is the hardest thing for me to get used to, but Mum and Dad seem to have moved on so fast that I almost feel I have to run to catch up with them. Sometimes I wonder if they are actually running away from the past instead of running towards the future. But I haven’t said anything to either of them because they both seem quite happy now, especially Mum.
In the middle of Dad leaving home I had my first proper storyline in top telly soap opera Kensington Heights, my first fake kiss from co-star Justin de Souza and my first real kiss from Danny Harvey, who is now my boyfriend. And then I left Kensington Heights to “find myself”, and found myself with a part in the Hollywood movie The Lost Treasure of King Arthur, directed by Art Dubrovnik and starring double Oscar winner Imogene Grant and leading British actor Jeremy Fort. I made friends with teen heart-throb and movie mega star Sean Rivers, rescued him from his evil father and helped reunite him with his long lost mum. Now he lives with her in London and goes to my school, Sylvia Lighthouse’s Academy for the Performing Arts. And on top of that, my best friend Nydia collapsed and hit her head very hard because she’d decided to stop eating to try and lose weight quickly.
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