Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time Read online

  So, I’d been going to the club for a while, and then one day Mum made a big fuss about what I was going to wear, and she 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 turns talking about our mums and dads. Well, I stood in the middle of the room when it was my turn, and I told them how my mum likes to dance to eighties music when she’s vacuuming, 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 other than 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 they were laughing as well as shouting. 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 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 Dad asked Mum if she was happy. She said of course she was, she just wanted me to be happy too. And he said that if I had a Barbie and a king-sized 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 anymore. 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, 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. I hope so. I think as long as I stay out of the way, turn up the TV, and keep 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 on 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 ever 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 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 that they’d be small ones like Mum’s. I didn’t think I’d be the first girl in my year to get them. And 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 girl who doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I try to be the sort of witty and sparky girl 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 sparky 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 knew 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 forever 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 has 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 that I was such a wide load, and Nydia went right up to him and said in front of everyone: “I don’t know why you’re going on about it, 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 apologized and promised the next time she picked on Mackenzie Gooding she’d go on about his little willy instead, but I suggested she just forget it. Really, you’d think I’d be used to humiliation by now. I’ve had enough practice.

  And anyway, I’m sure it’s because of 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

  INT. AUCTION HOUSE: EARLY EVENING

  CASPIAN and JULIA lean against a lateVictorian 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, 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. 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 exit, leaving ANGEL looking forlorn and sad. It is clear that ANGEL has a c
rush on CASPIAN and would do anything for him.

  Chapter Three

  Anyway, this is how it happened. I didn’t have much to do on the set today—no crying or anything hard. Just Angel finding out that her cousin Caspian, who she’s in love with, and her father’s archrival’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, but 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. But then Liz, our producer, would say time is money. So I’d put a tear stick under my eye 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 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 with Nydia (we’ve already started writing one) 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. They have 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 doorway, and that’s when I found out.

  “It’s just that Ruby seems to be going through a bit of a …a difficult stage right now,” 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 thing,” Simon Jenkins, the script editor (who I now know to be evil), said.

  “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” said Trudy, the show’s main writer. “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 this wasn’t a dream. And I wasn’t going to wake up. I wanted 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 crossly, “bearing in mind that we’re talking about a child here, we have a few options. Option one: We send Angel away to America or something and she comes back as a different actress—a more photogenic one.”

  I felt my stomach turn over and my mouth go dry. And there was a wave of panic in my tummy just like when a roller coaster starts going down really fast.

  “Option two,” Trudy continued, “and my favorite—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 colored 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. Yet 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.

  Bang. Just like that. My knees went weak and I had to grab on to the wall to stop myself from falling off the world. It was just like someone really had told me I was going to die. In that second it all caught up with me and I realized that if I went from the show, everything else that was just about holding things together in my life would go too.

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

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

  “Oh, yes,” Simon said. “I like that option. Let’s kill her. She could have some sort of disease. We could tie it in with National Kids Dying Week or something like that.”

  Trudy moaned. “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,” Liz interrupted.

  “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 my cheeks were burning. I ran out of the building and onto 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’re different. And I write back to them and say I know how they feel, because everyone feels isolated sometimes and it’s best to be true to yourself and talk to a parent or teacher. But I didn’t know. It wasn’t until then that I knew how they felt—so alone 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 to 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 of there 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 that 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 anymore. It’s not like anyone 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 this way forever and that Becky will talk to me again one day, but I don’t think so.

  I tried to talk to Becky before English yesterday and one of the other girls said, “Don’t you realize 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 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 summer 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 and pretend I’m with friends so my mum doesn’t worry about me being lonely.