It was perfect.
The silence that Frankie had wanted as she walked into the room was hers, that change in energy. But it wasn’t a positive one. And then it was broken as Ed let out a honking laugh which he tried to smother in Will’s back. Sean and Amit started giggling. Will grinned and reached up a hand to high-five Gee who ignored it for the moment and merely raised an eyebrow. Emma could see the back of Frankie’s neck go red.
It was funny, but she didn’t want to laugh. This wasn’t good. Frankie wasn’t a good enemy to have. This would end badly, because if Frankie was the sort of person Emma thought she was…
‘No, I wouldn’t want to take you away from your new job as a babysitter.’ It wasn’t the best comeback for Frankie but it was a small slap down. Well, at least Frankie wasn’t going to try and sleep with Gee so there were some positives.
She saw him narrow his eyes and taking the belated high-five from Will.
Crap, she knew that look. He was about to decimate Frankie. In other circumstances, she’d be right behind him egging him on. But this was her job. And Frankie was an integral part of the narrative she was rolling out. Their whole strategy depended on this going well. And her personal goals didn’t include getting fired because Gee and Frankie had got into a pissing contest.
‘Gee, why don’t you come with me to get a drink?’ she said as she walked over.
‘Wait Emma, before you drag him off, let’s get a photo with him.’ And before she could stop them the BOTP boys pulled Gee into a selfie with them. Sean holding the phone up above them, everyone crouching down to be in it with Gee in the centre.
‘Let me see,’ she asked Sean when he’d taken it. He handed over his phone.
This could be perfect, she thought. They were all grinning hard, Gee amused but with a hint of bemusement. And there in the background, it was very obviously Frankie. Luckily, she was actually smiling. Maybe she had a sixth sense when it came to cameras being round her and could slip the mask on.
Oh yes, this was the best way to let it be known that she’d been with them. It was almost organic. As if Frankie really was Ed’s new girlfriend. Social media was going to go mad.
For the first time in weeks, it felt as if she wasn’t pushing a stone uphill. From now on would things would only get better.
‘That is wonderful, can you send it to me, and I’ll post it to your Instagram account with all the correct hashtags,’ she said as she grabbed her phone, logging out of her own accounts and logging into Sean’s. She sat on one of the folding chairs around the outside of the room.
‘Always working,’ Gee said as he walked past her to the table that was covered with coolers of ice full of cans of soft drinks and beer.
Tess waved frantically at her and motioned that Frankie was going and made the universal signal of ‘I’ll call you’.
Crap. If only she could run Ed and Frankie’s relationship completely from social media. It was always much easier when she or Jamie or one of the team could pretend to be their clients. She could spin stories and could have them on verge of being engaged in weeks. All with them only having met once.
But no, they had to have photos which meant Ed still had to do the pap walk to the pumpkin patch tomorrow. Please don’t let Frankie take it out on him, she thought.
‘It doesn’t look like everything is shiny and happy in your version of Love Island, does it?’ Gee came to sit next to her, as she uploaded the selfie.
‘A few teething problems, nothing I can’t handle.’ She said as she hashtagged the post to within an inch of its life. She added Gee’s Instagram account; if he was going to poke fun at her job then she was going to make him pay… but he always said he didn’t want to be famous, didn’t he? She sighed and went to delete his username.
‘Looks to me like it’s dead in the water. But on the positive side just think of the time you’ll save not having to make up fake wedding speeches.’ Gee said before he raised the bottle in a salute to her.
Emma sighed. She had wanted at least one of these PR relationships to work, maybe get as far as renewing the contract. On paper Frankie and Ed had been perfect. Of course, that was before she realised that Frankie’s team were very good at hiding her very problematic attitude.
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
She published the photo without deleting anything. Sometimes people needed to learn when to be quiet, she thought.
‘I don’t think whoever you choose for any of them would work,’ Gee said as he looked at the boys.
She followed his gaze, what did he mean no one would work? What was it that he saw differently from her?
It didn’t look any different than it usually did. Will was the central person that they all revolved round. Ed was standing as close as he could get to Will, one part of their bodies touching at all times. Amit slouching with an elbow on Will’s other shoulder, leaning over to whisper to him. Sean was spinning around them, grinning wildly. To her they looked like overgrown puppies with too much energy. Innocent, even. And it seemed none of them had gone down the groupie and drugs route. Yet.
‘Well, Ed usually goes for older women,’ she said logging out of Sean’s account and logging into the others’ in turn so she could make sure all the band liked it.
‘You really don’t see it?’ Gee said.
‘See what?’ She asked. ‘Oh, you might see a spike in your Instagram followers after this.’ She finished liking the photo on all the accounts and logged into her own account.
Gee threw his arm around her shoulder and pressed a kiss to her head.
‘Ah, my clueless Ems, what would I do without you?’ he teased.
‘Be very bored,’ she replied. And she wasn’t clueless, he was just cynical.
***
The papped Pumpkin Patch date could’ve been worse. It also could’ve been better but Emma would take what she could get.
‘Fuck me,’ Ed said in bewilderment as they arrived at the parking lot, part of which had been converted into a kitschy straw-covered pumpkin paradise. There were giant plastic pumpkin statues everywhere. She couldn’t disagree. It was as if a demented Jack Skellington had gone all out. She looked at the prices – who paid eighty bucks for a pumpkin? She dug out her purse, and dragged out a pile of bills that she had for expenses. She handed it over.
‘Buy her a pumpkin, they also seem to have some champagne and waffle thing going on. But remember, you are still underage here, so stick to soft drinks.’
‘Bloody stupid country. I’m having a massive drink when I’m back,’ he muttered.
You and me both, she thought. Gee was still in bed, Lew and Harry having let him stay at theirs. They’d probably soon be having a lazy lunch together at Soho House where no one would bother them.
‘Also, as it seems I’m doing this, I do not want her mauling me,’ he said definitely.
‘I’m sure she won’t,’ Emma lied. It seemed that that was something she hadn’t been told about Frankie. She liked to seduce her fauxmances. It was amazing what suddenly came out about someone you were doing business with once you couldn’t back out of the deal.
Dan had let it slip on a conference call that it was very well known in Psyco Records.
It was a good thing he was still in London, because this was the sort of information that you shared in a team. As it was Emma felt like a pimp.
She opened the door and all but pushed him out. Ed turned to look at her as if she was sending him off to his execution.
The back door of a black limo opened next to them. First one long black skinny jean clad leg emerged with a high heeled boot at the end of it, and then the rest of Frankie appeared from the car.
Emma wondered if she could give herself a prize for guessing that Frankie had a collection of themed knitwear she wanted to show off. She was wearing a large orange knit shirt with a jack o’lantern face knitted into it in black with a heart shape for a nose.
She was glad she’d said no to a pumpkin latte when Ed had suggested it on their drive. This was too much orange for even a Dutch person. She watched as Frankie gripped Ed’s hand and dragged him off to Pumpkin Paradise. They were staying for as long as the paps got the photos from where they were stationed across the street and also for any fans to start sharing them. She sat in the car and logged into social media. How long would it take for the visit to hit the channels? She wasn’t sure how long Ed was going to survive out there on his own. Maybe she could suggest that someone from the team was also around? So that he was never on his own with her, to make him less anxious. Something like the comfort goat they sometimes put with twitchy racehorses.
Fifteen minutes later the first fan picture hit Twitter. Frankie smiling, with her arm round a fan. Ed standing beside them looking blank. Well, at least he’d stopped looking terrified.
Emma watched, chewing on her thumbnail as the #Fred and #Freddie mentions rose across Twitter and Instagram. Okay, so what did it matter if Ed was a little uncomfortable, this was golden publicity.
After another five minutes, she realised that interspersed with the #Freddie hashtag was the mention of bears again. The rainbow bears.
Okay, so this was going to be a thing, she thought. Excellent, it was a good way to eke out the story between stunts, whoever was running it was helping her out. People would be making the connection between the pumpkin tableau last night and today’s trip round Orange Wonderland. Good. It would show the fans that Frankie was a serious relationship, that this was here to stay. Smiling, she took her thumb out of her mouth and clicked onto one of the fan accounts.
@wedisreal: This shows that #Freddie is fake. Wed Lives! #rainbowbears @bop_bear
The retweets and replies on this, some of which were vitriolic, were growing exponentially. What the hell was on this account that made everyone think Freddie was through? She clicked through to @bop_bear
‘Bugger.’
It was the first coherent thing she could think, let alone say. She stared down at the photo, the first ever tweet from the account.
The two rainbow bears were posed in a mini pumpkin patch, not dissimilar to the one she was sitting next to. They were both now sporting very thick and frowning eyebrows, not unlike Gee’s she thought, absently. A pumpkin sat between them which someone had carved to look like the puke face emoji. Its eyes were squinting and it even had the inside of the pumpkin spilling out of it, a sea of seeds.
Nothing was inherently wrong with that.
The problem was the Barbie doll that was stuck head first into the mouth of it. As if it were drowning in the pumpkin vomit or was what had gagged the pumpkin into vomiting. Oh, and the doll was wearing a knitted fox sweater, which looked remarkably like the one Frankie had been wearing during ‘the kiss’.
Okay, so this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. This whole photo was in direct opposition to her job. The whole narrative she’d created with Freddie was undermined in a single photo and communicated to the world by a tweet.
It didn’t matter that the photo was only gaining traction in the fandom. This was the sort of conspiracy theory that could cause no end of issues down the road. Here was something that fans could point and show it was all fake.
Who the hell was doing this? It had to be someone close to the boys, someone who was part of the crew, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to attach the bears to the stage.
She shook her head. She’d have to think about it later. See if anyone had any idea what was going on.
There was a sudden frantic banging on the side of the van. Ed’s face was pressed to the window and flushed as if he’d sprinted back. She opened the door and he threw himself in as if they’d been part of a heist.
‘Drive. Drive. Drive,’ he said breathlessly, waving with one hand as he tried to buckle his seatbelt with the other. He was also ducking his head to hide his face from anyone who could see.
‘Chill, Ed. The windows are tinted,’ Paul said from the front seat, as he quietly put the van in drive and slowly pulled away.
‘Just get me out of here as fast as possible. She squeezed my bottom, Emma. How is that in the contract?’ Ed sounded affronted and not a little scared.
Between Frankie and the bears, which sounded like a group from the Seventies, Emma realised that she was still pushing that large stone up the hill.
***
The hotel bar was residents and their guests only. This meant the band and team could hang out in a dark corner without being bothered. It would’ve been nice to have been out by the pool but the large alcoholic drink in front of Ed meant that was out. It had been purchased through a good bit of finagling by Paul plus a large tip and a promise of an autograph to the bartender. She said she’d keep the drinks coming if Gee threw his autograph in there too.
Ed sucked down the drink as if it were water after a long time in the desert.
‘She was horrible,’ he said once the alcohol had relaxed him enough. ‘She wouldn’t stop grabbing at me. And her hands were so cold. Like dead fish.’
He took another drink, as if that would wash away the aftereffects of it all.
‘Well, you don’t have to see her till Christmas, do you?’ Will said, putting his arm round Ed and hugging him.
Emma didn’t think it was the time to say there was a likely second date planned for when they were in New York next month. No point in upsetting things if she didn’t need to.
Gee sat next to her in silence. She didn’t think it was possible for someone to drink a beer contemptuously but he seemed to be managing it well. The only reason he wasn’t saying anything was because everyone was there and much as Gee might like to tell her his thoughts, he usually did it in private.
Thank goodness, they were leaving at the weekend, she thought. Although she was worried that she was leaving without working out who was behind those damn bears.
She took a drink of wine and let the conversation go on around her. She watched Will whisper in Ed’s ear to make him laugh, his hand hanging over Ed’s shoulder. The door to the bar opened, letting bright sunshine in. A shaft of it hit Will’s orange hand.
Why was Will’s hand orange? It wasn’t fake tan. They had all sworn off that ever since a disaster on an awards show when they looked like they’d been dipped in creosote.
But his hand was definitely orange, a pumpkin kind of orange.
He couldn’t be… could he? The thought of how Will had given in so easily on Sunday. How they all seemed to be going along at least in theory with their narratives.
She looked up and saw Will staring at her, was that a smirk on his face?
He lifted his hand off Ed’s shoulder and using a bar mat started picking at the nails on his hand.
‘It’s amazing how hard it is to get pumpkin out from under your nails, don’t you think Emma?’ he said, before putting down the mat and picking up his drink. ‘Cheers,’ he said saluting her before taking a drink.
Holy… was Will behind the rainbow bears? Was he @bop_bear?