Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (100 page)

Virginie and I crawled to the edge of the stage and peered over to see Solène slapping away the helping hands that tried to pull her upright. I waved down at her with a cheesy smile, able to laugh now I knew she hadn’t accidentally broken her neck. Which probably would have been a bit harsh. She pushed through the popping flashbulbs and out of the photo pit, vanishing into the crowd, who cheered as she went by.

I shook my head, gingerly rubbing my cheek. I couldn’t believe she’d actually gone for an all-out punch. And I couldn’t believe that Virginie had KO’d her off the stage.

‘Thanks for that,’ I said, pushing my cheekbone in as I spoke.

‘I am not normally violent,’ Virginie blushed, ‘but I feel better.’

‘You don’t need to explain to me. I completely understand that sometimes, you just need to slap someone. Or hit them with a shoe. Sorry about that again, by the way.’

‘You did not hit me with a shoe?’ she said, confused.

I turned to look at the side of the stage where Graham was still standing, openmouthed and staring at the chaos. Craig was beside him, but looking far less concerned, in that he was making rock signs at me while drinking a beer.

‘No Alex?’ I mouthed, not knowing whether or not the mics were still turned on. Graham shook his head and shrugged, pointing at his watch. The band should have gone onstage five minutes ago.

Without the impromptu entertainment to keep then occupied, the crowd began to get restless. A small section at the front began chanting for Stills, and the cry soon rippled all the way to the back of the square. Graham threw his hands up in the air and turned away, holding his phone to his ear.

‘Erm, is this still on?’ I asked no one in particular, picking up a stray microphone from the floor. A high-pitched squeal from the monitor in front of me confirmed that yes, it was. And without knowing what I was going to say, I suddenly had the crowd’s attention, whether I wanted it or not.

‘Hi,’ I said slowly. ‘I’m Angela. Sorry about the whole fighting thing.’

The crowd was suddenly silent. And all looking at me.

A lone voice in the photographers’ pit coughed and shouted up to the stage. ‘En Français?’

‘Je suis desolée, je ne parlez vous la Français?’ I stuttered my stock phrase into the microphone against a wave of boos. ‘But I’m sure Stills will be on in just a minute.’

The boos faded out to some confused mass chatter.

‘Ah, Stills seront sur la scène dans un moment,’ Virginie grabbed the mic out of my hand, and the crowd responded with a cheer. ‘Say something,’ Virginie urged, her hand over the microphone. ‘I will translate.’

I took the mic back and stared out. Really, that was a lot of people.

‘So, my name is Angela and I’m a huge Stills fan,’ I put the microphone back in its stand.

There was a brief delay while Virginie translated, followed by a huge roar.

‘Angela, what are you doing?’ Graham yelled offstage. Craig was too busy shouting along with the crowd. It seemed he was a huge fan of his own band.

‘I don’t really know,’ I shouted back. ‘I want to say I’m buying you some time, but I might mean making myself look like a complete dick.’

‘Yeah, the second one sounds right,’ he shouted back.

‘The band are having some technical issues,’ I said back into the mic. ‘So they’ll be on in a minute.’

A murmur travelled across the square. The cameraman at my feet called something out to Virginie, bypassing me altogether. And she replied into the microphone, eliciting a loud whoop, followed by a mass giggling from the female festival goers.

‘What did you just say?’ I hissed across the stage, blinded by a sudden outbreak of flashes at my feet.

‘He asked who you were,’ Virginie said, backing away from the cameras slightly. ‘I told him you were the girlfriend.’

‘You didn’t?’

This was not good. I was not in a state to be photographed as ‘girlfriend of the lead singer’. I could possibly pass as ‘drug dealer of the lead singer’, but that was about it. A fact not lost on the girls in the audience, who did not seem too keen on Virginie’s revelation. I was seeing a lot of arms folding in front of me and even hearing a few boos. Harsh, ladies.

‘They want to know why the band aren’t onstage,’ Virginie translated the random screaming coming from the front few rows. ‘I think you should tell them, it is a very sweet story.’

‘No it isn’t!’ I replied, trying to think of more diversionary tactics, but all I could come up with was flashing the crowd, and that wasn’t going to win anyone over. Certainly not the girls, who already hated me. This was not one of my best ever days. ‘I’m not telling them why Alex isn’t here.’

‘Then I will tell them.’ Virginie gave me a sly smile. The new Virginie had more in common with Jenny than enough. ‘They also want to know why we were fighting with the girl from Stereo.’

‘Fine.’ I looked out at the thousands of people one last time before someone turned a spotlight on above me and made them all disappear. ‘OK, basically it’s like this.’

Somewhere offstage to my right, I heard Graham cursing. Onstage to my left, I could hear Virginie’s fast translation.

‘So at least when I got to Paris, I was Alex’s girlfriend, Alex from the band,’ I clarified by pointing at the huge, blown-up Stills album cover hanging from the stage rigging behind me. ‘But he didn’t tell me his ex-girlfriend lived here, that was the girl that I was sort of talking to onstage a moment ago.’

‘You want me to say “talking to”?’ Virginie stopped translating mid-sentence and gave me a ‘really?’ look. ‘They are French, not blind.’

‘Just say it.’ I gave her look right back and continued with my story. ‘So yeah, she was hanging around, pretending she wanted to be my friend, inviting me to parties and stuff, but it turned out she just wanted to break us up so she could get Alex back.’

I couldn’t see the crowd, but I could hear them ruminating this twist in the tail. The photographer, acting as their representative, shouted a question up to Virginie.

‘He wants to know why they broke up in the first place,’ she repeated in English.

‘Oh, because she was cheating on him,’ I said, waiting for the appropriate response. And I got it. Ten thousand sharp intakes of breath and unmistakable ‘bitch!’ comments echoed around the square. ‘Yeah, she was really awful. And this was a couple of years ago, before I ever met Alex. She totally broke his heart.’

I realized the murmuring had stopped. There was nothing, but silence while everyone waited for me to go on with the story.

‘So yesterday, Stills played Nouveau Casino in Paris,’ I paused for a couple of ‘I-was-there-whoops’ to die down. ‘And she announces that they’re getting back together. And I didn’t know what to think because I’d seen them in a bar together before the gig and Alex and I had sort of had a misunderstanding about us moving in together—’

‘You’re moving in with him?’ Craig asked from offstage. ‘Dude, that’s sweet!’ Graham punched him in the arm and smiled at me, shaking his head.

‘Well anyway, I was really upset because I didn’t know what was going on and I’d cocked up my job a bit.’ I looked over at Virginie who winced as she translated. ‘But I think that’s all going to be OK, and I was really homesick for my friends back in the UK and so I decided to leave and go back to London. And well, basically, Alex followed me to London except I changed my mind at the last minute and came back to Paris to find him. Which is why he’s not here.’

The crowd let this sink in for a moment before the confused chatter started again.

‘Perhaps it was not that sweet a story,’ Virginie said, stepping back from the stage as the crowd started to get rowdy. ‘Or perhaps we should not have told them that he is in London looking for you.’

Before anything could turn nasty, the photographer yelled something out and the crowd began to laugh, chanting something over and over.

‘Angela?’ Virginie tried and failed to suppress a smile.

‘What?’

‘They want you to sing.’

I stepped out of the spotlight for a moment, trying to get my eyesight back. It didn’t change anything. There were still 10,000 people shouting ‘chantez’ at me, over and over and over. And looking over to Graham and Craig, they weren’t helping. In fact, Graham was clapping along with the chant and Craig was running to his drums, shouting something about playing along.

‘No, really. I don’t sing.’ I laughed nervously. ‘Unless you’ve had several drinks and I’m going to do “Hungry Like the Wolf” on karaoke, you don’t want me to sing.’

‘They like “Hungry Like the Wolf”,’ Virginie confirmed as the photographer gave me a thumbs up.

My heart was pounding so hard, I could barely breathe. How was this happening? At what point did I think addressing the crowd at a music festival and joking about singing a Duran Duran song was a good idea?

‘Really, it’s not a good idea,’ I said into the microphone, but Virginie had already set hers back into its stand. She held her arms up in a helpless gesture, but I was fairly certain she was enjoying this.

Opening my mouth to speak, the crowd roared, and I closed my eyes.

‘She means it guys, it’s really not a good idea.’

Another voice came over the loud speaker, followed by a ‘da-dum-ting’ comedy drumbeat. The spotlight shifted away from me, over to a tall dark-haired man, striding on to the stage with a microphone in one hand and a guitar in the other.

‘You absolute bastard,’ I said, throwing my arms around Alex’s neck.

‘OK, maybe I deserve that,’ he said, kissing the top of my head before I let go and punched him in the shoulder. ‘I’m not sure about the punch though. What was that for?’

‘For not coming back last night.’ I stared at his face. Was he really there or had I actually passed out? It was my first time in front of a capacity crowd after all.

‘I know, we have a ton of stuff to talk about,’ he said, suddenly serious, but still with light in his dark green eyes. ‘Just promise you won’t take off while we play?’

‘I promise,’ I said, remembering that the crowd weren’t here to see me. ‘But it’s a tough crowd, it’s going to be difficult.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ Alex said, swapping the mic I’d been using for his, and plugging in his guitar. ‘I usually play better when I haven’t been on a wild goose chase to another country, but I’m pretty sure we’ll do OK.’

‘You say that now,’ I said, tiptoeing offstage with Virginie, ‘but I just killed it.’

‘You’re a tough act to follow,’ he shouted after me with a grin.

‘Believe it,’ I shouted back, squeezing Virginie’s hand.

‘Ow,’ she yelped, snatching it back.

‘Sorry,’ I said, gazing out at my boyfriend, pretty certain that he was still my boyfriend, as the band began at last.

It was a good few hours before we were back in Paris, back at the hotel and finally alone. Virginie had gone for a drink with Craig, ignoring my repeated but subtle shin-kicking in the van on the way back to the city, and Graham had gone to lie down. According to him, my impromptu one-woman show had brought on a migraine. Nice. I was scared to think what might have happened if I had sung. A stroke? Keen to avoid any and all discussion of my performance, I had played my favourite ‘pretend to be asleep’ card for most of the journey, resting my head on Alex’s chest, delaying the inevitable ‘conversation’. Everyone in Arras knew the ins and outs of our bust-up, but not even I knew what was going to happen next.

Alex held the bedroom door open and I scuttled back in, suddenly nervous to be on my own with him. I placed my handbag carefully on the bedside table, pretty pointless given the bashing that it and my laptop had taken already, but still, it was nice to be nice. Sighing loudly, I turned to face Alex, who was still standing by the door.

‘You’re not coming in?’ I asked awkwardly.

‘Do you want me to?’ He raised his shoulders with his question.

‘I want to know where you were last night.’ I sat down on the bed and looked at my knackered shoes. ‘And I want to know why you followed me to London.’

‘I followed you to London because when I got back this morning your passport was missing and you’d left a printout of your itinerary,’ he replied, crossing the room to sit in a chair. ‘And I spent the night with a friend.’

‘Why were you looking for my passport?’ I had decided to park the ‘friend’ thing for a moment.

‘I check your passport every day.’ Alex shrugged. ‘Don’t take offence, but you tend to lose stuff pretty easily. Who do you think puts your keys back in that bowl by your front door every night? Because it sure as hell isn’t you.’

‘Oh,’ I said, quietly touched.

‘And I know you’re freaking out about it, but you’re not going to ask, so the friend was actually Solène’s brother,’ he went on. ‘They don’t get along, but he and I always stayed in touch. He’s a cool guy. I had a lot to think about and Graham said you’d come back to the hotel because you had a migraine and that I shouldn’t call you. So I went there.’

‘He said that?’ I asked. Bless Graham for lying when he’d said he wouldn’t. Except, if he hadn’t, Alex might have come back to the hotel and none of this nonsense would have happened. Excellent! The whole festival debacle was Graham’s fault!

‘He did.’ Alex looked up at me from behind a stray lock of black hair that had escaped from behind his ear. ‘But I’m guessing it’s not true. You spoke to Solène at the show, right?’

‘I did,’ I said. ‘And I saw you together in the bar before.’

‘Jesus, why didn’t you just come over?’ Alex ran his hands up over his face and through his hair. ‘So that’s why you took off. Honestly, Angela, how many times do we have to have the same conversation about talking to each other?’

‘So talk to me now,’ I replied quickly. ‘Tell me why you were even in a bar with your ex-girlfriend who you hate so much.’

‘Because she wouldn’t leave me alone. Because she wouldn’t leave you alone. Because I needed her to know that it was over, for ever, and that I was in love with someone else and that nothing she could say or do would change that fact.’ He stood up and crossed the room towards me, kneeling at the edge of the bed and taking my hands in his. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it was kind of a personal message to leave at the front desk. I was going to tell you afterwards. She’s not part of my life, Angela, no matter what she told you. She hasn’t been part of it since the day she cheated on me, and she will never be part of it again.’