Nothing But Trouble

by Matt Cain

  ‘Well, let’s keep it on the down-low,’ he breathed, leaning into her ear. ‘You know what these things can be like – and we don’t want people talking.’

  Sharonne nodded with a knowing grin.

  ‘Don’t want people talking about what?’ snapped Lola, standing over them with her hands on her hips.

  Uh-oh, thought Jake. Here we go . . .

  ‘Oh, hi Lola,’ he chirped, without losing his calm for a second. ‘We were just talking about Amina and Danny. They’ve been making eyes at each other all day.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Lola stammered, sitting on the chair on the other side of him. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Yeah but they’re both quite shy,’ Sharonne cooed, ‘which is why we were just saying we’re going to pretend we haven’t seen anything.’

  Lola looked up and saw Amina catch Danny’s gaze, distracting him from the game and causing him to let through a goal.

  ‘Get in!’ roared Smudge, pounding his fist into the air. ‘Good old Smudge takes the lead!’

  ‘Anyway,’ Sharonne went on, ‘if you don’t mind I need to make a quick phone call. I’ll see you guys later.’

  They both smiled as she slipped away.

  ‘So what you up to tonight, darlin’?’ Lola asked once they were on their own. ‘It looks like we’ve got a night off. Fancy room service at mine?’

  ‘Actually, I’m not sure I can tonight.’

  The look of disappointment on Lola’s face registered like a warning signal – as if her little outburst of jealousy towards Sharonne hadn’t set sirens blaring already. ‘You what?’ she huffed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, it’s just that—’

  ‘Lola,’ Harvey interrupted, stepping towards them. He was accompanied by a dull-looking exec who was wearing glasses with those transitional lenses, which had gone into total blackout even though he was only standing under a sixty-watt light bulb. ‘Can I introduce you to Mathias Muckenfuss? He’s Head of Distribution at the record company here in Berlin.’

  ‘Hiya,’ Lola beamed, standing up to shake his hand. ‘Great to meet you, darlin’.’

  ‘Good to meet you too, Lola. We’re very excited to have you with us in Germany.’

  Lola slid back into her seat as Mathias began trotting out sales figures and distribution plans for the next quarter. ‘Oh my God,’ she cooed, eyeing him with an expression of the utmost fascination, ‘that’s blatantly amazing.’

  As he droned on, Jake became aware of her hand sliding under the table and feeling its way over to his crotch. His mouth twitched slightly as she undid his fly and wriggled her fingers through the gap to start stroking his rapidly swelling cock. Man, this is horny. This is so freakin’ horny!

  ‘Germany has now overtaken the UK to become the biggest market for recorded music in Europe,’ Mathias rattled on in his formal, heavily accented English.

  ‘Which is why we’re so pleased to be here,’ Harvey quipped, ‘and why we’ve given Germany such priority in the campaign.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ echoed Lola, her hand now expertly working its way up and down Jake’s fully erect dick. His eyes focused on the exec’s thin lips, which began to form abstract shapes as Jake zoned out of his words. He had to concentrate all his energies on stopping himself from whimpering with pleasure.

  Damn, Lola’s good at this, he thought, his legs splaying on the seat and his mouth twisting into a smile. Maybe he’d been a little hasty when he’d thought about telling her to back off earlier. Maybe he’d have a quick word with Sharonne and make up some excuse about tonight so he could be with Lola instead.

  Because he had no doubt Sharonne would keep. And he wasn’t through with Lola just yet.

  *

  ‘Kerfuffle,’ said Belle.

  ‘Codswallop,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘Canoodle,’ said Trixie.

  Lola and her Style Council were in the dressing room of a TV chat show in Stockholm. Already tiring of a seemingly endless round of interviews, they were coming up with suggestions for a code word she had to somehow smuggle into today’s live chat. And each time she mentioned it the girls would down a shot of vodka backstage.

  ‘Oh I know!’ yelped Trixie. ‘How about “rambunctious”?’

  ‘Yeah!’ they all agreed. ‘See if you can get that one in!’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Lola. ‘What does that actually mean?’

  They looked at her blankly.

  ‘Maybe it’s best if I stick with “kerfuffle”.’

  The girls began flitting around her, putting the finishing touches to her clothes, hair and make-up. Lola looked at herself in the mirror and could see that the cumulative lack of sleep was starting to show. Jake had come to her hotel room again last night and once again they’d stayed up until the early hours having sex, this time in an antique four-poster bed that for some reason had driven him wild. The problem was, even though she was trying her hardest not to, she knew she was starting to fall for him. On their last night in Paris she’d made the mistake of calling him her boyfriend and he’d instantly lost his hard-on. A full-on heavy had ensued − he’d accused her of pressurizing him into something he wasn’t ready for and she’d spent most of the next day feeling guilty. At the time she’d plunged deep into a ditch of disappointment, but she’d since reassured herself that some men just weren’t ready to get serious straight away and needed easing into a relationship. Which was why she’d resolved to be just the kind of low-maintenance, up-for-it girlfriend Jake wanted until she’d made him fall for her.

  That had certainly been her strategy when she’d given in to his demands for increasingly athletic sex last night. But now she’d spent the day feeling like the old hag from a Disney cartoon. And her concentration was so low she was seriously worried about being able to hold a straight conversation with the chat-show host, never mind sneaking in secret words. She stifled a yawn.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ crowed Scarlett. ‘What were we up to last night then?’

  ‘Nothing. I just stayed up late watching a film, that’s all.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ said Trixie. ‘Lola Grant, you can’t lie to save your life.’

  Lola tried keeping a straight face but couldn’t help herself breaking into a smirk.

  ‘Come on, girl,’ cooed Belle, putting down her can of hair-spray and folding her arms. ‘Spill!’

  Lola wasn’t sure she could keep her secret much longer; hiding her relationship with Jake was proving a real struggle. If I just tell the girls, it’ll make things so much easier . . .

  After making them all promise not to tell anyone, she admitted she and Jake had spent pretty much every night together for two weeks – and she was totally hooked. The girls were rapt.

  ‘Oh my God, when did you first shag him?’

  ‘Has it been good sex?’

  ‘Does he have a big dick? Tell me he has a big dick!’

  She answered pretty much all of their questions, her face blazing with a mixture of joy and excitement. And as she did so, she realized she didn’t feel tired anymore.

  Of course what she didn’t tell them was that Jake had repeatedly stressed he didn’t do relationships. Or that he’d been totally disrespectful when she’d asked him not to smoke weed and leave it lying around her room. Or that she was starting to be racked by a paralysing fear that one day he’d dump her. She felt a shiver of shame as she remembered how just the other day she’d been reduced to wanking him off under a table to keep him interested.

  ‘Well, I think it’s totes amazing,’ crooned Scarlett.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Belle. ‘I’m sure you two will be really happy.’

  ‘Big time!’ chirped Trixie. ‘And I’m so jealous that you’ve seen his dick!’

  They erupted into a fit of filthy giggling and picked up their tools to get back to work.

  ‘How come you all know him so well anyway?’ asked Lola.

  ‘Oh, you know, he comes in to see us quite a bit and we do his hair and make-up sometimes.’
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br />   Lola furrowed her brow. ‘Jake? You do Jake’s hair and make-up? But I thought he wasn’t bothered about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t – until he met you.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just trying to impress you.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not quite as cool as he likes to make out.’

  Lola nodded as she thought about what they said. For the last few days she’d been winding herself up into a nervous wreck thinking Jake was losing interest in her – or that all he was interested in was sex. But from what the girls were saying now it seemed he really did like her. I’ll just have to be a bit more patient with him, she thought, her resolve strengthening. She cast her mind back to last night and the look on Jake’s face as he’d entered her again and again. Surely he felt the same way she did? And how could a feeling so strong not eventually blast through his resistance?

  She noticed Trixie yawn and the other two quickly followed suit.

  ‘Eh-eh,’ she piped, ‘it looks like I wasn’t the only one who stayed up late last night.’

  For the next ten minutes, Belle, Scarlett and Trixie entertained her with stories of yet another raucous night out, including a long anecdote that ended with Trixie being fingered over a barrel by a colour-blind florist. Once their laughter had died down, the girls tried persuading Lola to go out with them that evening.

  ‘Oh come on,’ cooed Scarlett, ‘we’ll have such a laugh.’

  Lola wasn’t convinced; she really needed to catch up on her sleep and she wasn’t sure how she felt about leaving Jake on his own.

  ‘Chill out!’ trilled Belle. ‘I’m sure he can look after himself for one night.’

  Lola didn’t give in; she reminded them that they all had to catch a flight to Amsterdam first thing in the morning.

  ‘Exactly!’ fizzed Trixie. ‘Which means we’ll have plenty of time to sleep on the plane.’

  ‘And Tiny’s coming too,’ said Scarlett, ‘so he’ll make sure we all get home OK.’ Tiny was Lola’s head of security – so-called because he was nearly seven foot tall and about the same size as a Ford Transit.

  There was a pause as Lola thought it over.

  Trixie raised an eyebrow. ‘And you know Swedish men are supposed to have the biggest dicks in Europe?’

  ‘Oh all right, all right!’ Lola said, feigning a look of exasperation.

  They all cheered.

  ‘But I can’t stay out late,’ she added, raising her hands in defeat.

  ‘Course not,’ Belle reassured her. ‘We’ll be in bed by midnight.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ smiled Lola. ‘Course we will. Now what was that word again?’

  ‘Kerfuffle.’

  ‘How appropriate,’ quipped Lola. Although, if she knew the girls as well as she thought she did, something told her she’d need a much stronger word to describe what they were going to get up to.

  *

  Freddy gazed in horror at the YouTube clip of Lola Grant staggering out of a Swedish nightclub surrounded by a group of bedraggled girls. It was broad daylight, so the clip must have been filmed during the early hours of the morning. He couldn’t help flinching as he watched Lola miss her footing and then tumble down the flight of stone steps, at one point almost flipping over a central handrail, only to land in a crumpled heap at the bottom, her legs bent open to reveal her underwear. As an enormous black guy in a dark suit stepped in to scoop her up, the camera started shaking and the clip came to an abrupt end. Freddy saw that it had already been viewed by nearly half a million people, even though it had only been posted earlier that morning. He hoped Lola hadn’t seriously hurt herself. He shook his head and put down his smartphone. Oh Lola, what are you playing at?

  He was sitting in the afternoon meeting in the Channel 3 newsroom, trying not to get involved as his colleagues discussed a bomb that had exploded in Baghdad, killing fifty Iraqis. At around the same time another bomb had gone off in the US, although it had only injured a few people. While the Washington correspondent had already been dispatched to cover that story and the plan was to sub-anchor the entire programme from the crime scene, for some reason there weren’t any plans to even mention the more serious explosion in Iraq.

  ‘I just don’t think it’s very interesting,’ dismissed Hugh Badcock.

  Freddy shifted forward in his seat. ‘So how many people have to die before we cover a bomb in Iraq?’

  Hugh looked at the head of foreign news, Colin Duffer, a balding fifty-something who panted like a carthorse with emphysema and had such strong fag breath you could smell it across the newsroom. ‘How many did you say had died again, Col?’

  ‘Fifty,’ came the gravelly voiced reply.

  ‘Then fifty-five,’ Hugh answered calmly.

  Freddy did his best not to look exasperated.

  ‘Anyway,’ Hugh went on, ‘don’t you worry about Iraq, boyo. What’s the story with this footage of Lola Grant falling down stairs?’

  ‘Oh nothing,’ he shrugged, desperate to play it down. ‘She just had an accident after a heavy night, like.’

  ‘But didn’t she miss a flight to Amsterdam?’ asked a producer.

  ‘And hasn’t she had to pull out of some big show?’ added another.

  ‘And what about that tweet she sent a few hours ago?’ came a voice behind him.

  Freddy had read the tweet as soon as it had appeared. ‘Blatantly feel like shit,’ Lola had written. ‘Do you think you can actually die of a hangover?’

  ‘Well, she’s obviously suicidal,’ said Hugh. ‘And I think it’s a great story.’

  ‘She’s doing a Justin Bieber!’

  ‘More like a Britney Spears!’

  ‘Make that a Lindsay Lohan!’

  As Freddy watched his colleagues whip themselves up into a frenzy of excitement, his stomach lurched in disgust. How could they all be so keen to exploit Lola’s misfortune? Well, he wouldn’t let them do it to her – especially not when he’d have to appear on national television fronting the attack.

  ‘I think we should blame the government,’ hissed Janine Jury, taking a sharp swig from her can of Diet Coke. ‘Surely we can broaden out the story to do a disco about binge-drinking and feral girls roaming the streets? I mean, what’s the government doing about it? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Freddy managed firmly, ‘but I just don’t think Lola Grant getting pissed is a big story.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Hugh. ‘So the rumours are true then . . .’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘That you’re shagging her.’

  Freddy rolled his eyes. He hadn’t seen Lola since she’d shouted out to him from the stage in Hyde Park two weeks ago. As she wasn’t due back in the UK for another couple of weeks, he was already starting to worry about things fizzling out. The idea that he was somehow shagging her was nothing short of preposterous. Not that it hadn’t crossed his mind – on many an occasion. Although unfortunately there was zero chance of it happening just yet. And there’d be even less chance if he made fun of her drunken accident on tonight’s programme. ‘No, Hugh, I’m not shagging Lola Grant.’

  ‘Well then what’s the problem? Surely you can give us a fat minute?’

  ‘The problem is, on my desk it’s all about relationships. And I do get on well with Lola, yeah. So I don’t want to balls things up now and miss out on potential stories in the future. I mean, it’s not as if this is an exclusive or anything – everyone’s seen that footage already.’

  Just as Hugh was opening his mouth to reply, Spike stepped in to stop him. ‘Just a minute,’ he began, looking at his mobile. ‘Something’s coming in from the wires.’

  ‘Let’s hear it, bro.’

  Freddy cringed. He knew that Spike hated Hugh calling him ‘bro’ almost as much as he hated being called ‘boyo’.

  ‘Cooper Kelly’s just died in LA,’ Spike read. ‘The family’s releasing a statement.’

  Cooper Kelly was an octogenarian Hollywood legend who’d been starring in hit films
since the 1950s, as well as frequently recasting the role of his wife and in the process siring an entire acting dynasty.

  ‘That’s great news!’ chorused the full complement of Freddy’s colleagues.

  ‘It looks like your girlfriend’s off the hook,’ added Hugh Badcock.

  ‘Didn’t Cooper Kelly shag Marilyn Monroe?’ asked Janine Jury.

  ‘No, it was Jayne Mansfield,’ gasped Colin Duffer with a blast of fag breath.

  ‘But I always thought it was Lana Turner,’ chimed in the now unfeasibly pregnant weather girl Dolly Dawson.

  ‘Actually,’ sighed Freddy, ‘I think you’ll find he shagged all of them.’

  ‘Great,’ said Hugh, clapping his hands together. ‘In that case, forget the films – let’s hear about the shags. I want three minutes, Freddy. Let’s make some noise!’

  Freddy nodded, too worn down to protest that it might be worth mentioning Cooper’s three Oscars rather than just the famous women he’d shagged. Ordinarily he hated doing obituaries but on this occasion he was relieved to have escaped appearing on screen predicting Lola’s downfall – especially as tomorrow was the weekend and by Monday the story would have blown over.