Ruby Parker: Soap Star

Nydia is quite an unusual girl. She’s got the loudest voice in our year and the loudest laugh you’ve ever heard, which she says is because she always has to shout to get heard over her four brothers, but I think she’s just got inbuilt “theatrical projection”. Nydia’s family originally came from Nigeria, but Nydia was born in the same hospital as me, only two months later than I was. I was on the fifteenth and she was on the eighteenth. So like we say, apart from the fact she’s black and I’m white, and the fact that we have different parents and everything, we could practically be twins. It feels like we are twins sometimes, because sometimes we just start thinking the same thing at the same time, like a joke or something, and we start laughing for no reason. Then everyone looks at us, but we both know why we’re laughing and it makes us laugh even more. It makes me feel safe and sort of warm inside to have a friend like Nydia. While everything keeps changing, Nydia and me will always be the same, because we’re like twins.

Nydia’s mum and dad aren’t rich like most of the parents of the kids that go to this school. She won her place, beating over four thousand other applicants through the Sylvia Lighthouse scholarship programme, which makes her better than probably anyone else in our year. But that doesn’t stop the other girls picking on her, calling her fat and stupid. Anne-Marie even said no wonder so many people are starving in Africa, because obviously Nydia ate all the food; but she said that in front of Miss Greenstreet and then we got lectured for over an hour about the Third World debt, so she hasn’t made that crack twice. And she’s a moron anyway, because Nydia grew up in Hackney just like I did and has never even been to Africa. But that’s Anne-Marie for you: the brains of a pile of damp pants.

And besides, Nydia is a very good actress, better than any of them. She wants to be a character actress, which Anne-Marie says means an ugly, fat actress, but if you ask me it’s better than being a characterless actress like Anne-Marie, because she looks just the same as everyone else: tall, thin and blonde, which means she’s bound to get a part on Hollyoaks. (When the current cast get too old and ugly and get sacked.) But at least they will be old, like twenty-five or something. Not only thirteen, like me.

The thing that happened to me that other girls just dream about? I got famous. Not just a little bit famous like Anne-Marie, whose dad is a film producer and who was once in the EuroDisney advert on TV.

Not just famous because my dad used to be a rock star and my mum was an ex-supermodel, like Jade Caruso’s parents.

Not famous for modelling in the Kay’s Autumn/Winter catalogue like Danny Harvey. (Who looked nice, by the way, even if he didn’t exactly smile. According to Menakshi – who obviously fancies him, as she fancies more or less ALL boys – he thinks he’s too good for everyone else at the academy, even the popular kids. She’s probably right. He used to be quite a laugh, then about a year ago he seemed to change over night.)

Anyway, I am famous in my own right. I’m famous because every year since I was six I’ve appeared in Britain’s most popular serialised soap Kensington Heights. Unless you come from outer space or something you’ll have heard of it. It’s set in the cut-and-thrust world of an auction house and it’s all about very rich, glamorous people buying antiques (and having sex with each other’s husbands, usually). Every year from mid-August to February, Kensington Heights runs once a week at eight o’clock on Wednesdays and I’m in nearly every episode, playing Angel MacFarley.

That’s how I got to be famous and not just in Britain, either. I’m famous in eastern Europe, Pakistan and Japan, and even a bit famous in America. I don’t know this for sure, but Kensington Heights runs on the BBC America channel and I read in Heat magazine the week before last that Brad Pitt watches it and is a big fan! Imagine that! Brad Pitt has seen me on TV! Which is why it’s a shame that Angel MacFarley is about as glamorous as Tesco’s-own trainers. But it’s only to be expected because, of course, I’m not even slightly glamorous. Even last year when I went to the British Soap Awards all the other girls from the show wore backless and strapless dresses and glitter and heels. I had on my black trouser suit and a blue velvet top and no real make-up, just foundation and lip gloss. Mum said I had to look my age. I said, “I don’t want to look my age, I hate my age!” And she said that the only way to get round that was to grow up, which I clearly wasn’t ready to do if I was going to make a fuss about it. Like I said, she’s pretty keen on me being normal – even when being normal makes me look stupid.

Everyone else in the soap is super gorgeous, of course, except my family, the MacFarleys, because we’re what the producers call “social realism”, although Angel’s mum, played by former model Brett Summers, is still pretty attractive – even in an M&S top. And anyhow, I don’t know that it was very realistic when it turned out that Angel’s dad had a long-lost identical twin brother who came back whilst 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 him and stopped it 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 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 realise 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 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 antiques 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 had a dad like yours to sort her out (my dad says he’s washed his hands of her) and of course having a rich uncle to pay for a rehabilitation centre must be a help.

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

PS 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 usually, but I haven’t had so many recently as we have been off-air for a while. I started shooting the new series as soon as school broke up for summer a couple of weeks ago, so no holiday for me! It starts again next week. I think you’ve been watching it on UK Gold as the story line you describe was two series ago. Angel has got a different duvet cover now.

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

Keep watching the show!

Best wishes

Ruby x

Chapter Two (#ulink_edbc2990-f319-52fd-82fc-4103a0ab65e0)

Like I said, it was an accident in the first place that I got famous. I wasn’t even trying. I didn’t even 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 dimpled smile. 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 day 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 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