Soap Star by Rowan Coleman Read Free Book Online

Dad shook his head and moved his hand from under mine.
    “No, darling, I mean I’ve got a new place – a little flat. It’s only five minutes round the corner, but I’m going to live there. I’m going to take some stuff and go and sleep theretonight and move out over the next few days. But, Ruby, you must understand – it’s not you I’m leaving, Ruby, it’s just the house…It’s just…” He looked at my mum, who had turned her face away from us, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him, and her skin looked like it had turned to hard, cold, grey rock. “It’s not you that I’m leaving. I’ll still be your dad, I’ll see you just as much, more even, and—”
    “No!” I screamed, and just then everything, all the fear and the worry and the knowing, welled right up inside me like a volcano and erupted out of me. I pushed back my chair so hard it fell over with a clatter and Everest shot out from under the table with a yowl and raced through the cat flap. “No!” I shouted again, slamming my hands down on the table top and making my palms sting. “No, Dad, it won’t be the same! How will it be the same, how can you even say that? How can you say that you’re going, tell me that you’ve known you were going for ages? You’ve just let me go around thinking I have a normal life, a life with proper parents, when all the time you’ve…
    “People’s mums and dads live together: that’s how it’s supposed to be, otherwise why did you ever get married? Why did you ever even have me? You’re supposed to live together – and as for you…” I looked at my mum and waited until she looked back at me. I felt so angry with her, just sitting there made out of rock, not doing anything.
    “Why are you letting him do this? Why don’t you do something? You could have been nicer to him, been kinder or something, been pleased when he got you flowers instead of going on about your hay fever. Or happy when he got you chocolates and not been cross because of your diet. Why are you letting him do this? Why are you driving him away?” Mum shook her head and looked like she was trying to say something, but her mouth just moved and no words came out. I could see her body was trembling, and her grey skin suddenly flared up with blotches of bright red and she began to cry. She held out her arms to me.
    “Oh, baby, sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do…I’m so sorry Ruby, I…” I wanted to go to her then and sit on her knee and hug her like I used to when I was a baby, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I had to make them see what they were doing.
    “No! You’re just giving up! Why are you giving up? There is something! There is always something! You, both of you, you don’t care! You don’t care about what happens to me, do you? You don’t even love me any more…you can’t if you’re going to do this !” And I ran out of the back door and into the garden. I found Everest hiding on the garden swing seat and I picked him up and hugged him so hard that he struggled for a bit and triedto get away. But then I think he felt my tears wet his fur and he stopped trying to get away, and he sort of snuggled close to me and rested his soft fat head on my shoulder and looked at me.
    “They don’t know what they’re doing, Everest,” I told him, between sobs. “They think they know but they don’t.” I cried and cried then, quietly, into Everest’s fur.
    It was a long time before Dad came out. The sun had gradually seeped from the sky, leaving traces of its light streaking the evening. When he opened the back door, a rectangle of yellow fell over the grass and I could see his silhouette, but not his face. I’d worked out what to say to him, I knew exactly what to say to make him stay. Dad always gave into me in the end because we were best friends. When Mum made up her mind about something, it stayed made up, but Dad was the sort of person you could talk to and reason with, and I’d always believed that he