for a while. I started shooting the new series as soon as school broke up for summer a couple of weeks ago, so no holiday for me! It starts again next week. I think you’ve been watching it on UK Gold as the story line you describe was two series ago. Angel has got a different duvet cover now.

You asked me if I have a helper to answer all my letters and I do, it’s my mum – and sometimes my cat Everest. (Although he’s not really much help as he sits on the papers.)

I don’t know if you saw the helplines advertised at the ends of those episodes about Angel’s mum drinking a lot, but just in case you didn’t I have enclosed some leaflets with them on, in case you wanted to talk to someone about it. Otherwise you could speak to a teacher if you are worried. As you know, Angel didn’t tell her dad about her mum’s secret drinking for ages and it really got on top of her. After she talked to an adult she felt much better about it.

Keep watching the show!

Best wishes

Ruby x

Chapter Two

Like I said, it was an accident in the first place that I got famous. I wasn’t even trying. I didn’t even have to queue up for six hours with thousands of other girls and then go through six weeks of elimination rounds. I didn’t even know I was auditioning, but then I was only six so it’s not that surprising, because when you’re six you don’t really think ahead all that much, do you? When I was six everyone said I was beautiful with my blonde curly hair and dimpled smile. I even played Goldilocks in the school play and the Virgin Mary in the Nativity. It’s a bit of a shock to wake up one day and discover that if I auditioned for the same plays today I’d probably get the part of the fat grizzly bear, or maybe a goat.

Anyway, I didn’t go to a stage school back then. I just went to an ordinary school and then on weekends I went to a drama club, which Mum said I should go to because I was always putting on shows in the living room and doing ballet and singing. Dad agreed I should go if it would shut me up for five minutes. And they laughed about it for ages because they knew he didn’t really mean it – he used to love me to sing to him, even though back then I went out of tune a lot and mostly forgot the right words. They still have all my shows on video, even the really bad ones. Actually, one of them appeared on last Christmas’s edition of Before They Were Famous. It was the one when I was doing a sailor dance all on my own at Mrs Buttle’s drama club’s annual show and I sneezed and all this snot shot out and ran down my chin. Dad thought it was hilarious, but Mum and I didn’t speak to him for the rest of Christmas: I was mortified. I knew then I’d never get a boyfriend – especially not Justin de Souza, who is so handsome it hurts to look at him. But it was pointless staying angry at Dad. If I had no one would have been talking to anyone and what kind of Christmas is that?

So, I’d been going for a while, and then one day Mum made a big fuss about what I wore to the club and spent ages doing my hair. And these two men showed up to class and they didn’t look anything special to me, except that one of them made Mrs Buttle, our teacher, go all high-pitched and red. (I didn’t know then that he was the famous actor Martin Henshaw, who used to be on a cop show before I was even born and who’s now Angel MacFarley’s dad, Graham MacFarley.)

Mrs Buttle told us we were playing a game and we all had to take it in turns to come and talk about our mums and dads. Well, I stood in the middle when it was my turn and I told them about how my mum likes to dance to eighties music when she’s hoovering, that sometimes we do the conga around the house for no special reason, and that my dad snores so loudly he makes the alarm clock on the bedroom shelf vibrate. That’s all I said. Next thing I knew I’d got the part as Angel MacFarley in Kensington Heights. But I was only six, and to be honest I didn’t really have a clue what it meant except that I’d go and play “pretend” somewhere else apart from Mrs Buttle’s drama club and under the dining room table.

I do remember that my mum and dad argued about it for ages, though. I remember that because it was the first really loud argument I’d ever heard them have, even if it was a laughing argument. I remember they went into the kitchen and shut the door as if it would keep me from hearing them. It didn’t then and it never has done since, not even with the volume of the TV turned up and my bedroom door shut too.

My mum said what an amazing opportunity it was for me and my dad said there’d be plenty of time for opportunities when I was older. My mum said that there might not be and that sometimes opportunities don’t come twice and she never got any chances when she was my age and she wasn’t having me deprived of them like she was. Then my dad asked, wasn’t she happy? She said of course she was, she just wanted me to be happy, and he said that if I had a Barbie and a king-size bar of Dairy Milk I’d be over the moon, and she said, “You know what I mean, Frank!” And in the end he gave in, because he always did back then.

He doesn’t even really have to give in any more. Mum sort of stopped asking him his opinion recently, which I suppose means that at least they argue less. It used to be when they argued that they’d sort of laugh at the same time, (like the day I got the part in Kensington Heights) and that later on they’d be all cuddly and soppy. But then – I don’t really remember when I first noticed – the arguments got louder and there wasn’t any laughing. Or any cuddling. And when they’d finished, after everything had gone quiet, and maybe one of them had gone out and slammed the front door, either Mum or Dad would find me and ruffle my hair and ask me if I was OK. And I always said yes, as if I’d never heard them.

Nydia thinks that Mum and Dad are having a “difficult patch”, like a couple we saw on Trisha during half term. I hope so, and think as long as I stay out of the way, turn up the TV and keeping saying I’m OK, everything will stay the same and we’ll be OK. Except everything is changing and it feels like there’s nothing I can do. I can see what’s happening to Mum and Dad, I can feel it, but I can’t seem to stop it. I keep running up those escalators but I’m still not getting anywhere.

Anyway, as I said, I was blonde when I six and sort of cute and chubby with dimples. Now, according to Amy from Birmingham, I’m the most real-looking teenager in the show, and according to Liz Hornby, who I accidentally overheard talking about me during a script meeting on the set this morning, I’m going through a “difficult lumpy stage”. I suppose what she meant is that since we finished series seven I’ve got these two extra bits. The Breasts.

You’d think there’d be a sort of adjustment period, wouldn’t you? There should be a sort of a warning for when they were coming up. I thought that I was bound to be one of those girls who had to wait for years to get any at all and then they’d be tiny small ones like Mum’s. I didn’t think I’d be the first girl in my year to get them. I didn’t think they’d start out being a C cup! Everyone says that I’m a freak and, by the sound of what Liz Hornby was saying earlier today, they’re right. I am a freak. A big, lumpy, difficult-stage freak. Anne-Marie is so going to love this when it gets out.

You see, the thing at school is that I try to be the one who doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I try to be the sort of witty and sparky one who doesn’t need to be accepted to be happy; who just shrugs off the snubs and teasing and stuff like that. And most of the time it works. OK, so only Nydia laughs at my jokes and everyone else couldn’t care less if I was witty and individual so long as their nail varnish and lip gloss match, but it’s a way of knowing how to be.

But then this thing happened and before I know it I’m all pulled out of shape, like I’ve been shoved back into the wrong-sized box or something, like no matter how hard I try to fit it I never will. It’s hard to explain, but once the future seemed like for ever away and suddenly it’s here – the beginning of being grown-up is here and it’s nothing like I imagined it would be. (Admittedly I imagined it would be Justin de Souza pulling up to school on my sixteenth birthday and asking me to go to the Oscars with him, but still.) It hurts and it’s awkward and not just because my bra pinches and rubs my shoulders.

Nydia tried to cheer me up about The Breasts when they appeared last term. She said I should be proud of what God had given me and pleased that I was becoming a woman, and that maybe Justin would suddenly see me differently and chuck his girlfriend and ask me out. And I tried to be pleased, I really did, and I tried to stop hunching my shoulders up. But then, that day at lunch, Mackenzie Gooding asked me if I had to go through doorways sideways now I was such a wide load, and Nydia went right up to him and said in front of everyone:

“I don’t know what you’re going on about it for, Mackenzie Gooding! I bet your willy’s so big you have to fold it up just to get it in your pants!” And all the boys nearly wet themselves from laughing and all the girls tutted and looked disgusted – especially Anne-Marie. I had to grab Nydia by the arm and drag her into the girls’ loos, because nobody could be any redder than I was just then. I said to her, “Nice try, but I think you sort of missed the point a bit.”

Nydia apologised and promised the next time she picked on Mackenzie Gooding she’d go on about his little willy instead, but I suggested she just leave it. Really, you think I’d be used to humiliation by now: I’ve had enough practice.

And anyway, I’m sure it’s down to The Breasts that I heard what I heard today. I’m sure it’s mainly because of them – and a bit because my hair always looks greasy and my skin always looks shiny – that the producers are going to axe me from the show!

Oh yes, and because I’m ugly.

KENSINGTON HEIGHTS

SERIES EIGHT, EPISODE EIGHT

“REVELATIONS”

WRITTEN BY: TRUDY SIMMONS

SCENE SIXTEEN

INT. AUCTION HOUSE – EARLY EVENING

CASPIAN and JULIA lean against a late-Victorian dresser in each other’s arms.

CASPIAN

It doesn’t matter what they think, Julia, they can’t stop us. I’m fifteen now and you will be too in a few months. I love you and if you’re ready, then, well so am I.

JULIA

Oh Caspian, I don’t know, I just don’t know. What would Mummy say if she found out…?

The door opens. ANGEL comes in looking for a book she has left behind.

ANGEL

What are you two up to? You’d better not be doing anything in here. If Dad finds out he’ll go ballistic. Caspian, you know that Uncle Henry says he’ll ground you for good if he catches you with her again!

JULIA

Oh please don’t tell anyone, Angel, please. They don’t know what they’re doing keeping us apart. We love each other, don’t we, Caspian?

CASPIAN looks a bit uncertain but he holds JULIA even tighter.

CASPIAN

Yes, yes we do. You won’t tell anyone, will you, Angel?

ANGEL shakes her head. CASPIAN and JULIA leave, leaving ANGEL looking forlorn and sad. It is clear that ANGEL has a crush on CASPIAN and would do anything for him.

Chapter Three

Anyway, this is how it happened. I didn’t have much to do on set today, no crying or anything hard. Just Angel finding out that her cousin Caspian, who she’s in love with (who can blame her as Caspian is played by Justin. Whenever Justin talks to me I sort of have to stop breathing, so it’s lucky, when you think about it, that he hardly ever does talk to me.) and her father’s arch rival Harrison Archer’s daughter Julia are still seeing each other – despite being totally forbidden to do so by both of their parents. Also Caspian is trying to get Julia to have sex with him, but she’s not sure she wants to. She probably won’t in the end though because Kensington Heights in no way condones underage sex; we leave that sort of thing up to EastEnders. Or possibly she will say yes, but they’ll get found out and stopped in the nick of time. Probably by Angel. Angel’s main thing is finding out stuff and stopping it in the nick of time.

So I didn’t have much to do and I couldn’t go home because I had to do some reaction shots at the end of the day. That’s when you look just off-camera and have to pretend you’re reacting to a line another actor has said. Sometimes the actor’s not even there! Sometimes it’s just one of the runners or something, saying it all deadpan like they’re ordering a Big Mac and fries and you have to gasp or cry or something. I used to be terrible at reaction shots; I always wanted to laugh instead and then Liz, our producer, would say time is money, so I’d put a tear stick under my eyes and think about what it would be like if Everest ever died and usually it turned out all right in the end.

Brett and Martin had this big scene to do, and Brett said I was putting her off just hanging around watching her and that I should go for a walk or something, so I thought I’d go and see Liz because she’s really nice normally. I knew that Liz was upstairs in some kind of emergency script meeting, and because one day I want to write my own screenplay and direct my own film (an independent one with Justin in it because we’d be married by then), I thought they’d let me sit in on the meeting, because they have done before.

I got there and the door was open a bit, and so I thought I’d just wait for a lull in the conversation before going in, but then I heard my name! I heard Liz talking about me, Ruby. So I thought, Excellent – new story lines! I crept up a bit closer and put my ear next to the crack in the door, and that’s when I found out.

“It’s just that Ruby seems to be going through a bit of a…difficult stage right now. That certainly is true,” Liz said, sort of sadly.

“Yes, she is a bit, she’s just sort of stuck between being a girl and being a woman. She does look a bit awkward, poor old thing,” I heard Simon Jenkins, the (I now know to be evil) script editor say.

“I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” Trudy, the show’s main writer, said. “She’s just a normal girl. She gets loads of fan mail from girls just like her. She appeals to her demographic. I know that KH is partially about glamour, but not everyone can be glamorous all the time, and I thought we wanted a balance. Otherwise we’ll end up like Crossroads and look what happened to that! It’s not as if she’s the star of the show: I think we should let her grow a bit and then decide.”

At first it felt sort of strange listening to them talk about me, like they were talking about some other girl, like it wasn’t about me at all.

“I agree with you up to a point, Trudy,” Simon said. “But, say what you like, it does matter what people look like on TV. The public likes looking at pretty faces. It is important and, well, if you-know-who is worried about it then we have to be too. That’s just the way it is: for a lot of people out there, she is the show.”

I heard Trudy sigh and someone shuffled some papers. It felt like a dream, like one of those nightmares when you walk into class in your knickers and nothing else and everyone laughs and you think it’s real. And just for a second when you wake up you feel sick and terrible. Except it wasn’t a dream. And I wasn’t going to wake up. I wanted to leave, to run away, but I couldn’t. I was sort of glued there.

“So,” Liz said, after a pause, “what are our options?”

“Well,” Trudy said, sort of crossly, “bearing in mind we’re talking about a child here – option one: we send Angel away to America or something and she comes back a different actress, a more ‘photogenic’ one.” I felt my stomach turn over and my mouth go dry. I felt this wave of panic in my tummy like just when a roller coaster starts going down really fast.

“Option two,” Trudy continued, “and my favourite – a bit of a cliché, but always a hit – we give Angel a makeover. Maybe put a few highlights in her hair, get her some coloured contacts and let her wear a bit of lip gloss.”

I remembered wearing lip gloss at the British Soap Awards and feeling like I had raspberry pudding glued to my lips, but before I could get used to the idea Simon chimed in:

“But do you think Ruby’s got anything to work with? I’m not sure a makeover will cut it.” There was a short silence and it was like I was watching a live link on satellite telly. Like there was a two-second delay between him talking and me hearing what he was saying.

“Option three is that we kill her,” Trudy said. just like that. Bang. My knees went and I had to grip on to the wall to stop myself falling off the world. It was just like someone really had told me I was going to die; it was almost just like that, because in that second it all caught up with me and I realised that if I go from the show, everything else that was just about holding things together in my life would go to.

I’d never get to see Justin again, which meant he’d never get to know me properly and then realise one day that it was me he loved and not his stupid girlfriend. And worse, worst of all, Mum and Dad would be so disappointed in me. So angry with me that…that they might stop trying altogether, and then…

And then I had to stop thinking about it. I had to stop being there before I started crying and they heard me or something.

“Oh, yes,” Simon said. “I like that option. Let’s kill her: some sort of disease or something. We could tie it in with national kids dying week or something like that.”

“Oh, Simon, you are such a—” I think Trudy was going to swear, but Liz stepped in before she could.

“Ruby is such a great little actress. I know she’d give that story line everything, but well…”

I couldn’t listen to any more after that because suddenly I felt sick. My head was throbbing and I could feel my cheeks burning; I ran out of the building and on to the lot and tried to get as far away from everyone as I could. I ran into one of the Portaloos and locked the door. My face was all hot and I felt like I should cry, but my eyes were dry and prickly. I get letters from girls who are picked on at school because they’re fat, because they wear glasses, or sometimes just because they are different. And I write back to them and say I know how they feel, because everyone feels isolated sometimes in life and it’s best to be true to yourself and talk to a parent or teacher. But I didn’t know, not really, not until then. It wasn’t until then that I knew how they felt. So alone and so wrong in the world that there was nothing they could do to fit in, because it wasn’t anything they did that was wrong. It was everything they were.

It took me ages to be able to go back on the set and act like everything was fine. Actually it took until one of the runners came and banged on the door and shouted my name. A part of me wanted to just walk out there and then and leave them in the lurch. But I’m not very good at rebelling, so I just went back and I did my scene. Luckily I was filming reaction shots for a scene when Angel accidentally finds a robber in her house and I had to scream and look scared. It was pretty easy – after all, it’s not every day you find you’re going to get killed, is it?

Flat 32

Mandela Tower

Freedom Estate

Luton Beds

Dear Ruby,

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you – I’m sorry to be taking up your time. It’s funny though, because I’m thirteen like you, and I feel like you know me really and that talking to you is like talking to a friend.

The thing is, Ruby, I don’t know what to do at the moment, I really don’t. My best friend Becky stopped talking to me a couple of weeks ago. She got in with the in-crowd and then just stopped talking to me, and it wasn’t just her it was everyone. Nobody talks to me any more. No ones calls me names or hits me or anything, but all day long at school I’m on my own. At break time I just go to the library and read a book. I told my mum about it and she said it wouldn’t be for ever and that Becky would talk to me again one day, but I don’t think she will.

I tried to talk to her before English yesterday and one of the other girls said, “Don’t you realise she hates you?” I didn’t know what to say after that. Becky looked sort of upset but she still didn’t talk to me. I know that when Angel and Julia fell out, Angel felt like that too for a while, but then she found out just in time that Julia was going to be kidnapped by Armenians and they made up. I don’t think anything like that will happen to me. On Sunday nights I feel so terrible that I’m sick. It’s the holidays soon and that’s good, but even then I know that I won’t have anyone to talk to and that I’ll have to go out on my own so my mum doesn’t worry about me being lonely.

What would Angel do?

Love

Shamilla Choudary

xx

Ruby Parker

Dear Shamilla,

I’m so sorry that you’re feeling so lonely, and I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to answer your letter. Today I had a very tough scene at work and I have really thought about what Angel would do if she was going through what you were. I think that sometimes when there’s a whole group of people doing something, it’s easier to do what they are than to be different. I think maybe that’s what your friend Becky is doing. I don’t think she’s stopped being your friend, not really, not if she was upset about what that nasty girl said to you. Maybe as it’s now the summer holidays you could ring her up and ask to speak to her on her own. Or maybe just send her a friendly text. I bet once the pressure of school is off she’ll realise how much she’s missed you, because a good friend is hard to find.

If she really has stopped being your friend then, well, she really isn’t worth being upset about – although I know that’s easy to say. I talk to my mum when I’m really worried and I think you should try and talk to your mum again. Ask her to sit down for a minute and really listen. I bet she will and I bet when she properly understands how sad you are you’ll feel better.

You sound like a lovely girl and I bet you’ll make new friends before you know it. If you really don’t think you can talk to your mum I have enclosed some leaflets and the number for ChildLine.

Good luck!

Ruby x

Chapter Four

I usually do tell my mum everything. Usually she picks me up from school or the set and we go home together and I tell her all about my day: if I’d had a good scene or if Liz said that I’d had a good day. We laugh and talk about Everest and the things he got up to at home that day, like trying to kill Mum’s fleece, or getting stuck in the cat flap again carrying a whole baguette in his mouth, all nonchalant like nobody’d notice a cat with a baguette. When we’d get in, I’d sit at the table and Mum would make me tea; then after an hour or so Dad would come in and Mum would say she was off for a bath, and Dad would sit at the table and I’d tell him all about Everest and the baguette, or something, and he’d tell me a joke he’d heard on the radio. And I’d laugh really loud so Mum could hear us in the bath and she’d realise that we are happy and that nothing had to change.

When Mum picked me up this afternoon I really needed to talk to her, but I didn’t, because like Shamilla I didn’t want her to worry about me. I knew if I told her she’d be lovely. I knew that if I told her she’d give me a big hug and we’d sit on the bed and eat chocolate biscuits and somehow she’d make it all right, but I didn’t want to tell her. I don’t want her to worry about anything else. I just want to keep on showing her that we are happy.

The thing is, if I get dropped from the show I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to Silvia Lighthouse’s Academy for the Performing Arts any more. I mean, I only ever got in there because I was on the TV in the first place. I didn’t even have to audition. If I get dropped from the show then maybe I’ll get dropped from the school; maybe everyone, including Sylvia Lighthouse, will see that I haven’t got what it takes to make it after all. That maybe I never did…

And it’s not as if I’d get another job. I don’t think there’s work for ugly teenagers anywhere. Not even EastEnders any more. And then I’d lose Nydia and I’d be at a school where everyone would know I was a failure and I wouldn’t have any friends and…

It’s easy to tell other people to be brave and to cheer up, but it’s not so easy to do it. I know I sometimes moan about the school and about starting so early and finishing so late, but I love it. I really, really love it and I don’t want to go to a school where everyone has to be good at physics and pass five hundred GSCEs at grade A*. I’m rubbish at physics and maths and spelling.

So I didn’t tell Mum because of all that, and also because on the way home she wasn’t laughing or smiling and she didn’t talk about Everest – she didn’t talk to me at all. She turned up her Celine Dion CD really loud and pressed her lips together really hard so they went a bit blue. She went for a bath before Dad got in, and when he did come in I asked him what his joke of the day was, but he just sat at the table and asked me to give him a big hug.

“I’m so proud of you, Ruby,” he said. “You do know that, don’t you?” And I said that I did, but then I went to bed before it was even eight o’clock, because I know that once he finds out about the show he won’t be proud of me any more. And if he’s not proud of me, if he’s disappointed in me, if we don’t loud-laugh at his jokes every day when he gets in, then what then? Then maybe they’ll stop trying for my sake, that’s what then.

But I thought, At least I have Nydia for now. At least, unlike Shamilla, I still have one friend I can talk to. So I phoned her and told her.

“But it’s not true!” was the first thing Nydia said. “There is a place for ugly actors on telly!” And then she sort of coughed and said, “Which you aren’t one of anyway. You are beautiful, Ruby, and I’m not just saying that because I love you. I can see that you are beautiful.”

“On the inside, you mean?” I asked her glumly.

“Well, yes, but on the outside too. Definitely.” And I loved her for saying it, but I knew it wasn’t true, not really. On the outside I’m just almost-average at best – and average isn’t good enough.

“The thing is,” I told her, “I can’t tell Mum and Dad because well – you know. They’ll go all bonkers and I can’t give them something else to fight about and, I don’t know, they’ve gone ever so quiet, Nydia, and they keep hugging me. I think something’s going to happen. Something bad.” I felt my tummy go cold with fear at the thought of it.

“No, it’s not, because we won’t let it. I’ll think of something, I promise you. I always do, don’t I?” I thought of Nydia’s various plans to fix things since I’d known her (including stealing all of the hockey sticks from the sports locker and hiding them in the basement so we didn’t have to go and play outside in the snow and “build ourselves up for the harsh realities of life in the real world” like our sports teacher, Miss Logan, said) and I bit my lip. Nydia’s plans usually get us into lunchtime detention for four weeks in a row. Who knows what she might dream up? Some mad plan, I was certain. But I knew she was trying to make me feel better, and just knowing that she cared did make me feel better.

I heard a muffled voice on the other end of the line and Nydia shouted right in my ear, “All right, Mum, I’m coming!” so my ears rang for a second. “I’ve got to go, Gran’s here. Look, I’ll ring you back after dinner, OK? Even if it’s ten or something, and we’ll talk then. But don’t worry, Ruby, you’re a really great actress and pretty, and I’m not just saying it, OK?”

After she’d gone I flicked through the numbers on my mobile looking for someone else to talk to, but I don’t have very many numbers on it, just this French girl I met on holiday last Easter, and Nydia, Mum, Dad and Gran. I thought about calling my gran, but she’s a bit deaf and she’d probably ask me to repeat everything twice, really loudly, and end up thinking I was asking her about the war or something.

Then I looked at Brett’s name. I remembered the day when she put her number in my mobile. It was the first day I got it and I was showing it to everyone and feeling really cool. Brett took it off me and put in her home number and she said, right in front of the journalist who was interviewing her, “You know you’re like a daughter to me, don’t you, darling? Any time you need to talk, you just call me. Any time, sweetie.” So I did.

I was a bit nervous about calling her because she’s such a big star, the real star of the show. The one who goes on all the chat shows and the only one who’s published a biography about her affair with a footballer. When I’m being Angel and she’s being my mum, sometimes it’s like having a little holiday from my life. It’s not that I don’t love my mum or my dad, it’s just that, when Brett’s being my mum and I’m being Angel, all of the things we say and all of the problems we have, have been written out for us. I don’t have to worry because I know it will be OK in the end. I don’t have to worry that anything I say or do might make things worse or more difficult. Brett is very good at being Angel’s mum. She always makes Angel feel loved and better, and when Angel feels better, then, well, so do I. So I called her.

“Yes?” Brett said. She sounded a bit cross as if she thought I was someone else. The press probably, the press are always hounding Brett, she’s always giving interviews about it.

“Brett? Hello, it’s me.” There was long pause. “It’s Ruby – er, from the show?” There was another pause and I thought I heard the clatter of a glass or something.

“Now, Ruby, I don’t know what you’ve heard but…”

“Oh. You know, then? Does everyone?” I asked her, and felt my insides curl up and shrivel. I couldn’t face having to go back in and see Justin, knowing that he knew and everything.

“Er, know what, exactly, darling?” Brett asked me.

“About me being dropped from the show. Being killed for being ugly.” I explained what I’d overheard, and the minute I finished speaking Brett’s voice changed completely; straightaway, once she understood how bad I felt, she was just like Angel’s mum, soft and understanding.

“Oh, darling, how ghastly,” she said. “I hadn’t heard at all – it comes as a total shock! It must have been terrible for you. What monsters! What do they know, crushing a young girl like that? And it’s simply not true, darling! I’ve always said you have wonderful bones. And I used to be a model, I know.” I wasn’t exactly sure what use it was having wonderful bones that no one could see, but when she said it it felt important. So I started to tell her about how worried I was about school.

“And my mum and dad are—” I found that once I started to tell her one thing, I wanted to tell her everything, just like Angel would have.

“The thing is, darling,” she interrupted me, “I’ve got a really early shoot tomorrow and I have to be on set at four a.m.! God knows what they expect me to look like at that hour! But don’t you worry, OK? Brett won’t let this happen without having her say! You know, I don’t know how much influence I’ll have, Ruby, but I’ll talk to Liz first thing and try and make her see sense. I promise.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, Brett,” I told her. “It’s just I don’t want to worry Mum and—”

“Of course not, dear. Ruby, are you on set tomorrow?” Brett asked me as if she’d just thought of something.

“No, day off tomorrow,” I said.

“Well then, leave it to me, dear. Leave it to me. Kisses!”

And she’d gone.

It took me a long time to get to sleep, even knowing that Brett was going to help me. Somehow being away from the set when something so important was being decided about me seemed worse than if I was actually there going through it.

And Nydia did call me back, just before I went to sleep.

And she did have a plan.

And it was a mad one.

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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