by Oli White
‘So why did she decide to tell you when she did?’ I asked. ‘Why now?’
‘She actually told me about six months ago. I’d been going through a bit of a rough patch since I dropped out of uni. It just wasn’t for me, you know? And I’d sort of lost my way. I didn’t feel like I had any direction and I was going out and partying too much and … Well, Mum’s a bit of a hippy at heart, and she thought it might help me spiritually.’
‘And did it?’ Dad asked.
‘Not at first,’ Lewis said with a laugh. ‘I went even more nuts, finding out my dad wasn’t my dad and that someone else was. Then one morning I woke up facedown on the beach, hung-over and freezing my arse off, and this thought just popped into my head. It was, like, Oh, OK! So I’ve got an old man I didn’t know I had. I think I need to check him out. And that was it.’
‘Yes, not so much of the old, thanks,’ Dad laughed. ‘Well, I’m glad that you did decide to check us out, Lewis.’
‘And how are things now, with your mum?’ Mum said. ‘Finally telling you the truth – it must have been a very hard thing for you both to deal with.’
Lewis nodded. ‘We’re fine – we had a couple of really good talks. Once I’d got in touch with Paul, the anger just went away. Me and Mum and are totally cool now, man.’
What was with all the ‘man’s? God, if Trisha was a bit of a hippy, then Lewis was definitely a chip off the old block.
Sunday lunch (a vegetarian roast, because Mum had thought to check ahead) was a reasonably relaxed affair. At first. It was when Dad brought up the subject of GenNext that things started to go a bit pear-shaped.
‘Of course, Lewis, you must have seen Jack’s stuff online. His videos, vlogs and everything. He’s built up a brilliant business with his mates and we’re really proud of him.’ I knew what Dad was trying to do. We’d been talking about Lewis and his life since the moment he arrived, and this was his way of trying to make me feel included.
‘Yeah, you mentioned that on the phone,’ Lewis said, nodding. ‘It sounds amazing, but I’m not really into all that stuff. I’m a bit of a technophobe, to be honest. Actually, I don’t use a computer at all these days.’
‘Really?’ My voice shot up much higher than I’d have liked. ‘You mean you just use your phone instead?’
‘What, this?’ Lewis dug around in his pocket and pulled out a piece of technology that looked like it should have been in the Science Museum. ‘I haven’t even got a smartphone. I hate the bloody things. I just think people have become such slaves to the screen in the last ten years.’
‘You’re not wrong there, Lewis,’ Mum laughed. ‘The girls who work in my salon might as well have their phones surgically attached to their hands.’
‘Yeah, but it’s information, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘It’s how we know what’s going on in the world and how we find entertainment and how we communicate.’
‘Yes, or we could just read a book or talk to somebody face-to-face,’ Lewis said assertively. ‘I think we all need to look up a bit more. See what’s actually going on with our own eyes, rather than through the lens of somebody else’s phone camera. And shouldn’t we be forming our own opinions rather than being bombarded with what other people think on Facebook and Twitter?’
‘I can see what you mean by that,’ I said, trying to be agreeable even though I could feel myself getting irritated, ‘but there must be a happy medium. I mean, you’re on Facebook, aren’t you?’
‘My page is up but I haven’t updated it for aeons,’ Lewis said. ‘At one time I was actually really into technology and computers.’ He laughed as though he was embarrassed. ‘That’s what I was studying at uni before I dropped out, and I was obsessed with it all.’
‘So what changed your mind?’ Dad asked.
Lewis shrugged. ‘Academia wasn’t for me, man. I fell behind with my studies, was always getting hassled by the lecturers for not turning in projects, and by then I’d spent so long in front of one screen or another, I felt like it was eating my soul or something. I just couldn’t hack it any more and went completely the other way. Nowadays I’d rather wake up and look outside or gaze across a beach than at a computer screen.’
‘Well, I think that’s a very refreshing way to look at it, Lewis,’ Mum said tactfully, glancing at me.
‘You never said on the phone that you’d studied computers at uni,’ Dad said. ‘Jack has always been so brilliant with computers and technology, but I suppose it’s a case of each to their own, right, Jack?’
‘I suppose,’ I said.
‘I’m just over all that,’ Lewis said, as if he’d evolved into a higher being. ‘I get more joy out of being outdoors: riding a wave, or my motorbike.’
‘Now that’s something I can understand,’ Dad said. ‘I used to be bike crazy when I was your age. I had a Suzuki Katana. Very nice.’
‘That’s a cool ride,’ Lewis said.
I wasn’t sure exactly what a Suzuki Katana was, but I made a mental note to google it at the earliest opportunity. In fact, I knew nothing about motorbikes; they didn’t interest me in the slightest, and I’d never paid that much attention whenever Dad started enthusing about them.
‘That thing used to terrify the life out of me,’ Mum said. ‘If it wasn’t for me, I think your dad would still be riding around on one now, Lewis.’
I was jarred by that. Mum using ‘your dad’ so casually like that to Lewis, in the way that she would to me.
‘I’d love to go out and have a look at your bike, Lewis,’ Dad said.
‘Sure! You could take it for a spin up and down the street if you like,’ Lewis said.
Dad’s eyes lit up in response. ‘I’d love that!’ he said with more enthusiasm than I’d heard him express for anything in ages. He looked at Mum, who was clearing the plates away.
Mum rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, here we go. Wear a helmet if you’re going to get on that thing!’ she said.
I watched Dad, smiling as he got up from the table and headed towards the front door, with Lewis following, and I felt confused … maybe slightly jealous. On the one hand, the day was going really well. Dad had been apprehensive about meeting Lewis, but as it turned out I could tell that both he and Mum liked him a lot. On the other hand, Lewis and I had totally failed to find any common ground. In fact, we were as different as chalk and cheese. Now that Dad and Lewis had discovered a shared love of motorbikes, I felt this weird sensation that I was somehow on the outside, looking in, and it was growing by the second. Was it possible that Lewis would end up having more in common with Dad than I did?
Dad and Lewis were gone for ages. They’d taken the bike out for a proper spin, Mum said. Back up in my room, I lay on my bed, finger hovering over my phone as I sat mentally toing and froing with the notion of calling Ella to tell her about our family lunch. I’d already pinged a couple of WhatsApps to her earlier in the afternoon, and any other time when something of this magnitude was happening I’d have been straight on the phone to her, but right then and there, something was making me stall. Maybe I was worried because I knew she was going to ask me how I felt about it all, and I didn’t have a definitive answer to that question yet. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready for her enthusiasm about the whole thing while I still had doubts and concerns flying at me from all angles. Plus, we’d be together in London in a few days once filming started on Emerge. Maybe I should just wait till then.
‘Jack! Jack, love!’ There was no time to chew it over as Mum yelled at me from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Your dad and Lewis are back. Do you want to come down for a cuppa?’
I exited my bedroom and headed down the stairs, plastering on a smile. ‘How was the biking, guys? You didn’t kill yourself or anyone else then, Dad?’
‘It was pretty close,’ Lewis laughed.
‘Oh, you must be joking!’ Dad punched Lewis’s arm playfully. ‘Admit it, you were impressed to see how well I can handle a bike.’
He put his arm around Lewis’s shoulders and I felt myself freeze on
the spot. The spin on Lewis’s bike had clearly been a galvanising experience for both of them.
‘Lewis is going to stay over tonight, Jack,’ Dad said. ‘It’s too far to do that journey twice in one day.’
‘Oh, OK!’ I said, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
‘Maybe the two of you could do something this evening,’ Mum suggested, looking between me and Lewis. I sensed that she’d figured out we hadn’t exactly clicked yet, and was trying to rectify the situation. ‘Take Lewis for a walk around the town or something, Jack. Show him the area.’
‘Er, yeah, why not? I could take you to one of the pubs I never go in, Lewis.’ I had to make the effort, for Dad’s sake more than my own, although I had no bloody idea what we were going to talk about, and I could see that Lewis wasn’t exactly jumping up and down at the prospect of the two of us going out together either.
‘Sure thing, man. That would be cool,’ he said with a nod.
I swallowed hard. Yep. This was happening, all right. There was a new member of the family … and I was going to have to get used to it.
THE SHOW
3 Mills studios were built on the site of an old mill and disused distillery on an island in the middle of the river Lea in east London. And four days after Lewis’s visit, there we all were, gathered in its swish reception at 7 a.m. on a bright Thursday morning in September, ready for the first day’s shoot on our brand-new TV show: Ella, Ava, AJ, Austin, Sai and me. This was very cool.
Ava, as usual, was the brightest among us at that time of the morning. ‘Another day, another adventure. Are we all feeling good about this, people?’
‘I’m ready for anything,’ Sai said. He was wearing a shirt so tight that literally every muscle was on display. Since he and Lily had got together, he’d become even more shameless about showing off his physique. Usually Austin would have been mercilessly ripping it out of him for the shirt, but he’d been pretty quiet today so far.
‘I think I’ll need a coffee or five before I know whether I’m feeling good about anything, Ava,’ he said.
‘Well, you won’t have to be here this early every morning,’ AJ assured him. ‘Plus the apartments are only fifteen minutes’ walk from here, so it’s not exactly a big commute, is it?’
AJ had found us two apartments on the same floor of a cool new building in Wapping, overlooking the water – one for the girls and one for us boys – and we were all set to live there for the duration of the show, to save us the hassle of travelling back and forth from Hertfordshire every day during a manic three weeks of filming. Mind you, moving out of my family home straight after Lewis’s visit hadn’t been the easiest thing in the world. I felt like it wasn’t the best time to be leaving, with such a massive change happening in the family. Of course, Mum and Dad were totally cool with it, but being down in London, miles from them, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like I was bailing on the situation.
On the journey to London I’d had the chance to tell Ella about Lewis’s visit, although I kept it all quite light and didn’t go into too much detail about the awkwardness I’d felt between us.
‘You see; I knew you’d be fine with him,’ Ella had said, hugging me in the back of the car that was speeding us towards the metropolis. ‘I bet you end up becoming really close.’
In the end, I’d smiled and agreed because I knew that was what she wanted to hear, and I really didn’t want to start another disagreement. Not when we were just a few hours away from diving into the TV show. All that other stuff could wait.
‘It’s like the first day at a new school when you don’t know what to expect,’ Ella said now, as we followed one of the show runners through the massive studio building towards our set. She was right, and it was quite an exciting feeling. GenNext had done a ton of cool stuff since we’d started, but nothing like this. We were buzzing with anticipation – well, all of us except Austin. You’d think he was about to be wheeled into surgery for a major operation rather than embarking on his own TV show.
‘Dude, relax,’ Ava said, noticing his worryingly grey complexion. ‘You’re not even going to be on camera.’
Austin smiled nervously. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s all just very … big.’
‘We’ll be all right,’ Sai said. ‘If we can pull off a stage at a major festival, we can do this.’
I knew only too well that Austin’s fears ran much deeper than just worrying about the show; it was something that he and I had been either talking or messaging about in the days leading up to our departure for London. I was trying hard to be a good mate and to build up his confidence, but he wasn’t in a good place at the moment. The fact that he hadn’t been able to work things out with Jess had left him doubting every other part of his life, and he was having trouble believing that he was good enough to be involved in a show like Emerge. I was hoping that working on the show would remind him of how good he was, like Total had. But I’d never seen him looking as anxious as he did today – about everything.
Ella, on the other hand, seemed totally at ease with being in the studio. Her eyes were shining and she looked at home and relaxed. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe this really was where she belonged. In a proper studio, doing ‘real TV’.
‘Look, Austin, it’s nothing that we haven’t done a thousand times before; just on a bigger scale,’ she said, striding along confidently behind the runner. ‘It’ll be absolutely fine, I promise.’
‘You’re bang-on, Ella,’ AJ agreed. ‘I spoke to Olympia after the meeting last night and she has every confidence that Emerge is going to be a huge hit.’
I thought back to the previous night’s get-together with Olympia and Ethan in the swanky surroundings of Ham Yard Hotel in Soho. Olympia had referred to the meeting as ‘the big briefing’, and it consisted of her talking us through every single thought and idea she had for what she called the ‘tonality and trajectory’ of the show, at lightning speed. I have to say, it all sounded pretty good, even with Ethan sitting by her side with a perpetual self-satisfied grin on his face.
‘Guys, forget the fact that I’m the exec producer,’ Olympia had told us. ‘Don’t be afraid to push your ideas forward; that’s what I need from you. If I think what you’re giving me is lame, I’ll tell you straight and we move on. That way we don’t waste time and everyone wins.’
There was something refreshingly honest about Olympia Shaw: she loved the GenNext brand and she wasn’t afraid to admit she wanted a piece of it. And there was plenty of creative leeway for us, too. We discussed how the show would be shot and edited, and how GenNext should lead the way as far as online and social-media content went, and Olympia seemed agreeable to all of it. I guess that had been my main concern at the start of all this: that we’d end up getting pushed into something that wasn’t really us. But by the end of that very long meeting, I was convinced that Emerge was going to work … and that despite my misgivings about Ethan, it was going to be awesome.
We all fell silent as the runner we were following led us out onto a full-size sound stage, surrounded by white brick walls with bars of light hanging from high ceilings, and massive cameras everywhere. It was somewhat bigger and grander than Austin’s mum’s basement, that was for sure. I felt dwarfed as I stared around the cavernous room, but I convinced myself I’d get used to it, just like I had the festival stage. One corner of the studio was set up like a smart lounge, with an expensive-looking L-shaped couch and some stylish armchairs. Lights and cables surrounded it, so I assumed this area was part of the set, rather than just somewhere for us to hang out between takes – probably where some of the interviews would take place.
Standing in the midst of it all was Ethan, waving us over. He shook hands with me, AJ, Austin and Sai, and then gave Ava and Ella a hug, with Ella’s hug including an unnecessary kiss on the cheek, I noticed.
As we all got settled on the various chairs in the lounge area to the side of the sound stage, Ethan held court in front of us. ‘So, guys, listen up! I just want to run through
what’s happening today.’
I was sure he was loving this. The GenNext team, who’d once turned him down as a potential presenter, now under his direction. He seemed about a thousand times more confident than he had when we’d first met him. He even looked different, with some decent clothes and a haircut a bit too similar to my own for my liking. It was clear that landing this gig and being able to rule the roost had given the guy a massive boost.
‘You all met Glen, our director, at the briefing last night,’ he went on, motioning towards the short man standing next to him, who was peering at us through a mop of teased black hair.
‘Hey, guys! Fabulous to see you all again,’ Glen said. ‘I must say you’re all looking great. Jack, loving the red shirt, babes. That’s really gonna pop on camera.’
‘Cheers, Glen,’ I smiled.
Sai leaned towards me and stage-whispered, ‘He wants you.’ I elbowed him in the ribs before Ethan went on with his opening speech.
‘Today we’re seeing three artists and bands, and shooting two or three takes of each one. Ella and Jack, you’ll be shooting intros, links and interviews with the artists.’
‘In your own adorable style, of course,’ Glen interjected.
‘You just tell us where you need us to stand and we’ll be fine,’ Ella smiled.
Ethan continued, picking up momentum. ‘Ava and Austin, obviously you’ll be working with Glen on the overall look and feel of the show: camera shots, set-ups, that kind of thing, and Sai will be taking the reins in post-production and editing, along with our own team, of course. Does that all make sense?’