Issues [Frollie]

Chapter 7

“No,” Frankie protested for the second time, shaking her head in abject denial. “No way. We can’t go without Mollie.”

“I agree,” Rochelle piped up. Her expression was respectful, but determined. “There’s no point in trying to get us out there when Mollie’s still in hospital.”

A few weeks ago, before the accident and even before Frankie and Mollie had fallen ill, the Saturdays had agreed to what they’d intended to be a brief fly-out to Ireland to meet some of the fans before doing a quick circuit in London on the way home. It would just be a few interviews before they were monopolised by the tour. Amongst the band members, it had been a shared, unspoken agreement that there would be no such undertaking with Mollie sitting alone in her hospital bed with a broken skull and a battered brain, yet it seemed that their management had not yet received the same message.

“It’s not fair to go without her,” Una added, “and we can always do more interviews by radio or phone without flying out.” The fact that she was choosing to forego a trip to her homeland should have been significant enough for their handlers to realise that this was an important issue to the girls.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Their newest press manager was a woman named Amanda. She offered them a bland, condescending smile as she spoke, as if she were talking to four twelve-year-olds. “The thing is, we want to reassure all the fans that Mollie is up and well, and the best way for us to do that is to just send you off on your way like you were meant to. You can go to Ireland, chat with the fans, then come back through England and be back home before you know it. Molls won’t mind, I’m sure!” She didn’t appear to notice the four glares that were thrown her way the second that she dared to use the nickname she had no claim to. “What do you say?”

“We say no,” Frankie said bluntly. Her usual polite self had been buried along with her co-operation the moment they had suggested that Mollie be left behind while they went away.

Amanda the walking-corporate-smile looked mildly confused. “What do you mean by that?” she asked politely.

“No, we’re not going without Mollie. She’s not ‘up and well’, and we won’t leave her while she’s in hospital. You do realise that she has just woken up from a coma, right?”

She gave an airy laugh that made every single one of them want to punch her in her pretty, pretty face. “Of course I know that,” she said casually, brushing the matter away with her hand like it wasn’t a matter of their friend’s life and death. “I may be new to the Saturdays team, but I do know the basics.”

There was a small frown on Vanessa’s face as she leaned forward to catch her attention. “Do you know how to count?” she asked.

Now, the corporate smile slipped a fraction. “Pardon me?”

“Do you know how to count?” she repeated clearly, without breaking eye contact.

“Of course I do,” she said, adding a light laugh at the end. If she had intended to break the tension in the room, she failed miserably, as it only strengthened the animosity they felt toward her.