CHAPTER 1

Rachel Adams didn’t get good things. 

That was why she was in the industrial-sized kitchen of a five-star French restaurant in a five-star Mayfair hotel, in the bitter London cold. More specifically, she was gritting her teeth, barely resisting the urge to throttle a Frenchman’s conceited, moustachioed face – and honestly, who would even blame her? The man’s utterly condescending behaviour was testing her patience to its limit, and she didn’t exactly have that much to begin with.

She definitely wished she wasn’t there. However, her bank balance, or rather lack thereof, along with her landlord's rental lease, most assuredly, thought otherwise. It all was because she had walked — stormed — out of her old job, in a back-alley bar, with an Evil Witch as her boss, leaving her with very few legal options about making more money.

Hence, the new job.

The new job that was making her want to find a hole and live in that instead of her current minuscule studio apartment, so she didn’t have to pay rent or need this job at all. The level of screaming in her head was rising, and someone was probably going to end up being punched before the day was out. Granted, it probably wouldn’t be the best way to start said new job, by punching the Mâitre d’ of a posh restaurant – aka, your new boss – no matter how annoying he was. And yet, that seemed to be the only course of action that made any sense to her, at that very moment.

 “And you are sure you have done this before?” the annoying boss drawled on, repeating a question from not even three minutes before. Again. Rachel was well aware that he was being passively-aggressively insulting. 

Sweet took a deep breath and decided to answer him, instead of pushing him into the nearest vat of soup.  

“Yes, but not quite like this,” she muttered. Monsieur Jean-Pierre Dupont, Mâitre d’ of London’s newest super-posh restaurant, L’hôtel D’amour, actually rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue at her, like a petulant teenager. I’ll pop

“Mon Dieu,” he muttered. “Here we go again.” Rachel gawked at him mutely. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“Right. This way!” Jean-Pierre clapped his hands together at her like she was an unruly puppy, sending Rachel’s patience from the gutter straight into the Earth’s Core. “I will be showing you what you are to do, and you must listen - carefully! It is a very fine skill to serve guests with flair and not to spill anything on this. And you must not ever spill anything on them. Ever! Which is why I am going to be teaching you how, maintenont.”

Well.

This was what she got for starting a new job in a new French restaurant, when the closest she had come to the actual country was to whiz through her French A-level exams and work hard at becoming fluent in it – just for fun. Also, not to mention, that as a staunch vegetarian, she had also never felt the urge to stuff dead snails and frogs’ legs into her mouth – and now that she had seen them, she definitely wasn’t going to be starting anytime soon.

The pretentious man, who had apparently decided to take on her training personally and demanded that she follow him right now, stalked off with every expectation that she would do as she was told.

Trying to convince herself that the jail time wasn’t worth what she really wanted to do with him, Rachel quietly followed in the wake of the infuriating man, feeling particularly overwhelmed. Already, she could barely breathe in the wake of the breakneck speed the Mâitre d’ took her through everything she would need to know, piling more and more information onto her beyond-overwhelmed brain. She also vaguely wondered how long it would take before she actually drowned in all the condensation pouring out of his mouth.

The man hardly seemed to have taken a single breath since she’d arrived, launching directly into his training lecture, and condescendingly looking down his long nose at her – but in fairness, she seemed to get that from, well, almost everyone, anyway, so that might actually be by-the-by. His lengthy, lecturing tirade about their own unique levels of service that he insisted she would have to learn and perfect to be up to their standard of service, seemed to be given just so he could make it abundantly clear that this was an art form and not just waitressing. 

All she’d wanted was some money and a way to earn it – not a monster of a migraine and a hefty dose of major information overload.     

Inwardly, Rachel sighed and tried, again, to convince herself she was doing the only thing she could do – keep trying to survive whilst paying her dues for giving up on the one career she was trained and qualified for, that she had worked most of her young life for. The one that she had given up, without any consideration to the fact she had absolutely nothing else to fall back on. Her skillset, her training, and her entire life, her soul, and her very existence, had always been dedicated to Music and Performing – up to the point where that was all she had ever “qualified” in. Except for one A-Level, in French. 

As it was, back then, it had never even occurred to her she’d might actually need a backup plan, and this is what she got for not having one – serving pretentious prats with far too much money (and way more of it than sense) a lot of overpriced tiny food for almost no pay.

Granted, waiting tables was a thankless, mind-numbing job; but someone had to do it, right? So, she figured it might as well be her, since she could do nothing else – hell, she couldn’t even really do this. It was hardly great money, but it was some money, at least, and it kept a roof over her head. Just. Why the art of presenting pretentious food to pretentious people was so complicated, and yet came with pay barely above minimum wage, was utterly beyond her, though. The Evil Witch hadn’t paid a penny over minimum wage, but it was a dark and cheap bar that stank of beer and sweat, in the backend of Camden Town. Working in this palace of a place, on Park Lane, where food prices were so eye-watering only the seriously well-off could afford it, you’d expect the pay to reflect it. Sadly, it really did not.

Rachel half-despaired the fact everything in her life had somehow come to this point. Her childhood dreams of treading the boards of the West End were up in smoke, and she had entirely given up hope of a singing career somehow magically materialising in front of her a long time ago. Now, it was just about pretending to be an adult, paying rent and bills, and essentially just surviving. It was something unprecedented to a younger Rachel, years ago, who saw herself as a success on stage, in some capacity, by the time was twenty-five. Yet, here she was, in training to be a super-silver-service penguin, for a couple of quid over minimum pay, instead. Absolutely not living the dream.

London had been a do-or-die situation when it came to her soul and her own sanity, after making the heart-wrenching decision to give up on her theatrical, performing and music aspirations. It had been the hardest decision of her young life, but the never-ending conga-line of nay-sayers, all of them more than happy to cackle, snort, or refute her life choices, likes, and ambitions , became more and more insistent – and more and more prevalent – ending up becoming less and less bearable. Until she just couldn’t take it anymore.

People were cruel – thoughtlessly, coldly cruel – and time and again, over almost her entire young life. The people around her were overbearingly judgmental, rude, belittling, scornful and entirely ridiculing of her; her talents, her skills, and her aspirations to be a professional performer. She was too pudgy, with a round face, scattered freckles, unruly red hair, and glasses, which also apparently equated with not being good enough for music or stage work.

The  was bad enough coming from the people who knew her, but when virtual strangers were gearing to give a verbal barrage of unwanted, unwarranted “concerns” – which were just badly masked scornful ridicule and making her feel condescendingly belittled – it really pushed more than boundaries.

It eroded the fabric of her very being, unravelling it word by word, day by day.  

It was made worse, because almost all of these people, were strangers, and yet somehow believed they knew her, simply because both her parents were the dedicated joint owners the large, local GP Practice, where virtually everybody who lived there went. Had “watched her grow up” – as if that wasn’t creepy enough – and, therefore, apparently entirely believed that this gave them some kind of entitlement or privilege over her own privacy, personal space, and autonomy. Their opinions were apparently The Only Navigation That Counted, if you listened to them prattling on, and she was apparently an abhorrence in their society, of she did not follow their word as if it were The Gospel.

They always made it clear there was no way in all of everything that little Rachel Adams was undoubtedly in no way fit to be in Musicals or be a professional singer. Their awful behaviour went on until their ridiculing had become too much. After hearing one too many times that the gawking girl with the frizzy ginger hair and glasses was in no position to go and become “some West End or Pop Star” (now say it with immense disdain and derision to get the full effect), something in her brain just snapped.

Unsurprisingly, Rachel had hated it. By the time her Performing Arts course was over, Rachel had firmly decided that enough was enough, and she absolutely wouldn’t pursue it anymore, nor have anything to do with it again – not if she planned on staying sane with at least a little bit of something that hopefully looked like self-confidence left. To do manage that, she was going to leave all this where it was, shut the door on it, and never look back, hoping that without it. She was hoping she  then would be spoken to, and treated like  a normal person, instead of an aberration of all humankind.  

Unfortunately, it also hurt. Actually, it was worse than that: It felt more like a betrayal. She had promised her grandparents she would pursue it, and not allow her skills and talent go to waste. They had been the ones to believe in her, and support her with all of it – taking her to her dance classes, singing lessons, and amateur dramatics when she was younger, her parents were too busy to do so, or care. 

It was also especially poignant because her grandmother had actually been a professional opera singer, playing and touring with the English National Opera, now known as the world-renowned ENO and based on Covent Garden in the West End of London. To them, she was known as Mirabella Fontaine, lauded for many years within their community at the time, widely celebrated and – basically – famous. Even to this day, she was  known as one of the greatest Sopranos of her time, if not all time. 

To her family, she was simply Mary Adams, neé Jones, and she had a lot of great anecdotes to tell from her time touring the country and Europe with her voice, both with the ENO and on her own merit. Her husband, John Adams and Rachel’s Grandfather, had undoubtedly been her biggest fan. He had been a carpenter and accidentally became a specialist in creating stage sets, after getting a few odd-jobs for theatres and tours requesting self-employed carpenters to assist with set-building. They got to talking and they never looked back .

Even after her grandmother had passed away, when Rachel was just fourteen years old, he continued to diligently take her to her classes and the many “am-dram” meetings and rehearsals , always reminding her that “your granny would have my hide and worse if I didn’t get you there, and on time!”. 

He never stopped telling stories about her either, before and after her grandmother passed away. Her grandfather’s favourite subject was his wife, her talents, her skills and what she got up to. Back then, it was pretty much expected that women give up their careers when married, presumed to “need” children immediately or soon afterwards. Both my grandparents defied expectations , and Mirabella Fontaine remained secretly happily married whilst she continued to tour and work as a professional opera singer , whilst her husband proudly cheered her on, and encouraged her to take as many opportunities as possible.  

He’d confided in Rachel on the day her grandmother passed away, he had done so in the hope that as many people of the world as possible got to hear her voice before she gave it up, and before she died, so he cheerfully grinned her off to every performance, every tour, and every recording session she went to. Her voice still resonated on for anyone who wanted to play various cast and solo albums, including her favouritnd Sullivan’s Pirate of Penzance and The Mikado, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and La bohème, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and Mozart’s classic of “The Magic Flute”.

After she retired from Opera, Mary Adams had become a professional musician, and was extremely and perfectly proficient as a pianist and violinist. Her favourites to play were Chopin, Beethoven and Mozart, even though she could easily turn her talented hands to anything, from Rachmaninov to Wagner, and so many others the average person hadn’t even heard of. Rachel had listened to her play her entire life, and got the studio albums of anything that had her playing in. Mary Adams had an incredible, unique and haunting tone to her playing that was unsurpassed and had kept her just as busy as her opera career had. 

By the time she was just ten years old, Rachel had a wide and varied understanding and exposure to the best that music could offer. It came as nothing more than instinct to want to embroil herself within it, as well. From that age, she learned to play the piano and sing, and was taught by her grandmother personally, not quite understanding that she was being trained by one of the best opera singers and musicians in the world. However, she was definitely quite aware of just how incredible her grandmother was, both appreciating and loving every minute of it.

“She didn’t just have a gift, she was one,” her grandfather had told her, on the day that she passed away. He was clearly so hollowed with grief, yet the words were also had a warmth that overcame the cold darkness that it brought. “I wanted to share it with anyone whoever wanted to listen. I wanted to make sure that she shared it with the world.”

Then he’d turned to her, put his gnarled, wrinkled hands on her shoulders , then  proceeded to tip her world completely upside-down, and utterly stripped the floor from under her feet, telling her something she’d never thought she would hear.

“That’s what you are, too, little Songbird,” he told her with solemnity Rachel wasn’t used to, using the nickname he had given her when she’d started her vocal lessons with Granny. “You don’t just have a gift. You are a gift. Your voice and skills are incredible and becoming impeccable. The more you learn, the better you’ll get, but already you are showing such promise beyond most of the peers around you. There is no doubt in my mind that watching you is a gift, and everyone who sees you can already feel it. Make sure you keep your grandmother’s heart and her soul alive and well inside you. Keep up with your skill and your craft, and keep the voice and soul of Mirabella Fontaine alive and well as you sing.”

Fourteen year old Rachel could to nothing but nod and let the tears stream silently down her cheeks. They were the words that kept her going for another four years . But her grandfather passed away himself only three years later, and after that she had no one to support her, other than her best friend from Performing Arts, Kirk Brandon. So, with nobody left to keep her promise for, she had made her decision to walk away and never look back. Whoever, or whatever, she was, it was not Mirabelle Fontaine, and the world would not miss her, in the least.

In the end, there was nothing left of her or for her back home. Once Kirk had left to go to drama school in London, she was on her own and living with her parents in this tiny town, instead of going to a London drama school herself. So, after some deliberation, she had packed her bags – and every ounce of courage she’d ever had – and followed him down, with at least some kind of hope she might some kind of a future there, somehow.

Unfortunately for Rachel, she hadn’t thought through how she was actually going to do it. Not at all. She had set her sights and simply focused on getting to the one place that anyone could be anything they wanted, without being judged or belittled about it. She wanted – needed – to get away from the mindless village the lived, where they all believed no one should do anything different, or “rock the boat” of basic existence. Even if she couldn’t do what she had once wanted to do the most – perform in Musicals – she would at least be free of them and their presumptive, cruel venom. She believed she would just... figure it out when she got there.

Well. Here she was, seven years later, still figuring it out. Badly.

It wasn’t really much of a surprise – Rachel knew she was absolutely lousy at running her own life. But when she was eighteen and following Kirk’s trail dust out of there, she’d had no idea how utterly useless she truly was.

It was naïve but hopeful, to think she was capable of sorting stuff out when she had got here, because Musical Theatre, performing and music was all she had ever known, all she had wanted to do. From as far back as she could remember, singing and performing had been more natural than breathing, more fluid than blinking. Music had been in her very soul since Minute One of her very existence, and more than anything had been inspired by watching Disney films into be in Musical Theatre. Failing that, a singer-songwriter.

She had no other jobs in mind and had little other interests. 

In that moment, a hollow, gutted space seemed to open up inside her; a cavernous and overwhelming black hole that was threatening to entirely engulfed her, so much so that she couldn’t even breathe through, right then.

Therefore, when her best friend, moved to London to go to a prestigious Theatre School after college, she packed up and followed him there faster than you can say Les Misérables.

But right now, Rachel was thinking maybe she really shouldn’t have. There was only so much condescending Mâitre d’ one could take in a lifetime... And she was starting to edge beyond her limit already.

The only thing even keeping her there was the fact she really needed the money, because she’d effectively made herself unemployed from the last one, where she had been working for the afore-mentioned Evil Witch. It really had been a nightmare of a backstreet bar in Camden, so the step-up in employment made it… almost worth it. That Camden job had been one she was forced to take to make rent and eat upon first stepping foot in the city, because she needed a place to live that was just hers, and hers alone.

Needing said independence, and quickly, was made all the more imperative because the only way she had been able to move to London and into somewhere to live, was to pretend to be Kirk’s girlfriend and stay with him at the flat-share he’d found in Queensway, on first moving out there. Needless to say, she wanted that façade to be over and done with in the quickest possible way that was relatively believable.

Both the accommodation and the job had been endured with gritted teeth and Rachel bore with it for a good while, but in the end, she’d had to go, both times. 

With Kirk, there was only so much pretending to dote on him and showering him with girlfriend-esqe affection she could take, let alone having to occasionally kiss him to keep up the ruse. That really was the straw that broke the camel’s back with that. When she’d saved enough money, she had managed to scrape together enough for a really dingy “studio apartment” – read: one small room with a tiny en-suite-like shower room, and a couple of kitchen cabinets, with a kitchen sink and a hotplate next to it as a “kitchen” space, a dropdown bed a some fitted wardrobes. It was on the third floor of a townhouse in a small area of Camden Town, curiously called Mornington Crescent, and – in her own, strange way – she loved it there.

Now that she had that space securely, all to herself, leaving her old job had been overwhelmingly terrifying, but it was either that or one day find said Evil Witch buried in, or under, her own kegs.

In comparison to that really awful bar, The L’hôtel D’amour was like being in a palace. It was huge, spacious, and sat somewhere between pretentious, and quietly sophisticated and glamorous. It looked more like what she imagined a First-Class dining room on Titanic might have looked like, had it been built in the twenty-first century, rather than a restaurant.

There were the slightly overstuffed minimalist armchairs and tablecloths in a muted cream, and tables with high backed plush sofas with the deep buttoning on the back, making them look even more pretentious. The walls looked like they were made of grey-speckled marble and there were even white pillars scattered throughout. The ceiling was high and moulded, except for the centre where there was an honest-to-goodness fresco in a large oval space in the centre. There was also rather annoying art-deco-style drop chandeliers, where a cluster of long white lights hung down low and you needed to circumvent those as well as the pillars, when swanning about the place. There even was an honest-to-actual ivory-coloured baby grand piano – of all things – in a nook.

The entire design exuded class, old-style glamorous fashion, and she felt so out of place it almost made her squirm. She even had a posh tuxedo-style uniform (even if it did make her look like a penguin in bad makeup), made up of tailored pants, pristine white shirt buttoned up to her ears, and a black dickie-bow, of all things. 

It was a such surreal turnabout from her dreams of her future, it made her head spin and her stomach feel queasy and hollow. Her future was supposed to have been about moving to London for training in theatre performance, and afterwards head for the West End, or going another way in her music career, performing as a singer and songwriter, instead. It was all she had ever wanted since she was a small child – to be like Granny.

She had studied Performing Arts, taken professional singing lessons, had been taking dance classes since she was in primary school, and had applied for a place at a highly prestigious music school to further study singing. At one time, she had been ambitious and really serious about it. But that had been a long time ago, now. Before The Evil Witch, before the rejections, and before her already non-existent confidence took a nosedive into somewhere by the Earth’s Core.

Because Rachel Adams didn’t get good things.

Now, she was stuck in yet another job she already hated, and she’d only just got there this morning. Whilst she tried, unsuccessfully, to balance plates, cups and crystal glasses on silver trays, something told Rachel that not only did she look like an idiot in her penguin suit, but also maybe she was in way over her head with her waitressing skills here. After all, the only reason she was here was because they really wanted her for her language skills, and there apparently weren’t many people willing to work in waitressing who could also speak fluent French.  

And was quickly becoming clear to Rachel that she seemed to have drastically overestimated her skills as a waitress for this job.

“No, no, no! NO! Not like that, vous imbecile! Regarde-moi, maintenant!” 

He was first calling her an idiot, then instructing her to watch him. Gritting her teeth, Rachel just about managed to not go and find a toothpick to eyeballs out, and did as she was to bid to do, which was to watch him. Then she kept on watching, whilst the temperamental French diva kept on ranting, and then would repeat his tirades when she attempted the same thing, expecting her do everything again until it was perfect.

Well, he was probably going to have a long wait if he wanted that.

“Non! With flair and grace. Head up, shoulders back, smile. Non, I said smile, not look like you just sat on the wrong end of l’ épingler. Now float, be graceful and trés charming… If you possibly can.”

No, she wasn’t capable of being charming, and, no, she definitely couldn’t help but look like she sat on the wrong end of a pin.

At the end of a very long day, Rachel even shocked herself to be finally really getting the hang of it. Head up, shoulders back, smile, float. She didn’t drop anything, she could carry away the plates without them falling off the tray, and she could pour wine without spilling it all over herself and everywhere else. She could actually do it - call the Guinness Book of Records. Her best friend Stevie (real name Stephanie, but you ran the risk of being fed to piranhas if you ever called her that to her face) would never believe it when she told her.

“Well, I admit you are not the clumsiest person I have ever taught,” Jean-Pierre said in some kind of grudging compliment to himself. “But still took lots of work. I sink you are now ready to face the guests. How is your Française?” 

This time Rachel really did feel at ease. Speaking French was the only thing she knew she could do, and well. Jean-Pierre hadn’t hired her himself, so he had no idea that French was about as natural to her as speaking English.

“It’s not bad,” she answered mildly, and in perfect, fluent French. “I know more about it than this. And I know what you kept saying to me.” 

And it definitely hadn’t been complimentary. 

“Ah. Then we do not need to go through the menu,” Jean-Pierre remarked, also in French He kept to his native language and finally made a lot more sense to listen to. “Now, tomorrow, you will do as I tell you, as I have taught you today, and you will learn to be a real waitress, and not some pretty bar girl in an abominable English place. I have heard of the bar you’ve mentioned, for all the wrong reasons. Here, you will not be subjected to such… atrocious things.”

Rachel took the sentiment, for what it was worth, appreciative of the reassurance he wanted to give. However, she also felt a twist in her gut to be reminded about what she had put up with there, and for so long. She was even more surprised the sophisticated and snooty older man had even heard of it, let alone knew its reputation or how it was run. But there was no way she was ever going to ask how, because there were some things she was definitely better off not knowing.

Finally released to flee; after surviving many gruelling hours of her nightmarish first day, Rachel flew out the tall glass doors of the hotel restaurant and looked back through them at her new workplace. If nothing else, working at a place that was that so very pretty and shiny would cheer her up. Well, for now. At least it didn’t smell of stale beer and dodgy old men too inebriated to know how to use the toilet facilities properly. 

As she hopped down the steps leading down the pavement, she noticed someone walking towards her, head down with a baseball cap and dark glasses on. Immediately thinking she was going to get mugged, as she always did with all the horror stories of living in London, she retreated back towards the doors of the hotel again and clutched onto her bag for dear life, waiting for the man to attack her, ready to scream the building down if he did. 

It was as she retreated back up the steps of the building and turned around that man pulled off his hat and glasses and looked right at the odd expression on her face, which suddenly changed when she realised actually recognised him. And he was no mugger. 

Or at least he needn’t be.

What the — Luke Heartlett? Really? her brain rattled at her dumbly.

The moment – if you could even call it that – was over as quickly as it had begun. The man quickly turned back towards the door he’d been heading to and shot into the hotel, leaving her there, alone, like it had never happened. Nevertheless, it sent a ripple of buzzing energy through her to have experienced it. Her jaw remained dropped as she stared after him, unable to believe just who had just walked into the restaurant she was working at. 

Luke Heartlett. 

The Luke Heartlett – of all people.

Rachel would be the first to admit she wasn’t up on her latest celebrities or Entertainment News gossip rubbish, but even she knew who Luke Heartlett was. Despite still being relatively young, the man was a legend of the music industry – a bone-fide global superstar music icon. 

Luke Heartlett was an online and mass media obsession, an industry veteran, and an artist who had rocked and ruled the music world for the last decade. From having gone from teenage “heartthrob”-status pop sensation in his superbly-uber-famous American super-group “boy-band”, All-In – who won accolades, awards, and international godhood status amongst the world’s teenage population, all whilst breaking longstanding industry records – to a renowned and respected grown-up legend, he’d lived his life in the media spotlight for what felt like forever.

Certainly, it seemed like that to Rachel, who had grown up with that media glare aimed directly at her generation of googly-eyed super-fans. She saw far too many of her school and college peers losing their heads over every smile, wink, hairstyle, topless photo (oh, so many topless photos; enough to make her never open anything with the band or his name on it, ever again), and every damned song sung loudly every break time between classes.

So, yes. It could be said they Rachel was quite aware of who he was. 

The American musician had been infamously dubbed by his fans – and subsequently all media – as “The Heart Man”, for his over-zealously sweet manner to fans, and somehow even being utterly charming the Mass Media journalists. He also couldn’t seem to help but get himself at least mentioned every day in every tabloid newspaper, magazine, celebrity-gossip blog and online social media medium – although Rachel suspected that perhaps he gave them a lot of help in getting himself there. If he wasn’t excessively photographed and over-analysed by just about every given any opportunity, he was being continuously mentioned in the famous online celebrity gossip blogs and always made the front-page of the tabloid press if he did anything more exciting than simply breathe. 

He was gorgeous, she’d give him that, having just seeing him in the flesh. And he even had a typically stunning girlfriend that was one of the most famous and controversially skinny supermodels in the world, and he always had a guaranteed hit every time he released a new song or album, because almost all new teenage fans, as well as the veteran fans who grew up listening to him and his band, couldn’t wait to have him plastered all over their walls and clogging up their playlists. He had managed to win every music award known to the worldwide industry at least three times, and had, himself, broken even more industry records as a soloist.

Rachel at least had the awareness to feel rather ashamed that, at the grand old age of twenty-five, she knew any of this, and was even able to recognise him at all. But then again, her blind great aunt would recognise that face, it had been in the media so often. 

“Bloody hell,” she couldn’t help but exclaim under her breath, grinning excitedly – and despite knowing a lot better than to behave like a ten-year-old at Disneyworld. She told herself she was simply just excited that she had just seen her first celebrity in the city – otherwise, she was being really sad. Really, really, really sad. But just wait until she told Stevie! 

Of course, naturally, Stevie the cynic didn’t care at all. When Rachel trotted over to her best friend’s home in Chalk Farm, she barely got a blink out of her. Stevie hadn’t even given much attention to teen music sensations when she actually was a teenager, and so now she was an adult she absolutely had no intention of caring one iota about idiots who took all their clothes off for extortionate amounts of money and couldn’t sing. She also didn’t think he was even remotely cute and had never bought into the celebrity-obsessed culture that most people always seemed buy into. To her it was shallow, and she hated anything shallow. Something which often made Rachel beg the question - why Stevie was friends with her? 

“But it is quite cool,” Rachel tried to argue when she told her. “And he looked straight at me.”

“Yes, but that was probably because you first thought he was a mugger and nearly screamed at him. Then you probably stared at him with your jaw hanging on the floor. By the way, how do the steps of the L’hôtel D’amour taste?” 

Rachel narrowed her eyes and threw her a cold look. 

“My jaw was not on the floor, and my tongue wasn’t hanging out,” she informed Stevie defensively, lying through her teeth. If she had kept a bottle of Pledge in her mouth the steps would have been gleaming. “But when you see them on TV all the time you don’t really think of that.” 

“Yes, whatever you say dear,” Stevie answered patronisingly, giving her attention back to the food she was making in her kitchen. “Now are you going to let me cook my dinner or not?” 

“I am letting you,” Rachel sulked. “I’m just sitting here and talking.”

“Well, if you keep on, I’ll put you in the oven instead, and you can sit and talk in there, if you like.” 

Sometimes it could be asked why Rachel and Stevie (“don’t call me Stephanie!”) Hale were friends at all, but the dry jibes and mild bickering was their way of being friends, and it worked. Stevie was Rachel’s opposite in many ways, and because of that, they worked well together, being the balancing antithesis of each other.

Rachel had met Stevie in the back-alley bar in Camden Town, when she had been their longest-suffering bar staff member, and Rachel was nineteen and still relatively new to the city. Stevie was already a world-weary cynic, despite being just twenty-four at the time, and a closed off, tough-skinned Goth, who definitely little time for a “greenhorn” – as she’d called Rachel many a time there. But when a very tired Rachel had started snarking back, Stevie started to like the feisty redhead, and over the years Rachel was there, they somehow became very close best friends.

Stevie even let Rachel camp out at her place for a while, when Rachel couldn’t find anywhere to live after leaving Kirk’s place and admitting she had come to the end of her rope pretending to be his girlfriend. Although they came to blows more than a few times about just about everything, because they were so different, their friendship endured just about everything over the past five or six years they had known each other. Despite it all, they had become family, and nothing bad ever lasted more than a few heated minutes, usually with Stevie throwing a snark at her, and Rachel relenting with a retort and then they would both be laughing again.

They worked together for three years before Rachel finally managed to get Stevie to relent her stubborn streak, screw up her courage, and have another go at using her long-ignored BSc (First Class) Computer Science university degree to get some kind of a “proper” job. Two years later, Stevie had a very well-paying career role in corporate IT, as a Data Analyst as well as a Database and Systems Administrator, so her CV and contract said, when Stevie had showed her – along with the eye-watering salary that went along with it, particularly so to Rachel, who was barely scraping by on minimum wage. 

To her credit, Stevie semi-respected her place of work and gritted her teeth to put up with being forced to go to work in “posh clothing” (designated as anything not purchased from a Goth store, Camden Market, or never included her huge platform boots), given it was a corporate job – about as abhorrent to punkish-cybergoth Stevie as wearing a clown suit – and thrived in her new line of work. Her employer, fortunately, hadn’t cared so much about the long sheet of red-streaked, jet-black hair she sported, the odd tattoos, rings and black nails that she had, or her “interpretation” of office wear, and instead was quite happy to let her look however she wanted, and leave her be to weave her coding magic on their systems to make them work better. Or something like that. Rachel didn’t really understand the details, nor really care. As long as Stevie was happy…ish… That was all that mattered. “Posh Clothes” notwithstanding.

After five years of friendship, they had no barriers, no secrets, and supported each other like warring sisters, and with Stevie finally free of the bar and The Evil Witch, she turned the tables and kept pushing Rachel to do the same. She constantly begged her friend to just to find something, anything and get away from that place before it killed off what was left of her soul. 

In fairness, Rachel did listen. Seeing Stevie become an even better version of herself after leaving the bar, eventually prompted her to do the same; but it was a lot harder to find work when your only post-16 qualifications involved Musical Theatre, acting, and prancing around  on a stage. But she’d done it now, and Rachel had hoped she could now be a lot happier than she had been before.

After today, though… That seemed questionable.

Pouting at Stevie’s lack of excitement over her Celebrity “Experience”, Rachel huffed and hopped off the countertop in the kitchen and went back through the little archway that separated it from the lounge and sat herself down on the couch. Just as she sat down, though, she heard the buzzer go for the main door to the apartment building, and she got up and clicked the intercom to find out who it was. They definitely weren’t expecting anyone. 

 “Hey, it’s me,” announced the answer when she inquired as to whom it was. 

Rolling her eyes at the very familiar voice, Rachel pressed the button to open the door for none other than Kirk, and then waited patiently for him to walk up the stairs and appear at the apartment door. 

Technically, they had known each other since primary school, but they had only become actual friends while in college when they both took all the same classes by some freak accident. They had  subsequently somehow managed to become adoring best friends, and somehow, he had muscled himself into the role of her surrogate big brother, which Rachel loathed and loved in equal measure

It could also be argued that it was his moving to London to pursue his acting career which had made her contemplate leaving the ramshackle ruins of their tiny little town. So, technically, her depressing existence in this city was all his fault, really, if you thought about it that way, and squinted really hard to find the threads that would get you there. 

When he appeared at the door of the flat, Kirk near-suffocated her in his usual bear-hug greeting and dumped himself on the couch and smiled up at Rachel and Stevie. 

Kirk had been another concession of being friends with Rachel – Stevie had tentatively agreed to semi-adopt Kirk as well but had insisted on “the record showing it was with great reservations”. Rachel was more than happy to accept those terms, because it was a lot more than she thought she was going to get on accepting her annoying, but loving, oldest best friend.

Stevie eyed him with half-exasperated expectation when she found him on her couch, uninvited, and couldn’t help taking a poke at him.

 “And what do you want, trouble?” she greeted mildly as he grinned at them both, looking far too innocent for her liking. “Bored of your famous friends already?”

This was the tormenting he had to endure for appearing in West End shows with a toilet-roll list of celebrity headliners and several extra parts in TV programmes and a handful of films. Not to mention his fabulous West End debut in Phantom of the Opera, which he got almost the moment he graduated from drama school – until he got bored of playing a strait-laced love-interest and headed for more interesting roles. 

 “No,” Kirk answered Stevie, rolling his eyes at her. “You know there are no performances on Sundays. I’m free till tomorrow.” 

 “God help us,” Stevie muttered. “I’m surprised your big fat ego can fit in this tiny place.” 

 “I’m surprised your big fat arse can.”

Since Stevie was a size eight only if she put on weight, the two girls looked dubiously at each other, then both stared blankly at him for that one for a good moment.

“All right! Enough, people,” Rachel then ordered, before Stevie made him internally explode with her blazer death glare. “Behave, you two.”

 “So why are you here then?” Stevie asked him pointedly.

 “I came here to see my favourite girls.”

 “No, you want something,” Rachel retorted knowingly. Stevie turned on her heel and made her way back to the small “semi-open plan” kitchen through the wide archway. 

 “All right, you caught me,” Kirk admitted, grinning wider and holding up his hands. “I’ve got a date and she’s fantastic, and I want to know how to treat her like a real lady. I wanted to get a girl’s opinion, but you’re just going to have to do.” 

“So, who is she?” Rachel went and asked the obvious question because Mr Dramatic wouldn’t be offering it voluntarily.

“Holly Webb.” He said her name very smugly, and Rachel and Stevie exchanged very surprised glances. 

“Holly Webb? The Holly Webb that’s in that show with you and is apparently so fantastic she gets rave reviews in The Stage?” Rachel actually gaped with surprise. “Doesn’t she know you by now?”

“That’s probably why it took him so long to get a date,” Stevie shot from the kitchen. 

“No, it’s not, thank you very much,” Kirk called back. “I just decided to ask her out now.” 

“And yet, if we asked her, you could guarantee that’s not what she would say.” 

Kirk was infamous in the circles who knew him for being an incorrigible charming flirt and outright womaniser. He played on his stunning good looks and boyish charm, pushing the “bad boy rake” impression to get the girls flocking and as an excuse to keep his distance. It was his own description that stated clearly “he didn’t ‘do’ relationships – only pretty women”,  and enjoyed nothing better than a challenge. 

Kirk Branson had straw-blond hair with a floppy fringe, clear-blue eyes that looked more like contact lenses than a natural colour, was pretty-boy gorgeous and had been called “swoon-worthy” within Rachel’s earshot. He could be charming when he wanted to be, but he was only ever interested in one thing, and it certainly wasn’t a girl’s personality. He had been the cute, popular boy in school and now he was the gorgeous West End up-and-coming superstar, and – of course – it had all gone straight to his head. Especially when sweet, female performing arts students clamoured for autographed programmes after the show. 

“Anyway,” Kirk said, sidestepping Stevie’s jibes, “I want to know how you can really impress a girl.” 

“Don’t you usually?” Rachel stated what she thought was the obvious. 

“She’s not exactly the same as the other girls I’ve been out with. I actually like this one.” 

Rachel rolled her eyes and sighed. He was unbelievable – quite literally. No one who knew him 

  believe that. 

“Don’t you suck her face off every night anyway?” she asked pointedly. “Why make it more complicated by asking her out?” 

“Actually, I don’t,” Kirk grumbled. “That would only happen if the bloke who plays her boyfriend accidentally broke his leg, or maybe his neck. I have a completely different role. Don’t you listen to anything I say?” 

“No. Not really.”

“So, are you going to tell me how to really impress this girl?”

“Ask someone else to go in your place?” Rachel offered. She was immediately shot down with a derisive stare.

“I don’t think you could really impress a girl,” Stevie remarked dryly, poking her head around from the kitchen. “You actually have to be genuinely genuine to the girl and not spew your usual crap. You actually have to mean what you say. I know that’s a completely alien concept to you, but you should try it sometime.” 

“I always mean what I say.”

“And you just made my point. Honey, you never mean what you say.”

Kirk pouted for a moment, then looked back at Rachel. 

“So?” he asked her, very unexpectedly. “What do girls like?”

“Seriously?” Rachel raised an eyebrow. She received a sincere nod, and she gaped again.

Rachel had always known Kirk was a law unto himself, and when it came to girls, he was a complete douche to them. But she’d had no idea he really didn’t know anything about genuinely trying get one to properly… woo. Was that even a word these days?

“Well, for one you might want to realise you’re twenty-six and need to start calling them women,” Rachel started dryly. “Also, what you also need to remember is that women want to feel special. That you’re interested in them, not just a cold-hearted hookup. If you actually take the time to get to know Holly, she’ll let you know herself what she likes. You’re just too thick to be able to read between the lines,” Rachel pointed out, while Stevie groaned with her head in her hands. 

“God, you girls are complicated.”

“That’s only because men are so simple,” Stevie argued sensibly. 

“Have you actually managed to get one yet? Or are you still happy in your own little couple?” Kirk retorted sardonically. 

“Why on earth would we want men like you to come and shatter our little lives? You guys haven’t a clue how to make a girl happy. You’re so busy thinking of women as objects to get into bed as soon as possible, you forget we’re actually people. With opinions. And you wonder why they don’t hang around for very long.”

“They hang around long enough.” Kirk gave them a wink and a smirk. 

Stevie’s expression morphed into a dangerous scowl. “If you don’t get out of this sexist attitude, we’re not going to let you in here again.”    

“Nah. Rachel won’t let you do that, will you darling?” 

He looked over at her hopefully. Rachel simply glared back.

“She doesn’t live here,” Stevie retorted pointedly. 

Kirk rolled his eyes and changed the subject to Rachel. “So, how was your first day, hun?” 

Stevie grumbled under her breath at Kirk as Rachel told him about how her new job in the hotel and bumping into Luke Heartlett on the steps when she thought he was going to mug her. 

“Luke who?” Kirk asked blankly, and Rachel rolled her eyes. How was she ever going to manage to convince herself it was normal to know things about him when both her friends had absolutely no idea who he was?

“Heartlett? He’s a singer. I'm surprised you don't know – his face is always all over everything. From what I heard, though, the music is may even be tolerably good.” 

“Oh. The Heart guy. Well, if he can genuinely just hold a tune, he’s ahead of the pack,” Kirk commented mildly. “I tell you; they would get a shock if most of those supposed pop stars went into real singing we have to do, absolutely live night after night, no miming. Doing our own singing and dancing.” 

“Yes, yes, we know all about the tragic, appalling torture you musical Thespians have to endure for your craft,” Stevie said mildly, her bored tone coming from hours of listening to him going on about how challenging both singing live and dancing for nearly three hours straight, at least once a day, every single day. “All those musicals you’ve done must be really hard on the ego. Especially when it’s as big as yours.” 

“It’s a point though,” Rachel conceded, knowing very well what it was like to put that much effort into it and having to come out being, looking and sounding perfect. Every single time. “It takes a lot of hard work and skill to pull off a show like that, and famous singers and these so-called pop-stars just get it really easy and don’t have to do anything else except look pretty and smile. Too many don’t actually sing or perform at all. Though I’ve read All-In, and now Luke Heartlett on his own, actually does.”

“Whatever floats your boat, dear,” Stevie retorted, barely listening to what her friend had to say about the subject. Some random pop-guy was never going to be really high on the agenda of a Cyber-Goth Rock-Metal lover. “When you see him again, don’t forget to tell him that and suck it up for a really fat tip. If you can think of a couple more things along those lines, you can probably get next month’s rent off him.”

“Ha! I’m hardly going to be seeing him again - and if I did, I would be far too embarrassed to stay in the same room as him after this evening. I really humiliated myself. I just hope he didn’t take too much notice of me.”  

“So, you’re actually going to stay in this place?” Kirk asked incredulously.

“I may as we well,” Rachel replied with a sigh. “It’s nice enough. And apparently, they have celebrities there. Cute celebrities.” 

“Would you like another one?” 

Rachel looked at him dubiously. “Like who?” 

“Me,” he answered in complete conviction. “And Holly.”

Stevie snorted loudly. “Despite the size of your giant ego, you are not a celebrity, Kirk. You are an actor in a play.”

 “Musical, dear. And I’ll have you know, I even I have my own professional website and a fan club.”

 “Do people actually visit it? And I don’t just mean you and your fellow Thespian friends.” 

 “Yes, they do, for your information,” he answered indignantly.” And, I’ll have you know, I get asked to sign autographs every night at the stage door.”

 “Probably because they mistake you for a genuine celebrity.” 

He glared at her coldly and folded his arms in a sulk.

 “Okay, we know you’re brilliant,” Rachel said to Kirk, trying to soothe his damaged ego. “But what were you talking about going to the hotel restaurant for?” 

 “I was wondering if it was nice enough to take Holly to.

 Rachel snorted. “How much are they paying you for this show? The L’hotel D’amour is a celebrity hotel for a reason. As in they’re the only ones who can afford it.”

 “I thought it would be a nice place to go… with staff discount?”

 “Forget it, mate,” Rachel laughed wryly. “I am not having you anywhere near my new job, and I am not wangling any discount for you when I’ve only just started there. Even with fifty percent off the bill you still couldn’t afford it. Take her to Pizza Hut or something, where you belong.”

 “Yeh, because that’s going to impress her.”

 “If you really want to impress her, take her on a night-time picnic in the park or something soppy,” Stevie suggested. “It costs nothing, and it looks like you’ve put some effort into it. Any idiot can take someone to a hotel restaurant.” 

 “Not to that one, apparently,” Kirk pouted.

 “If you can’t figure out what she would like, you’ve got no business going out with anyone that good,” Rachel told him. “I don’t know why you bother anyway. It’s not like you could actually love someone as much as you love yourself.” 

 “Hey, you’re getting as bad as her!” 

 “Kirk, darling,” Rachel said, sitting down next to him and patting his leg, “just do what you want to do. If there’s any kind of decent bloke in there at all you’ll do something she actually likes. Otherwise, I’ll have to send her a sympathy card.” 

 “Right. Well, thank you for the advice – and merciless kicking, girls,” Kirk stated dryly, standing up to leave. “I’m sure I’d have been better off without it.” 

 “You sure you can get your big celebrity head out of that door?” Stevie shot as Rachel walked him out of the flat. 

 “Yes, thank you,” he answered dryly. “You concern is most not appreciated.” 

Rachel said goodbye to him at the door, where he gave her another bear hug and kissed her on the cheek before he left. Then she closed door and walked back to Stevie in the lounge. 

 “That poor girl doesn’t know what’s going to hit on her,” she mused, re-joining her friend in the kitchen. 

 “She should know by now what she’s letting herself in for,” Stevie retorted with a snort. “He’s been there every day for the last six months.” 

“He’s too good at being charming and an actor for girls to actually see through to the shallow depths that he really does hold. The problem is that girls always seem to imagine there are hidden depths to him when there really aren’t any.”

“And don’t I know it, the amount of girls I’ve seen him go through.” 

“Well, at least there’s someone out there who’s going to get lucky,” Rachel muttered. “At this rate I’m going to die an old maid.” 

“No, you won’t,” Stevie replied. “There’s got to be some idiot out there willing to put up with you. I do.” 

“Charming. That makes me feel so much better.”

TO CHAPTER 2