Between takes on our second day of working together when we were hanging about on the edge of the set, Sean told me he never even wanted to act, he actually wanted to be a bus driver, when he was discovered shopping with his mum on Fifth Avenue in New York at the age of eight. A talent scout for a model agency thought he had the kind of cute and cheeky good looks she needed for a new children’s-wear campaign she was casting. The next thing Sean knew he was shooting a commercial. “I didn’t know what was happening. The more I messed around in front of a camera, the more they loved me,” he told me. “They said I was a natural. A natural fool, my mom said.”
Then he got noticed by some Hollywood producers who screen-tested him for his first film co-starring with a Great Dane called Ernest, Doggy’s Day Out. And the rest is a history that I know quite well, as I have a Sean Rivers scrapbook with lots of magazine clippings about him glued into it—not that I was about to tell him, or in fact anyone, that little secret.
“And the thing is, Ruby Parker,” he said, gesturing to the set of the British Museum around him, “all of this stuff just happens to me, or at least Dad made it so all this stuff happens to me. I didn’t want any of it.”
“But you’re glad you’re doing it, aren’t you?” I asked him. He shrugged.
“I guess so,” he said uncertainly. His face seemed to cloud over for a moment before his tentative smile broadened into a dazzling grin. “I guess it beats going to school every day.”
“Oh, about that,” I said. “This afternoon we’ve got lessons with this tutor called Fran Francisco…”
Sean groaned and flopped face-first on the floor.
“Call a paramedic,” he yelled. “I’m dying of boredom!”
I was doubled up with laughter when a long cold shadow fell over both of us.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a man’s voice said. “Get up at once.”
Sean stood up immediately, his smile and easy demeanour utterly gone.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. I stared at the man who seemed to intimidate Sean so much. I wondered where the Sean who had cheeked a much more frightening Tallulah Banks was hiding. I felt suddenly protective of him.
“Er, excuse me,” I said to the man haughtily. I was about to tell him that he had to have a pass to come on set, but Sean stopped me.
“Ruby—this is my father, Patrick Rivers. He’s my manager too.” Sean smiled weakly at his father. “Dad, this is Ruby Parker.”
Patrick Rivers looked at me without smiling.
“I know who you are, and I hope you are not going to distract my son, young lady,” he told me. “Sean is here to work. He has got no time for anything else, so don’t get any ideas.”
“I beg your pardon…?” I was so amazed by his rudeness that I forgot to be intimidated by him. He glowered at me, darkly furious.
“I’m warning you…” he began, his voice almost a growl. I started to feel intimidated, but just at that moment Art appeared from behind part of the scenery and smiled at Mr Rivers.
“Hi, Pat!” He greeted Sean’s father as if he were an old friend, but I got the sense that it was a veneer of good will only. “Look, I’ve got no problem with the kids having fun between takes,” he told Sean’s dad. “If I did they’d know about it—and besides, your son’s giving a hundred per cent on set.” Art leaned against a partition wall and smiled easily at Pat Rivers.
“Of course, of course.” Patrick Rivers smiled the moment he saw Art, putting his arm around his son, laughing awkwardly. “Just making sure you’re getting value for money, Art.”
“Well, Pat,” Art said, watching Mr Rivers carefully, “you should know—you negotiated his fee!”
Both men gave hearty and entirely fake laughs before Art left to make a few more lighting adjustments. Pat Rivers’ arm dropped away from Sean the minute Art was gone.
“I’ve got calls to make,” he told Sean. “Come straight back to the Winnebago when you’ve finished here. We’ll discuss your punishment then.”
“Punishment?” I asked Sean in horror after his dad had gone.
Sean shrugged, amazingly his smile was back again as if all that had just happened was a cloud passing over the sun.
“Don’t mind him,” he told me. “The actual punishment is never usually as bad as you imagine it to be.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong!” I said.
“Do you want to tell that to Dad?” Sean asked me, raising both his brows as he said it.
I had to admit that I didn’t.
Once the chill of Pat Rivers’ on-set visit had thoroughly thawed, the rest of the day flew by. At the end of it Mum, Imogene and Jeremy had gathered to watch us wrap our final scene with Harry.
“Cut!” Art shouted and a ripple of applause went round the studio. Art stood back and looked from me to Sean.
“You two are a good team,” he said with approval. “Sparks were really flying there. We took a risk casting Ruby without getting you two together, but it’s really working. It really is.” Sean and I smiled at each other.
“I’ll let PR know,” Lisa Wells said, writing a note on her clipboard.
“What can I say?” Sean said, ruffling my hair. “I always wanted a kid sister.”
I should have been gutted that the world’s most gorgeous teenage boy thought of me as a sister, but I wasn’t, I was really happy. Happy that Sean and I liked each other so much that working with him was easy and tension free. And happy that even after meeting him, a boy who I had once daydreamed about marrying, I still wanted Danny to be my boyfriend.
I couldn’t wait to tell him and get things back to normal between us again.
“Right,” Art said. “Thank you everyone for gathering here for a little meeting. I’ve got some real work for you to do, I’m afraid.”
Everyone groaned except for Imogene and me. She saw the puzzled look on my face and winked at me.
“Imogene’s new film, Lizzie Bennet, a modern reworking of the classic Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice, is premiering in the West End on Friday. Of course, Imogene will be there walking the red carpet, and we’ve decided that all of you should go too, to give her and our film some support.”
“To a movie premiere!” I said excitedly. “Brilliant! I can’t wait to see it—oh, Imogene, what are you going to wear? Can I help you choose?” Imogene laughed, but before she could answer Art spoke.
“No, you can’t,” Art said, “because you’ll be too busy choosing your own dress, Ruby.” He smiled at me. “You can’t walk the red carpet in jeans and a T-shirt.”
“I…I mean—do you mean me?” I managed to say, looking at Mum, who from the look on her face had already known all about this. “I’m going to walk down the red carpet?”
“I want you all there, the entire lead cast working that carpet, working the press. Let’s get a buzz going on the film now, get the media interested in the on-set dynamics. It can never hurt, right, Lisa?”
“Right,” Lisa said, busily scribbling away on her pad. “I’ll update PR on the news.” I was too excited to wonder what news.
“Me walking up a red carpet…” I said in awe. And then I remembered that everyone else in this room (except maybe Lisa, the camera crew and Pete the special-effects man) had done it hundreds of times. “I mean, yeah, of course, I’ll be happy to do it,” I added, trying to sound normal again. “Whatever.”
Sean stifled a laugh beside me and Art gave me quite a hard stare.
“I’m so glad,” he said heavily. “Now, it’s on Friday, so—”
“Oh, no,” I cried. Everyone looked at me.
“What now, Ruby?” Art asked me, a tad impatiently.
“I can’t go,” I said. Art smiled, but only his mouth moved.
“What do you mean you can’t go?” he said.
“It’s my friend Nydia’s party—do you remember her from the auditions? She was really good—and anyway she got a part in this soap and her mum is doing her a party to celebrate, not a big thing ju
st a few mates, but I promised…” I caught sight of my mum shaking her head at me and making a chopping motion across her mouth, so I stopped talking.
“Ruby,” Art said, his voice ever so low, “while you’re on my team, my team comes first, do you understand? You’re standing on an Art Dubrovnik movie set with some of the world’s most talented and powerful actors. I’m sure they’ve all got better things to do too, but they are all going to the premiere. Do you know why they are going?” Art leaned his face closer to mine as he asked me. “Because they understand that it’s their job, and their job comes first. Now you are going to that premiere, Ruby. You’re going because you’re contracted to fulfil your publicity commitments and you’re going because you don’t want to let me or your team mates down, do you?” I shook my head slowly.
“No, Art,” I said quietly. “Of course I’ll go. I’m sorry.”
I wondered how I was going to explain to Nydia. At any other time in the past I thought she would have been fine about it, and after all I really wanted to go to the premiere, my first ever one. But at the moment, when she seemed so strange and tense, I was really worried about breaking a promise to her; it seemed so important to her that I was there.
“Don’t worry,” Sean whispered in my ear. “The premiere will all be over by eight, barring the after-show party. We can go then.”
“We?” I whispered back.
“Sure,” Sean said. “English kids’ party—excellent!”
“Um, the thing is…” I said, wondering if me, Nydia, Anne-Marie, Danny, Nydia’s grannies and some snacks really constituted a party worthy of an LA teenager.
“We’ve got a heavy filming schedule this week,” Art continued, “so you’ll be getting kitted out tonight. Guys, you’ll go with Lisa and Tallulah.” All three male cast members groaned. “They’re taking you to Paul Smith in Covent Garden.” Art turned to my mum and I. “Ruby, Janice—Imogene and Clarice have volunteered to look after you two. Mr Rivers, I’m assuming you can kit yourself out?”
Sean jumped at the mention of his father’s name; none of us had realised he had arrived.
“Mum’s coming?” I asked, wondering how my coolness factor (which was already in the low ones) would be affected by walking up a red carpet with my mummy.
“Parents are obligatory,” Sean told me, faking a yawn. “My dad hates me doing all this stuff, but he knows I have to do it to promote my movies so that I can get more work. Still, if you know what to do, you can usually give parents the slip.”
“What about being punished?” I whispered to Sean, feeling genuinely concerned for him. I had never known anybody who was actually punished before.
“Ruby, if I didn’t break out sometimes,” Sean told me, “I’d go crazy. It’s worth the risk.”
“Ah-hem,” Art coughed loudly and narrowed his eyes at us. “You will all be visiting Harrods where you will borrow the dresses of your choice. And then you will go to De Beers in Bond Street where you will choose some jewellery.”
“But it’s Monday,” I said. Art looked blankly at me. “I mean, it’s not late-night shopping on a Monday in England.” Art was about to say something else when Imogene stepped forward and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Ruby,” she said. “Shops have a habit of staying open just for me.” I turned my face to look up at her.
“Wow,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said. “So I’ll pick you up in the limo and we’ll go shop.”
That night a little bit of the glamour and magic that surround Imogene Grant wore off on me and I felt that I really knew what it meant to be a movie star at last, to be the kind of person the whole world stopped for.
When we got to Harrods a smartly-dressed lady was waiting for us by a side entrance. She looked both ways down the street, probably scouting for press, before she opened the limo door and waited for us to climb out.
“Ms Grant,” she said. “What a pleasure to have you visit us again.”
“Farrah,” Imogene said, giving the lady a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you so much for this. This is Ruby Parker and her mother Janice Parker. They’ll need gowns too.”
“Always happy to oblige,” Farrah said. She showed us to the lift and we headed to the designer department. I had expected it to be empty and quiet except for us. But when the lift doors slid back I saw that all of the staff were waiting, waiting just for us.
I have never seen so many beautiful dresses in my life, gowns of all colours and designs all brought out for Imogene to try on one by one.
“A lot of actresses,” Imogene told me as she swirled around in a pink princess number, “only use one designer, but I prefer to come here when I’m in London and I need a dress. There’s so much beautiful stuff to look at and I guess that this part is still like a fairy tale to me. I used to dream of shopping at Harrods when I was a little girl.”
“And me,” I said, making everybody laugh for some reason.
At last Imogene came out of the dressing room in a white gown with a hem that seemed to float just above the floor and that was covered in tiny crystals, and shimmered and glittered with every movement.
Farrah and her staff gave a ripple of applause.
“This is the one, Ms Grant,” Farrah said. “Stunning. Perfectly stunning.” Imogene smiled politely at Farrah but stood in front of me.
“It really is great, Imogene,” Clarice said.
“What do you think, Ruby?” Imogene asked me. “Does it make me look fat?”
I would have laughed if she hadn’t been so serious. Imogene Grant, one of the world’s most beautiful women, really wanted to know whether or not she looked fat!
“You look beautiful,” I told her.
“Great.” She smiled at Farrah. “I’ll take it,” she said, and then she looked at me. “Now it’s your turn.”
It was late as Imogene’s limo pulled up outside our flat.
“What a wonderful evening,” my mum said, overwhelmed by our out-of-hours visit to world-famous diamond merchant and jewellers, De Beers. “Thank you so much, Imogene.”
“Don’t thank me,” Imogene said. “I should be thanking you. Going to all this trouble to come and see my movie.”
“I can’t believe that I’m going to be wearing that many diamonds,” I said for about the fourteenth time since we’d got back in the car.
Imogene laughed. “You carry them off wonderfully well. And they looked lovely with that blue silk dress.”
“Fifty thousand pounds worth of diamonds,” I said, still not quite able to believe that anything could cost that much, let alone one necklace. “All around my neck.”
“Yes, well,” Imogene said. “Don’t forget we have to give them back at the end of the night—and the watch. De Beers will have a whole security team following us around to make sure nothing happens to those diamonds.”
“Fifty thousand pounds,” I said again.
“Come on,” my mum said, putting on her sensible voice again. “You’ve got lessons in the morning. Bed.”
“Bed.” I repeated the word and laughed. “I’m never going to be able to sleep!”
“Bet you will,” Imogene said, kissing me on the cheek. “See you on set tomorrow.”
“I’ll never be able to sleep,” I told my mum as I sat on the edge of my bed a few minutes later.
“I’ll bring you some warm milk,” she told me.
But I never got to drink it. I was fast asleep before it came.
The rest of the week seemed to whiz by, one minute in a blur of filming and lessons with Fran Francisco, and then suddenly time would stand still when I had nothing to do but play cards in my Winnebago and listen to Mum going on about Jeremy Fort and what a lovely man he was, and did I think he had a sort of sadness about him, as if he really needed to be looked after? I told her I most certainly did not, and anyway even if he did I was sure that Carenza Slavchenkov cheered him up no end.
At those times it seemed as if Friday, the premiere and seeing Danny
again would never come.
I did text and phone Danny a few times during the week, leaving him a message saying that I had something to tell him. But I thought his phone must be broken again because he never replied or called me back. On Thursday night I phoned his house and his mum said he was out again. He’d been out a lot recently and I wondered who with. I asked her to give him a message. I said it was really important, but he hadn’t called me back by the time I went to bed. I wasn’t worried; I was certain that now I hadn’t fallen in love with Sean Rivers everything would be OK with Danny. And anyway, he probably thought that as we would be seeing each other at Nydia’s party on Friday, we could talk then.
I had meant to tell Nydia and to explain to her about being late for her party. I meant to, but I didn’t for two reasons. First of all, I was worried about telling her; she seemed so fragile at the moment that I worried she might think I didn’t want to come, not that I couldn’t. So I decided that maybe it would be better not to upset her before the party and to just turn up a bit late with a movie star on my arm, which might make her forget that I had promised to be there from the very beginning of the evening. And secondly, because Sean said it was best not to tell anyone at all that we were still going to Nydia’s party.
“But why not?” I asked him. “I mean when I explain it to Mum she’ll be fine about it. She’ll probably even drive us; we’re going home for the weekend anyway.”
“Drive us!” Sean exclaimed. “Oh boy, Ruby Parker, you need to work on your sense of adventure,” he said.
“My sense of adventure?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “It will be much more fun if we escape. Besides, my dad would never actually let me go. My only option is to escape.”
And even though I am not very good at rebelling, and really don’t like to be in trouble, there was something about the daring twinkle in Sean Rivers’ eye that made me think it might be fun to turn going to Nydia’s party into an escape adventure. After all, I reasoned, it wasn’t as if I was doing anything really bad, and I was sure Mum wouldn’t be too cross or worried as long as I phoned her as soon as I got there.
Film Star Page 11
