Soap Star by Rowan Coleman Read Free Book Online Page B

her.
    “Mum, did you want Dad to go?” I asked hertentatively. “Was this your idea too?” She bit her lip hard and looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. Her mascara had spread out over her face and her cheeks.
    “No, darling,” she said. “I didn’t want him to go, but I also know I can’t stop him from going – not without hurting us all even more. I know that eventually this will be for the best and, your dad and I, we’re going to try very hard to make this OK for you. We didn’t get off to a good start, but we will make it work, I promise. We’re not going to fight over you; you can see him whenever you want – you can even…live with him if you want…” The way she said it made it clear that if I did, it would hurt her more than anything. Even if I had wanted to live with Dad I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Mum because I loved her. I understood that, even if Dad didn’t. I shook my head.
    “I don’t want to live with him,” I said. “I don’t want to live with you. I want to live with us, all together like always.” Mum sighed and her shoulders slumped. She looked exhausted.
    “It’s going to take a long time to get used to it, Ruby, but we will…” she said, rubbing her closed eyes with her fingertips.
    “But if it hadn’t been for Dad, you’d have kept on trying, wouldn’t you?” I asked her, thinking again of Dad’s refusal to stay, even for me. Mum thought for a moment.
    “Yes…” She hesitated. “I probably would have, but if your dad didn’t feel the same it wouldn’t work – it couldn’t. It’s no one’s fault. Ruby, you mustn’t blame—”
    “But it is him, it’s all down to him!” I interrupted with a flash of anger. “He doesn’t love us any more, Mum. It’s not that he needs space, or that he wants to be on his own, he just doesn’t want us. It’s not just you, it’s me too. This is all his fault.”
    Mum shook her head. “No, Rube, that’s not true—” she began, but I couldn’t listen to any more and I didn’t want her to stop me from feeling angry. If I was angry, I wasn’t hurt; I wasn’t lost and I wasn’t abandoned. Angry was much, much better. I stood up.
    “But it is, it is true,” I raised my voice and gestured towards the garden. “Because he told me it was, out there in the garden. So you needn’t worry. I don’t want to live with him, I don’t even want to see him or speak to him ever again.”
    And then at last I did run up the stairs, climb into bed, pull the duvet over my head and shut my eyes as tightly as I could, but I couldn’t stop the tears from squeezing out. After a while I just cried. I cried for a long time and thought about Mum downstairs crying somewhere too, and him out there probably laughing his head off, and I couldn’t believe that anything that had happened to metoday was real. How could it be real? How can a person’s life change so completely over a few short days? And worse still, it was nothing like Kensington Heights. There was no one there to rewrite the script, bring in a rich uncle or an identical twin and make sure it all turns out OK in the end.
    “Are you sure he’s not coming back?” Nydia said when I called her, still under the duvet.
    “I’m sure,” I said staunchly. “And I’m glad. I don’t want him to come back, ever.” Nydia thought for a moment.
    “Because maybe we could do something like in that film about the two twins who have to get their mum and dad back together again: I could think of a plan – hey, maybe we could get them trapped in a lift or something.” I smiled because Nydia was always so sure that her plans would work.
    “It’s a good idea, but it won’t work, not this time. It’s all right really. I mean, OK, so my career is over and I’m only thirteen, I come from a broken home and, oh yeah, I’ll never have a boyfriend because I’m the frumpiest girl in Britain, and I’ll probably get chucked out of theacademy and have to go to school without you, but