seen it at all (and things would have been so different if we hadn’t) except for Jeremy’s publicist, Michael White. I’d seen him around before on the set of The Lost Treasure of King Arthur, but I never really paid any attention to him because Jeremy seemed to think of him as more of a necessity than a boon and much preferred to deal with Lisa Wells, who was assistant director on the shoot. We were all in the main living area, with Mum parading up and down in various frocks, Jeremy reading through scripts and giving us his opinion every now and then, and me pretending that I was Tyra Banks on America’s Next Top Old Model when the doorbell chimed ‘God Save the Queen’. David went bananas, flying at the door like a four-legged spitfire.
Jeremy sighed when he realised it was Michael and he apologised to us as he got up and went to greet him. I noticed he let David nip at Michael’s ankles for quite a long time before calling the tiny dog off.
I watched them out of the corner of my eye while Mum tried to pick accessories for a bright pink silk dress that was her current favourite. Michael and Jeremy were talking as if they didn’t want anybody to hear what they were saying, their heads close together. Then Michael handed Jeremy a magazine and watched as he read it, rubbing his chin with his hand. Jeremy’s face grew red and he threw the magazine across the polished tiled floor so that it skidded to a stop by my mum’s feet.
“Ridiculous rag!” he bellowed. “This is outrageous. Janice isn’t a celebrity – she’s not putting herself in the spotlight! How dare they attack her?”
“Me?” Mum said with a puzzled smile. She put down the evening bag she had been carrying and picked up the magazine. Her eyes widened as she took in what she saw there.
“What is it, Mum?” I asked, but she Just stared at the magazine, her confusion turning into a look of horror.
Jeremy came and put his arm around her stiff shoulders. “Janice, I’m so sorry…”
“Perhaps,” Michael said, walking a few steps nearer, “they think that by dating you, Janice is putting herself in the public eye and making herself fair game.”
Frustrated, I took the magazine from Mum’s frozen fingers and read the column for myself.
“Look, Jeremy,” Michael went on, “as irritating and unkind as that is, what the studio and I are really worried about are those other comments. The press have already got it in for The Lost Treasure of King Arthur so this could be just the beginning. I think we need to schedule a meeting with them and Imogene’s people asap, start our publicity machine rolling and do some damage limitation.”
“Oh.” My mum finally spoke, her frozen expression suddenly thawing into tears. She sat down with a bump, her silk dress rustling around her. “Oh, I…I am sorry Jeremy,” she said. Her voice was small and she had two pink spots on her cheeks. “I’ve embarrassed you terribly.”
“But nothing they’ve written here is true, Mum!” I exclaimed as I finished reading. I wanted to hug her but I couldn’t unless I shoved Jeremy aside. “You are very fashionable,” I told her. “And you look great for your age and, OK, you’re not as beautiful as Carenza Slavchenkov, but you’re a normal mum not a supermodel!”
It was then my mum started to properly cry and I got the feeling I had made things worse. She turned her face into Jeremy’s shoulder and his arms enclosed her.
“What I meant to say was—” I tried again, but Michael spoke over me impatiently.
“Jeremy, we need to set up that meeting. We have to think about the movie.”
“And we will,” Jeremy said, his voice low as he held my mother. “But right now, Michael, you need to go.”
“I’ll call you,” Michael said, making a phone shape with his thumb and little finger and holding it to his ear.
“I have no doubt that you will,” Jeremy said heavily.
Mum was crying and Jeremy was hugging her and telling her he was so sorry that knowing him had put her in this position, and they seemed as if they were in their own separate world, a world I didn’t have a passport to. So I thought it was probably best if I just got out of the way for a while.
As I picked up the offending magazine and took it into the kitchen where Augusto was making sushi for lunch, I realised that David was scampering after me.
“Feeling left out too?” I asked the dog.
Of course he didn’t answer, but as his tiny nails clicked on the floor tiles I let myself think it was me he wanted to be with and not the scraps he might get in the kitchen. Because Just at that moment I needed a pal and even a rat dog was better than nothing.
“That’s pretty bad,” Augusto said when I showed him the magazine. “These journalists, they don’t think about anyone’s feelings. They don’t care as long as they’ve got something to write in their nasty little rags.”
“And it’s not fair,” I said. “Poor Mum, she’s really hurt. I know what it feels like to hear that people think you’re ugly. But she’s not. She’s just mum-looking, that’s all!”
“Which is a very beautiful way to look,” Augusto said.
“I tried to cheer her up, but I think I just made it worse,” I added miserably. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Just tell her that you love her,” Augusto said. “Telling someone that can never make them feel worse.”
“S’pose,” I said, looking towards the other room where Jeremy was probably doing exactly that. I wasn’t exactly jealous, but how could I tell Mum anything if she was always with him? I realised that I hadn’t spent any time on my own with her all holiday and, even more amazingly, I realised that I missed doing that. Even though usually it meant me doing the washing-up while she dried, or folding while she ironed, I liked talking things over with her. We hadn’t done that in ages.
“And that other stuff isn’t so good either,” Augusto said, wielding a large and very sharp knife as he thinly sliced some ginger. I wrinkled up my nose. I really didn’t like the idea of raw fish for lunch.
“What other stuff?” I asked him, eyeing some bright orange, globular fish roe suspiciously.
“About the movie, your movie! They are bad-mouthing the film before it even opens and that can’t be good.”
“What?” I said. I picked up the magazine and read the piece again.
“Oh,” I said heavily. I had been too busy being cross to notice it before. “But it can’t be that bad, can it? A couple of nasty comments in one magazine?”
Augusto raised an eyebrow. “If they want to, the press can sink a great film and make a success out of a real turkey.”
He offered me a salmony-Iooking thing and I backed away hastily. To my surprise David Jumped up on to my lap, digging his bony little feet into my thighs, and looked hard at Augusto as if to say he’d try anything I wouldn’t. Augusto threw him a scrap of fish which he caught deftly between his teeth and then waited hopefully for more. I stroked his bony back, which was not nearly as soft as Everest’s, but his warmth on my lap was still quite comforting.
“But why? Why would they want to do that?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Because their only concern is to sell magazines and if they were always lovely to everyone then nobody would buy any. It’s sad but true, Ruby. It’s the meanness and the cruelty that sells copies. The A-list actress who looks fat in a dress, the latest marriage to fail after only six months, the illustrious careers that tumble and fall over one ‘bad’ film.”
“But that wouldn’t happen to Jeremy,” I said. “He’s a British institution, even if he is my mum’s boyfriend. Or to Imogene Grant. Imogene is real star.”
“No, it wouldn’t happen to Jeremy,” Augusto agreed. “Or Miss Grant, but for other actors, younger actors, maybe who were just starting