Kimberley had awoken with a start.
It was Hilary, she sounded stressed.
"You've probably heard about this already from Cheryl," she had begun.
Kimberley said nothing. She hadn't heard about it from Cheryl. She'd heard next to nothing from Cheryl ever since her mad midnight dash to Oxshott.
Not that she was at all surprised by the announcement.
"There's more," Hilary had stated, her meaning more than a little cryptic.
Of course there's more, she had thought ruefully. There's always more with those two.
It would no doubt be breaking news. Because it was Cheryl. And Cheryl simply was news. And Cheryl and Ashley together - or, more precisely, Cheryl and Ashley not being together - was a hurtling juggernaut of a story likely to cause the biggest media maelstrom of the year.
She sleepily wiped the hair from her eyes and gritted her teeth for what was to come. Hilary was sketchy on the details, maybe deliberately so, but they were close enough and Kimberley was sharp enough that the reading between the lines was evident.
There would be a story, they were planning for it. Because it was Cheryl. Until then, all the girls were to lay low.
She'd been cleaning her teeth when the phone rang once more. She half expected it to be Hilary again with an update. As her fingers curled around the receiver her heart gave a twinge at the possibility that it might be Cheryl. She swallowed hard.
"Kimberley? It's me. Has Hilary got hold of you yet?"
Nicola.
"At about 8.30 this morning. Hello to you too."
"Well, sounds like I was first on the hit list then," Nicola ignored any attempt at pleasantries, clearly irritated at the interruption this new change of events was likely to cause to her pre-planned diary.
"So what you reckon to all this then?"
Kimberley sighed as she sat down on her unmade bed, her eyes darting to the window and the grey slate of sky.
"I guess it was gonna happen sooner or later," she replied diplomatically, doing her best to appear as neutral as possible.
She knew Nicola would take the bait though, she could practically feel the grimace down the crackly line. She heard a car horn blaring and hoped that Nicola wasn't the one driving.
"God, why's everything got to be so bloody complicated with those two?"
For the second time that morning Kimberley held her tongue. Nic didn't know the half of it, she thought.
"S'pose it's best it all comes out now though and not when we're buggering about with promo."
"Mm... yeah," Kimberley agreed half-heartedly, thinking of how a story like this would affect promo. Cheryl's promo. And there was no way the label was simply going to sit back and let the tabloids swarm all over the nation's sweetheart. Not without some carefully constructed strategy to garner every column inch and turn it into an opportunity to exploit brand Cole further. Or brand Tweedy. That was still to be decided.
She could visualise Sundraj frantically tapping away at his laptop, shifting into place some carefully orchestrated PR masterplan one detail at a time, planning and re-planning for every possible outcome. He was good at his job, she had to admit. He had a way of thinking on the hoof. And he had the right kind of connections, which meant everything in PR.
"What's Chez said about all of this?" Nicola broke her concentration. "I can't get hold of her at the minute."
"Oh, I..." I haven't been speaking to her, Kimberley realized in that split second. She hadn't been deliberately avoiding Cheryl since that night. But she hadn't been actively seeking her company either.
There'd been a short message on her voicemail a few days afterwards. She'd sounded weary and slightly embarrassed. She'd thanked Kimberley for staying over, apologised once again for making her worry, asked her out for lunch. At least, thought Kimberley, she had the good sense not to try and lure me back there. At least she recognised the need for neutral territory.
But Kimberley had been busy, and couldn't have met her anyway. She hadn't intentionally put off returning her call, but when at last she'd remembered, the line was constantly engaged. She hadn't bothered with a message. Cheryl would have seen her many missed calls.
Her words trailed off into the static space between them. She couldn't articulate at that moment what Cheryl must be thinking. And at this the guilt began to clutch at her heart.
"Are you still there?"
"Huh? Yeah, sorry Nic. I haven't spoken to Cheryl for a couple of days."
At that Nicola's voice shifted imperceptibly from casual annoyance to something altogether steelier. Her Liverpudlian accent became just that bit thicker, her eyes narrowed.
"Kimberley, what's going on?"
Never was there a more direct question with such a myriad of possible answers, each one more intricately cavernous than the last.
Kimberley stared into the middle distance as she subconsciously loosened her grip on the receiver, her thoughts drifting to a place and a girl not so far away.
"Honestly," she began, "I wish I knew."
