Emma Ever After

by Brigid Coady

  ‘Happy New Year, Emma,’ she said to herself, as the vice that had been crushing her chest earlier came back and seemed to spread across her whole body.

  ***

  The @bop_bear photo went viral around the BOTP fandom on all social media platforms about half an hour later. God, it was hard to wallow in misery when you were being a double agent. Emma used the official social media, trying to counteract all the confusion according to Mega!’s wishes, before logging onto some of the non-authorised accounts that Will and Ed had set up and undermining her own narrative.

  She felt as if she had a split personality as it got closer to 5 a.m., or midnight in NYC. There had already been a panic. Ed had gone off the agreed script for the evening and instead of watching Frankie perform in Times Square, he’d hung out with the Feckless Rogues who were playing two blocks away.

  With a bit of quick thinking, she’d managed to make it look like his trip to see the other band had been planned.

  She smiled as another frantic message came through from Dan. She could imagine that Will was probably hearing about it all from Tina and having a ball. Maybe it wasn’t very professional to let a colleague deal with all of this but… Dan’s hurtful words about Jamie came back to her. It was like she was back there. No, she couldn’t be the bigger person, Dan would reap what he sowed.

  Okay, it was almost time, Ed couldn’t avoid Frankie all night. She drummed her fingers on the table.

  Her email chimed. It was four-thirty in the morning, so a half an hour before midnight in New York. It was from Dan.

  He won’t kiss her on stage, says he’ll do it in the crowd or he’s walking. WTF???

  Good on you, Ed, she thought smiling. It felt so good to be on the other side, to be the resistance. It seemed that Ed and Will’s plan didn’t include him being stuck on a stage. Please let it go alright, she crossed her fingers.

  Just get him to snog her, was Si’s answer back on the email loop. Filing the emails, she went back to watching the social media conversation. She didn’t want to think about snogging.

  Because that made her think of Gee. Who was obviously too busy to charge his phone. Busy kissing?

  No, that didn’t help. She needed to concentrate.

  At that moment Dan sent through the live link to Times Square. He and Amanda were recording everything. Always got to have the evidence to update the social media accounts with, she thought, in case the real fans missed it.

  Crap, Ed looked as miserable as she felt. He had the beanie that Will usually wore pulled down over his ears. His sheepskin coat had its collar turned up so it hid a lot of his face. From what she could see of him he looked like he wanted to be anywhere other than there.

  Beside him Frankie’s face was split with a huge smile. Emma had to hand it to her, even in freezing temperatures she was able to sell this pathetic excuse of a story. In some ways she pitied her, Ed definitely wasn’t playing his part but then…

  Professionalism aside, Frankie had to know this wasn’t consensual and she had been incredibly gropey. Almost as if her thinking it had conjured it up, Emma watched as Frankie’s hand landed on Ed’s backside. His face came up and his mouth dropped in horror. It was as if she had her talons dug in and wasn’t letting go.

  Ouch, she hoped Will wasn’t watching.

  Over the crowd she could hear a countdown begin. Dan’s camera work left something to be desired as the screen joggled and she caught a glimpse of the illuminated ball on a building above them which would drop as the year turned. Sadly, it wouldn’t drop on Frankie no matter what Will and Ed hoped.

  Ten, nine, eight… Ed looked pale and grey, but that could’ve been the shoddy cameraman… four, three, two… and she scrunched her face up as the cheer went up, any minute now and then Frankie lunged at Ed.

  Oh. Well, that was unexpected.

  Ed ducked. He full on crouched to get away from her. Frankie’s puckered lips hit icy air. The next moment, Ed spun out of her hold, and with another duck he shook off his bodyguard and vaulted the security fence, directly into a group of rabid fans.

  It wasn’t anything anyone had suspected might happen.

  She could hear Dan swear on the live feed.

  She watched as the fans that Ed landed in the middle of stepped back in shock. It gave him enough time to give a little dip and a bow to them before he ran and disappeared behind a cop vehicle. The live stream bobbed and weaved as Dan took chase. Sadly for him the fans were now reacting and had also given chase and they were faster and more vicious. She flinched as it looked like Dan had hit the ground. No, he was up again. She squinted at the screen.

  There, she saw Ed’s beanie flash in the corner of the feed and then he was gone, leaping into a yellow cab that seemed to have been waiting for him.

  ‘Holy…’ she started. Not even one minute into the new year. She could still hear the crowds singing Auld Lang Syne. That was some kind of planning, she was impressed.

  Is he safe? She texted Will.

  Just on his way to the Airbnb we booked. He’ll be tucked up in bed in 20 mins. Will’s reply came quickly.

  They were smooth operators.

  The live stream was a mess. Somehow Frankie was still keeping her mask firmly in place, but her eyes… Emma was glad to be thousands of miles away.

  Good luck with that, Dan, she thought.

  Quickly she wrote up her monitoring report, double checking there was nothing in it which showed she had inside knowledge. Logging out about 7 a.m., she staggered out of the building.

  It was still dark, but the light from inside the cab she had called shone brightly. She should get in it and go home. Cook some bacon and at least keep some of her and Gee’s New Year traditions, eating bacon sandwiches while cuddled up under a duvet on one of the sofa’s watching old Buffy episodes. He would complain that Angel was a moaning git and people had little true appreciation of the joy that was Oz.

  A sob broke through. She was so tired, she was feeling nostalgic and sad. It looked like the new year wasn’t going to be so happy after all. At least not for her.

  ***

  There was nothing worse than getting yourself all wound up to have an emotional meltdown and then discovering that the other players in it hadn’t received the same information. She slammed the cupboard shut in the kitchen, watching as it caught a bag of Monster Munch and crunched it.

  It wasn’t as satisfying as she’d hoped.

  The day had been spent mostly sleeping. Not her, Gee. She’d got back and had a few hours’ sleep, waking with shaky hands. This was it, she was going to find out if he’d really said it.

  But as she’d walked downstairs she realised that he was still in bed.

  And well… she checked the clock. It was now 5 p.m. and… how drunk had he been last night? And what if he wasn’t alone?

  Why hadn’t she thought about that before?

  No, she couldn’t be here if Jamie ambled down the stairs after him.

  Now she felt like she had a hangover. She grabbed a coat and her phone. She would hide out with Lew and Harry until the 3rd of January when she went on tour with the band. Then when she got back and saw him again, maybe she would’ve forgotten the words she thought she’d heard.

  Pulling a woolly pom-pom hat over her ears she hoped to drown out Gee’s voice in her head.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Emma stared into the bag that had been shoved into her hands. She peeked in; it was a mess of rainbow fur and tangled blonde hair. She put a hand in to brush some the yellow strands back.

  ‘We’re counting on you,’ Will said seriously, his hands still on the bag as if he didn’t quite trust her.

  She nodded. There wasn’t anything she could say to get him to totally trust her. This was all about showing. Neither of them had to say that if she got caught setting up the bears then she would be out of a job. That was the new reality. They were all on shaky ground since the New Year fiasco. Ed had been fined for his break for freedom. Frankie’s team had pulle
d a PR turnaround, publicising a very sad photo of Frankie, supposedly left all alone on a tropical island, with the heavy implication that Ed had abandoned her and broken her heart.

  He was a pariah in the papers.

  The band were taking bets on how Frankie was going to write about him. ‘I should get a cut of the royalties from her next album,’ he joked.

  But it wasn’t funny.

  Will looked at her for a bit longer, then let go of the bag and turned away from her. Emma pulled the baseball cap she wore further down on her forehead, hoping her hair was well hidden, she’d tucked it in there to disguise herself.

  No one had worked out she was a double agent. Yet. Perrie hadn’t ratted her out, and it seemed McKee wasn’t publicising the loss of his wedding photo.

  But it felt as though they were all sailing close to the wind.

  And the Mega! team were watching each other, waiting for a moment to rat each other out, Well, Dan was. Being on tour shoved them all closer together and made it worse. If she wasn’t avoiding going home she would’ve run away before now.

  But a new narrative that had sprung up in the wake of the end of Freddie. She squirmed, it was horrible. Will and Ed were being turned into enemies, with Will hating Ed because everyone thought they were gay and in love with each other.

  She hated it, hated that she’d had a part in it. How had she been so clueless for so long? She wasn’t sure how long she could stay. Getting up each morning was harder and harder.

  But at least she could leave, she told herself every morning as she struggled to get out of bed. The band couldn’t.

  The absolute cherry on the icing of the cardboard cake that was her life, was having to be around Jamie. A Jamie who had never looked happier, even when Dan was bullying him. He glowed. He’d also gone coy about his love life.

  Emma wasn’t sure if that was worse than him wibbling on about it all day. At least she wasn’t home to see him coming to the house. Throughout the past two weeks, he’d been disappearing every few days and coming back grinning harder and wearing scarfs to hide the tell-tale hickeys on his neck. She wanted to strangle him with them.

  With the tour reaching London tonight at the O2, there was very little keeping her from going home. Her hand clasped harder onto the bag.

  No, this was not the time to start mithering on and getting depressed about Gee, she could do that any other day. It seemed as though the love declaration had been an aberration of her hearing or him being drunk and forgetting.

  ***

  The O2 was quiet, or as quiet as it ever got when a band was setting up for a gig. And today was a big one. The bangs and crashes she heard from where she was backstage, said that they were doing the final set up after sound check.

  This meant she had about half an hour to set up the elaborate tableau that Will has planned. Luckily Ed had managed to get one of the security guys to take the large pink revolving chair they’d ordered online, and secure it to the stage. Now all she had to do was add the bears and their entourage. Plus, she was adding a little extra something. Tonight, Will had decided that McKee’s photo frame was coming into play.

  What the hell had her life come to? This was not in any of the careers advice she’d been given. And it definitely hadn’t been in her plan. Not that there was one anymore. She wasn’t sure this was exactly what she’d meant when she’d made the resolution to go with the flow.

  How much had changed since she had stood in the boardroom being told about this project. Instead of the promotion she had pencilled in for this year, she was well on her way to being sacked and probably blackballed by an entire industry.

  She could feel her smile getting bigger.

  Was this what Gee had always felt when he said she had to let herself go? That sometimes colouring outside the lines and being true to yourself was everything.

  Her stomach swooped, she was still getting used to this freedom, this lack of structure, with no Gee to catch her.

  But this was the way it had to be.

  She would smile when he and Jamie confirmed they were together, no matter that she wanted to make grabby hands and snatch Gee back, growling ‘Mine’. Because although he had been hers for a little while, okay, for ten years, she’d had him and hadn’t appreciated the fact that she… Damn it. Loved him. There was never going to be the plastic perfect man who didn’t upset her world, because her world was all Gee.

  Now he’d have to be her whole world from a distance.

  There was a massive feedback which echoed down the hallways.

  Crap.

  She shook off the thoughts, she needed to get in place before she ran out of time. She adjusted the lanyard around her neck as she walked, turning the corner and…

  ‘Oomph.’ She bounced off a solid chest.

  The person grabbed the top of her arms to stop her falling.

  Gee.

  She knew without looking up. As if she’d conjured him up by just thinking about him. This close, she could smell him, it was home.

  It took everything not to melt into his arms. Even six months ago she would’ve at least rested her forehead on his shoulder and let him put his arms round her. It would’ve been natural. But now… that would be too tempting, because she wanted to plaster herself to him and never let go.

  ‘Hey, Ems.’ He smiled down at her, sadly.

  ‘Hey,’ she croaked.

  Okay, staring at each other was weird but she couldn’t look away. Gee’s hazel eyes were beautiful, they’d had whole websites written about them. They’d figured in some seriously good fan fiction in the past. But that wasn’t what kept her staring.

  She wanted to tell him everything, that she loved him. That she always had, ever since he took her in and gave her the foundations she’d always craved. And she knew she’d fucked up. That she’d taken all that and twisted it and used it against what he believed.

  But not here and not now. They were backstage at the O2, she was about to lose her job and was clutching a small fortune in Build-A-Bear workshop bears and accessories in a Sainsbury’s Bag for Life. Not the place for big gestures.

  And he wouldn’t want to hear it anyway.

  ‘Okay, I’ll just…’ Emma started.

  ‘Wait.’ He wouldn’t let her pass.

  No, the one thing she’d promised Will and Ed she’d do was to sort this out. They thought this would be their last hurrah, undermining the horrible enemies’ narrative that would follow. The photos had all been set up and the stories written, they were just waiting to be published, Dan and Si spinning their lies, turning love to hate.

  They trusted that she would do this even if she did think the wedding outfits they’d picked out for the bears were a little extreme. But well…

  ‘Look, Gee, can we talk later. I’m working.’

  She watched as Gee’s face closed up. Working, it was the wrong word to use. He was thinking about what she usually did.

  ‘No…’ She reached out to grab him. He stepped back.

  ‘Go, I wouldn’t want to stop you from doing your job.’ He said sharply.

  Damn it. Why did this happen to her?

  ‘Look, I have this one really important job to do and then I’ll be back. Here. I’ll meet you here?’

  It felt as if time had taken a break and wasn’t keen to get back on the clock, as she waited for him to answer.

  Then he nodded.

  ‘Great. Excellent. Fabarooni.’

  Had she actually said ‘fabarooni’?

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, confused.

  No. She wasn’t, but maybe she would be.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ she said, because she didn’t want to keep avoiding him. She needed to accept the new reality and move on.

  She pulled her hat back down and jogged to the side door that would let her into the security pit by the stage.

  Okay, so she had time. She quickly moved to where the pink chair was posed on the end of stage, high enough that grabbing fans couldn’t reach it but obvious
enough that it could be seen. And if the amount of money she’d seen Will push to the lighting guys had anything to do with it, they would definitely be seen.

  Emma grabbed the set of steps that had been ‘carelessly’ left by the crew, coincidentally right by the chair. At least these were steadier than the ones at home, she thought, as she clambered up onto it, grasping the plastic bag in one hand.

  ***

  Ten minutes later she was about ready to throw a fit. The bloody veil wouldn’t stay on the bear. No matter how she tried to position it, the elastic which was supposed to secure it under the chin would make it ping off. Maybe she could pin it? She wanted to strangle the bloody bears and the band. And Gee had almost certainly given up waiting for her. He probably thought she was off murdering small puppies. And it wasn’t even as though he’d hang around to see Jamie. He wasn’t due back with them tomorrow. She had presumed that he was with Gee. Like always.

  Emma blinked back tears that were threatening to fall.

  Bugger.

  She watched as the smaller rainbow furred bear listed to the left again, its ‘bride to be’ hat falling off, dropping to the ground.

  Putting out a hand to catch it, she didn’t want the pink felt and sequins to get dirty, she grasped at empty space as someone else caught it.

  ‘Is everyone invited to this wedding or is it private select guests only?’ Gee’s voice rang out, and it sounded loud in the arena, the acoustics taking it and bouncing it around.

  ‘Shush.’ She gestured and quickly climbed down off the stepladder.

  ‘We have to be quiet,’ she whispered.

  ‘Is that why you’re wandering round incognito?’ He flicked the brim of her hat with a finger.

  ‘Yes, we need to make sure that no one links me with it or the boys.’ She adjusted the hat back, scowling at him,

  She watched as for the first time in almost a month, Gee’s face lit up with his cheeky smile. And that was when she realised that, even though he swore he was always honest, he’d been wearing a mask with her, at least recently. And only now was he taking it off.

  She clutched the stepladder to keep standing.