Page 9

9

LONDON, 1986

Despite intending for them to go to the Secret Oktober concert together, Cassie had long since realized that her mother wouldn’t be well enough. Still, she’d refused to give her ticket to anyone else in the vain hope that Gigi would somehow muster the energy at the last minute. But as she peers around her parents’ bedroom door, keeping everything crossed, it seems that no amount of wishful thinking could get her mother to sit up, let alone leave the house, and Cassie can’t help but feel crushed by an overwhelming sadness.

“I’m off,” she says quietly, hoping she can’t be heard over the rise and fall of the oxygen cylinder.

But her mother is more astute than she gives her credit for. “Where to?” comes a fragile voice.

Cassie sucks in a breath, consumed with guilt for something she has no control over.

“I-I’m going to the Secret Oktober concert…” she starts, knowing that her mother’s disappointment will match her own.

“ What ? Without me ?” murmurs Gigi. “Pass me my pink suit and I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.”

Whether it’s her wicked sense of humor talking or a drug-induced confusion, Cassie isn’t sure, but bizarrely she finds herself waiting in the hallway, part of her willing her mum to appear beside her so acutely that it seems impossible that it won’t happen. But ten minutes later she solemnly gives up on a miracle and silently lets herself out of the house.

By the time she gets to Wembley Arena, the queue is already depressingly long, stretching around at least two corners of the huge building, without an end in sight. She scans the line, searching for Amelia’s face among the crowd, hoping that she’s nearer the front than the back.

“Cassie!” comes an ear-splitting screech. “Over here!”

Cassie ducks under the rope that Amelia is holding up, issuing hollow apologies as disgruntled moans ring out from those behind. Though they quickly dissipate when one of the windowless arena’s doors begins to open. It’s slow, painfully slow, as if even the staff are playing the game—ramping up the tension within an already restless crowd. High-pitched screams ring out as a random steward pokes his bald head out. Frustrated groans follow when he ducks back in and closes the door again.

By the time the whispers have reached the queue around the corner, word is that it was Ben Edwards himself who had appeared, which sends the line surging forward, forcing decisive action.

“No running!” the gatekeeper shouts pointlessly as the doors swing open and a thousand hysterical girls fight to get through the six-foot square entrance.

Amelia takes Cassie’s hand and they sprint with burning lungs across the concourse, through the doors marked “Arena Floor” and out into the hallowed magnificence of the empty auditorium. Cassie momentarily falters, wanting to take it all in, but bodies are running at her like wild horses, threatening to trample anything that stands in their way.

“Come on!” shouts Amelia, pulling on her hand.

It’s not until they’ve reached the barrier by the stage, gripping it with white knuckles, that it occurs to Cassie that they’ll have to stand their ground for the next two hours until Secret Oktober come on—though having Amelia there makes the time go surprisingly quickly, with new friends being made thanks to her envy-inducing stories of hanging out with the band.

“How do you know where they’re next going to be?” asks one girl, as Cassie flips through a photo album that Amelia has brought with her. Each slip-in pocket displays another picture of her with a band member at the airport, at the recording studio, at their hotel.

Amelia shrugs casually. “At the beginning, it was a game of cat and mouse. I had to keep reinventing the wheel, because they caught on.”

“Caught on to what?” Cassie asks.

“To my genius,” says Amelia, without an iota of irony. “They thought they were being clever, checking into hotels under false names, but they hadn’t reckoned on me setting off the fire alarm.”

Cassie’s mouth drops open. “You set off a fire alarm ?”

“It’s easy,” says Amelia, nonchalantly. “One night, I did three different hotels to find out where they were. And the looks on their faces when they all had to congregate on Park Lane so they could be accounted for!” She throws her head back and laughs. “That’s how I found out they were using cartoon names because Ben said his name was Donald Duck.”

“That is well impressive,” says Cassie, in awe of her new friend’s ingenuity and chutzpah. “But how do you get away with it with your parents? If my dad found out I’d done something like that…” She blows out her cheeks and shakes her head.

“Oh, my mum’s the same,” says Amelia. “I’m an only child and since she and my dad split up, it’s just been the two of us. She loves me so much, but sometimes it can be suffocating…”

Cassie nods, remembering Nicole’s words after the blow-out with her dad last week. “It’s only because he loves you,” she’d said, when Cassie had complained that he didn’t give her room to breathe.

“But I’m sixteen,” Cassie had answered back. “I know I shouldn’t have bunked off work to go and see Secret Oktober, but wouldn’t he rather me be doing that than spending time with a boy? I could be skulking around with someone like Aaron—would he be happier then?”

As soon as the barb about Nicole’s ex-boyfriend was out, Cassie felt guilty, but her sister had swallowed the unintended insult. “So, would you rather have a father who didn’t care about who you were with or where you were? Who didn’t love you enough to make sure you were in school when you were supposed to be and get the best-possible grades you can to give yourself a better chance at life?”

Cassie knows that one day she’ll see it like that, but right now it sounds like a broken record. “I know what you mean,” she says to Amelia. “But you should count yourself lucky because I’d never get away with what you do.”

“Believe me, if my mum knew half of what I get up to, she’d be down on me like a ton of bricks. She gets worried when I’m too long at the corner shop.” She laughs. “I swear she puts her egg timer on the minute I leave the house and comes out looking for me when it goes off.”

“So how do you do it?” asks Cassie, gesturing toward the photo albums.

Amelia shrugs her shoulders. “Like I say, I’m a genius when it comes to reinventing the wheel.”

The lights go down, plunging the auditorium into darkness, and twelve thousand girls instantly lose their minds. Cassie looks wide-eyed at Amelia, the pair of them covering their ears in an attempt to protect themselves from the high-pitched screams that are raining down on them from every angle.

A single drumbeat sounds and the girl next to her throws her hands to either side of her head, as if it will somehow keep it from spontaneously combusting. Tears stream down her face, making it look like she’s in pain rather than ecstasy.

Another beat, and butterflies take flight in Cassie’s stomach, the anticipation shredding her nerves, pulling her chest tight. The person behind her presses forward, and she can feel the rounding of a stomach in the small of her back. She steels herself, pushing back to maintain a gap between her and the barrier, but the pressure increases.

Static crackles the huge video screens, sending an electrical current through the audience as tantalizing glimpses of each band member momentarily appear. They’re gone before you can even work out who’s who, but it doesn’t matter to the hysterical crowd as they surge forward, desperate to get as close to the stage as possible, even though their idols aren’t yet on it.

Unable to withstand the force any longer, the metal railing lodges itself under Cassie’s ribs as she’s pressed up against it. Her organs feel as if they’re being slowly and systematically crushed under the weight of a thousand bodies.

“I can’t breathe,” she says, trying to lift herself, or at least her abdomen, above the unforgiving steel. But the more she tries, the more futile it feels.

Reaching out to the nearby security guard, she claws at his shoulder, but she can feel herself slipping. “I…” she starts, as a darkness descends.

He turns around to see her being swallowed whole, disappearing within a split second as the people she’s spent the previous two hours confiding in step on her in their haste to move forward.

“Get her out!” he roars as he puts all twenty stone of his weight into lifting Cassie up. The crowd don’t stop surging, but those around her slowly realize what’s going on and do their part to help. Panicked and wide-eyed, Amelia watches her friend rise from the crowd like a phoenix.

“Where are you taking her?” she shouts over the ear-splitting crescendo.

“She’ll just be backstage,” the security guard booms into her ear. “The St. John’s Ambulance crew will check her over and make sure she’s OK.”

The beat that Cassie knows so well—has listened to a thousand times—slowly infiltrates her befuddled brain. She knows where she is—or at least where she wa s—but she’s lost all perspective on when she was there.

“Christ,” comes a male voice. “Is she going to be all right?”

Cassie’s eyes are assaulted by a blinding brightness as they’re pulled open by a stranger with a concerned expression. Cassie instinctively flinches, but as she slowly becomes accustomed to the ring of light, she smiles. Because, blurred in the background, is a face that looks so much like Ben Edwards.

“Are you OK?” he asks, leaning in toward her with a worried frown. She manages a nod.

There are far-away drumbeats and screams that sound like they’re trapped within a screw-top bottle. Cassie feels compelled to get up, to go toward the noise, but she doesn’t want to ruin the best dream she’s ever had.

“Make sure to look after her,” says the voice, which is becoming more and more distant, though Cassie doesn’t know whether it’s him or her who’s moving further away.

“Oh my god, where have you been?” screams Amelia when Cassie eventually gets back to where she started, wedging herself in between her friend and the barrier. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

Cassie starts to tell her what happened, but Amelia has already turned her attention back to the stage, singing along to the rousing chorus of “Kissing Girls” with the rest of the twelve-thousand- strong backing band.

In the final throes, as the beat drops out and Ben delivers the last two lines a cappella, he kneels down directly in front of them. He’s so close that Cassie can see the beads of sweat on his forehead and, just as the lights go out on the last note, he blows her a kiss.