Soap Star (6 page)

“We need help,” she said finally.

“I know, but I can’t afford counselling,” I said with a squeaky laugh. Nydia didn’t laugh. She leaned her head in her hands.

“No, I mean we need someone who
really
knows what they’re talking about to help us. We need an expert consultant to teach you to kiss.” I uncovered my face a little bit and looked at her. She was either a complete loony or a genius – I just wasn’t sure which.

“An expert?” I asked her tentatively. “What are you talking about?”

Nydia shrugged.

“Well, it’s obvious when you think about it. We know totally nothing, so we need someone who knows totally
everything – or nearly everything. We need someone who, say, scored about fifty per cent on the innocence test?” My hands fell away from my face, my jaw dropped and I shook my head in horror. She was officially a complete loony.

“Oh, no!” I spluttered. “No way.
No way!
We are not asking Anne-Marie Chance to tell me how to kiss Justin.” It took me a moment to let the full horror of what she was suggesting sink in. “Nydia! She’ll laugh her head off and then tell the whole school. You might be able to handle the daily ritual humiliation, but I can’t. I would truly die of embarrassment. They’d be able to make a documentary about me and put me on
National Geographic.
‘People who die of ridicule: a case study’.”

Nydia pursed her lips and crossed her arms like she does when she thinks I’m being too dismissive of her ideas.

“Ah, but we’d make it so she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone,” she said with a hint of menace, nodding at me as if I should be in on a secret that I had no idea about. I shook my head.

“What? You mean give her concrete stilettos and sink her in the Thames?” I wondered if my voice would ever return to its normal pitch and if I would stop squeaking. On the other hand, if my career flopped I could get a job doing voiceovers on CBeebies.

“No, silly,” Nydia said. “I mean we’ll
bribe
her to keep quiet.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out three pounds and eighty-nine pence. “What, with this? Because this is all I have left out of my allowance and it’s only Wednesday. I don’t think it’ll cut much sway with a millionaire’s daughter, do you?” Nydia looked at the coins languishing in my palm.

“What about your trust fund?” she said.

“No way, José,” I replied. “I can’t touch it. And anyway, Nydia, Anne-Marie would never—”

“I know!” Nydia’s eyes lit up and I could see the worst had happened. She’d had one of her mad plans again, the kind you can’t get her to leave alone. The kind that always, always gets us into trouble. Only this time I had the feeling she was going to surpass herself.

“You said your mum is feeling guilty, right? And your dad too. Well, we’ll find out what Anne-Marie wants, a video mobile or a Game Boy or something, and then get them to buy it for you and then we’ll give it to her. Easy.”

I thought for a moment.

“I don’t know…” I said. “They feel bad, I know, but…Oh, Nydia, this plan is ridiculous – it’s never going to work. Anne-Marie won’t help us, even for a flash mobile phone and, even if she would, my mum would never buy
me one. You know what she’s like about me being normal! And anyway, it doesn’t seem very fair on Mum or Dad to rip them off like that.” Nydia took both my hands in hers.

“Have they been fair on you?” I shook my head, the bleak reality of what was waiting for me at home surging back for a second. All these plans, all this excitement over Justin. It was mad and silly, but it was better, anything was better, than thinking about that. I boxed up all thoughts of home and shoved them to the back of my mind. “And besides,” Nydia continued, “it would only be a one-off, it’s not as if you’d do it every week. You deserve to get something out of all this, Ruby, don’t you?”

I sort of nodded: the only thing I wanted was my family back the way it always had been, but I couldn’t have that so I’d just have to be tough, it was the only way to get through it. “And have you got a better idea?” Nydia asked pointedly. I shook my head. “And do you want to be able to kiss Justin so well he’ll be blown away at what might be your only ever chance?”

My heart plummeted. But it was no good, I just couldn’t do it.

“I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t get Mum and Dad to buy me something to give to Anne-Marie. Even if – even if I don’t like them much at the moment, I can’t do it. I’m
sorry, Nyds.” Nydia squeezed my wrist and thought for a second longer.

“Yes, you can,” she said, excitedly. “And you don’t even need your mum and dad to do it. You’ve got the one thing that Anne-Marie really wants.” I looked confused.

“What? A bra the size of a battleship?” I asked her.

“No, silly. Fame. You’ve got it and she hates that. If you told her that you could maybe help her get a part on the show…”

“But I can’t,” I protested. “I’m only just holding on to my own part.”

Nydia shook her head quickly.

“Yes, I know that, and you know that. But
she
doesn’t, does she? She’d go for it, I bet she would. She dyed her hair orange to try and get the lead in
Annie.
If she’d do that, she’d do anything.”

I nodded. “Maybe…” I said. Maybe I was overtired and overwrought, but Nydia’s plan did have a mad kind of logic to it. And so what if it would mean lying to Anne-Marie? It’s not as if she’d ever been anything but horribly nasty to me. Nydia was looking pleased with herself.

“Well then,” she said airily, “all we have to do is just call Anne-Marie and we’ll see what she says, OK?
There’s no harm, is there? We won’t say
exactly
why we need her help to start off with, just that we do, and if she turns us down flat, the worst she’ll even be able to say around school is that we tried to suck up to her. If she agrees, then she’ll have to keep her mouth shut or she won’t get your help. It can’t fail.”

“It can fail,” I said bleakly. “In fact, it probably will fail, but, oh well, what the hell. Let’s do it anyway.”

“OK, I’ll do it,” Anne-Marie said.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. Nydia and I didn’t just breeze up to Anne-Marie’s Highgate mansion the very next morning and sail past the video gate security. Or waltz into the marble-floored entrance hall, sweeping up the curved staircase, pop into her suite of three rooms (including her own bathroom and dressing room), sit down on her balcony and agree it all over a chilled Diet Coke.

First off, there was the phone call. Nydia decided that if we didn’t put the wheels in motion right there and then we would chicken out the next day. She grabbed her mobile and called Anne-Marie’s number without giving herself a chance to think. I don’t know how or why she had Anne-Marie’s number, but maybe it was left over from the time when we all got mobiles for the first time ever and it seemed more important to have a lot of numbers in your phone than if the person was cool or not.

I myself had had Menakshi’s and Jade’s numbers on
my phone for about a week before I realised they were never going to call me and I was certainly never going to call them, and I deleted them. Nydia, on the other hand, still harboured these fantasies that we were living in a real-life teen movie where the lame kids like us eventually become cool and everybody’s friends in the end. I don’t think this has to do with us going to the academy. I’m sure that even if we went to a proper school she would be just as hopeful. That’s the kind of positive, optimistic person she is. Anyway, I thought Anne-Marie would see it was Nydia calling and just cancel the call without even picking up, but it looked like she must have deleted Nydia’s number because she answered. I pressed my ear to the other side of the phone to hear the conversation. My heart was thundering in my chest.

“Hi-iiii!” Anne-Marie sang into the phone.

“Hi, Anne-Marie. How are you?” Nydia said.

“Fine, fine.
Who
are you?” Anne-Marie replied archly.

“It’s Nydia, um, from school? Listen, I was just wondering—” Nydia began.

“Nydia?” Anne-Marie was clearly shocked. “How did you get my number?”

“You gave it to me,” Nydia said, looking slightly hurt. “Anyway—”

“I don’t remember giving it to
you.
I must have been ill that day.
Mentally
ill. Anyway, whatever it is, no. No, I do not want to come to one of your lame sleepovers, or join in with one of your stupid film projects, or even walk on the same side of the street as you, Nydia, OK?”

Nydia looked at me and rolled her eyes. I shook my head, drawing my forefinger sharply across my throat in what I hoped was the universal sign for “Cut!”. But Nydia ignored me.

“Hang on,” she said quickly. “Just listen for a minute. It won’t cost you anything to listen – and it could be to your advantage.” She tried to sound all mysterious, but instead sounded like she had a nasty cold. Anne-Marie nearly choked on her own laughter.

“I’m listening because, luckily for you, I’m alone and bored and could do with a good laugh. But hurry up.” I pictured her tapping her pink nails impatiently.

“Well,” Nydia took a deep breath. “Ruby and I need your help; we need you to coach Ruby with a scene that’s coming up on
Kensington Heights.
Sort of like method acting: it’s an area where Ruby hasn’t had much…
experience
and, well, we thought that you could maybe…offer your advice? Because you’re
such
a good actress.” There was a pause, when I imagined the expression on Anne-Marie’s face was somewhere
between disbelieving hysteria and horror. After all, I more or less felt like that, and I wasn’t even
her.

“Me, coach little Miss I’m-so-brilliant-and-famous?” Anne-Marie barked out a harsh laugh. “No way. If she’d ever wanted any help from me she should have got off her high horse and stopped acting so snotty about being on TV years ago. She’s got everything, she doesn’t need me, and even if she did, I certainly wouldn’t help her. I mean, she’s so high and mighty she can’t even ring and ask me herself, she had to get her little servant to do it.”

My jaw dropped and I looked at Nydia. Anne-Marie calling
me
snooty?
Me
stuck-up! I tried to grab the phone off Nydia to tell Anne-Marie exactly what I thought of her, but she tussled it out of my hands, held me at arm’s-length and glared at me until I signalled I would listen quietly again.

“I know,” Nydia said with surprising calm. “You’re right. She can come across as the big ‘I am’ sometimes, but it’s basically only to cover up her many insecurities. She didn’t phone you tonight because, well, I haven’t told her I’m calling you. I wanted to see if you’d help us before I raised her hopes. She really does respect you, Anne-Marie, more than you know. She actually looks up to you.” I stuck my finger down my throat and mimed vomiting on to the floor. Nydia signalled for me to shush.
“And just think, if you help Ruby now, maybe she’ll be able to get you some introductions on the show like she did for Danny Harvey—”

“
Danny’s
got a part on
Kensington Heights
?” Anne-Marie exclaimed. “I
knew
she fancied him, it was so obvious! God, how sick is that, trying to buy a boyfriend? If it wasn’t for the fact you’ve got no other friends and no one else would even talk to you, I’d tell you to drop her, Nydia, she’s sick.” Nydia winced as if Anne-Marie had slapped her face and, taking a deep breath, put on her special happy smile, the one she uses for her frequent plan-backfiring related meetings with Sylvia Lighthouse. I felt bad as, after all, she was only putting herself through all of this for me. She really was the world’s best friend.

“No! No, she doesn’t fancy Danny, not at all, they just talked a bit during the school play last year and she decided to help him out. She could help you out too, get you on the set and introduce you to a few important people.” Nydia paused for a moment to let the idea sink before adding, “Apparently they’re looking for a new teenager…” Anne-Marie was silent again for what seemed like for ever.

“How do I know you’re not just feeding me a pack of lies?” she said, her voice as cold as ice. Nydia and I exchanged a look: that was a tricky one because, after
all, that was exactly what we were doing. Nydia steeled herself.

“Because we need you to help us,” she said evenly, looking at me and crossing her fingers. “And because you can trust us.”

“Trust you two, the original stupid twins?” Anne-Marie snorted, sounding like a pig. “As if!”

“OK, then,” Nydia said quickly. “OK, fine. We’ll leave it, but when you see someone else with that part, don’t go blaming us…”

Anne-Marie sighed. “No, no…hang on a minute. Tell me exactly what I’d have to do and I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Er, OK, but we don’t tell you exactly how you’re helping us until we meet you tomorrow, and you must
never
tell anyone
anything.
Ruby will arrange for you to get on the set and meet all the right people, but that will only happen after completion of the agreement. So what do you say – will you do it?” Nydia held my hand so tightly the tips of my fingers went white.

“You know what, Nydia, it’s lucky for you that you know Ruby, isn’t it? Otherwise your fat little life would be really boring.” Nydia flinched again and I squeezed her fingers back. “You’d better not be winding me up. If I find out this is one of your stupid little scams, I swear I’ll make you pay.”

Nydia looked at me and winked. She was such a nice person that I honestly think if Anne-Marie had been even a little bit nice to her she would have called the whole thing off. As it was, she was happy to close the deal.

“It’s not a scam. Ruby can make it happen.
She’s
on the telly, remember?” Nydia said it in such a way as to remind Anne-Marie that she wasn’t on telly, never had been, and hadn’t even had an advert in a year. There was a long and agonising silence.

“OK,” Anne-Marie said. “I’ll do it.” So we arranged to go round to her place in the morning and sort it all out then. Just like that.

“You heard what she said,” I said later, when we’d calmed down and stopped jumping on the bed like idiots. She’s going to totally kill us. At least now she just ignores us. After this she’s going to…she’s going to…well, kill us.” Nydia smiled and gave me a hug.

“Relax, it’ll be fine. We’ll worry about that after we’ve got your kiss out of the way. She’ll probably just forget about it anyway.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Yeah, right!” I exclaimed. The excitement was suddenly gone. I felt sick again. “You shouldn’t have told her that I helped Danny. I didn’t even know he was going to be on the show until
today! I mean, I just very nearly got sacked myself – the last thing I have is any influence.”

“I know,” Nydia said. “But I had to have a way in with her. It’s the only thing she understands.” I nodded.

“And what about her calling me stuck-up? Imagine that!” I said.

“Imagine,” Nydia agreed.

Nydia’s dad took me home just before nine thirty. The house was quiet except for the murmur of the TV in the living room, so I crept in and stood in the hallway for a few seconds, waiting for Mum to call out to me. When she didn’t, I peeked round the door. She was asleep in the chair, a glass of red wine in her hand, tipped over so it was almost going to spill. I stood there for a moment and wondered what to do. Eventually I tiptoed in and carefully lifted the glass out of her hand. It was full and the open bottle on the coffee table was still half full, so at least she hadn’t got herself drunk like Angel’s mum did in the show.

I set the glass down on the table and looked at her. Her mouth was open and her eyes were screwed up, as if she were dreaming in frowns. I took a pen from the
sideboard and wrote on the back of an envelope, “I’m back, Rx” and rested it on her knees. Then I went to bed.

I don’t know what the time was, but I’d been asleep for a while when I heard her come into my room – just like she used to when I was a baby. I kept my eyes closed and my breathing steady as she sat on the edge of my bed. She brushed the hair off my face and kissed my cheek.

“Sleep well, my baby,” she whispered. “I love you.” I lay very still as she went back out of the room, still pretending to be asleep, but it was a long time before I was.

29 Windhouse Street

Brighton

Sussex

Dear Angel,

Last year your mum and dad split up for a while and you were really sad. Do you remember they had a big custody battle over you and you thought that you were going to have to choose between them? Then you all got trapped in that lift as it hung by a single wire for two episodes and you realised that you all loved each other more than anything and they called off the divorce.

Because of this I know you will understand how I feel, Angel. My mum and dad have split up too. My mum has got a new boyfriend; she got him before she split up with Dad and now Dad is very angry. He doesn’t live at home now and Mum won’t let him near the house; she says she’ll get a restraining order if he even tries to talk to me or my little brother Josh. He’s not even allowed to pick us up from school. Mum says that Dad is a bad person and that he’s never really loved us. Dad told me Mum didn’t care about anything or anyone except herself and that we should come and live with him. We have to see a social worker soon and tell her what we think.

The thing is, Angel, I know they still love each other really—just like your mum and dad. How can I make them see it? We don’t live near any tall buildings with lifts and anyway Mum won’t go in one since she saw that episode of Kensington Heights.

Thank you for listening.

Naomi Torrence