Free Hollywood Star by Rowan Coleman Page B

magazines, Ah well some of us have got it and some of us haven’t…
    OK, OK, enough from Annie. I haue some news to tell you too. I’ve got a part in a new series for CBBC called Totally Busted. It’s a sort of a cross between a comedy sketch show and a hidden camera show where we prank other kids. It’s going to be really funny and it’s very exciting. Jade and Menakshi are SICK with jealousy!
    Anyway we want to know how many celebrities you have met? Looking forward to seeing you at home again soon for hot chocolate and girly gossip.
    Nyds and Anne-Marie
    PS Isn’t it weird that Danny had a Christmas number one? He even beat the girl from X Factor! We can only pray that it will never happen again, (joking)

Chapter Six
    I read Nydia and Anne-Marie’s e-mail and was about to click on ‘Reply’ to tell them my incredible news when something made me stop and think.
    After The Carl Vine Show I had been offered a really incredible opportunity, the kind that hardly ever happens to an average girl, even one who’s been in a famous British soap and had a film role. But I’d barely had time to think about what it would mean to me or my life yet. I didn’t want to tell anybody else until I had thought it through properly, no matter what everyone else wanted.
    I could still hardly believe what had happened. Mum, Jeremy and I had all come out of the studio with Julian and the others and were waiting for the car to pick us up and take us back to Jeremy’s. We were all on a high. The interview had gone really well, except for the bit where I nearly blew Sean’s cover and I had hoped that everybody would forget about that. Mum seemed happy and relaxed again and really pleasedwith me, and Jeremy spoke on the phone to some people at Wide Open Universe and told me they were very pleased with me too.
    Outside the celebrity entrance there were a few people waiting for autographs and Jeremy was signing, along with the man who had cried and Pete Peterson. I stood about for a bit, but nobody asked me for mine, which was fair enough because nobody knew who I was.
    “Hey, I like you,” Pete said, when he’d finished with his fans, pointing his finger and clicking his tongue at me. “You’re a funny kid.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “And you’re a funny man.”
    “Oh, you kill me,” Pete Peterson said, and then he climbed on to the back of a waiting motorbike and was gone.
    Then, as Mum and I waited for Jeremy to finish, David started barking at something. It was a photographer taking photos with a long-distance lens.
    “Paparazzi,” Mum said in a low voice, almost a growl. “I’m not ready to be in any more magazines just yet.”
    “He’ll be after Dane,” Julian told her. “He’s the hot ticket in town at the moment after his shocking fall from grace and his amazing ability to cry like a baby on national TV. Careers start and finish quickly in this town, but I think that was a record even for LA.”
    “Well, I think I’d rather wait inside until Jeremy is ready to leave, if you don’t mind,” Mum said, and so she, David and I went back into an area that was called “Stars’ Reception”. The walls of the room were lined with signed photos of celebrities who had been guests on the show. Considering that the show hadn’t been on air that long there were already a lot of photos.
    “Oh look, there’s Imogene!” I said, going to her picture. They might retouch and paint out the so-called faults of other stars, but not Imogene. I knew her face well and the photograph reflected it exactly, including the faint crinkles around her eyes when she smiled and the mole on her chin.
    Suddenly David started growling in my arms and I realised that there was someone standing behind me.
    “Now, she’s an old-style film star,” a voice said in my ear. I turned and looked around at a quite old man in a dark pinstriped suit with not very much grey hair and a rather large pair of black-rimmed spectacles.
    “It’s Ruby,