[[[all of my flaws]]][[[part ii]]]

1.

I'd been sick four times before I left the house that morning. I had always suffered badly with nerves. But today was the first day of my new job. The job I'd been working towards for four years. I couldn't make any mistakes. I had to make a good first impression. After all, I'd be working with these people twenty four seven for the next four weeks. I checked my new shoes were clean. Someone had once told me that shoes were the first thing people looked at.

I'd had a job interveiw weeks ago, but had given up hope of hearing back. They wouldn't want me. I'd never done it before, I only had a degree in personal relations, management and scheduling, but no actual experience. My age was a massive factor, being only twenty five. They wanted older, wiser people. So when I'd got the phone call the night before, requesting I begin immediately, I had dropped everything, packed my bags and prepared myself for life on the road. I was to be tour manager, a real life tour manager. Only temporarily whilst their guy was off sick with an injured leg, but that didn't matter. It was the first step to getting my name out there so other artists would know I could look after them. And if I could nail these four weeks without fucking anything up, it could be the start of a long career.

I triple checked my short bleach blond hair in the wing mirror of my little car before heading into the head quarters of the bands record label. In my haste of getting packed I'd failed to research who they were. I'd been told their name, immediately forgetting it, but they were some small band about to make it big, consisting of four guys. I still couldn't believe they'd chosen me to do this. It wasn't even a small tour this band were doing, it was an eighteen night tour of Britain and I was in charge of getting them onstage, on time, every night whilst making sure they were all fed and watered and behaving themselves.

I had some things to go over with the bands manager and promoters before signing a contract, going over pages and pages of times and places, reservations for hotels, transport details, even the names of the various drivers and car rental places I'd be using. It took hours, but luckily my brain was a sponge. And I was handed my new work phone.

'This thing will never stop ringing.' I was warned. I shrugged. I was more than prepared for this, despite only having twelve hours notice. 'Now, do you want to come and meet your children?' I was led away from the office and down to the canteen in the basement. Sat towards the back of the room with the remnants of breakfast across the table, two guys were sat awaiting my arrival. I recounted. Weren't there four of them? Had I managed to lose half of them before I'd even began?

'Guys, this is Lillian Smith, your new tour manager while Dicks away.' Their manager introduced me.

'Hi.' I waved my hand awkwardly, like a moron. Great. The two of them were staring at me and I felt my cheeks getting hotter and probably redder by the second. They stood up to greet me.

'Kyle.' A tall skinny guy with a moustache held out his hand, breaking the awkward silence. I shook it with a nervous laugh.

'I'm Will.'

'Hey.' I replied and took his hand in turn. He was a muscly guy and seemed to be the oldest of the group so far, with a fantastic charisma about him.

'And the other guys are just getting some food, hang on.' Will pointed to the food counter. 'Oi, Woody, Dan, come meet Lillian.' He shouted across the room.

'Shit, sorry.' I heard from a far and a shorter guy with blond curly hair approached us. 'Hey, nice to meet you, I'm-'

'Chris?' My hand flew to my mouth in awe.

'Lillian?' Chris threw his arms around me and hugged me. I didn't have the brain capacity to know what to think right then. I did burst into tears when Chris did though. 'I can't believe...you're...it's you.' He said through tears of happiness. Which set me off a million times worse. I had imagined meeting my brother so many times over the last eight years. But I never thought it would actually happen. I had closed that chapter of my life and moved on without the family I'd grown up with. 'You're our new tour manager? How...?' He let me go and stared right at me, like he was seeing a ghost. I was totally overwhelmed.

'I can't believe this...' I uttered.

'How do you guys know each other?' Will asked.

'Lillian is my sister.'

'I had no idea you had another sister?' Kyle laughed. He looked between us. And I just stared at Chris. There were no words. I pulled him into another hug and laughed as I cried.

'I...you...' Chris began, but neither of us could form any sort of sentence.

'Yeah.' I laughed and wiped away the tears from my cheeks. This hadn't been the introduction I'd had planned. We'd momentarily forgotten what I was here for.

'Oh, this is Dan.' He stepped aside and revealed a tall guy with dark spiky hair and glasses. As if I couldn't have been more shocked and overwhelmed, I was stood looking at my estranged husband. It took every single part of my brain not to scream out in shock. I had roughly 0.0009 seconds to decide that I couldn't acknowledge that I knew him. I would lose my job on the spot. I could see it on his face that he recognised me. Dan was stood there with his mouth open as I tried desperately to control this situation. I was pleading with him with my eyes not to say anything. Especially not the truth. He laughed nervously.

'Hi.' He held out his hand and I reluctantly took it and dropped it quickly. I was grateful that he seemed to understand that he could say nothing about knowing me.

'So after that little family reunion, I'm going to hand the reins over to Lillian now. Please be gentle with her.' The manager warned them. The look that Kyle and Will gave each other assured me they weren't going to treat me like some porcelain doll. And I'd rather have it their way. 'And Lillian, don't take shit from them. Any problems, let me know.' And off he bustled. They were now my responsibility. My new charges. Or half of them at least.

We were bombarded by questions from the two men I didn't know. I kept glancing at Chris as though he would disappear any second, all the while I could feel Dan watching me.

'So, you guys are siblings? But you've not seen each other for a while?' Kyle asked.

'Yeah...' Chris looked to me to explain. Probably wasn't a good idea to tell the truth.

'There was a big family fall out a long time ago.' I said to Kyle and then turned to Chris. 'I knew you wanted to be a drummer in a band, but I didn't know you were in this band.'

'Yep!' He laughed. 'And you're a tour manager!'

'Almost. I've been at uni for four years and this is my first real job.' I lied. If only I could tell them the truth...