She shouldn’t be star struck, she’d hung around with Gee for long enough but… Sprawled around the table, draped over chairs and talking over each other and the harried looking middle-aged men attempting to look trendy in skinny jeans was this year’s, hell this decade’s, biggest boyband. THE boyband…
Breach Of The Peace. Or BOTP as they were known by their fans, who pronounced it Bop.
Their success knocked Gee’s band, Status Single into a cocked hat. His one Brit and Teen Choice Award were dwarfed by the number of awards they’d collected in the past two years.
Bloody hell.
Emma’s hand shot out quickly to steady herself on the door then dropped. This was it. This was the big time.
Those Gantt charts in her life plan would be moving so much she might have to make new ones. If she did well here, she could jump any number of stages.
Gee wasn’t going to believe this.
Okay, professional face on. If she could deal with Gee on a daily basis and the Feckless Rogues every time they camped at the house while Gee remastered some tapes, then she could do this. Shoulders back. Head up.
These were her clients…
They were on every magazine cover, every gossip site. Their music was at the top of charts all over the world.
How had they snuck into the building without hordes of screaming teenage girls following them?
‘Ah, Emma…’ McKee said with a smug smile; he must have been watching the shock hit her. He waved her in from where she was currently hugging the wall.
She put her notebook on the part of the huge conference table nearest her and gripped the back of a chair. It was somewhere to put her hands, nothing to do with needing support.
‘I wanted to introduce you to Breach Of The Peace. Your new project.’
Everyone turned to look at her except two members of the band who sat at the far end of the table and were too engrossed in talking to each other.
‘Boys, this is Emma Woodhouse, she’ll be coordinating that special publicity we spoke about.’
‘Hey.’
‘Wotcha’
Those comments came from the two boys that were paying attention.
‘Ed! Will!’ One of the middle-aged men snapped a finger at them. Emma noted out of the corner of her eye that McKee had crossed his arms and was staring at them, his smile hardening.
The two blokes turned away from each other and looked at her. They looked as if they’d stepped directly from one of their posters, all boyband cool and yet they also looked like any normal teen boys, wishing to be somewhere else.
‘Hey,’ Ed drawled, his voice deep and sleepy. He blinked slowly. All curls and dimples. She tried to remember everything she knew about him, the memory of stories of him being a bit of a ladies’ man tickled the back of her mind.
‘Hi.’ Will’s voice was higher and lighter. His gaze was sharp, and she recoiled slightly. His chest puffed out, like a small terrier dog. She wondered whether he’d bite if she held her hand out to shake. She didn’t remember much about Will, he always seemed to be in the background, unlike today.
‘Hi.’ Emma smiled and nodded at them all, keeping her hands firmly on the chair. She didn’t want any kind of bites.
But this was going to be great with four of them to sort out, hopefully. Ideas and plans started to spark and roll out as she looked round.
It was a dream come true. Each one of them fit a different fan demographic. She got it now, why they were successful. Something for everyone – they’d been constructed to appeal to the greatest amount of people. A bouquet of ‘boys next door’ for anywhere you lived.
Whoever had done it deserved a medal. It was as if the prototype had been Status Single and they had perfected it for BOTP.
And yet, none of them were intimidatingly plastic and perfect, although… She looked at Amit whose eyes were inky pools of darkness and you could cut silk on those cheekbones plus the eyelashes… she pulled her thoughts away.
Okay, so some of them were objectively very good looking, but none quite reached the gloriousness of Gee. Admittedly she was biased, but he’d always been that bad boy and very masculine, while these boys, who were all over eighteen, were still boys. They were definitely not threatening to any parents anywhere. There wouldn’t be an outcry in Middle America because of them.
‘Emma, I’ll leave you here. Good luck, I’m expecting to hear good things about this.’ He smiled at her showing her his gappy front teeth. It made his words seem less intimidating, almost benevolent.
‘Thank you for the opportunity.’ She wished that hadn’t come out quite so breathlessly. That wasn’t the way to be professional.
McKee walked back through the door into the office and the room seemed to be suspended as they waited for it to close. As if the headmaster was leaving.
‘Thank you for the opportunity.’ A voice sneered as soon as the door shut. It was Will. She turned to him, frowning. He’d only just met her.
‘Oi, stop that. We’re going to get Emma up to speed, have a nice chat, Will. If that is something you can find yourself doing, yeah? Then we’ve got rehearsals.’ It was the same middle-aged man who’d snapped his fingers earlier, he seemed to be in charge.
Who was he? She looked questioningly at him.
‘Oh, I’m Simon Campbell, Si, I’d forgotten we haven’t met yet. I don’t work out of the office very often.’
Oh, so this was Si Campbell. He was Mega!’s biggest success story. The man who put the band together and now managed them. In the past two years, Emma had only seen the back of him as he whizzed through the offices. Rumour had it he had his own office at Maple Groove records, the band’s record label.
She had always thought it was a little odd. A bit incestuous having management and record label teams in the same office. A conflict of interest, surely?
He came around the table and shook her hand before she could think further. He was younger close up, less middle-aged. He was maybe mid-thirties but due to the extra weight around his stomach and his too tight, trendy clothes, he looked older. Probably not the effect he was going for.
The handshake was brief and too tight.
‘Okay, Emma, here’s the deal. We’ve got a presentation that can get you up to speed faster than telling you.’
Before she knew what was what she was pressed into the chair she’d been holding onto. Si took the back of it and swung it round to look at the TV screen at one end of the room.
She clasped the arms of the chair, trying not to slap Si’s hands away. This wasn’t on, no one pushed her around like this. She felt like she’d been overrun by a personality even bigger than her own. She was the one who made the plans and made people go her way.
It was a good thing that the presentation started right then, before she said something that would ruin this opportunity. She swallowed down any hasty words and sat on her hands.
After slide fifteen of the presentation, she started to frown.
Where were the other band members in it? Because it seemed to be photo after photo, video after video, of just two of the boys. Occasionally one of the others was in shot but the focus was on two of them.
Will Poulson and Ed Selley.
The two who were currently sat together, at the other end of the table from her.
And it seemed as though they were always together even in real life. Even on stage.
It was sweet, two boys who didn’t have a problem with affection. Almost like a puppy pile, she thought. In fact, as she looked at the group photos of the four, she saw they were all happy to invade each other’s space. There was no macho posturing.
If this was what the fans saw no wonder they had a great following, that easy intimacy made them real. They may have been put together as a business decision but they looked as if they were all best friends. As if they’d known each other forever.
The presentation finished on a photo of all four in an aforementioned puppy pile. Emma felt herself smile as she looked at it. It was just sweet enough, almost making your teeth ache but not quite. Why they needed her help she didn’t know.
‘And now you can see the problem we have,’ Si stated.
Problem? Emma wasn’t sure what he was on about. The boys had good, boy-next-door images. They were obviously close friends, even if they’d been constructed by management. With some closer than others.
‘Problem?’ She echoed.
Si actually rolled his eyes. She could feel the flush rise on her cheeks. She was good, but she wasn’t a mind reader. It wasn’t as if the boys were doing lines of coke off My Little Pony merchandise.
‘We go to the States next month for their next big tour there. The buzz is incredible and we need to keep it going, need to stop any rumours from starting up, and most importantly, we need to raise the boys profile. It’s always tricky in the US… Any whiff of something not…’ he paused. ‘… Standard, and they start returning tickets. We’ve decided that before any pesky fan driven rumours start, we’ll plant some of our own. And then follow it up with reality, that is where you come in.’
‘Rumours, then reality, okay,’ she repeated as her head tried to catch up.
‘Yes, something juicy and newsworthy.’ Si glared down the table at Will and Ed.
Will bumped his shoulder with Ed’s, his smile could only be described as smug.
Emma could feel Si almost vibrate with frustration, his nails almost gouging a line in the table.
‘As you know the best way to do that is to get girlfriends, and fast.’ He growled as if this was a conversation that had happened more than once before.
‘Look, he’s just annoyed that we all live in the same block of flats and don’t go out partying every night,’ Will called back, still smiling. She wondered how hard it was for him not to flip the finger at Si. Will slung an arm round Ed’s neck. Ed smiled and said nothing. She wasn’t sure whether Ed’s smile could be considered sweet or if he looked just as smug as Will.
It was obvious they were best friends, which was nice to see in the music business. And there was definitely an incredible amount of tension between Si and Will. If the band were really homebodies then they definitely needed to shake things up. A bit of partying and then they could quickly settle down into domestic bliss with a girlfriend. In fact, it was much easier when people actually wanted to settle down.
‘Can we just get on with it?’ Amit sounded bored.
‘All of you are getting girlfriends?’ Emma asked opening her notepad, holding a pen ready to take notes.
Damn it, her fingers were shaking. It must be the adrenaline and excitement. Running four high profile fauxmances was going to be tough, especially trying to make it all look organic, as if they had all fallen in love, because it would be weird for all of them to suddenly topple like dominos within the same month. That was the sort of thing that sparked fan conspiracy theories.
‘Sean here is good to go. He’ll be our single boy, so the fans think at least one of them is available,’ Si said as Sean waved lazily.
‘All the more girls for me,’ he laughed and rubbed his hands together in glee.
‘Not that much competition, mate.’ Ed rumbled from the other end of the table.
Si ignored him. ‘Amit needs one as well as them.’ The thumb he used to jab at Ed and Will, plus the viciousness of his voice, jolted Emma.
Okay…
‘So, if I could just get an idea of what you guys would look for in a girlfriend?’
There was silence, followed by a giggle from Sean. Will was staring at her like she was stupid.
‘No,’ said Si. ‘You don’t get it. This isn’t a dating show. This is about what sort of girl goes with their image. We’ve run the numbers and we’re not leaving anything to chance,’ he said as he passed over a thick printed handout. Bound.
Okay… She was used to managers being hands on with their clients plus all artists had images that went with their brand but this was… Wow.
She flicked through the document.
Impressive. Whoever did their analytics, she thought, was good.
She looked at the graphs, which showed exactly which demographic of the general public each boy was supposed to be attractive to. Who would be their key market. Then they’d split those groups of girls into what other things they liked, what brands they bought, what they watched. This was big business. It was all there in black and white. A marketing strategy in the making. Not bad for a band of boys who didn’t dance or play their own instruments. No wonder they weren’t leaving anything to chance.
‘But wouldn’t it be good if I got a chance to talk to the guys? Make it more organic?’
Statistics and data were great, it could get you so far, but what she did went beyond that. It was about the people. She wanted to understand what made them tick. She needed to choose a girl who at least had something in common with them. With Phil and Brooke, the thing that had broken the ice and made them be more than PR relationship had been a shared love of Sweet Factory, an over rated Eighties rock band, whose only big hit had been the nauseating Barley Sugar. She had only just about managed to talk them out of having that as their first dance. Sweet Factory might have been the truth, the grit in the oyster that grew the pearl, but no one needed to know, because it didn’t fit with the narrative. It didn’t make the final result any less real.
‘Nope, no talking with them. Not today, it would be a waste of everyone’s time. Everything you need is in the presentation and that book. I want you to have a presentation with a shortlist of likely candidates and how the narratives would work ready for the end of next week. We’ll be in then, you can talk to the boys while you coach them on what they need to know for the story.’ In one move, Si waved her away and clicked his fingers, summoning the boys to stand.
None of them moved straight away.
Amit raised his eyes to the ceiling as if he was so over it all and then rolled off his chair onto the floor, lying there for a moment as Sean laughed down at him. Next, Sean rolled off his chair to lay next to him on the floor.
How old were they, twelve?
Emma quickly checked their bios again. Nope, they were both twenty.
This could end up being a long-arse job.
It was worse than having Gee and Johnnie reliving their band days. Maybe there was something inherently childlike necessary for people to be in boybands?
‘Get up,’ Si hissed.
He didn’t seem to get a lot of respect from the guys, she thought, as she caught Will flipping Si the finger with his right hand.
His other hand was holding Ed’s as he pulled him from the chair.
‘Let’s go,’ Si barked. ‘Emma.’ He nodded at her and led the way out of the room.
Sean bounced up off the floor, came over, shook her hand and said, ‘See you next week.’
Amit lazily got up, waved a hand in her direction and winked.
She could only be thankful she had been exposed to the Gee Knightley experience, it had made her immune to the bad boys of boybands.
Ed and Will stopped in front of her.
Ed held out his hand and looked straight at her.
‘It was nice meeting you, Emma.’ His smile made her heart beat a little faster.
Damn it, maybe she wasn’t as immune as she thought.
But he was eight years younger than her. As she realised that, her heart beat normally again.
‘It was nice to meet you, Ed.’ She said shaking his hand.
She turned to Will who was looking at her appraisingly.
He didn’t offer her a handshake.
She was sure that Will could read every small part of her soul, all the lies she told, as if he had stripped off her masks.
It was a look she only usually saw from one other person. Gee.
She wouldn’t squirm, but she could feel her body itching to shiver.
‘Emma,’ he nodded. ‘Bring your A game next week.’ He said it like a challenge. As if she wasn’t up to it.
Why was her back straightening?
Will was small and slight, like Peter Pan, but he looked like he’d fight dirty.
The pair of them moved as one. She watched them walk out of the door before collapsing back into the chair.
She stared at the thick document before her.
Bloody hell.