[18+] Mark just wants a quiet life. With plenty of action at work, he has no interest in bringing the drama home with him. But he does need a flatmate, and when blonde bombshell Zoe crashes onto the scene, she's more than he bargained for.
Zoe is a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
May 2014
MARK
"It's not a big deal." Ed wanders over to the window and peers out at the view. "This room is great."
He says it with the nonchalance of someone who wasn't a victim of a crowd swarm last night. In his eyes, the incident represents his success. Hundreds of girls fighting to get close to him. To touch him. For us, it's a logistical nightmare and raises all kinds of security concerns.
With his usual home now public knowledge, I made the call to divert us here for a few nights. Unfortunately, it seems one of the best hotels in London isn't able to accommodate a simple request. On a Tuesday night no less.
"This room is not what we asked for," I say to the concierge. "We needed a floor."
"I'm afraid I'm not involved in room allocation," the elderly man replies. "Would you like to talk to our Operations Manager?"
"No." I shove my hands in my pockets. "I'd like to talk to the General Manager."
"I'm not sure he's in today, but let me find out who's in charge and I'll send them up."
With a tip of his hat, he scurries out of the room, no doubt to warn the GM that there's a pissed customer and he needs to stay in hiding.
"Honestly, Mark." Ed turns to face me. "We'll be fine. Nobody followed us."
"We don't know who else is on this floor," I try to explain for the fiftieth time.
"Yeah, well, I like it in here."
Of course he does. He's developing a taste for the finer things in life. Money's leaving his bank account as quickly as it's going in. Fortunately he has enough of it—and all because of these crazy fans. No wonder he loves them so much.
On the maddening chance that the hotel can't fix this mess, I start discussing strategy with Jeremy. He makes a good Second, and it's times like these that I realise how thankful I am to be Team Leader. Des would've let the chips fall. He was reactive, not proactive. Crowds would continue to swarm Ed, and Des wouldn't do anything to prevent that because his thought process was entirely one-dimensional.
It's all part of being a celebrity, he'd said to me on more than one occasion, like I was a clueless kid who didn't know how the world worked. He didn't like being challenged, and I didn't like not being taken seriously. Each time it happened, I built up a case with Helen. I explained that it kept happening because Des was letting it. We couldn't operate as a single team anymore. We needed an inner cordon of officers and outer cordon. We needed an advance party and a residential team. If Ed's success continued to grow, our current model wouldn't be sustainable.
Then Ed had a panic attack before going on stage one night, and Des didn't know what the fuck to do.
