Ruby Parker Hits the Small Time by Rowan Coleman Page A

boring.” Nydia flinched again, and I squeezed her fingers back. “You’d better not be winding me up. If I find out this is one of your stupid little scams, I swear I’ll make you pay.”
    Nydia looked at me and winked. “It’s not a scam.
    Ruby can make it happen. She’s on the telly, remember?” Nydia said it in such a way as to remind Anne-Marie that she wasn’t on the telly, never had been, and hadn’t even done an ad in a year.
    There was a long and agonizing silence.
    â€œOK, I’ll do it,” Anne-Marie said. So we arranged to go to her place in the morning and sort it all out then. Just like that.
    â€œYou heard her,” I said later—after we’d calmed down and stopped jumping on the bed like idiots. “She’s totally going to kill us. At least now she just ignores us. After this she’s going to …she’s going to …well, kill us.”
    Nydia smiled and gave me a hug. “Relax, Ruby. It’ll be fine. We’ll worry about that after we’ve got your kiss out of the way. She’ll probably just forget about it anyway.”
    I shook my head in disbelief. “Yeah, right!” I exclaimed. All my excitement was suddenly gone. I felt sick again. “You shouldn’t have told her that I helped Danny. I didn’t even know he was going to be on the show until today! I mean, I just very nearly got sacked myself. The last thing I have is any influence.”
    â€œI know,” Nydia said. “But I had to have a way in with her. It’s the only thing she understands.”
    I nodded. “And what about her calling me stuck-up?
    Imagine that!”
    â€œImagine,” Nydia agreed.
    Nydia’s dad took me home just before nine thirty. The house was quiet except for the murmur of the TV in the living room, so I stood in the hallway for a few seconds, waiting for Mum to call out to me. When she didn’t, I peeked around the door. She was asleep in the chair with a glass of red wine in her hand. I stood there for a moment and wondered what to do. Eventually I tiptoed in and carefully lifted the glass out of her hand. It was filled to the brim, and the open bottle on the coffee table was still half full, so at least she hadn’t got herself drunk like Angel’s mum did in the show.
    I set the glass down on the table and looked at her. Her mouth was open and her eyes were closed tightly, her brows furrowed as if she were dreaming in frowns. I took a pen from the desk and wrote on the back of an envelope, “I’m back, Ruby xoxo,” and rested it on her knees. Then I went to bed.
    I don’t know what the time was, but I’d been asleep for a while when I heard her come into my room, just like she used to when I was a kid. I kept my eyes closed and my breathing steady as she sat on the edge of my bed. She brushed the hair off my face and kissed my cheek.
    â€œSleep well, my baby,” she whispered. “I love you.”
    I lay very still as she left the room, pretending to be asleep, but it was a long time before I was.
    29 Windhouse Street
Brighton
Sussex
    Dear Angel,
    Last year your mum and dad split up for a while and you were really sad. Do you remember when they had a big custody battle over you and you thought that you were going to have to choose between them? Then you all got trapped in that lift as it hung by a single wire for two episodes and you realized that you all loved each other more than anything and they called off the divorce.
    So I know you will understand how I feel, Angel. My mum and dad have split up too. My mum has got a new boyfriend; she got him before she split up with Dad and now Dad is very angry. He doesn’t live at home now and Mum won’t let him near the house. She says she’ll get a restraining order if he even tries to talk to me or my little brother, Josh. He’s not even allowed to pick us up from school. Mum says that Dad is a bad