‘It isn’t working.’ Si shouted. ‘Why the fuck are Google searches for “Wed Pulley” still rising?’ He looked around the conference room waiting for someone to tell him.
Si had dragged them all to the meeting at Mega!’s offices on the Wednesday after Christmas. No one wanted to be there. Emma was happy that McKee had decided not to show. She looked down at the table, not needing to see the screen to show the stats that Si was raging about. Luckily Si’s temper was hot enough that her desire to smile was squashed.
‘These “fauxmances” were supposed to be about killing the rumours not making them more obvious. What the hell… We now have rumour upon rumour. They’re breeding like bloody rabbits!’ She looked up, wondering if she’d find Si frothing at the mouth, but instead he was scowling at her as if it was her fault.
Which it partly was but he didn’t need to know that. She looked back down to stare at the table.
The professional part of her wanted to say that if they’d stuck to her original plan it would’ve gone much better. But that still didn’t take into account the fact that whichever story he’d gone with they would’ve still been forcing the narratives on a set of boys who were determined to undermine it. At least this way she couldn’t get blamed.
She was only glad that none of the band were in the meeting.
‘So that means we’re going full on with the Freddie New Year kiss, yes?’ Dan looked positively gleeful. He was even rubbing his hands.
She rolled her eyes up and looked at the ceiling. The man had no finesse and no soul. He was the sort of person who thought if a man was photographed holding someone’s bag or carrying their coat they must be dating. It seemed all he cared about was the free trip to New York for New Year’s Eve that he was getting, he was fairly vibrating at the thought. Obviously knowing his new girlfriend would be off fauxmancing with someone else didn’t seem to bother him at all.
She was so tired. The easy truce that she and Gee had come to over Christmas had started to break. He seemed to be texting on his phone more than usual. She’d noticed it at the pub last night. Most of the people he spoke to were sitting round the table – her, Johnnie, Harry and Lewis. And yet, his phone screen lit up every few minutes. When he’d ducked out to take a call. She couldn’t help but smack her glass hard on the table.
She was glad that Lew had looked at her and kept his mouth shut. She didn’t need any more advice. At least not yet.
Emma stared across the conference table at Jamie. He was ignoring Si but it seemed for a different matter. He obviously had his phone in his lap and the colour fluctuated in his cheeks as he blushed and smiled down at it. Probably texts from Gee. Because that was what was happening. It wasn’t as if she were stupid, and Jamie deserved a nice bloke. But why hers? It hurt, she thought, rubbing her chest as if she could massage the heartache away.
Her phone lit up with a text. Gee, she thought excitedly, her hands reaching for it as she glanced over at Si, to make sure he hadn’t noticed. He was waving his hands round talking about how Ed was going to be in the middle of Times Square when he’d planted a juicy one on Frankie.
She looked at the screen.
Damn. It was Will. Making this text about the sixth he’d sent today already. He had overtaken Gee as the person most likely to contact her. Millions of BOTP fans would kill to have one text from him. They would be welcome to it. If only… She missed Gee that was all.
No, she had no reason to feel sorry for herself. Will contacting her was actually a good thing. Somehow, they had to undermine New Year in New York but the way Si was planning it, it felt like a military operation. But it only took a bit of propaganda and some guerrilla tactics to do damage. She knew all those battle strategies she’d studied would come in handy one day. She texted Will back and smiled. She only lacked a cigar to complete her Hannibal Smith impression.
***
‘Package for Emma Woodhouse,’ the bored sounding receptionist said over the phone. ‘You need to come sign for it.’ Emma stared at the handset of her phone for a brief moment after the receptionist had hung up.
Emma grabbed the lift and went downstairs to the lobby. New Year’s Eve in Mega! Management’s office was always weird. In fact, anywhere in London, the week between Christmas and New Year always had that slightly hungover feeling. Not an awful ‘can’t get out of bed I drank too much’ morning after, more as if you were taking a breather between blow outs, with your liver giving occasional twinges. There was just enough work that had to be done to keep things ticking over but mostly you could cruise. Or at least some people could, she thought, as the lift pinged and the doors opened up to the sight of a slightly listing Christmas tree.
She passed it yawning. She was tired, but she’d had as much sleep as she could before what was going to be an all-nighter. With Will stunting with Tina and Amit supposed to be papped with Jessie on UK time, and then Ed and Frankie’s shenanigans starting five hours later on the East Coast, it was going to be a busy start to the year.
Even busier than Mega! Management had planned for.
Signing for the large brown box sitting on the desk, she could feel her hand trembling. The receptionist who was a temp, stared blankly at her. Emma had spoken to her this morning when she’d come in, when the girl had been thrilled to be working in a building that BOTP visited. Obviously the ennui of the week was catching up. How thrilled would she be if she knew the box she’d just handed over was from Will Poulson, Emma thought, as she carried it back to the lift and jabbed the call button with her elbow.
She shoved the box under her desk. There was no way she was opening it until she knew she had the floor to herself and everyone had gone home.
She checked the time on her phone. It wasn’t going to be long.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind working tonight?’ Jamie said as he pulled his jacket on, looking guilty. ‘I know you and Gee usually see it in together…’ He flushed when he said Gee’s name.
Swallowing down the surge of jealousy that threatened to spill up out of her and become a sentient beast that would throttle him, it took a moment before she smiled back at him. God, she hoped that she was selling it. She might have promised Gee that there would be no more masks between them but that didn’t mean she was going to be showing her heartbreak to anyone.
This was her bed and she was going to have to learn to lie in it. By, well, lying.
God, it was hard to keep clean with the white lies that she was so used to telling. The lies that kept the world moving past the awkward moments, such as when you lied that you loved pineapple when someone put it in fruit salad even though it infected everything. So this was like that, a smile when your heart was breaking, so you wouldn’t let them know that it was infecting every part of you.
‘No, it’s okay,’ she lied. She could feel the sadness like it had a vice grip on her chest. She couldn’t look at Jamie as she carried on. ‘You enjoy the party. The Empress always puts on a great night, the gang will be there and they’re friendly. Gee will look after you, make sure you have a good time.’ Because that was the sort of person he was, she thought. She didn’t need to tell him, Jamie had obviously figured that out for himself.
Please don’t wax lyrical about how you want to kiss him at midnight, she thought, staring unseeingly at her monitor. She’d have to learn to cope with knowing they were together but not now, not tonight. Not when this was the night she was going to have to make some resolutions which included putting any idea that she and Gee would…
Nope. Not going there. She typed some gibberish into a text box.
Please go, she thought hard.
‘Okay, well, Happy New Year, Ems,’ Jamie said coming around the desk pod and hugging her from behind, using Gee’s nickname for her.
It was a kick in the gut.
‘Happy New Year.’ She hoped that was a smile her mouth was forming as she spoke or at least it looked like one, she wasn’t sure.
Waiting to hear the door click shut, she sat motionless, her shoulders ridged. With the click, she felt as if the stuffing had been pulled from her, and she draped over her desk. She’d rest for a moment before she kicked off a night no one would forget.
***
An hour later, she got up from her desk and did a quick circuit of the floor. It was empty, everyone was off to say goodbye to the old and usher in the new. Emma grabbed the box, juggling it with her laptop and her phone, plus their respective chargers. She staggered to the lift and with a bit of manoeuvring, pressed the up button. There shouldn’t be anyone on the executive floor and if she was stuck working New Year’s Eve then she deserved a luxury space in which to work. McKee was sunning himself with Tina’s father somewhere in the Caribbean. She knew this because Dan had been boasting that come the 2nd of January, he and Tina would be joining them.
The lift seemed to take longer than usual. Each time the display ticked over to the next level she crossed her fingers a little harder that it didn’t stop at any of the floors, that no one would ask her where she was going. Or, more importantly, what was in the box. By the time the doors slid open on the executive floor, her hand had a cramp and she wanted to drop everything. But she couldn’t, not yet.
She looked around quickly. No one around, it seemed deserted. She crept along the hall, the doors to the boardroom just there, almost within reach…
‘Hey, Emma.’ The voice came from behind her.
She squealed and with a bit of juggling managed to not drop anything.
Fuck, she thought, glancing over her shoulder.
Perrie was looking at her impassively.
‘Oh, hi!’ Emma said brightly, her mind scrambling. What the hell could she say to excuse what she was doing up here? And why she was holding a massive box?
‘Happy New Year?’ she said hopefully, playing for time. Maybe if she played it off as no big deal.
‘What’s happy about it?’ Perrie’s face went from impassive to pissed off. ‘You work your arse off and get promised a trip on a yacht to see in the new year. Then all of a sudden, just because his wife wants to go, you get ditched. I gave up a girls’ trip to Gran Canarias for him. Screw happy new year.’ She turned her back on Emma and headed for the lifts.
Oh.
Obviously, the rumours about Perrie and McKee were true. Not her business, but was it bad that she hoped Perrie would be angry enough that she wouldn’t let anyone know she’d seen Emma near the CEO office? Watching the other woman get in the lift, she decided that she’d just have to risk it. It wasn’t as if this whole plan wasn’t risky anyway.
Emma pushed the doors of the boardroom open. The lights came on automatically, but it didn’t detract from the nightscape of London that was laid out in front of her. The lights from a thousand buildings were shining back at her. She knew that in a few hours the sky would be lit with fireworks, but before that she had to set the stage for more fireworks in here. Enough so that when everyone woke up in the new year, hopefully there could be a new narrative.
***
‘Here we go.’ She spoke out loud to herself, breaking the silence. She checked the time on the laptop. It was ten-thirty and the first few photos of Will and Tina arriving at a party somewhere down in the streets below them were hitting the internet. The original party had been moved to a club, as Will had balked at holding a party at his and Ed’s flat without him there. There had also been some swearing about letting Tina over the threshold.
Is it ready to go? Will’s text came through suddenly as if he knew she was thinking of him.
Give me a moment, she texted back.
They were really going to do this. She looked at the tableau on the conference table in front of her. She’d created it out of two rainbow bears, a large fake red plastic apple, a willowy silver Brit award statue and a Barbie doll. All the parts except the Brit had come in the brown box. The Brit statue she’d snuck out of McKee’s office. Will had been bitching that McKee had taken one of theirs from when they’d won for Best British Single last year, so that was the one she’d picked
It seemed fitting.
The apple was balanced on top of the Barbie much like the house in the Wizard Oz had landed on the Wicked Witch. Will had even made sure the doll was dressed in striped tights. The larger rainbow bear was wearing a pair of ruby red slippers. The second one was dressed as Glinda the Good, waving a wand to get his friend home. The Brit award’s silver figurine could be mistaken for the Tin Man, a Leprechaun doll had straw sticking out from his clothing and there was stuffed lion dressed in a miniature version Amit’s signature hoodie.
She looked at the set of smiley faces that had accompanied them. She carefully placed evil smirking ones on the soles of the bears. It made them look as if they were planning something. Which, from what she could gather from Will, they were. She was merely along for the ride.
She took a few photos from different angles, making sure that only those in the know might realise these were from the Mega! offices. She sent them to Will.
She checked to make sure they didn’t save to her cloud account. The last thing she needed was someone hacking her and finding out she’d been taking photos of @bop_bear.
No plausible deniability there.
Brilliant! Will sent back with the thumbs up emoji.
Okay, now she had to clear up. The last thing she needed was to be found with a complicated tableau all set up in here, although the bears weren’t so big they wouldn’t be easy to hide. Quickly she grabbed all the toys and shoved them back into the box, willy-nilly. She took the award back into McKee’s office, maybe she could smuggle something out to give to Will as a memento. It wasn’t stealing so much as swapping. McKee kept the Brit and they got something in return.
There. It was perfect. McKee would probably think it was something that Perrie had taken or thrown out. McKee’s wedding photo was in a silver ornate frame on the shelves, tempting her. She took it down and replaced it with the Brit. He’d never know… And if it just happened to turn up in one of the bop bear tableaus… well, it didn’t point to anyone in particular, did it?
She wrapped it in one of the hand towels from his private bathroom and packed it in the box and sealed it up.
Now what? There were still another seven hours to go before it was midnight in New York. Maybe she’d stay up here and watch the fireworks?