Ruby Parker: Hollywood Star

But the weirdest thing of all was that my mum and Jeremy Fort started going out together! And that is properly weird because my mum is my mum. She’s pretty but she’s not glamorous or amazingly beautiful, or a Russian supermodel like Jeremy’s last girlfriend Carenza Slavchenkov, but it seems as if they are getting quite serious, because here we all are at his Hollywood home for the Christmas holidays.

Like I said, weird.

When I finally got up I had a shower, got dressed, then ventured outside of my bedroom to find Mum and Jeremy. I felt nervous about leaving my room, all fizzy and fluttery inside. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen during my two week holiday from my normal life, but I felt sure that they would be the most special, most exciting, most fun two weeks ever!

The house was covered from head to foot in the kinds of Christmas decorations that you usually only ever see in shops like Harrods. The banister was entwined with thick fake pine bunting, encrusted with glittering baubles that reflected the morning sunlight so brightly they almost dazzled me as I came down the grand staircase. In the hallway stood a Christmas tree that had to be nearly as big as the one the Norwegians give us Brits every year to put up in Trafalgar Square. It had an interestingly large amount of presents stacked underneath. I wondered if they were real gifts or fake ones like you get in department stores. As I studied them I noticed a furry little face with beady eyes peeping out from behind one especially big present. I hoped that it wasn’t a present for me because as a girl of nearly fourteen I was pretty much over cuddly toys, a fact that even basic research of my interests would have alerted him to. I was Just rehearsing the appropriate polite and pleased response when suddenly the creature leapt straight at me.

I screamed my head off.

“It’s a rat! A rat, a rat is biting me!” I shrieked as it grabbed my trouser leg and began to shake and tug at it vigorously, almost pulling me off balance. Mum, Jeremy, Jeremy’s chef Augusto and Marie the housekeeper all came racing into the hall. But instead of saving me from the mutant rodent, they all stopped in their tracks, smiling, and Mum even laughed.

“David!” Jeremy said sharply. “Come, boy.”

I stood in awe as the rat with a name stopped yanking at my trouser leg. Giving me a haughty look, it trotted over to Jeremy and leapt up into his arms. It was then that I noticed it had a collar. I knew Hollywood was a place where weird fads ruled, that some film stars had pigs for pets and others kept snakes, but I honestly thought that Jeremy was far too sensible to put a collar on a rat and call it David.

“Silly girl,” Mum said, reaching out and ruffling David’s head. “Since when do rats bark? This is Jeremy’s Chihuahua. He’s a dog, silly.”

I stared at the creature who was watching me intently from Jeremy’s arms. Of course he was a dog. I’d seen dogs like him before when we watched Crufts and also quite often peeping out from the specially made handbags of hotel heiresses, wearing diamond-encrusted ribbons. It was Just that everything had happened so quickly I’d put two and two together and made eight. Besides, it was the last kind of pet that I expected Jeremy to have.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling the heat in my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to call your dog a rat.”

Jeremy laughed. “Don’t worry, Ruby. When I first set eyes on him that’s exactly what I thought too. He used to belong to the young woman who lives a few houses down. But when it became more fashionable to have a Iamb on a lead she kicked poor old David out into the street without a second thought. He found his way here so Marie and I decided to give him a home. When you get to know him he’s really quite a character. I’m sure you’ll be great friends.”

Gingerly, I reached out a hand and tried to pat David on the head. He bared his needly little teeth at me and snarled. I wasn’t sure I agreed with Jeremy.

“David’s a funny name for a dog,” I said, withdrawing fingers quickly.

“I call him David because despite his tiny size he’s prepared to take on any Goliath in a fight. He’s got a lion’s heart.” Jeremy grinned and nodded towards the kitchen. “So, let’s have breakfast and plan our first day together in Hollywood.”

David looked at me from over Jeremy’s shoulder and for a second I wondered if the film of my life had turned into a Disney cartoon. Because I could have sworn that the evil little dog was laughing at me.

As I entered the kitchen I had to stop myself for a second by a fridge the size of a car and take a breath at what I saw. There was my mum, with quite a lot of grey roots showing in her hair and wearing some Jogging bottoms from Primark, sitting holding Jeremy Fort’s hand with one hand and eating a grapefruit with the other.

That was when it hit me.

This is my life now. My mum is going out with someone properly famous and rich, and I have Just made a film with him due to be released really soon, which means that before long I might be properly famous too, not Just in Britain – but all over the world. I felt my knees buckle and it seemed as if I had forgotten how to breathe out.

School, Dad and Everest, and even Danny and Nydia seemed very far away from me, and I felt homesick and scared, excited and thrilled all at once. This holiday was going to be Just a taste of what my life might turn into. This lifestyle, this kind of house, even this stupid dog with a stupid name could be the sort of thing that I take for granted in a few short weeks when my film comes out. If the last year had been a rollercoaster, I couldn’t imagine what heights the next year might hold for me.

“Well,” Jeremy said as he finished eating breakfast, “I have to confess that I’ve been so busy with this new shoot that I haven’t bought any gifts yet, so as today is Christmas Eve and time is running out I’ve decided I’m taking you two ladies shopping. You can choose whatever you want – so start thinking!”

“Oh Jeremy, you don’t have to do that,” my mum said happily. “We don’t expect you to buy us expensive presents.”

“Don’t we?” I said, a bit disappointed that all the presents under the tree must be fake after all. Mum raised a warning brow at me and Jeremy laughed.

“It feels funny enough as it is,” Mum went on. “Having someone else doing all the cleaning and the cooking and even the Christmas dinner! I hope you don’t think that the reason I…we…Ruby and I…are friends with you is because of all this. I mean, I knew you’d done well, but I honestly had no idea that you were quite so…well…rich.”

“My dear Janice,” Jeremy said, and he actually picked my mum’s hand up and kissed it, “I think you and I both know why we have become ‘friends’ and it had nothing to do with the mere trappings of wealth. Besides, if you don’t want expensive presents, then don’t choose expensive presents.”

“But the option is there to go expensive, right?” I said Just to make my mum’s eyes flash.

Jeremy smiled at me. “I can’t remember the last time I had a proper Christmas like this one, with people that I care for. I never married, never had children. What family I have is far away and distant. So you and your mum’s gift to me this year is your company, and giving me the pleasure of making your stay a happy one.”

“So we don’t actually have to buy you anything?” I asked mischievously.

“Ruby!” my mum exclaimed. “Remember you manners.”

“It’s fine, Janice,” Jeremy said. “I think my old friend Ruby here is teasing. Besides, it would be difficult to find inexpensive gifts where we are going.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Rodeo Drive. The most glamorous shopping street in the world. What do say, Ruby?”

I grinned at my mum. “I say, let’s go shopping!”

Somewhere between leaving in Jeremy’s silver Rolls Royce and returning five hours later, my mum had forgotten entirely that she didn’t want anything from him at all except his “friendship”.

I’ve never really done designer labels, not because I didn’t want to but because I wasn’t allowed to in case I got spoiled. (I should be so lucky.) It seemed, however, that the same rules did not apply to mums who date film stars and even I recognised the labels on the bags that she came back with: Armani, Gucci, Donna Karan, to name Just a few. All names of people who make a lot of money selling posh stuff that from a not very great distance looks exactly the same as stuff from Marks and Spencer or Asda. But anyway, it made Mum really happy. In fact, more than happy – she was sparkly and excited, like she was the teenager let loose with a credit card and not me.

Surprisingly, I found it much harder to spend Jeremy’s money. I kept thinking about my dad and the last time I had seen him, the night before we flew out. I had gone round to his flat to give him instructions for looking after my cat Everest. I also took the present I’d bought for him, which was a DIY manual because he still hasn’t done up his flat, and it’s all miserable and grey and old ladyish.

He looked miserable too when I went in – like he had started to blend in with his surroundings. He made me a hot chocolate and we sat on the lumpy old sofa.

“Are you still OK about me going?” I asked, because he wasn’t talking.

He gave me a sort of unhappy smile and said, “Of course I am.”

“You’ll be all right,” I said, leaning my head on his shoulder. “You’ll have a nice lunch at Granny’s with Uncle Pete and all that lot, won’t you? You love Granny’s roasties.”

“It’s not the same though, Rube,” Dad said heavily.

At first I felt guilty, but then I realised that if it was up to me, this Christmas would have been exactly like the last. Me, Mum and Dad sitting round the kitchen table in paper hats, and Everest trying to get a great big turkey leg through the cat flap without anyone noticing. Christmas was always good in our house even when Mum and Dad weren’t getting on so well. It was like in the First World War when all the soldiers stopped fighting on Christmas Day and played football instead. Mum and Dad stopped arguing and pulled crackers, and we laughed at the terrible Jokes because we wanted to laugh and we didn’t care if they weren’t funny.

And I suppose I knew last year, and even the year before that, that they were only trying for my sake, but I was glad they did it, because it meant that they were putting me first. I’ve been doing OK about Mum and Dad splitting up, but thinking about the kind of Christmas I would never have again made me feel cross and sad all at once.

“But, Dad,” I’d said, “it wouldn’t have been the same. Christmas wouldn’t have been us all together anyway, would it?”

Dad shrugged so that my head bumped on his shoulder. I sat up. “I know that,” he said shortly. “But I didn’t imagine that I wouldn’t be able to see you at all because you’d be in America with your mum’s new boyfriend.”

I looked at him. “So that’s what you really mind,” I said, my voice quite sharp. “You mind Mum having a boyfriend.”

“It does feel a bit strange, Ruby,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Well,” I said, and maybe I did sound a little bit more “I told you so” than I meant to. “You’re the one who wanted to break up, Dad. Me and Mum didn’t. And it’s not our fault if your so-called girlfriend chucked you and Mum’s going out with a movie star.”

“So that’s how it is, is it?”

Dad’s shout was unexpected and I Jumped as he stood up so that a little bit of hot chocolate slopped out of my mug and on to my trousers. I hadn’t realised he was so upset.