He's So Fine [Beatles / George Harrison FanFiction]

Chapter Nine: 9th November 1961

''Now, all you cave dwellers! Welcome to the best of cellars! And welcome to a very special guest in The Cavern today... Mr Brian Epstein of NEMS music store! Please make Mr Epstein welcome...'

It was crowded this lunchtime inside the Cavern. It was crowded every lunchtime. Della had left early to come here today, but there had still been a queue half way down Mathew Street when she'd arrived. It took a good forty-five minutes to get inside, by which time the Beatles were already on stage.

Della asked Paddy, the Cavern's doorman, if he would mind her bags and went to buy herself a coke from the snack bar at the back of the central tunnel. She would wait. There would be a break in the show sooner or later.

As she turned around to watch the band, she found herself trapped behind by a couple of men in suits. 'Excuse me,' she said, but the men, one dipping his head to speak to the other, didn't move.

Annoyed, she squeezed through them, apologising as she forced them to separate for her. She cast them a look back over her shoulder as she escaped down the right side tunnel. Suits, ties, bright white shirts. What would two fellas like them be doing down here?

Della squeezed through the audience to find a couple of inches of space under one of the arches, close to the front of the stage. 'Sorry, sorry,' she whispered as her fellow audience member scowled at her for forcing her way through. She stood by the wall on John's stage side, sipping her coke. Close to the front, but not close enough to be noticed. She craned her neck and raised herself onto her tiptoes in the hope she'd catch someone's eye - they'd let her go through to the back room then - but there wasn't a chance she would get to the front. It was rammed solidly, a wall of dolled up girls, all jostling for space to bat their eyelashes at their Beatle of choice.

Paul didn't like Della to stand on the front row, and to be honest, neither did Della. It was cutthroat down there. If anyone got an inkling that she was anything more to Paul than just a friend and acquaintance, there could be trouble. She was known here, but most people outside of their closest friends only thought of her as George's friend, and not his girlfriend either, because George had just started going out with a petite blonde girl called Bernadette.