Читать книгу Ruby Parker: Soap Star - Rowan Coleman - Страница 6

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.