“No!” Nydia looked upset. “No, I don’t want a big party! I just want you three there. You will be there, won’t you, Ruby? That’s all I want. I don’t want loads of people from school knowing about the part. I’ll just get so much aggro for it and it won’t air for weeks so I might as well put it off until then. Please, just promise me that you will be there.”
“I’ll be there,” Danny and Anne-Marie said all at once. I bit my lip and looked out of the window where the group of girls had increased to ten or eleven; they must be some kind of Brownie group or something, about to go on a trip out. I looked at Nydia. Strictly speaking I didn’t know if I would be working next Friday or not but I also knew I couldn’t let her down. Whatever my hours were next week I had to make her party and show that she was still important to me.
“Of course I’ll be there,” I said.
“Really?” she asked me. I was worried by how surprised she sounded.
“Of course,” I said. “It’s my best friend’s party—I’m not going to miss that for the world.” Nydia smiled at me and it was the first real expression I had seen on her face all morning.
“Good,” she said, lowering her voice just for me, “because I really need—”
“Oh my word.” Anne-Marie cut across Nydia and the expression on her face made both Nydia and I turn to where she was looking, over Danny’s shoulder and out of the café window.
“Danny…” I said in slow disbelief. “You’d better turn round very, very slowly.”
Outside the window where the group of girls had been gradually growing there now stood about twelve. They stood in a long line, each one of them holding part of a banner that looked like it had been hastily made by taping several bits of A4 together. Scrawled on this banner in a variety of coloured felt tips were the words:
As Danny turned round and the girls caught a glimpse of his face they started to jump up and down and scream.
“Blimey,” Danny said, his face turning white.
“It’s a mob!” Anne-Marie laughed. “Danny, you’re being mobbed by little girls.”
Danny turned to me and as he reached for my hand twelve girls booed enthusiastically.
“What am I going to do?” he asked, leaning close to me, which got the girls booing again. I thought for a moment.
“Well,” I said, “even when I was on Kensington Heights I never had anything like this, but Justin did. And he would just go out and be polite and sign autographs and chat and everyone would be happy. I think the best thing to do would be for us to go out and for you to…greet your public.” I couldn’t resist a tiny smile.
“Ruby!” Danny said, a bloom of embarrassment colouring his cheeks again. “This isn’t funny—I mean Justin loves all this sort of thing. It’s not really my scene…”
“We could creep out of the back door,” Anne-Marie suggested, looking at the group of girls who were now chanting “We love Danny!” with some distaste. Mr Hollinghurst, the café owner, came over to our table and leaned over Danny’s shoulder.
“I’m terribly sorry, ‘sir’,” he said, clearly having trouble calling a thirteen-year-old boy sir. “But your—ah—‘fans’ are blocking the entrance and putting off customers. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Danny looked back at the girls, who screamed whenever he moved. Mr Hollinghurst looked with a sort of muted astonishment at the mini-mob. “You are most welcome to use the back door, sir, if you wish.”
“Um…right,” Danny said, looking at me. “Right, well…No, no, Ruby’s right, I should be nice to them. I’ll just go and sign some autographs and then we can go home. It will be fine, won’t it, Ruby?” he asked, looking nervously at me.
“Completely fine,” I said firmly. “I mean they’re just little girls. How much mobbing can twelve girls do?”
It’s amazing how much mobbing twelve girls can do.
I think it would have been fine if they hadn’t all rushed at Danny the moment he stepped out of the café. And maybe he would have had a chance to sign autographs if they hadn’t pulled his jacket off him while elbowing me out of the way and trampling on Anne-Marie and Nydia’s feet.
“Why you little…” Anne-Marie yowled. “Right, I’ve had enough of this!” And I saw her march off as the crowd jostled me.
Some of them grabbed Danny’s hair and tried to pull it out. Two began a tug of war on his T-shirt, which ripped after a few moments.
“Look!” I heard Anne-Marie’s voice from a few metres away. “It’s Sean Rivers!” Not all of the girls looked in Anne-Marie’s direction but a few did, and it was just enough for Danny to be able to shake himself loose and break out of the group.
“Run, Danny!” I shouted, but Danny was already running and I followed him as closely as I could, feeling my chest about to explode and hearing my heart thundering in my ears as I pounded after him, finally thankful that my mum made me wear sensible shoes.
We didn’t really notice where we were going, Danny and I. We just turned down house-lined street after street until finally the sound of insane girls shouting his name had died away completely.
“That was like some terrible zombie film,” Danny said, sitting on a garden wall and leaning over as he caught his breath. “I never knew girls could be so…hard.”
“They were a bit wild,” I said, flopping next to him on the wall. “I mean, they went crazy—over you!”
“Yeah, well,” Danny said, giving me a sideways look. “Is it really that surprising?”
“Yes!” One look at his face made me correct myself hastily. “I mean no, of course not. It’s just that I had no idea you had got that popular so quickly. That’s pop star popular, Danny! If you released a single today it would be number one by the weekend!” I laughed, but Danny looked embarrassed.
“They did actually ask me to record a single,” he mumbled, the flush in his cheeks no longer from running so hard in the cold air.
“Did they?” I asked, astounded, and then added, “I mean, of course they did. Who’s they?” Danny winced and wrinkled his nose.
“The production company,” he told me. “They wanted me to sing a version of the Kensington Heights theme tune with words. They gave me the lyrics to look at. They are totally slushy, and I said no, but…well, they did ask. They thought it would be a ‘smash’. They said I’d had ‘instantaneous’ appeal or something like that. Liz said older women wanted to mother me and younger girls wanted to go out with me. She’s still going on about it, actually—but I can’t even sing, Ruby! And anyway, I want to be a real actor—like Jeremy Fort—not some one-hit wonder or someone only known for his sex appeal.”
I was about to laugh but then I realised that Danny wasn’t joking.
I stared at my lovely, normal boyfriend and realised that in fact he was not normal at all any more. He had turned into the sort of boy that made girls stupid and giggly, unable to speak properly and prone to forming violent mobs. They felt about him the way I used to feel about Justin de Souza, the way I sort of might feel about Sean Rivers but probably wouldn’t, not once I’ve met him and find out that he’s not that nice in real life (hopefully). Which did rather beg the question, what was a genuine heart-throb pin-up of the masses doing going out with me, and how long would it be before he realised he’d made a terrible mistake?
“Well,” I said. I knew it was wrong, but I felt a sudden pang of jealousy that surprised me, because it wasn’t over all of those girls out there who might be dreaming about Danny and preparing to mob him at that very moment; that made me feel uneasy, but it wasn’t that that made me envy him.
I was jealous of Danny and his fame.
When I had been Angel in Kensington Heights I had hated the attention I got—feeling as if my life was under the spotlight all of the time. I had hated it even though the kind of attention I got was nothing like Justin and now Danny get. People didn’t write love letters to me, they wrote problem letters. Boys didn’t chase me down the street yelling, unless it was with a spider or a frog. Boys never notic
ed me at all, except to make fun of me—until Danny that is. I hated feeling that I was growing up with everyone looking at me and seeing what a bad job of it I was doing; getting all lumpy and spotty and awkward in front of the whole world. Part of the reason I left the show was to get away from that—to let myself be free to be just me again.
But I hadn’t quite realised that the same girls who had used to write to me in their droves would forget me so soon. I hadn’t realised that only a couple of months later they’d be trampling over me in their masses to get to my boyfriend without so much as a “Oooh, didn’t you used to be Angel MacFarley?”
I never thought that the fame part of being an actor mattered to me. I always thought that as long as I could act I’d be happy wherever it was. But as I realised exactly how famous Danny had become—potential number-one-single-releasing famous—I knew that I missed it. I missed fame, and getting my name mentioned every now and then in a magazine didn’t really count.
I suddenly saw that when you are not in people’s living rooms on their TV every day of the week, or on at the local multiplex, they don’t think about you at all. I wanted people to think about me. I wanted to be famous. I wanted it so much just at that moment that it felt like a punch in the stomach. A punch that winded me because I was surprised about how strongly I felt it.
“I can’t see you on Top of the Pops somehow,” I said, forcing the jealousy I was feeling back towards the pit of my tummy.
“If I could sing and play an instrument maybe…” Danny said, sighing heavily. “And then only if I could write my own stuff, and I can’t.” He hung his head and stared at the cracks in the pavement. “But all this? Girls chasing me and stuff? I don’t want this, Rube. I’m not into fame. I just want to act. That’s all I want to do. Maybe I should leave Kensington Heights.”
I picked up his hand and held it. For one sharp moment I wanted him to leave Kensington Heights too, but not for his sake—for mine. I wanted my Danny back again, all to myself. The first ever boy to think that I was worth noticing. But it was only one moment before I realised that I wanted Danny to have the best chance at a career he could, and I knew that Kensington Heights would give him a brilliant chance. After all, if it hadn’t been for the show there was no way Art Dubrovnik would have called me back for a second audition. Whether or not that was right or wrong, it was true.
“No,” I said. “Don’t do that. You’ve got to stay for at least one season. Look at what working on the show’s done for me.” Danny nodded.
“That’s right,” he said, smiling at me. “Here I am feeling all sorry for myself and you’ve got all this to come and worse. Once you’re a movie star the whole world will be in love with you—not just me.”
I froze, looking at Danny, with my mouth open. No one had ever said anything that sweet to me ever in my entire life, not even in a script.
Danny and I had spent a lot of time with each other since we started going out in the summer, almost every day. He was a regular part of my group now. We had so much fun together; just having Danny sitting next to me during the most boring maths lesson made it a thousand times less boring. It was obvious to everyone how well we got on. But not once, not even that time I went camping with Danny, his dad and little brother and Danny took me for a walk under the stars and it was so romantic, had either of us used the word “love”. Not even indirectly the way that Danny just had.
Somehow I knew it was more than just a casual comment; I knew that Danny really meant to say it, and that made me feel wonderful. The trouble was that I had no idea how to respond.
I tried to think of something to say, to show Danny that I felt the same, but I couldn’t. I just gaped, unable to speak. As Danny watched me his sweet, shy smile faded, and he looked down and sort of shrugged as if he could shake what he had said away. He had just said the sweetest, most romantic thing ever to me and all I had done was gawp at him.
“And anyway,” he said, keen to kick-start a conversation between us again, “Liz will get some new teenagers in soon enough and no one will notice me any more.” He smiled at me as he pushed himself off the garden wall and gestured for me to follow him. All as if I hadn’t just blown the most romantic moment of my short life sky high.
“Exactly!” I said, stupidly trying so hard to be bright and breezy.
“Well, come on then, Ruby Parker, film star,” Danny said as I fell into step beside him. “I’ll walk you home.”
And he did. But he didn’t hold my hand once the whole way there.
Kensington Heights
(You take me to…)
Words and Music by Simon Yates
Before I met you, I was
on a dark and dusty shelf.
Oh and I hated myself
cos I was all alone.
And then you came along
and gave me back my shine
when you told me you’d be
mine
on the telephone.
And now, your love lifts
me,
so high and so easily,
and I know I’ll love you
with all of my might,
because you
take me to—
Kensington Heights.
And when I’m with you I
know everything’s all
right.
The sun will still be
bright
as long as you’re here.
And when I’m in your arms
I feel so safe.
Just looking at your face
brings heaven so near.
And now, your love lifts
me,
so high and so easily,
and I know I’ll love you
with all of my might,
because you
take me to—
Kensington Heights.
Kensington Heights…
Kensington Heights!
(repeat to fade)
Chapter Eleven
“Wow!” I said as Nydia finished singing the words to the Kensington Heights theme tune. “Your voice is amazing. You make even those words sound great!”
I had phoned Nydia as soon as I got in from saying goodbye to Danny because I wanted to tell her what had happened: what he had said to me and what I hadn’t said to him. I half expected her to say she didn’t want to come over so I was glad when she said she would come round straight away.
She shrugged and handed me the lyric sheet.
“Danny brought them into school last week to see what we thought.” I looked at the song lyrics. When Nydia had sung them, with her powerful melodious voice, they sounded fantastic. Nydia could make anything sound incredible—she had a brilliant voice. But I couldn’t imagine Danny singing them, because as lovely as he was he was right—he couldn’t sing.
“He didn’t tell me anything about being asked to make a single when we spoke on the phone last week,” I said, laying the lyrics down on my bed.
“Perhaps he couldn’t get a word in,” Nydia said. She was smiling but I got the feeling she wasn’t entirely joking. And it was true—whenever I had spoken to Danny during the week I hadn’t really stopped talking about what was happening to me, me, me. I thought about our awkward and near-silent walk home. I still couldn’t believe that he had said something so lovely to me and all I had managed to do was make him feel awkward and embarrassed. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t feel the same, because I did. But I didn’t know how to say it. I hadn’t exactly had any practice. And now it looked like I wouldn’t get to see him and make things OK again until my next days off. He had seemed fine when we’d said goodbye, just like old Danny again. But I couldn’t help feeling that things weren’t completely right between us; I was sure that I had somehow hurt him.
“Anyway,” Nydia continued. “We all agreed they weren’t really Danny.”
“You should do it,” I said. “Seriously, Nydia. You made that sound brilliant.”
“Yes,” Nydia said sharply, flopping down
on my bed next to me. “But I don’t think I’ve got the right looks, do you?”
I put the song sheet down.
“You’re still feeling bad, aren’t you?” I asked her. “About your weight and everything?” Nydia shrugged. “Is that why you don’t want a big party even though you’ve got three episodes of Holby City, which most of the kids at school would kill for?”
“They’d kill to play Polly Harris in The Lost Treasure of King Arthur. No one would kill to play a morbidly obese diabetic with a heart problem,” Nydia said glumly. “Everyone calls me names at school already. I don’t want to give them something else to laugh at,” she said miserably. “It’ll be bad enough when it goes on air. That’s why I’ve got to lose weight before then. If I’m still fat in six weeks then my life might as well be over…”
“Nydia,” I said, “you’re not fat—you know you’re really beautiful and—”
“Oh, shut up, Ruby,” Nydia snapped at me. “I’m not beautiful. You know that I’m not, so don’t even try and lie! I am fat and bulbous and ugly and that’s that.”
“You are not ugly!” I protested, and I wasn’t lying. I really did think that Nydia was beautiful.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Nydia said, “because I’m just going to lose weight and it won’t be an issue any more.” I nodded. I wasn’t an expert, but Nydia made it sound much easier than I thought it was.
“Did you talk to the nurse then?” I asked her. “About a healthy-eating plan?” Nydia shook her head.
“No,” she said. “If I ask the nurse then Mum will know and I don’t want her interfering. She’ll make a huge big fuss out of it—the whole family will know, all my cousins and my grannies too. And my brother will tease and tease me…so, no.” As Nydia had been talking her voice had been steadily growing louder and now she stopped and took a breath. “I found this website about nutrition and exercise and stuff called ‘getskinnyquick.com’ on the net. It’s really good and tells you exactly what to do to lose weight quickly.” I smiled tentatively at her; it was sort of hard to know how Nydia was going to react these days.
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