by Oli White
‘Look, I’m just glad you’re OK,’ I said, squeezing her hand. ‘And you can’t imagine how happy I am to have you next to me again.’
‘Can you forgive me?’ she said.
‘God, of course,’ I said, and I meant it. Ethan had spun such a clever web of lies; I couldn’t blame Ella for getting caught up in it. I was just so relieved to have her back again, to know that she knew I was innocent.
I pulled her in for a hug, and then we kissed, gently and for a long time.
‘I’ve missed you, Ella Foster,’ I said.
‘It’s only been a few days,’ she smiled. ‘And you’ve missed me that much?’
‘Not really just a few days,’ I said. ‘I feel like we lost each other sometime during Total Festival. As soon as Ethan appeared, actually. I feel like he’s been out to destroy us from the get-go.’
‘God, how did none of us see it?’ Ella said.
‘Look, I’ve seen how manipulative he can be,’ I said. ‘Somehow he managed to wind everyone round his little finger, and by the time everything went down there was so much at stake, what with Emerge and the American deal. He never showed any of you the side of him that he showed to me. The nasty side. He was very smart about that.’
‘I’d call it downright evil,’ Ella said sadly.
‘The one thing I want you to know is that I am really supportive of your career. I couldn’t bear that Ethan had made you think I wasn’t. This whole mess has made me realise that, yes, GenNext is important, and it’ll always be something amazing that the five of us created together, but what’s even more important is that we use it as a springboard to grow, and to follow our dreams and ambitions – even if those dreams are different. Part of being in love with someone is making it work together, and supporting the other person no matter what, you know?’
Ella smiled, the anger and sadness in her eyes finally evaporating. ‘Wow! Jack Penman, inspirational speaker,’ she said, touching my cheek.
‘Are you taking the mick?’ I laughed.
‘Absolutely not,’ Ella said, her eyes crinkling. ‘I knew deep down you would always support whatever I wanted to do. I just had my head turned by all Ethan’s grand promises, and somehow I let him convince me that he was the supportive one, not you. I’m truly sorry for that.’
We kissed again, but this time it was cut short by a voice from behind me.
‘Man, how did I know I’d find you in a bar with a beautiful woman?’ I looked up to find Lewis grinning down at the two of us. ‘Ella, I presume,’ he said, holding out his hand. She looked momentarily confused as the unshaven, tattooed figure in a yellow vest and multicoloured jogging pants sat down on the bench opposite. ‘I’m assuming you guys have kissed and made up.’
‘Ella, this is Lewis,’ I said. ‘My brother.’
‘Oh my God!’ Ella squealed. ‘How …? But I don’t …’
‘Your boy here was in trouble, so I came to London to save him,’ Lewis grinned.
‘Yeah, whatever, dude!’ I scoffed.
‘It’s really good to meet you, Ella, but I feel like I know you already with this guy gushing about you every five seconds,’ Lewis said.
Ella’s eyes were shining. ‘Well, I’m really happy to meet you too, Lewis. And I’m even happier to see that you and Jack are friends. This is … it’s amazing. Are you staying here, too?’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sleep and I had a few fresh thoughts about our plan, Jack, so I went to your room to see if you were still awake. Then when you didn’t answer I figured you were either dead to the world, down here in the bar, or that you’d just decided to give it all up and throw yourself out of a fourth-floor window.’
‘I like your style of humour, Lewis,’ Ella said, giggling. Then her face turned serious. ‘Now, what’s this about a plan?’
Lewis looked at me and then back at Ella. ‘OK, do you want to tell her, Jack … or shall I?’
THE PHONE CALL
Lewis: Hello! Am I speaking with Ethan Harper?
Ethan: You are. Who’s calling?
Lewis: My name’s Mark Knowles; I’m a journalist with Savage Online. You know it?
Ethan: Doesn’t everyone? How can I help you, Mr Knowles?
Lewis: Well, we’d very much like to do a piece about you to coincide with the live final of Emerge tomorrow.
Ethan: What sort of piece? About the show?
Lewis: It’s a profile of you, Mr Harper, charting your rapid rise to popularity since the show started.
(Silence for a few moments)
Ethan: Go on …
Lewis: The focus of the piece is how you’re emerging – no pun – as the new star of GenNext now that Jack Penman appears to be off the scene. We’re very keen to get an exclusive before everyone else starts clamouring to interview you.
Ethan: I see. And when were you thinking of conducting this interview?
Lewis: I’d like to do it this afternoon. I’ll be down at the venue, watching the live showcase. It would be fantastic to interview you shortly before the show kicks off, to capture the atmosphere and excitement beforehand. Would that be convenient for you?
Ethan: Today? It’s going to be very busy; there’ll be a lot of preparation before the show …
Lewis: I just need five minutes with you, Ethan. It’s the perfect time to do it, and it’d be really great if we can get the piece up online right after the show airs. It’ll be the lead article on the website this week, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that our site receives more traffic worldwide than any other. This would be VERY high-profile.
Ethan: The lead article, you say?
Lewis: Correct.
Ethan: I’m certainly very interested, Mr Knowles. Can I come back to you on this number? I’ll need to check your credentials online, as I’m sure you can understand.
Lewis: Of course. I’ll be on this number all day. Do let me know what you decide.
THE DAY OF …
Lewis was pacing around his hotel room like a caged tiger, muttering to himself every now and again in an attempt to get into character ahead of his important mission. It was a mission that we both knew relied on perfect execution, precision timing … and luck. We were on the cusp of something major, and for this to work, we couldn’t afford any screw-ups. While he paced, I sat in the corner of the room in an armchair sipping coffee and feeling eerily calm. It was Saturday. The day of the Emerge live final at the Camden Electric, when the ultimate winner of the competition was to play a showcase gig in front of an audience of millions. The day I was due to be disgraced and replaced by Ethan Harper. The day we put our plan into action.
‘Aren’t I supposed to be the one who’s bricking it?’ I said as Lewis strode past me for the twentieth time. ‘I’m the one whose career and reputation is hanging on a twig, dude. Sit down, will you? You’re making me dizzy.’
‘Shut up and drink your Starbucks, man. I always walk when I’m thinking: usually on a beach, but we’re a bit short of those in London, so this will have to do,’ Lewis said. He checked his watch. ‘We still haven’t heard back from him. It’s been an hour since we spoke. Do you think he really bought the whole journalist thing? I mean, the guy’s no idiot. What if he’s seen straight through the fake profile we set up?’
‘No way. We put so much detail into it; it was foolproof,’ I told him. ‘He will call, I’m sure of it. However smart he is, he’s too bloody conceited to ignore the chance of that sort of online glory – I know him.’
Fifteen minutes later, the sign we were waiting for finally came. A text to Lewis’s phone … from Ethan.
We’d gone over the plan about a thousand times in the last two days – or at least that was the way it felt – but now that it was actually on, it felt scarily real. At times, I was certain that we really had a chance and that everything was going to come good, but in moments of doubt it felt like a ridiculous long shot that was never going to work, and I swung violently between the two trains of thought on an hourly basis. The trut
h was, if this went wrong and it all blew up in my face, I was going to be in even worse trouble than I already was. I’d be done for. Finished.
One of the things I was most unhappy about was the fact that Ella was going to have to spend the day with Ethan after everything he’d done. We didn’t really have a choice. For our plan to work, he had to believe that she was on side and totally committed to the show. The prospect of that was the hardest part of the plan for Ella, and I could hardly blame her.
I thought back to Thursday night, the night she had run out of Ethan’s flat. She’d been pretty freaked out, especially after Lewis and I filled her in on all the private pictures and GenNext files on Ethan’s online drive. She’d been even more horrified at my discovery that Ethan was involved with the two idiots who’d started the fight at Total. When we got back to the hotel room that night, her instinct had been to tell AJ and the rest of the GenNext team everything we knew straight away.
‘Who cares if it’s the middle of the night? Let’s just call them,’ she’d said urgently. ‘Let’s put a stop to this now, Jack. I never want to have to look at that creep again.’
‘Look, Ella, I get where you’re coming from, and it does seem like the obvious thing to do,’ I said, putting my arm around her. ‘But even if we convince the rest of the crew that it’s all true, Ethan could still release his fabricated evidence about Glen and me trying to rig the competition, and that could ruin both of us. Plus, it would trash GenNext’s name forever and sink Emerge totally, and we’ve worked way too hard for that to happen. Trust me, the fewer people who know what we know, the better. That way, it’ll be harder for Ethan to slither out of it once we finally show him for what he really is.’
Ella’s expression of anger changed into one of weary realisation. ‘Oh God, I never thought of that. You’re right, he’s likely to get desperate, and he might do anything if you try to alert the others.’
‘Exactly,’ Lewis agreed. ‘I don’t think we’re dealing with a rational bloke here. Who knows what he’d be capable of if he feels like he’s backed into a corner?’
‘The only way we’re going to expose him is to let him think he’s winning,’ I said. ‘And that means you’re going to have to bite the bullet, babe, and play along like nothing happened the other night. It’s hard I know, but it’s the only way. Obviously we’ll make sure that you’re never, ever alone with him.’
Ella had set her jaw determinedly. ‘It won’t be easy, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes, Jack.’
I’d gone to sleep that night feeling pretty confident about our plan, particularly having Ella both on my side and by my side. But when we woke up yesterday morning, it was to some heavy online speculation that all was not as it should be in the GenNext camp: various websites, including E! Online, Huff Post and BuzzFeed were speculating that I was being axed from GenNext for some serious but unspecified wrongdoing, to be replaced by Ethan. It didn’t exactly take a world-class detective to work out that this was the work of Ethan himself, drip-feeding his poison to the online press and laying the groundwork for the announcement of my departure in Saturday’s live show. It was hardly a surprise that he’d agreed to the interview with Lewis aka Mark Knowles; he probably had half the tabloid journalists in the country on speed dial. In fact, all the time we’d been gathering ourselves and formulating a plan, he’d been busy inflicting carnage, and if we didn’t act fast, it would be too late. The damage would be irreparable. My morning didn’t improve after that: while Ella, Lewis and I ate breakfast at the hotel, a courier delivered an official letter from GenNext’s management company, Metronome. It was a stiffly worded document, signed by AJ, informing me that I was being let go from GenNext and from Metronome itself. Seeing it down on paper like that, with Metronome’s familiar logo at the top, was gutting.
Ella, noticing the desolate look on my face, took the letter from me and read it once I’d finished.
‘Oh Jack, this is so, so awful,’ she said sadly. ‘How could it have happened?’
Lewis put his hand on my shoulder across the table. ‘Don’t worry, man, this is all going to be over tomorrow. We’re going to expose this guy, trust me.’
I nodded slowly, hoping that he was right and that our plan would work. And if it didn’t? Well, even if I was able to convince my friends that I was innocent, there was no telling what Ethan might do; he’d sooner ruin GenNext entirely than hand the reins back to me, I just knew it.
Last night, I’d finally persuaded Ella to call Ethan. He’d left her a voicemail earlier on in the day asking her where she was and if she could call him back, and the way he was talking it was as if absolutely nothing had happened between them. It was creepy.
‘Just be as natural as possible with him,’ I said as Ella stood looking down at her iPhone and biting her lip. ‘We need him to believe that you’re back on side. Why don’t you put it on speakerphone so Lewis and I can hear, too?’
Ella nodded, her mouth drawing tight in a grim line. ‘I’ll do my best, Jack, but it’s not going to be easy knowing what I now know about him.’
She dialled Ethan’s number and then put her phone on speaker.
He picked up almost straight away. ‘Ella! You never called me back earlier.’ There was an edge to his voice.
‘Yeah, sorry about that, Ethan,’ Ella said. ‘It’s been a bit of a crazy afternoon.’
‘Sure.’ There was a pause. ‘I just want to make sure that we’re cool after last night. You know it was just a laugh, right? I was playing around.’
‘Playing around?’ Ella said incredulously.
‘Of course; it’s just my sense of humour. You took me too seriously, that’s all. God, I thought we were supposed to be friends. I was a bit hurt by your overreaction, to be honest.’
‘Of course we’re friends, Ethan,’ Ella said gently, although the expression on her face was murderous. ‘And I’m really sorry if I hurt your feelings.’
Lewis rolled his eyes and made a hand gesture to show what he thought of the conversation.
‘Good. That’s really important, because the fans love seeing us together. We can’t let them down, can we? I have to know I can still rely on you, Ella.’ His tone had switched in a flash from petulant to demanding. ‘Can I trust you to get past this so that we can work together? GenNext is relying on us. Emerge is relying on us.’
‘Of course you can,’ Ella said. She looked at me and mouthed a swear word. Lewis stuck two fingers down his throat and pretended to gag, silently.
‘Good girl,’ Ethan said, oozing satisfaction. ‘I just need to ask, though. You haven’t said anything to Jack about our little misunderstanding, have you? The guy’s in big trouble – like it or not – and if he comes anywhere near Emerge, it’s only going to get worse for him, trust me. And you know that anyone associated with him is at risk, too – it’ll look like they were involved in the scam. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I could see Ella mentally biting her tongue as she thought about how to respond to his thinly veiled threat. Meanwhile, I was ready to grab the phone and throw it out of the window.
‘No, I haven’t even spoken to Jack. I know you’re right; I can’t trust him any more.’ Her voice had softened for effect. ‘I’m glad it’s going to be you and me up there tomorrow night, Ethan. The truth is, we make a much better team than Jack and I ever did.’ She looked like she’d just uttered the most disgusting sentence of her life, but to me it sounded like a stroke of genius.
‘I knew that was how you really felt,’ Ethan said arrogantly. ‘I knew you’d get there in the end, Ella, once you realised what a lowlife Jack Penman is. He doesn’t deserve to be part of GenNext, but I – we – do. I’m looking forward to being up there together with you, too. I can’t wait, actually.’
‘Great,’ Ella choked out. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘You most certainly will,’ Ethan said. ‘Bring your A game, babe.’
Once she’d hung up, Ella threw her phone on the bed.
> ‘That was officially the most hideous thing I have ever, EVER had to do,’ she said, looking traumatised.
I put my arms around her. ‘I know, I know. He is just such a complete and utter snake. You were seriously amazing, though. I think you said exactly what he wanted to hear.’
‘The more I know about this guy, the more he totally freaks me out,’ Lewis said with a shudder. ‘He really is one deluded nut-job.’
Ella sighed. ‘Well, at least I’ve got him back on side. Now it’s just tomorrow to get through … and then hopefully none of us will even have to look at Ethan Harper ever again.’
That had been last night. Now here we were on the day of the show. Ella was with the rest of GenNext preparing for Emerge to go live, and Lewis was still pacing the floor of the hotel room. He’d now been at it for almost an hour.
‘What if Ethan sees through me?’ he said.
‘He won’t,’ I replied. ‘He’s got no reason not to trust you. You’ll be fine, Lewis, I know you will. And at the risk of sounding excessively mushy, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this for me. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.’
He smiled. ‘You know what I was thinking?’ he said. ‘Can you imagine if Dad and your mum knew about everything that’s happened in the last few days? If they knew what we were doing today … the two of us … together?’
He had a point. Dad wouldn’t have imagined in a million years that his two sons would be hanging out in London together, let alone teaming up against an enemy force. Still, he’d know soon enough … once all this was over.
Just then, my phone pinged with a message from Glen. Yes, I’d roped him into helping us enact our insane plan. Glen knew everyone on the Emerge production team, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Camden Electric. He needed to clear his name as much as I did mine; his reputation and career were on the line, too. Aside from that, there was also the threat of both of us being arrested if it all went the wrong way. The best thing about Glen’s involvement was that he’d got plenty of friends on the Emerge team who knew without question that he would never have committed the attempted fraud he’d been accused of. A fraud that, thankfully, Olympia had managed to keep out of the press so that the show could go on. Glancing down at Glen’s text, it looked as though everything was going smoothly so far.