Free Soap Star by Rowan Coleman Page A

anyone,” she said with a hint of menace, nodding at me as if I should be in on a secret that I had no idea about. I shook my head.
    “What? You mean give her concrete stilettos and sink her in the Thames?” I wondered if my voice would ever return to its normal pitch and if I would stop squeaking. On the other hand, if my career flopped I could get a job doing voiceovers on CBeebies.
    “No, silly,” Nydia said. “I mean we’ll bribe her to keep quiet.”
    I reached into my pocket and pulled out three pounds and eighty-nine pence. “What, with this? Because this is all I have left out of my allowance and it’s only Wednesday. I don’t think it’ll cut much sway with a millionaire’s daughter, do you?” Nydia looked at the coins languishing in my palm.
    “What about your trust fund?” she said.
    “No way, José,” I replied. “I can’t touch it. And anyway, Nydia, Anne-Marie would never—”
    “I know!” Nydia’s eyes lit up and I could see the worst had happened. She’d had one of her mad plans again, the kind you can’t get her to leave alone. The kind that always, always gets us into trouble. Only this time I had the feeling she was going to surpass herself.
    “You said your mum is feeling guilty, right? And your dad too. Well, we’ll find out what Anne-Marie wants, a video mobile or a Game Boy or something, and then get them to buy it for you and then we’ll give it to her. Easy.”
    I thought for a moment.
    “I don’t know…” I said. “They feel bad, I know, but…Oh, Nydia, this plan is ridiculous – it’s never going to work. Anne-Marie won’t help us, even for a flash mobile phone and, even if she would, my mum would never buyme one. You know what she’s like about me being normal! And anyway, it doesn’t seem very fair on Mum or Dad to rip them off like that.” Nydia took both my hands in hers.
    “Have they been fair on you?” I shook my head, the bleak reality of what was waiting for me at home surging back for a second. All these plans, all this excitement over Justin. It was mad and silly, but it was better, anything was better, than thinking about that. I boxed up all thoughts of home and shoved them to the back of my mind. “And besides,” Nydia continued, “it would only be a one-off, it’s not as if you’d do it every week. You deserve to get something out of all this, Ruby, don’t you?”
    I sort of nodded: the only thing I wanted was my family back the way it always had been, but I couldn’t have that so I’d just have to be tough, it was the only way to get through it. “And have you got a better idea?” Nydia asked pointedly. I shook my head. “And do you want to be able to kiss Justin so well he’ll be blown away at what might be your only ever chance?”
    My heart plummeted. But it was no good, I just couldn’t do it.
    “I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t get Mum and Dad to buy me something to give to Anne-Marie. Even if – even if I don’t like them much at the moment, I can’t do it. I’msorry, Nyds.” Nydia squeezed my wrist and thought for a second longer.
    “Yes, you can,” she said, excitedly. “And you don’t even need your mum and dad to do it. You’ve got the one thing that Anne-Marie really wants.” I looked confused.
    “What? A bra the size of a battleship?” I asked her.
    “No, silly. Fame. You’ve got it and she hates that. If you told her that you could maybe help her get a part on the show…”
    “But I can’t,” I protested. “I’m only just holding on to my own part.”
    Nydia shook her head quickly.
    “Yes, I know that, and you know that. But she doesn’t, does she? She’d go for it, I bet she would. She dyed her hair orange to try and get the lead in Annie. If she’d do that, she’d do anything.”
    I nodded. “Maybe…” I said. Maybe I was overtired and overwrought, but Nydia’s plan did have a mad kind of logic to it. And so what if it would mean lying to Anne-Marie? It’s not as if she’d ever