Soap Star

by Rowan Coleman

  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 kn
ow 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.