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
SERIES EIGHT, EPISODE EIGHT
“REVELATIONS”
WRITTEN BY: TRUDY SIMMONS
SCENE SIXTEEN
INT. AUCTION HOUSE – EARLY EVENING
CASPIAN and JULIA lean against a late-Victorian dresser in each other’s arms.
CASPIAN
It doesn’t matter what they think, Julia, they can’t stop us. I’m fifteen now and you will be too in a few months. I love you and if you’re ready, then, well so am I.
JULIA
Oh Caspian, I don’t know, I just don’t know. What would Mummy say if she found out…?
The door opens. ANGEL comes in looking for a book she has left behind.
ANGEL
What are you two up to? You’d better not be doing anything in here. If Dad finds out he’ll go ballistic. Caspian, you know that Uncle Henry says he’ll ground you for good if he catches you with her again!
JULIA
Oh please don’t tell anyone, Angel, please. They don’t know what they’re doing keeping us apart. We love each other, don’t we, Caspian?
CASPIAN looks a bit uncertain but he holds JULIA even tighter.
CASPIAN
Yes, yes we do. You won’t tell anyone, will you, Angel?
ANGEL shakes her head. CASPIAN and JULIA leave, leaving ANGEL looking forlorn and sad. It is clear that ANGEL has a crush on CASPIAN and would do anything for him.
Anyway, this is how it happened. I didn’t have much to do on set today, no crying or anything hard. Just Angel finding out that her cousin Caspian, who she’s in love with (who can blame her as Caspian is played by Justin. Whenever Justin talks to me I sort of have to stop breathing, so it’s lucky, when you think about it, that he hardly ever does talk to me.) and her father’s arch rival Harrison Archer’s daughter Julia are still seeing each other – despite being totally forbidden to do so by both of their parents. Also Caspian is trying to get Julia to have sex with him, but she’s not sure she wants to. She probably won’t in the end though because Kensington Heights in no way condones underage sex; we leave that sort of thing up to EastEnders. Or possibly she will say yes, but they’ll get found out and stopped in the nick of time. Probably by Angel. Angel’s main thing is finding out stuff and stopping it in the nick of time.
So I didn’t have much to do and I couldn’t go home because I had to do some reaction shots at the end of the day. That’s when you look just off-camera and have to pretend you’re reacting to a line another actor has said. Sometimes the actor’s not even there! Sometimes it’s just one of the runners or something, saying it all deadpan like they’re ordering a Big Mac and fries and you have to gasp or cry or something. I used to be terrible at reaction shots; I always wanted to laugh instead and then Liz, our producer, would say time is money, so I’d put a tear stick under my eyes and think about what it would be like if Everest ever died and usually it turned out all right in the end.