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Chapter Three

The Devil, The Succubus and The Rockstar

Pushing my way arse first through the ByteBanter double doors, I dodge my way through the desks to where my office is, saying my good mornings to the nerdy guys as I pass through – although I think that ship has sailed now.

I have a go at opening the Starstruck door with my forehead, with no luck, but thankfully someone at a nearby desk notices and helps me out.

‘I’m here, I’m here,’ I chant victoriously as I arrive with the new coffees intact.

‘Well, look what the cat dragged in!’ Emily teases.

‘I’m late, I know, but you wouldn’t believe what happened on the way over here,’ I begin to explain, handing out the drinks.

‘What could have possibly happened that would make the ten-minute walk from your flat to here take two hours? And is this a skinny latte?’ Vicky asks rather rudely, and yes, I am technically her boss.

I ignore her question about my lateness, but as for the latte – what is the right answer? I’m so not in the mood today. It took me two attempts to get her that damn coffee and if she doesn’t drink it she will end up wearing it.

‘No?’ I reply, although it sounds more like a question than an answer.

‘Excellent!’ She snatches it from me without the same thank-you that I received from Emily and Jake.

‘You know what they say, Nicole,’ Vicky persists, ‘the early bird catches the worm.’

‘Ah, but the second mouse gets the cheese,’ I reply.

‘Yeah, but it’s covered in dead mouse,’ she says, looking and sounding thoroughly disgusted that I’d suggest such a thing.

Vicky Mason is the newest member of the Starstruck team. She is an aspiring journalist with a BTEC in Photography, desperate to break into the world of music journalism. Emily met her at a gig she was reviewing and I guess Vicky just latched on to her. She didn’t have a job, and we didn’t have a proper photographer, so after a lot of persuasion from Em I agreed to take Vicky on. Oh, how I have come to regret that decision now; the girl is impossible to get along with. She’s bossy, she’s rude and she is so argumentative.

Emily gets on with her and Jake gets on with anyone, but Vicky and I just clash in every way imaginable.

She’s an averagely talented photographer – much better now that I’m constantly splashing out on new kit for her to use. Personally, I think she would be much more at home trying to trick drunk celebrities into flashing their underwear outside nightclubs so that she can snap some photos and sell them to the tabloids for a big chunk of cash.

I have lovingly dubbed her Succubus (a name I only use behind her back, obviously) because the first time she went to a gig with me and Emily, we ended up back at the hotel with the band and Vicky got in bed with the bassist while he was sleeping.

I tell them the story about my encounter with Tom, hoping they might think my fall had more to do with me being late than my hangover.

‘He gave you his business card?’ Jake chuckles. ‘Did you say his name was Patrick Bateman? You know, he liked blondes.’

‘Very funny,’ I say sarcastically. ‘Now hadn’t you better get back to playing The Sims or updating your MySpace profile or whatever it is you do on there when you’re pretending to work.’

I have a great friendship with Jake. He teases me about being a groupie, I tease him about a nerd. We are about as opposite as two people can be, but we get on like a house on fire.

‘Nic, can I see you in your office, please?’ Emily asks. She sounds serious, but her face isn’t giving anything away.

My first reaction is to panic – on the inside though, I’m not going to let Vicky enjoy my potential misery. I grab my caramel macchiato – I can’t hear bad news without caffeine in me – and make my way into my little office. I close the door behind us, just as Jake starts singing the chorus of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ in an attempt to tease me. He’s spending way too much time around me if he’s learning the lyrics to songs like that, I almost feel sorry for him.

‘Right, hit me with it, get it over with,’ I babble. I’ve never been great at receiving bad news.

A smile spreads across my friend’s face.

‘It’s good news. I was going through the emails...’ Emily pauses for dramatic effect.

‘Spit it out, woman!’ I demand, unable to wait a second longer.

‘We’ve had an email from Plastic Rap’s manager, you’re interviewing them tonight!’ she tells me with an extra-loud squeal.

‘No way! We managed to blag an interview? How? I thought they were all booked up.’

‘They had some journo drop out at the last minute, there’s a slot going free. It’s after the show though, so late. Do I confirm?’

‘Erm, yeah! You’re coming with me, right?’

‘Can’t. It’s my mum’s birthday party tonight,’ she reminds me and I can see how disappointed she is. ‘He said in the email that he could supply us with photos, so you don’t even have to take Vicky if you don’t want to.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I whisper with a cheeky smile on my face.

‘I am so jealous. You never know, one of the Plastic Rap boys might fall madly in love with you. You could get married and your groupie days would be over. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about getting up for work on a morning – I told you that you’d be late today,’ she teases.

‘Oi, who are you calling a groupie? And when did you tell me that I’d be late today?’

‘Last night...’ she prompts, and I cast my mind back. Em and I went to a gig last night and then partied with the bands until the early hours – let’s just say things got messy. She’s right though, I remember the taxi dropping me off, drunkenly fidgeting with my door key, thinking it was the funniest thing ever, and Emily yelling something out of the taxi window about how I’d be late for work as she was driven off. A guilty smile spreads across my face.

‘And don’t think I didn’t see you snogging the face off Troy Reeves, Miss Wilde,’ she adds.

Troy was on one of those terrible reality TV talent show things. He didn’t win, but when I interviewed him he told me that he was glad because he could make music without a super-strict recording contract holding him back – he also told me he wanted to sleep with me and we’ve been getting together whenever he’s in town ever since.

‘So how come you didn’t go back with him last night?’ Emily asks.

‘I’m a lady!’ I protest, trying to give off Kate Middleton vibes but actually sounding more like David Walliams in Little Britain.

Emily gives me a look.

‘He had to go,’ I admit. ‘They were travelling through the night.’

‘You’re so bad, Nicole.’

‘The devil made me do it, now get out of my office, bitch.’ I laugh, totally defeated.

‘Gosh, Troy Reeves last night, Prince Charming today – it’s true what they say about men being like buses, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, they’re dirty, anyone can ride them and they’re never there when you want one.’

Emily, a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, rolls her eyes at this.

Plastic Rap are one of the biggest bands around at the moment. They’re mainly aimed at the teen market, but loved by young girls and mums alike. Even a few boys admit to liking them these days. At the moment they are touring the UK, and when tickets went on sale all venues sold out within a couple of hours. I managed to score a place on the guest list months ago, but all their publicity time was booked up. As far as their music goes, they’re not really my cup of tea, but this interview will be good for hits.

‘Get some work done,’ Emily says, leaving me alone in my office and closing the door behind her. There are only a handful of reasons why my office door is ever closed. 1. When Vicky is driving me especially crazy. 2. When I am in on my own, and therefore scared something might ‘get me’. 3. When I actually need to do some work. Despite today being a three, I have Googled Plastic Rap and now I’m casually clicking my way through their photos and mentally placing them in order of hotness. This takes up about ten minutes that I don’t have and I manage to burn another five flicking through the photos from last night on my phone. It certainly was a wild one.

Now officially in the p.m., I click open my emails. The first one I open is from Dylan King. Subject: Escort girl.

I quickly scan through the email which informs me Dylan is ‘sixty-seven percent certain’ he didn’t pay some girl for sex, although he is ‘eighty-five percent certain’ he did ‘bang her’. The percentages make me laugh but somehow I don’t think they were meant to.

Dylan is a mega-star, so stories are forever popping up in the press about him sleeping with some girl – and most of the time he has slept with them, in fact, I’m ninety-nine per cent certain.

As well as being a super-famous rockstar, he is also my best friend. I met him on my gap year when I won a competition to meet his band, The Burnouts. Back then the bands I hung around with were small-time, so it was pretty cool to meet one of the most famous bands in the country and get to hang out backstage.

I remember their manager came out to get me and as we were walking backstage he said: ‘They’re going to love you, darling.’ Back then I wasn’t the expert that I am now when it comes to bands, in particular the inner (and outer) workings of your typical band member, so I weakly asked him what he meant. ‘Blonde hair, big tits. You’re just Dylan’s type, you want to watch yourself with him,’ he warned me, making me even more nervous than I already was.

When I was shown into the backstage room, it was Mikey King, Dylan’s younger brother who is also in the band, who I was introduced to first and he was lovely. Dylan was always the one I’d had the crush on, but Mikey was just so down-to-earth and charming. It’s no secret that Mikey is the real talent in The Burnouts, he’s the guitarist and he writes most of the music, whereas Dylan is the egotistical front-man with the pretty face and the shocking reputation. After I’d chatted to Mikey for a while, Dylan came in and he was everything people had warned me about. His ego was in full swing and I could tell he was going out of his way to try and impress me – he even played me an exclusive clip of their next single. Until that moment, everything I had known about bands I had loved, but being around this mega-famous arsehole was really starting to get on my nerves, so when he played me their new song, despite it being amazing, I told him it was crap – because that ought to bring him down a peg or two. Of course I instantly regretted saying it, but after a few seconds of straight-faced silence he burst out laughing.

‘I think you’re the only person in the world brave enough to say something like that to me,’ he chuckled and apparently the kind of person who will tell you your music is crap is exactly the kind of person you want to have in your life if you’re a musician and we became pretty much inseparable. We’ve been best friends ever since – although nothing more, I hasten to add. This works well for both of us professionally because if I am having a slow week with news he will give me an interview, and he can always rely on me to give him a bit of good press when everyone is reporting the negative stuff – like him ‘banging’ a female escort, for example.

With me living in Leeds and him all the way down in London, we don’t see each other as much as we’d like, but we talk almost every day and we always have a blast when he is on tour.

My mind darts back to the ‘real world’. Sitting at my desk and staring at my computer, I realise that I’m not going to be able to concentrate today, I’m just too excited. I go through the rest of my emails, clicking my way through the masses of press releases we receive every day. There are a few good ones but nothing too exciting, I’ll do them later.

One exciting email I have received is from a tour manager, asking to me to confirm that I will be joining a band on their tour. These guys are also my good friends; I used to tour with them when no one knew who they were, and now they’re embarking on their first headlining UK tour as a signed band, which is pretty exciting. I send a quick message (something which feels weirdly formal considering they’re my buddies) confirming that I will still be joining them on the road and then crack on with my work.

After four hours of replying to messages and writing items for the website, I am more than ready to go home. In what little time I have, I’m going to pull out all the stops for tonight. I only wish I had time to pick up something new to wear.

‘Don’t mind if I get off a bit earlier, do you, team? Big night tonight,’ I say, making my way towards the door.

‘Last one in, first one out,’ Jake jokes. ‘Lucky for some.’

‘Of course we don’t mind. If you do pull one of them, be sure to text me,’ Emily says excitedly. I think she may be even more excited than I am.

‘I don’t think so,’ I call back as I make my escape. It’s not that they are a bad-looking band, but my priority is the interview and I’m certainly not going to mess this up by getting my goals confused.