Soap Star by Rowan Coleman Read Free Book Online Page A

loved me, that whatever he said about Mum, he’d never want to hurt me. So I knew exactly what to say to him.
    I waited for him to walk across the grass and sit down next to me on the swing. Everest opened one eye and looked at him. Dad put his arm around my shoulderand tried to hug me, but I held myself very stiff, so he just rested his hand on my shoulder.
    “Darling, I know this is hard for you,” he said, and he sounded like my dad again, not the stranger who’d been in the kitchen. “I know right now you can’t see how this is ever going to be OK, but one day, when you’re a bit older, you’ll understand…” I wanted to hug him, but I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and slid away from him.
    “A bit older? Why? Why doesn’t anything I think or feel matter now? Why doesn’t it, Dad?” He shook his head.
    “Of course it does, Ruby, of course it does matter. All I’m saying is right now you can’t see things the way your mum and I can…” Dad trailed off as if he had run out of words.
    My moment had come. I slid Everest off my lap and on to the cushioned seat of the swing and picked up Dad’s hand. This was my big scene; these were the lines I’d been rehearsing out here all this time as the sun went down.
    “Dad, please, I love you so much and I don’t want you to live in some poky little flat. I want you to live at home with me. Stay, Dad, please. If you love me, please, stay for me.” I’d been certain, I was sure, that if I asked him he would stay. He would hug me and sigh and say, “Of course, Ruby, of course I’ll stay because I do love you.”
    But he didn’t. He just shook his head and he said:
    “I’m really sorry, Ruby, but I can’t. I have to go.”

Chapter Seven
    “Well, on the bright side,” Nydia had said on the phone last night, “things can’t get any worse.”
    After Dad had said that he was going anyway, however I felt, he just got up and walked back to the house. A sort of numbness spread though me and I stayed outside in the garden, until the last bit of warmth of the day had finally gone, waiting to feel something again. Finally, I went to the kitchen door and looked inside. The kitchen was empty; I couldn’t see Mum or Dad so I went inside.
    I just wanted to go upstairs, get into bed, pull the duvet over my head and go to sleep and forget about everything. But Mum was in the living room and she heard me.
    “Ruby?” The tight voice she’d had earlier seemed to have snapped and disintegrated and I knew she’d been crying. I stood outside the door for a moment and I wished more than anything that I didn’t have to go in there and see her crying. But I went in.
    “Are you OK?” I said. I didn’t sound like I meant it or anything because I couldn’t seem to feel anything at all, just numbness like I’d been swimming in cold water for too long. And I think I even sounded a bit cold, maybe angry with her still. She sat up in the armchair and wiped the heel of her hand across her eyes.
    “Yes, darling, I’m OK. I feel sad, Ruby; hurt and angry and sad, but…I will be OK. We will be OK, I promise you.” She tried to smile and held out a hand to me, so I took it and sat on the arm of the chair, although at that moment all I wanted to do was run out of the room and upstairs and hide under the duvet. “What’s worrying me is you, Ruby. All this, everything that’s happened this evening, this isn’t how I thought it would be. Your dad and I thought we were protecting you by trying to sort things out before telling you. We thought if we all sat down and talked it through it would be easier for you. I can see now that it must have been a terrible shock. I – I suppose I thought you sort of already knew, that you were expecting it. We didn’t do a very good job and I’m sorry, Ruby, I really am. We were trying to think of you but we got it wrong.” Like everything else, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
    She put her arm around my waist and hugged me close to