Rupert stood for everything Paige didn't, but Andre guided the conversation to music and it stayed on musical topics for the entire flight. Paige was surprised to learn that Rupert had been to a Bare Necessities concert three years previous with his ten-year-old niece. Paige posed for a selfie with him and signed some airline-branded paper with a message for Felicity.
What could have been a troublesome trip, passed without too much incident until they approached Swedish airspace
“Rupert, here's my office number,” Andre said as he passed his acquaintance a piece of the airline-branded paper. “I'm going to be there Monday afternoon and if you let me have your account details I'll wire the money over for the flight.”
“No need for that. Next time we're in the club, you owe me a bottle of Bollinger!”
“No, we'll pay our way,” Paige said firmly. “What was it? Sixteen, twenty grand for the flight, split eight ways.”
“Last year I got a seven figure bonus. A few thou for a flight with a music star is fine.” His eyes sparkled as Paige shuddered.
“We'll pay our way. I've always paid my way and I don't intend to stop now.”
“We'd be up a pooey creek without any paddles in the rollocks if we hadn't have got a lift,” Andre admitted. “But I need to pay a quarter of the bill.” Rupert looked at Paige crossing her arms menacingly and tapped the autograph.
“It's a measly five thou. I don't like dealing with such small figures.”
“Unless it's a measly five thou that is your bank's tax bill?” Paige enquired. “I don't charge for autographs, but if you insist on not taking our money then we will need to make the equivalent donation to a good cause.”
“Splendid idea,” Rupert replied. “Good compromise.”
“I fear the War on Want is a great cause. Or Shelter. Or perhaps even The Bash the Bankers pressure group. How about …”
“Paige!” Andre interrupted and smiled at his friend, who didn't return it. Their exchange was once again disturbed by a timely interruption from the stewardess.
“We are having to take a diversion,” she announced with a worried look. “Stockholm Bromma is closed because of a security alert.”
“What about the other Stockholm one?” Rupert asked and she nodded.
“Captain Rogers is checking, but it might not be Stockholm Arlanda either. We are in the hands of ATC.”
“What’s a TC?” Paige asked.
“Air Traffic Control,” Andre replied, and looked at his watch. “We gotta land somewhere in Sweden.
Chapter XCVI
Jack
Jack stopped pacing as he looked at his guests. “I've just spoken to Lucinda,” he announced to Claire and John as the entered their hotel suite. “Paige and Andre left ten minutes ago.”
“What does Paige say?”
“Paige is not answering her mobile. This is because she knows what I'll say or because she hasn't charged her phone. As her phone charger is still plugged in over there and not with her I'll guess either is possible.”
He waved his hands angrily and sat down on the chair. “How's Hazel?”
“Hazel is fine. She nearly wasn't but that's Paige for you.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as he took a few deep breaths; neither Claire nor John knew the full story which Lucinda had relayed to him.
“Ricky was hitting Hazel and she accidentally dialled Paige which is why she went off to London.”
“Yeah, you told us this last night.”
“I got Andre to meet her and told him to put her on the next flight to Sweden but he took her to Hazel's to put her mind at rest, I think. She got there and saw Ricky about to rape her sister. So she climbed up onto the balcony, broke in and smashed Ricky's face in.” He hid a smile unconvincingly. “Something like 30 bones broken. He had a figure cast of him naked. Made of bronze or something. So she took that, and with the element of surprise, battered him. They spent the night in Andre's flat and they are flying over now.”
“EuroSong say we need to be there by seven or they will disqualify us. The show starts at eight.”
“They land at two-thirty Swedish time. Plenty of time for them to get from Bromma to here.”
“Even so, they are seriously pissed off at us.”
“They've been seriously pissed off at us since we won the nomination,” Claire replied and walked over to the kettle. “Good on her, standing up for her sister. Tea?”
“Why she couldn't have phoned the police like normal people,” Jack muttered, and shook his head. “She's … a bloody pain at times.”
“Yeah, but she's our bloody pain! And a heroine.” Jack nodded and looked at Claire. “Coffee. Black. Strong. Two sugars.”
There was nothing they could do but wait for news. They had lunch and they checked the television, unsurprisingly finding that the assault on Ricky Nicholls was the lead item on the 24 hour news channel. Details were sketchy but there were rumours Paige was involved.
Jack read out the story from the BBC News page and Twitter; Paige was getting a lot of abuse from Ricky's fans as the story about Paige being behind the attack snowballed; perhaps she was jealous of Hazel, or perhaps she was mentally deranged. The idea that Ricky was attacking a defenceless woman and Paige was the hero never came to any of them.
Jack's phone rang at 3pm. It was Andre. “Where the fuck is Karlstad?”
“West Sweden,” came Andre's voice through the speaker. “I'm in the queue to get a hire car. I've just done the DVLA thing on my phone. But Google Maps reckon we are four hours away.”
“Shit!” Jack cried. “You gotta get here 'fore seven or else we'll be disqualified.”
“I'll try. Oh, and do us a favour. Tweet from the Bare Necessities account that Paige and Hazel are safe and well after being attacked by Ricky last night. Then say, Paige protected her sister and fought Ricky off. Finally say, Paige is looking forward to representing GB tonight. Got that?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because if I am being a chauffeur, I need someone else to do my job! I’ve got a media plan.”
Jack smiled. “You always have a media plan! Sure, I’ll do it.”
Chapter XCVII
Andre
“Are these road signs in miles per hour or kilometres per hour?” Paige asked.
“Definitely miles per hour,” Andre lied. “And I don't care if your waters go pop as this is a hire car.”
“What does Google say?” Andre glanced at his phone, running the mapping software and guiding them to Stockholm.
“Follow the E18 from Karlstad to somewhere then the E20 to Stockholm,” he replied. “It says we should arrive at 19:02. But I am sure we can improve on that.” His foot pressed the accelerator and the car's needle edged towards 100mph; the tree-lined grass verges flew past the window on the motorway. “According to Google Maps there is a lake over there.”
Paige saw nothing but the pine trees as Andre overtook a long lorry convoy. As Google Maps predicted an earlier arrival he began to ease off the speed, dropping to an excessive but more excusable 75-80mph.
They stopped for a sandwich and more petrol in Orebro and enjoyed some amazing views of the scenic country as they ate a petrol station picnic in the car.
They charged Andre's phone from the car USB socket and phoned Jack at regular intervals; the concern in his voice rose as they got closer to the anointed time.
As the clock tripped past 18:30 they approached Stockholm. “Get ready to jump out,” Andre warned.
“Yeah sure.” She pursed her lips together. “And Andre, thanks.”
“For being your chauffeur, no problem.”
“No. I mean, for everything. For last night and today.”
“That's my job,” he countered, and before Paige could reply, he touched his phone. “You better listen to this. It's your song. You'll be singing it in a couple of hours.”
“Andre, I've practised it thousands of times. It's all I've bloody sung since January.”
“Then once
more won't hurt,” he said firmly. She humoured him, listening to their three-minute song in silence and then he rang Jack.
“We're ten minutes away, maybe fifteen,” he said. “Tell the organisers to tell security to let a black Audi A3 hire car through. We'll go to the front gate as I don't know where the back entrance is.”
“Bet they've closed the street off,” Jack replied through the speakers.
“Just do what you can,” Andre said, and Paige’s boyfriend ended the call. “You know you need to win now.”
“What?” Paige exclaimed
“You need to win. If you don’t win, they’ll say it is because you flew to London. Before, you need to give a good performance and be towards the top of the leaderboard. Now, you need to win.”
“But Andre, we won’t win. Even Jack, who is a simple optimist at times thinks we won’t win. We’ve pissed off EuroSong way too much. Even if I give the performance of my life, it’s still gonna be a nul points. I abandoned EuroSong on the day and they are not going to take that lyin’ down.”
“I’m just sayin’. I think you need to win or else the story will be dominated by your decision to fly back.”
“Well fuck ‘em. Hazel’s more important than journalists. I’d do the same again.”
Whatever Jack did or said to the organisers made a difference as they approached the security cordon, the yellow-jacked guard checked the occupants in the car, verified it was Paige and Andre and then waved them into a special car park.
Paige whimpered, barely able to keep her breath, as she was hurried through the corridors, just in time for the clock in the main hall to strike seven. She was presented to “make-up”; they had just an hour to get ready.
Chapter XCVIII
Paige
“Save me the lecture,” Paige said, the moment she saw Jack in the doorway. “I know what you are going to say.”
“Keep still,” the lady cried, dabbing expensive cosmetics onto Paige's face. “And don't speak.”
Jack sat on the chair next to her. “Excellent. I love it when she can't speak. Maybe she'll listen.” He picked up his girlfriend's hand and squeezed it tight. “This is exactly the sort of behaviour that makes me cross, makes me frustrated and … I don't know … exasperated. There are hundreds of people we could have called in London to go and see what was going on, and would have done what we asked. Hundreds. And you have to fly 2000 miles to go do it yourself on the eve of the biggest night we've ever had.”
Paige went to speak but Jack shushed her. “No chatting, listen. Illogical, unpredictable, and a million other things. Uncontrollable. But when I said there were hundreds of people who could have visited Hazel, I can't think of any that would have broken 30 of his bones after breaking in to their flat. None. Not a single one would have used the bust he had made of himself to batter him with. And then get away with it all! And it's the character traits of being illogical, unpredictable, uncontrollable that makes me frustrated and cross and exasperated. But they are also the traits that makes me want to make Paige Simmons, Paige Rees-Montague.”
She smiled at him and he leant over to kiss her on the lips, pushing the BBC make-up lady aside. She squealed in annoyance and shouted at him, but he ignored her, looking into his partner's eyes as they broke and he got up from his chair. “Sorry,” he muttered without meaning it.
“Love you,” Paige called as he left, and the beautician assessed the damage Jack had done to her handiwork.
Paige joined her co-stars backstage wearing just a long white T-Shirt as the hall counted down from 60 to 1, when the show started.
“Nervous?” Claire whispered but Paige shook her head. They waited patiently in the wings of the stage as the EuroSong music reverberated around the hall and two bubbly hosts came on stage, speaking in English and then French.
Their attempted chemistry was as fraudulent as Monopoly money with lashings of sickly sweet false bonhomie. It was cringe-worthy and cheesy, and Paige joked that they had not improved since the rehearsals.
“Well they couldn't have got any worse,” Jack added as they announced the United Kingdom and played their video section. The trio hurried onto the stage as the translucent screen was quickly erected around them; it was pitch black inside the tarpaulin box, and Paige threw her T-Shirt onto the floor. Claire and Jack did the same behind her.
The vignette finished, and the audience rose to a deafening applause as the bright lights of the back wall put them as silhouettes to the audience through the fabric.
Claire, already holding her black guitar, looked at her two bandmates, and started their song with a powerful, complicated riff that was second nature to their guitarist.
As Paige had said to Andre, this song was all they had sung for three months. She closed her eyes and felt the breeze coming from the arena and waited for her cue to start singing; the tale of failure and rising to success. Each verse was punctuated not by a chorus but by a short guitar solo that drove the song into a fast beat.
Paige's motions behind the screen were exaggerated; they had to be, to provide a visual element to their performance and she took the microphone from its stand in front of the canvas and moved. She strode and pranced around the stage as she sang, performing to the crowd that could not properly see her.
She wanted eye contact; she could see lights on the other side of the screen and some fluttering dark splodges of colour, but nothing that could focus on. Perhaps flags were being waved in front of an illuminated fire exit sign, or perhaps the lights were cameras; she couldn't tell.
Paige had made her name – and that of the band – by their live performances and connection she forged with the audience. She was unable to do that behind a screen. She was unable to do that if was being treated like she was ordering tickets or talking to a prisoner; the wall disconnected them from their audience.
But Paige had spotted that, in the twenty seconds to erect dozens of feet of tarpaulin, the men had not fastened the canvas to the top of the beam. The side panels were fastened with clamps and hooks, but the main panel was not: it was attached by two clamps and it sagged slightly in the middle at the top of the screen. They had not followed the BBC’s directions; they had ignored the instructions they had been given.
She smiled inside; as they reached the end of their final verse, put her microphone onto the stand and pushed her hands forward to press against the canvas.
It should have held; it should have gone tort, but the weight of the canvas, combined with Paige's foot on the base of the tarpaulin and her hands pressing on the fabric, caused it to slip from the clamps and tumble in front of her, covering the press pack and exposing the final few notes of their song, and Claire's final riff to the audience.
The crowd's appreciation trebled instantly; to everyone it looked like it was part of the show, but it was far from planned.
Paige finished with a bow, a smile and skipped off stage, as they got a standing ovation.
Chapter XCIX
Claire
“What happened?” Claire asked as they left the stage and headed for the Green Room.
Paige shrugged with a dirty smile; Claire understood instantly. “How about Wallpaper Malfunction?”
“I like it. Perhaps we could call it an up-to-date homage to Bucks Fizz,” Claire joked.
A producer passed them some T-Shirts as they entered the Green Room; in the commotion they had left their own garments on the stage. Paige idly slung the white garment over her head, letting it drop to her thighs. Cameras trained on the UK delegation, walking towards their couch in the vast room to wide applause. Paige nodded and bowed appreciatively, lapping up the attention. The Swedish band clapped loudly and all eyes turned to the next act on stage.
Barely two minutes had gone past when the band and John were summoned to a side room; John looked worried and a EuroSong producer rapped his knuckles on the desk. A TV screen showed the unbroadcast footage of them behind screen during their performance.
The man, with pitted skin and
yellowing fingernails, gestured towards Paige. “You brought the screen down!” He cried. “You know the rules, we will disqualify Britain.”
“The United Kingdom hasn't been disqualified since the tournament began,” John replied and looked at Paige. “What happened?”
“I did what we did in rehearsals,” she said, gulping. Her eyes closed as she felt her heart race and she rubbed her eyes. “I put my arms out in an embrace to show the crowd love. It touched the screen and then it slipped forward, sliding off my hand and onto the people below. And that's it. I don’t think you fastened it.”
“That cannot 'appen,” he said and gestured to the screen.
John focused on the top of the tarpaulin and cried out. “It wasn't fastened. Look at that, the hooks aren't through the eyelets.” He squinted at the only two hooks in focus from the camera and turned to face the EuroSong official. “The directions from the BBC were clear. The screen was to be fastened by eyelets and hooks; the clamps were merely to hold it in position while your guy in the gods ran 'round to slot them in. You signed off on this as acceptable presentation and that you could follow the clear directions the BBC gave.”
The man paused the playing video and focussed on the television screen on the wall, cursing under his breath. “Your representatives still brought the screen down.”
“Let’s see the feed from when your men were setting up our stage. As how could Paige or anyone else have known that you hadn't done your job properly.” He turned to face Paige and looked at her. “Did you see the canvas sheeting wasn't put up properly?”
“Of course not!” She lied with an indignant voice. “How could I?”
“Indeed. And your incompetence here has interrupted our performance and has caused the United Kingdom embarrassment.”
“More than your representatives did?” He mumbled and shook his head. “The board will want to see you,” he said to John, and then waved away the trio.
Bare Necessities 2 (The Bare Necessities) Page 38
