Hello,
Today’s blog post is all about marrying a Hollywood Star. A dream come true? Not necessarily, as our heroine finds out in this glamorous tale of what happens when you marry a superstar but try to keep your own identity.
Kelly is a pretty girl from a very ordinary family, with an extraordinary secret…she is dating one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Rufus George – the handsome, millionaire star of countless blockbuster films.
No one knows. And it’s great.
But then Rufus asks her to come and live with him, so she tells her flatmates and takes him to meet her parents and all hell breaks loose – it turns out that it’s very hard to live an ordinary life when you’re going out with a movie star.
Soon photographers are circling, unscrupulous journalists are hovering and ADORING WOMEN EVERYWHERE want to ruin her relationship with her Hollywood hunk as she tries to make her relationship work.
Can a normal girl stay normal when she is plunged headfirst into an abnormal world? Or will the backbiting, lies and media pressure drive her to distraction and drive them apart?
Below is an extract from the book.
It’s from Chapter 10, the scene when Kelly takes Rufus back to meet her parents for the first time:
We arrive at Mum and Dad’s house in something of a state, with Rufus
having nearly killed us en route. He didn’t mention that he was yet to drive on
the left for any period of time, having designated all previous long-distance
driving to Henry. Rufus said he was eager not to have Henry drive us on this
occasion for fear that it looked too ‘flash’. It seemed slightly ridiculous given
that Rufus is an international film star and one of the best–looking guys on the
planet. He’d look ‘flash’ lying in rags in the gutter, begging for food. Rufus is
the very personification of ‘flash’. He could no more avoid being flash than I
could avoid being female: that’s just what he is.
Still, I appreciated the gesture. I was glad he was worried about how he might
be perceived by my parents. I loved that he cared. Just a shame that he had to
demonstrate it by risking both our lives.
‘Mum and Dad, this is Rufus,’ I say when we arrive at the front door.
‘Oooo, hello,’ says Mum, patting her hair and fussing over her flowery apron.
She might not know her Rufuses from her Johnnys, but she knows a pretty face
when she sees one.
‘Nice to meet you, son,’ says Dad, patting him on the back in a manly fashion.
‘Do you want to shove that car of yours up onto the drive so it doesn’t get
bashed into? The cars come round at a hell of a pace.’
Mum and Dad live on a crescent and most of Dad’s life is spent fixating on
what’s going to become of the cars parked outside.
Rufus thanks Dad and heads off to ‘shove’ his Maserati GranCabrio onto the
drive while Dad stands there in his brown cardigan, directing him into the tiniest
space, with all the skill of a drunk. It is a scene which has disaster written all
over it.
‘Come inside, dear,’ says Mum. ‘We’ll leave the men to it.’
I look over at Dad waving his arms wildly as if to indicate acres of space,
while Rufus manoeuvres the £100k car slowly and cautiously into the three
inches available. The very last thing I want to do is to ‘leave the men to it’. It
seems to me that ‘the men’ are far from capable of being left to it.
Still, I follow Mum into our small, cluttered family home. The smell of
cooking leaks out from the kitchen. Mum is preparing a large Sunday roast and
it smells absolutely delicious. I walk into the kitchen to find eight of our
neighbours, all crammed up against the window and peering through it as my
boyfriend and father bond over car manoeuvring.
‘Oooo, Betty, he’s better looking in the flesh, isn’t he?’ says Margaret, the
lady who runs the coffee shop at our local church.
‘He is,’ says Betty with a leeriness to her voice. ‘Oh yes, he definitely is.’
‘Hi,’ I say, and watch as the ageing ladies jump back and pretend to be
admiring the petunias on the shelf by the window.
‘Lovely shade of purple, Jayne,’ says Betty. ‘Oh, Kelly, how nice to see you.’
The others mumble their greetings, comment on how well I look, and how
gorgeous my dress is. ‘Must have cost a fortune!’ declares Doreen. ‘But I guess
you can afford it.’
‘Lovely to see you all too,’ I reply. Then I walk into the sitting room and push
the cats off the sofa so I can sit down. Mum runs in behind me.
‘Sorry, love, I couldn’t stop them!’ she says. ‘Once I told them about Rupert,
they all wanted to come and see him.’
‘Rufus, Mum. His name’s Rufus.’
‘Rufus. Yes. Funny name. He seems nice though. I’ll throw this lot out when
he comes in, and I can get to know him a bit better. Pretty dress. It must have
cost a fortune.’
I often think that Mum and Dad’s generation are obsessed with how much
things cost. They mention the price of things all the time, and whether things
seem cheap, expensive or reasonably priced.
‘Rufus bought it for me,’ I reply.
As we sit side by side in the warm sitting room, enjoying the late morning
sunlight coming in through the patio windows at the back of the house, it
sounds as if a small commotion is developing in the hallway. We rush out to see
what’s going on to find that Rufus has come into the house and Mum’s friends
have all gone diving out of the kitchen to say hello to him, with the result that
he can’t get in.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that local boys have seen the
Maserati and are gathering outside to see whom it belongs to. One sight of
Tarzan and the crowds are growing. Rufus needs to get in to escape the throng
outside, but is prevented from doing so by the throng in the hallway. It would be
safe to say that nothing like this has ever happened in Leemarr Crescent before.
Mum pushes past me and moves herself onto the stairs that run just off the
hallway, next to the sitting–room door. She claps her hands loudly and everyone
falls silent. ‘You can all meet Rufus later,’ she says. ‘But right now I’d like him
to be able to get into our home, so would you mind leaving. There’ll be plenty
of time for autographs later.’
There is mumbling and moaning from inside the house, and grunting and
groaning from outside but, to be fair to the old dears, they do depart, and the
youngsters outside retreat to pore over the car.
‘Thanks,’ says Rufus to Mum, causing her to blush hysterically and giggle
like a ten–year–old.
Before long Mum and Dad are chatting away to Rufus as if they’d known him
all their lives. We sit in the kitchen to eat ‘because it’s cosier’ than their dining
room, and Mum has drawn the blinds, just in case there are a few people still
hanging around outside. ‘Now it’s really cosy!’ she exclaims as we sit in
half–darkness while the late September sun shines gaily outside.
‘More lamb?’ she asks Rufus.
‘No, I’m full. Thank you very much.’
‘Not dieting, are you?’ she enquires. Mum doesn’t think that men should be
on diets. She thinks it’s ‘unmanly’.
‘No, just very full now,’ he says.
‘Leave the boy alone,’ Dad interjects, protectively. I love the way he does
that; treating the multi–millionaire film icon as if he were a snotty–nosed
teenager. He calls him ‘boy’ constantly and talks about the financial instability
of Rufus’s ‘line of work’.
‘Must be tough for you,’ he says, on more than one occasion. Happily, Rufus
has the good grace to nod and smile in the semi–darkness, and fails to mention
that he earns enough to buy the country.
‘Why don’t we pull the blinds up, Jayne, there’ll be no one there now,’ says
Dad, as Mum lays huge bowls of apple pie and custard down before us. ‘It
would be nice to enjoy the natural light.’
‘Good idea,’ she says, pulling the cord. We all look up, and there, in front of
us, stand around 500 people, packed onto the lawns, peering right through the
window and cheering madly at the rising blind as if at a rock concert.
‘Rufus, Rufus, Rufus!’ they chant. ‘We want Rufus.’ Camera flashes explode
and people come running towards Mum’s little kitchen from all directions.
‘Jayne, let’s not have the blind up after all,’ says Dad, quickly and calmly.
‘It’s quite nice to eat without the sun bothering us.’
