Christmas on Primrose Hill (36 page)

‘I’ve got to get ready,’ she said in a broken voice, unable to meet either of their eyes and breaking into a run past them both, bolting the bathroom door behind her.

She leaned against the door, her breath coming in hiccups as she struggled to keep down the emotions that kept trying to rise in her. Hot, tight tears budded at her eyes.

‘Jay, what the f—!’ Coco’s hissed whisper was clear through the door.

‘Coco, don’t. Just don’t.’ Jamie’s voice was low, barely audible.

Not wanting to, but not able not to, Nettie shifted her position to bring her ear to the door. Quite literally, her ears were burning.

‘You slept with her?
Her?
That little mouse?’

‘Just leave it. It was a mistake.’

‘The freak bunny girl? What were you
thinking
?’

Nettie heard him sigh. ‘Clearly I wasn’t . . .’

‘What are you doing?’ Jules whispered behind her, but Nettie held a shaking hand up to silence her.

‘. . . just a groupie. It was a one-time thing.’

The word was like a punch, throwing her across the room.

‘Nets, what the hell?’ Jules cried, running over to her, seeing the hot tears begin to splash.

Nettie couldn’t reply. The words kept going round and round in her mind, her body like a cauldron – her blood hot and swirling, getting hotter, making her dizzy, making her sweat . . .

‘What just happened? Did you talk to him?’ Jules asked, snapping her fingers in front of Nettie’s gaze, trying to get her attention.

But Nettie was lost. Groupie? He couldn’t say those things! They weren’t true; they weren’t fair. She couldn’t believe he was capable of such cruelty. That look he’d given her, that name . . . Did he really think those things about her? Was that what he was going round saying about her? To Dave, and Gus, and Jimmy? What about to White Tiger? To Jeremy and Scott? Would it get back to them? He couldn’t get away with this.

‘Speak to me, Nettie, for Chrissakes.’

And then it came to her. The perfect reply. Nettie looked at her, a sudden calm settling upon her like a cooling mist and making her friend frown at the abrupt change. ‘Jules, I need to get dressed.’

Gus had been right. The noise level at this ball made Saturday night’s gig seem like a few friends playing the village hall. The average age of the audience was lower by about ten years and that meant, in Jules’s opinion, a difference of three octaves and ten decibels.

Nettie stood in the wings where she had stood only a few nights before in very different circumstances. But she had been lost back then – falling. Now she jumped on the spot, dressed in the costume once more and getting the adrenalin pumping. The noise of the crowd was lifting her and she couldn’t wait to get out there and do this. Finish it.

Jamie had finished the third song, his guitar resting now on one of the amps as he took the mic from its stand and began to talk, milking the crowd with his charm and humour, working them en masse, the way he’d worked – duped – her.

‘Nettie, could you please just tell me everything’s OK? I’m worried. You don’t seem yourself,’ Jules shouted.

‘Don’t worry. This is going to be great. It’ll be the biggest hit yet,’ she shouted back, trying to be heard through the costume and over the music. ‘Caro’s going to freak!’

And then suddenly she heard her name. Blue Bunny Girl, being repeated over and over, in a chant, getting louder and louder. She stopped jumping. They were all calling for her?

‘Shit!’ Jules laughed. ‘You’d better get out there!’

They high-fived, Jules pushing Nettie onto the stage.

The arena erupted as she ran out, the lights finding her as she ran from one side of the stage to the other, whipping the crowd to ever higher frenzies, her arms up, ears flapping, before coming to a stop in the centre of the stage and standing with her legs wide, paws raised in the air, soaking it all in.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, louder even than the music. The rush being out here, all these people . . . Suddenly she understood it; she got why musicians and actors loved to perform.

Jamie had picked up his guitar again and was walking towards her slowly, his eyes on her as he strummed, unable to see her face or the expression in her eyes, but ever the professional, he was doing a fine job of hiding his contempt. She stood there, swaying languidly, watching him all the while – hating him, hating that she still felt a pull to him even as she hated him.

And then Gus dropped the bass beat, Jimmy hit the drums, and as the lights began to strobe, she went for it, writhing and jumping and convulsing like a mad thing, not caring, hearing the laughs, the screams of delight. She was free in here; it didn’t matter. No one knew who she was or what she wasn’t.

Jamie was laughing too. She could see his shoulders shaking as he played and she shook it all out, burned it all off, and everything that had gone wrong between them – the confusions and misunderstandings, unspoken explanations and soured passions – melted away so that it was just them, in this moment, on stage in front of all these people.

But four minutes was all she got of that freedom. Four minutes and it was all over and she was left remembering what he’d said as she lay on her back, panting on the stage of the O2 arena, with 20,000 people shouting her name.

Jamie offered a hand and she let him pull her up, her flinch not visible beneath the costume as he put his arm round her shoulder, flashbulbs going off as their partnership was cemented. The crowd was going wild and she wriggled out from under his arm, running from one end of the stage to the other.

Jamie walked over to the microphone and picked it up from the stand again.

‘I guess you’re all pretty fond of my new friend, huh?’ he asked the crowd.

Cue frenzy. Nettie punched the air delightedly and did a little jig.

‘Yeah, me too.’

She ran to Gus and hugged him. The crowd whooped. She ran round to the back of the stage and hugged Jimmy. The crowd roared.

As she went to leave him, she picked up Jimmy’s water bottle, the one he kept beside his drums, ready for his pièce de résistance in the next song. Fanning herself with one of her paws, she ran to the front of the stage again. She could see Coco standing in the wing, waiting to come on for her duet, her arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

Jamie was watching on, bemused – but also now confused. She was supposed to have left the stage after the shake. ‘London, give it up for my good friend Blue Bunny Girl!’ Jamie shouted into the mic as she came to stand in front of him, waving to the crowd with her left hand.

As the crowd gave her another roar of appreciation, she mimed surprise, flinging both arms up like a gun was being pointed at her, the water in the bottle flying backwards in a perfect arc. It landed on Jamie in an almost solid heap, the noise from the crowd cutting out like the National Grid had been unplugged.

But only for a second.

In the next instant, they lifted the roof, cheering and screaming and whooping, whistling and clapping as Nettie pulled a pose and bounded happily off the stage to where Jules was standing, open-mouthed.

‘Oh my God!’ she hollered. ‘Nettie, what did you
do
?’

‘You should know, Jules. It’s your favourite – “hashtag Blakeing”,’ Nettie laughed, disappearing into the shadows with a victor’s strut.

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Right, well, today’s off,’ Mike said in his tetchiest voice, walking into the conference room. Caro hastily took her feet off the table.

‘Off? What do you mean, off?’ Daisy asked, watching as he irritably threw his paperwork down on the desk.

‘Jamie’s refusing to show. Says he wants no further involvement after last night’s humiliation.’

‘Oh, come on!’ Nettie said, swinging defiantly in her chair, her hands on the armrests. She still felt high from last night’s win. Groupie? Ha! ‘How was it humiliation? It’s one of the memes.’

‘Which he knew nothing about! It would have been a courtesy if you could have kept him – no,
all
of us, in fact – informed!’

Nettie tutted. ‘He needs to grow a sense of humour,’ she muttered.

‘He was wearing a mic pack, Nettie! It blew an entire circuit when the water hit him.’

Nettie tried to look serious, but the laughter wanted to burst out of her like, well, water from a dam. The thought of blowing the electrics at the O2 was too much.

Another memory of working the crowd last night rippled through her and she smiled to herself.

‘It’s not funny!’ Mike said, seeing the way her eyes danced.

There was a pause.

‘It kind of was,’ Daisy said, clearly also trying to swallow down her laughter.

‘Yeah, and the Interweb’s gone fricking mad for it,’ Caro added, nodding vigorously and chewing her gum in tempo.

‘Language, please, Caro,’ Mike sighed. ‘We’re not on the streets in here.’

‘Do you want to hear the stats?’ she asked, one eyebrow cocked.

Mike, resting his weary head in one hand, gestured for her to continue.

‘Twitter retweets for last night: three point two
million . . .
’

Every single one of them gasped, Mike sitting as upright as if he’d been pulled up on strings.

‘Twitter likes: also three point two million. Total Twitter followers: three point four million. YouTube views for this link’ – at this point, she took a breath – ‘five point seven
million
.’

Mike closed his eyes and pulled a fist, whispering, ‘
Yesss
,’ under his breath.

‘And total donations to Tested as of nine o’clock this morning: one . . .’ She dared to breathe again, making them all groan.

‘Spit it out!’ Daisy harried her. But Caro just smiled.

‘One million, three hundred and seventy-four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-two pounds
and
’ – she held a finger in the air – ‘thirteen pence.’

‘Oh my God! We broke a million?’ Daisy yelled.

‘And then some!’ Jules hollered, jumping to her feet, along with Caro and Daisy, and running round the room and waving her arms in the air. Even Mike was joining in the group hugs. They were making so much noise, Nettie noticed the people in the events management agency across the road staring in at them.

Jules dragged her to standing, throwing her arms round her neck. ‘You do my head in! Do you know that?’

‘I told you it’d be the biggest one yet,’ Nettie yelled as Jules clasped her arms and they skipped round in a circle.

‘We freaking rule!’ Caro yelled.

‘Let’s get drunk!’ Daisy cried, punching the air delightedly. ‘I know someone at the—’

‘Ladies, ladies.’ Mike came swiftly to his senses. ‘While I applaud the sentiment, it is only ten a.m. and I’m afraid we still have work to do.’ He sat down in his seat again and waited for the girls to do the same.

The excitement fizzled out of them like air from a punctured ball as they dropped back into their seats, chewing on the ends of biros and drumming their nails as they took in Mike’s subdued demeanour.

‘The fact remains that we now have a problem. As successful and funny as last night’s skit was, we’re screwed without Jamie. We were doing well before him, but it’s the two of you
combined
that’s given this campaign a whole new platform. You’re a dream together, a marketing power couple.’

‘You’re the new Beckhams,’ Jules teased, giving her a wink.

‘It’s gone global, Nettie,’ Mike said sternly, trying to establish a sensible tone. ‘Or at least it
had
. The song vote had the potential to break us out to yet another level. Internet traffic was our highest yet yesterday. “Hashtag team-jamie” and “hashtag teambunny” were the top trends on Twitter, and actually, after the prank last night, you’re in the lead, Nettie, for the song.’

‘But no one’s even heard it yet!’ she half laughed. This was crazy.

He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter. They just love you.’

‘It’ll change by Friday, don’t worry,’ Caro said assuredly, knowing that would be Mike’s next concern. He had promised the record company #teambunny wouldn’t win.

‘That’s if we still have a vote by then. Obviously without Jamie, there’s no contest. We need to get him back in the game. We have to change his mind.’

His eyes had settled upon Nettie, his fingers pointed together in a steeple.

‘Uh . . . why are you saying that just to me?’ Nettie asked him nervously.

‘Because you did this to him. It’s because of you he bailed. You’re the one who’s going to have to try to build a bridge and repair the relationship.’

Nettie spluttered, sitting up adroitly. ‘Y-you mean, you want me to
apologize
to him?’

‘You were the one who went off plan and covered him in water in front of all those people. It’s not going to mean anything coming from me.’

‘No.’ She shook her head firmly and crossed her arms above her chest. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘Nettie, you have to. There are three days left of the campaign. You’ve raised almost one and a half million pounds for the charity.’ He leaned in, gathering her gaze with a conspiratorial glint. ‘Don’t you want to get to two?’

She blinked. Over her dead body was she apologizing to that man. After what he’d said about her? Uh-uh. No way. Not happening. ‘No. I’m good, thanks. Very happy with that number. It’s a good, solid number, one and a half mill.’

Mike smacked the desk with his palm and pushed himself back in his seat, staring up at the ceiling for strength.

‘Nets,’ a softer voice tried.

Nettie looked across at Daisy, who was leaning on the table, a compassionate look on her face.

‘Look, I know you and Jamie don’t really . . .’ She rolled her hands in the air in front of her, searching for the right words. ‘You don’t really hit it off. You’re not each other’s cup of tea, and that’s fine . . .’

Under the table, Jules’s foot gave her ankle a swift kick.

‘But couldn’t you put your personal differences aside – for the good of the campaign?’

Nettie stared at her in dismay. They had no idea of the gravity of what they were asking her to do. She looked over to Jules for support – she’d have an alternative idea, a better idea; she always did.