Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time (2 page)

Everyone else in the soap is super gorgeous, of course—except my family, the MacFarleys, because we're what the producers call “social realism.” (However, Angel's mum—played by former model Brett Summers—is still pretty attractive, even in a frumpy top.) And, anyhow, I don't know how realistic it was when it turned out that Angel's dad had a long-lost identical twin brother who came back while 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 it and stopped him 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 that 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 always realize 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 you have 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 antique 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 I had a dad like yours to sort her out (my dad says he has washed his hands of her) and of course having a rich uncle to pay for a rehabilitation center must be a help.

I like watching you on TV because you are so much like me and when you get fed up sometimes 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

P.S. 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, but I haven't had so many recently as we
have been off-air for a while. I started shooting the
new season as soon as school broke up for summer a
couple of weeks ago, so no holiday for me! The show
starts again next week. I think you've been watching
reruns on UK Gold, as the story line you describe was
two seasons ago. Angel has a different duvet cover
now.

You asked me if I have a helper to answer all my
letters. 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've
enclosed some leaflets with the numbers on them, 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 to
her. After she talked to an adult she felt much better
about it.

Keep watching the show!

Best wishes,
Ruby x

Chapter Two

L
ike I said, it was an accident in the first place that I got famous. I wasn't even trying. I didn't 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 dimples. 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 morning 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 it when I sang 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' edition of
Before
They Were Famous
. It was the one when I was doing a sailor dance all on my own at the 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 that 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 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.