It Started With The Crazy Lady

3rd September 1964, Indianapolis

"George! I wasn't expecting you today! It's lovely – though I will have to go in half an hour, I've got a shoot. How are you?"

"I'm... fine." He took a drag of his cigarette.

"Sure? You sound..."

"No, I am, I'm fine. I just wanted to talk to you today, in case... you'd heard."

"Heard what? George, what's happened?"

George cursed himself for being over cautious. He'd wanted to phone Pattie in case she'd heard rumours and now she hadn't and she was worried, instead of just being happy to talk to him. "Nothing, nothing's happened! Some stupid woman went on the news and said we were all going to die in a plane crash and it was all over the papers and I thought you might have heard. But we didn't crash and we're fine. Obviously," he concluded.

"George, that's horrible! How did you all feel when she said that?"

How did they all feel.

Well they all felt just like anyone would expect them to feel, when they eventually heard the news. It turns out the others all knew, Brian, Neil, Mal, and they were going potty trying to hide it from them. They took away all the newspapers and pretended they hadn't been delivered, and sorted all kinds of things for them to do like Monopoly and Scalextric so they wouldn't watch telly. It was all pretty generous of them, really, considering that if the Beatles went down in a flaming crash then so would they. But then, everyone had got used to treating the Beatles like princesses. And their plan was working, until it came up on the radio and Neil dashed to turn it off but he was too late and they all heard it. Some woman called Jean Dixon; she said that their plane was going to crash flying out of Indiana and three of them would die and the fourth would be maimed.

The room went silent, a rare thing in itself.

"It's crap," said Neil into the silence. "You know it's crap." But none of the Beatles looked at him. They were all looking at George.

"This is it, isn't it," John's voice was uncharacteristically husky. "This is what that mad lady was on about. Warning you."

"Eh?" said Neil, but again he was completely ignored.

"We need to stop that flight." Paul marched towards the telephone, but realised that was nothing much he could do on his own. "Where's Brian?"

"Look..." Neil tried again, with no more luck than before.

"We need to get Brian in here." John's face was pale, his eyes wide with anxiety.

"No."

George's quiet interjection seemed to bring a sudden halt to the growing panic, and once again all eyes were on him. When he saw that he had everyone's full attention, George spoke again. "No. This isn't it."

"Isn't what?"

For the third time Neil might as well not have spoken. With an exasperated shrug he gave up and went and sat quietly in a corner and watched and waited for some clue as to what was going on.

"How d'ya know?" This from Ringo; George turned to look at him. His large dark eyes were completely steady. Only the other day they'd seen him frozen with fear and panic, and this, they all saw with relief, was not like that.

"I... just do. I just know. This isn't what she was on about."

John crossed the room to stand in front of him, standing close, body language an unmistakable threat; he peered into George's face, invading space. "Why are you so sure?" he barked. George stood his ground without difficulty and met the aggressive gaze.