Hopelessly Devoted to Holden Finn (12 page)

But then, as the week flew by and the weekend drew nearer, bringing with it the promise of the Every Which Way concert, Bonnie found her daily irritation with Max, gradually replaced by excitement and some trepidation for what the big night might hold. In the back of her mind, she wondered if the spark she had felt between her and Holden at the radio station might have the room to grow into something more, if only she could get close enough for long enough to make him see the real her. But then, what did the real Bonnie have to offer someone like him? Debt, a manky flat, a moody teenage daughter, the delicate beginnings of crow’s feet and stretch marks – oh yeah, she was a real catch. But still, she convinced herself, there
had
been something there when he looked at her, she was sure of it. Stranger relationships had been made good. She couldn’t think of any right then, but she was pretty sure she’d heard of some.

***

As Bonnie stepped out of the shower on the night before the concert, Paige came bursting into the bathroom.

‘Paige! What the hell’s the matter?’ Bonnie shouted as she hurriedly wrapped a towel around her.

‘Oh, Mum, Annabel’s got flu!’

‘She has?’

Paige nodded miserably. ‘Her mum says she’s running a fever and can’t even get out of bed.’

‘And you only just found this out?’

‘Well…’ Paige began, ‘she wasn’t in school today and texted me to say she wasn’t well. I thought it was a twenty-four hour thing and she’d be alright, that’s why I never said anything. But her mum has just phoned and said she’s got worse through the day and now they have the emergency doctor coming out, so she must be bad, mustn’t she?’

Bonnie nodded thoughtfully. ‘I suppose she must. So she can’t come tomorrow?’

‘No. I can’t believe she’s going to miss it.’

‘It does seem a shame. Do you want to give it a miss?’

‘I don’t know,’ Paige said reluctantly. The internal struggle was clear as day to Bonnie. Paige obviously wouldn’t want to miss out on the concert – opportunities like this came around once in a lifetime – but she would feel as though she had betrayed her friend if she went without her.

‘What did her mum say?’ Bonnie asked gently.

Paige shrugged. ‘Her mum says that Annabel totally understands if I go and that if it was the other way around, I would tell Annabel to go too.’

‘And you would, wouldn’t you?’ Bonnie prompted.

Paige nodded uncertainly. ‘Yeah… yeah, of course I would.’

‘Do you want to go?’

‘I really do. But I’ll feel so bad that she missed it.’

‘She’s already told you she doesn’t mind.’ Bonnie paused. ‘What if we take a souvenir back for her? Like buy a tour t-shirt and get it signed or something? It wouldn’t be anything like going, of course, but it would be something at least.’

‘It’s not much of a consolation,’ Paige said doubtfully.

‘No, it isn’t. But there is nothing you can do to help Annabel whether you go or whether you don’t. She’ll feel guilty if you miss the concert because you don’t want to go without her, so either way, one of you loses. But at least a gift like that will show that you appreciate her letting you go and that you thought about her while you were there.’

Paige considered for a moment and then nodded. ‘Ok, you’re right,’ she sighed. ‘So, what am I going to wear?’

Bonnie laughed lightly. ‘That’s what I like to see… practical as always.’

***

Bonnie slipped a pair of heels on with her skinny jeans and examined her reflection in the full-length mirror inside her wardrobe door. She’d piled her hair up in a stylishly messy bun, wore a neat vest top and fitted shirt casually unbuttoned, an understated diamond pendant at her neck. The heels made her legs look longer, but would she be able to stand them for the three or four hours that she’d be on her feet at the concert? She kicked off the shoes again and pulled on her ballet pumps, looking critically at her reflection. Comfy, practical and boringly safe, or sexy but at risk of looking like a bimbo and falling flat on her face at some point? It wouldn’t matter, of course, if she
was
just
going to see a concert. Steeling herself and knowing that in an hour or so, she was going to regret her decision, she pulled the heels back on and went to see if Paige was ready.

Paige was in her room applying make-up. For once, she was wearing an outfit that Bonnie approved of. She had gone for a short, flared skirt with a wide belt pulling her waist in and a fitted top, but the top was high-necked and subtle and the skirt just the safe side of short with a pretty fifties vintage look about it that somehow made it look more respectable.

‘You look lovely,’ Bonnie said with obvious pride.

Paige grinned. ‘You don’t look so bad yourself. Like a yummy mummy.’

‘I’m not too embarrassing then?’

‘You’ll do,’ Paige said, turning back to the mirror to finish applying her mascara.

‘Are you nearly ready? We need to leave soon.’

Paige screwed the lid back on the tube and turned to her mum, planting her hands on her hips in a model pose. ‘Let’s roll!’

***

Bonnie had wondered whether there would be someone to meet them at the arena, or at least a special door they would have to go through to make full use of their VIP passes, but as nobody had contacted them beforehand with any instructions, and none of the concert stewards on site knew what to do either, Bonnie and Paige ended up queuing impatiently at the main gates with the rest of the concert-goers. They had arrived early, and it turned out to be a wise move, as even an hour before the show was due to start the arena was buzzing with excited teenage (and some not quite so teenage) girls. They decided to see how effective their passes actually were, and wandered around for a while, trying different official looking areas of the building to see if anyone stopped them from going in. What they had dubbed ‘no man’s land’ (the area between the stage and the barriers separating it from the crowd), the side of the stage and a special drinks area all seemed to be ok. But Paige, having never been to a concert before, and being swept up in the soupy atmosphere of rampant teenage hormones, decided that she wanted to be right at the front in the crowd, so she could experience what she had assumed would be the best view of all.

‘We can see that in front of the barrier,’ Bonnie said, ‘without getting squashed.’

‘It’s not the same, Mum, in front of the barrier. Everyone will be staring at us and I’ll feel weird, like I’m not part of the concert.’

Bonnie laughed. ‘There’s no way you can be in this building and not be part of it.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Paige replied with a pout.

Bonnie sighed. ‘Right then. If you really want to get in amongst it, I don’t see we have a choice. But I’m telling you now that if it gets too rough, we’ll be getting out over that barrier. I’ve been to enough rock gigs with your nan to know that these things can get scary.’

‘You worry too much,’ Paige returned sagely. ‘This isn’t one of nan’s sweaty rocker gigs, this is proper organised stuff.’

Bonnie raised her eyebrows and bit back a wry smile. ‘We’ll see,’ is all she said.

Half an hour before the concert was due to start, the engineers came on stage to check the equipment to a loud cheer. Even though there was a support band due on first, The Musketeers, who nobody particularly cared about, the crowd was already pushing forwards towards the front, everyone in a territorial bid to find the best spot and hold onto it ready for the main event. Even before the sound engineers had left the stage, Bonnie was feeling tense and claustrophobic, not to mention very hot. And she was pretty sure that rock crowds weren’t that different from hordes of teenage girls (if anything, teenage girls were probably scarier) and that things were going to get a whole lot more uncomfortable before the night was out.

***

As it turned out, The Musketeers were actually quite good. Bonnie didn’t know many of their songs, apart from their one big hit, but Paige knew them well and jumped up and down along with everyone else, mouthing the words to the songs she knew, pretending to mouth along with the ones she didn’t, and the set flew by. They went off with a flurry and a roar of appreciation from the crowd, and then the stamping and clapping demands for Every Which Way began. If the audience had been excited before, the departure of the support band and the imminent arrival of the one they had all really come to see sent them into a collective frenzy, so that it became not a room full of separate people, but one, huge, obsessive creature, hungrily baying for blood. Paige began stamping too, shouting, ‘
We want Holden, we want Brad, we want Jay, we want Nick…
’ over and over again along with everyone else, her face alight with
fervent hero worship. Bonnie could feel herself becoming seduced by it too, and she stamped and found herself wanting to shout and scream for the band to come on. The tension built and the stamping and shouting grew and grew in volume, and just as it reached a dangerous crescendo, the lights of the stadium went down and a great roar of anticipation erupted from the crowd.

There was a burst of fireworks from the stage, and in front of them, grinning madly and in various poses, stood the members of Every Which Way.

There was something about seeing them up there, backlit and awesome, that made them look strangely unreal; it was like looking at gods, not men. They wore different but complimentary outfits, colour coordinated, and even the colour and styles of their hair seemed to work together to produce an overall effect.

And even as these brief thoughts ran through Bonnie’s mind, she could feel the huge weight of the crowd behind her begin to push forwards and tensed herself to hold firm against it. She glanced warily at Paige, who seemed unconcerned, staring up, mesmerised, at the stage.

‘ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME?’ Brad shouted, and a deafening wave of screams rolled across the arena.

‘I SAID, ARE YOU READY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME?’ he shouted again, holding a hand to his ear for effect.

The screams and shouts grew louder and the first bars of
Don’t Forget Me
struck up, only to be drowned out in Bonnie’s immediate vicinity by frantic squealing and not a small amount of yelled swearwords mixed with marriage proposals and offers of sex.

Slightly self-conscious at first, painfully aware of being the oldest person she could see up front, Bonnie got into the spirit of things. Paige was already swept up in the music and atmosphere, jumping up and down with her hands in the air, shouting along to the words of the song, and if someone had set a bomb off in there, Bonnie didn’t think her daughter would even notice, so entranced was she by the men performing in front of her. And Bonnie couldn’t help but get swept up too, so that three songs into the set, she started to jump with everyone else, and her arms went above her head and she shouted her undying love to Holden, because nobody would notice anyway, and it felt so good to let it out.

***

As things mellowed for a brief moment into a slower number towards the end of the set, Bonnie glanced across at Paige. Her daughter seemed quieter suddenly, staring up at the stage, though now she didn’t seem to really be seeing it. Bonnie had become aware of the terrific heat being given off by the tightly-packed bodies, of the sweat running down her own back, and could see that Paige looked overheated too.

‘Are you alright?’ Bonnie shouted.

Paige looked across but didn’t answer.

‘Paige? Are you feeling ok?’

Then Bonnie saw Paige’s eyes roll back in her head and she seemed to crumple. There was nowhere for her to fall, so she fell against the people next to her, limp and gradually sliding down to the ground. Bonnie felt her heart lurch in panic. If Paige fell to the floor, there was no way she would be able to get her up without the pair of them being trampled to death. She grabbed for Paige, pulling her up roughly under the arms and yanking her through the few layers of people right at the front with a strength she had no idea she possessed. Once at the barrier she waved frantically for the attention of one of the stewards. A burly looking woman came across to them, a quick glance enough for her to immediately understand the situation. She called across another couple of stewards, who hauled a now almost insensible Paige over the barrier, and then Bonnie too shortly afterwards. They took Paige to a chair at the side of the stage where a few other casualties stood and sat around about being tended to by first-aiders.

A cold sponge down the back of the shirt and a bottle of water seemed to bring Paige round just as the show was heading into its final song. Bonnie heaved a sigh of relief as Paige looked up at her with a faint smile.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said ruefully.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Bonnie pulled her into a sweaty hug. ‘I’m just sorry I didn’t notice sooner that you weren’t feeling well.’

Paige’s attention was drawn to the stage where the band seemed to be saying their goodbyes. There would be an encore – there was always an encore – but their night was almost over.

‘It’s been amazing, hasn’t it, Mum?’ she said with a dreamy expression. ‘I’m sorry Annabel didn’t get to come, but I’m so glad that you did… you’re like my other best friend.’

Bonnie looked at her beautiful daughter, wanting to hold her tight and never let go. Her eyes filled with tears and she sniffed them away. ‘Silly,’ she said trying to underplay the emotion for fear of driving Paige back into her usual uncommunicative self. ‘I’ve had a brilliant time too.’

***

After the madness of rescuing Paige from the surging crowds at the front of the stage, Bonnie was feeling a little delicate and in desperate need of a sit down in a cool, quiet room. She was pretty sure she wasn’t looking her best either – burning cheeks, her fringe sweaty and slicked off her forehead and her clothes crumpled. But there was no way that Paige was going to miss the opportunity of mingling backstage, and once Bonnie had got out of the crowds and felt slightly better for the clearer air, the excitement began to build in her too. They wandered for some minutes, completely lost amidst the confusing labyrinth of concrete-walled corridors away from the main arena, until they spotted a troupe of backing dancers heading towards a large set of red double doors.