Chapter Forty-Two

“This is gonna be so much fun!” Ben said, looking through the ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ details as he sipped his coffee. “Oh cool, we get two phone a friends each!”

“Great.” Paul said sarcastically.

“Shut up Paul, it’s gonna be good.” Chris said.

“Yeah Paul, it’s not for you anyway, it’s for charity.” Mark agreed.

“You lot are acting like it’s the be all and end all. It’s not that amazing!”

“Maybe not, but it’s still good fun. It’s better than everything else we’ve got lined up over the next few months.” Chris pointed out.

“When have we gotta have the contracts back by?” Ben asked.

Mark flicked through his documentation. “Doesn’t say I don’t think… oh hang on, the 16^th. So, Monday.”

“Is that just the bit saying we’ll do the show, or all the forms about charities and stuff?”

“Why d’you lot always ask me these kinda question?” Mark asked.

“Coz you pay more attention than us.”

Mark laughed. “All you have to do is read the small print!”

“I’m allergic.” Ben said.

“You’re allergic to everything! Especially if it involves any form of hard work.” Paul said.

“Oh and you’re so much better.”

“Don’t start you two.” Mark warned. “We have to have all of it filled in and back to Tim by Monday. That’s audience guest list, phone a friends and charities we’re playing for, as well as signing the participation contracts.”

“Audience guest list?”

“Yeah. According to this, we’re allowed to have two guests each in the audience. Their names will be put on the guest list and they’ll get VIP admission.”

“Cool!”

“Where’s it filmed?” Chris asked.

“Doesn’t say. One of the London studios though I’d guess.”

“We might as well decide on the charities and stuff now, seeing as we’re all together and we’ve got a bit of spare time.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

“Paul?”

“Whatever. I’m not going anywhere.”

Ben’s mobile beeped. He looked up from the pieces of paper he’d been engrossed in.

“Is that mine?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Over there.” Mark said, pointing to the cupboard on the other side of Ben’s living room.

“What’s it doing there?” Ben asked.

“You put it there.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Ben got up and picked up his mobile.

He had a text message. He smiled when he saw it was from Chloe.

“I’ll give you two one guess who it’s from.” Mark said.

Chris looked at Ben. “Chloe smile?” he asked Mark.

“Think so.”

“What?” Ben asked.

“Never mind, just read your message.”

Ben smiled even more when he saw what the text said.

*sigh* I’m all alone in

the house and sooooo

bored. Fancy coming

round 2 cheer me up?!

; ) haha. Clo xxx

“Well that’s definitely a Chloe smile.” Chris said.

“Yeah, textbook.” Paul agreed.

“What are you lot on about?” Ben asked, saving the message.

“Was it from Chloe?”

“Yeah… How did you know that?” Ben asked.

“You do this smile thing when someone mentions her name or anything vaguely to do with her.” Mark explained.

“Do I?”

“Yeah, it’s well sappy. Makes me want to throw up.” Paul told him.

“Thanks Paul.”

“Your eyes go all weird too.” Chris added.

“Yeah they do!” Mark said, smiling. “It’s really hard to describe though. They just go all…”

“Sickening?” Paul offered.

“They go all glazed, like you’re on a different planet.” Chris said.

“What did the text say?” Paul asked.

“Nothing you need to read.” Ben said. “I’m gonna ring her and tell her about the meeting and stuff.” He said, putting his mobile on the table picking up the telephone.

Paul grabbed the mobile as Ben was dialling Chloe’s number. He knew it off by heart.

“Oi, Paul, give it back!”

“Now let’s see, messages…” Paul said, pressing buttons on Ben’s phone.

“Paul…” Ben gave up as Chloe answered the phone on the second ring. “Hi babe.” He said, leaving Mark, Chris and Paul to look through his mobile.

“Have you found it?” Mark asked Paul.

“Hang on… oh here we go.” Paul said, reading the message and laughing. “I like Chloe. She’s not all sappy like him.”

“What does it say?”

“Read it out!”

“I’m all alone in the house and so bored.” Paul read in an innocent voice. “Fancy coming round to cheer me up?”

Mark laughed too. “That’ll wind him right up.”

“Answers our little question too.” Paul said with a satisfied smile.

“What question?”

“They have been shagging.”

“I think you’ll find that was your question, Paul.” Mark reminded him.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t want to know.”

“Actually, there was nothing I wanted to know less.” Mark said.

“You’re only fooling yourself.” Paul said with a grin. “What other messages has Ben got on here?” he asked himself, scrolling through Ben’s saved messages. “Oh yuk, really sappy one from Chloe. I take back everything I said about Ben being the only one.”

“Let me see.” Chris said.

Paul handed him the phone and Chris read the message.

“That is disgustingly soppy actually. Nothing makes you feel more single than romantic text messages.”

“And sleeping alone in a double bed.” Paul said. “But then I expect you’re used to that by now aren’t you Chris?”

“Only as much as you.”

“My bed sees way more action than yours does thank you very much.”

“Yeah, in your head.” Chris said.

“Don’t you put me in your little ‘pathetically single’ group. You haven’t been out with anyone for ages!”

“At least I have the guts to talk to girls. You just go and shy and stupid.”

“Having guts doesn’t help you though, does it? Only in adding to your knock-backs.” Paul said with a grin.

Mark watched with amusement. They had this argument nearly every day.

“Face it Chris, the only girls who don’t reject you are the 16 year old fans you hit on.”

“I do not hit on fans!” Chris protested.

“Nothing wrong with 16 year old fans.” Mark said.

Chris and Paul looked at him and burst out laughing.

“Oh yeah I forgot. We can’t have this conversation any more. Not now that Mark’s currently dating a 16 year old fan, and Ben’s sleeping with his underage girlfriend.” Paul said, almost crying with laughter.

“Why is that so funny?” Mark asked.

Paul shrugged through the hysterics. “Just is!”

“I’ll talk to you later then. Bye!” Ben said, putting the phone down. “What’s up with those two?” he asked Mark.

“They seem to find the fact that we’re going out with fans hilariously funny. They were having the who’s been single for longest argument again.”

“Ohhhhh.” Ben said with a smile. “They can’t handle the solitude.”

“How’s Chloe?” Mark asked.

“CHLOE SMILE!!” Paul shouted, still laughing with Chris.

Ben ignored him. “She’s fine. Very bored. I wanna go and see her.”

Mark smiled. “It’s gonna get harder than this.” He said.

“I know. We’ll manage though. We’re like that.” Ben said, holding up crossed fingers.

“So I’ve heard.” Mark said with a smirk, not being able to help himself.

Ben really did set himself up for remarks like that.

Ben gave him a puzzled look and then discarded the thought.

“Did you decide anything about the charities while I was on the phone?” he asked

“Nope, too busy reading your texts.” Mark said.

Ben grabbed his mobile off the sofa. “You are such a pain.” He said to Paul.

“I know! Takes years of practice to get as good as me!”

“So, charities. Any ideas guys?”

Paul took a deep breath to calm himself. “What did Chloe say?”

“How do you know I asked her?”

“Coz you’re so predictable!” Paul said, laughing again.

“Someone throw some cold water on him will you?”

“Just ignore him. He’ll tire himself out in a minute, go back to being grumpy.” Mark said.

“Are we going to play for separate charities or just one?” Chris asked, having stopped laughing.

“Dunno. I thought we could play for a couple, split the money.” Mark suggested.

“Yeah, good plan. Any charities you particularly like?”

“What did Chloe say?”

“Well she’s done a lot of stuff for WWF so she said we could maybe play for them.”

“Wrestling?” Chris asked confused. “That’s not a charity!”

Ben and Mark grinned.

“It stands for World Wildlife Fund.” Ben said.

“Ohhhhh. Never heard of it.”

“It saves pandas and stuff, doesn’t it?” Mark asked.

“Endangered wild animals.” Ben told them.

“Like pandas.”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah, that sounds like quite a good idea. What do you think?” Mark asked.

“I think it sounds good.” Chris agreed.

“Well Ben’ll just agree with Chloe.” Paul said.

Ben smiled. “Can’t help myself.”

“Have you got any suggestions Paul?”

“Well if we’re gonna be playing for animals, maybe we could have another charity that raises money for people. Then we’d have a good balance.”

“Yeah, I like that idea.” Ben said.

“Which charity?” Mark asked.

Paul shrugged. “NSPCC?”

“Yeah, let’s have that one!” Ben said enthusiastically.

“Is that the one with the really sad TV adverts?” Chris asked.

“Yeah the one with the child that’s learnt no-one comes when he cries. I hate those adverts, they make me cry.”

“Are we all agreed then? WWF and NSPCC.”

“Yep.”

“Yeah.”

“Yep.”

“Good.” Mark said. “Got a pen?” he asked Ben.

“Here ya go.” Ben said, picking up a pen off the phone table.

“Paper?”

“Yep.” Ben threw a notebook at Mark.

“Right, let’s write all this down.” Mark said, flipping to a clear page in the notebook. “So we’re playing for WWF and NSPCC right?”

“Right.”

Mark wrote down the names of the two charities.

“How about phone a friends?” he asked. “We get two each.”

“We need some really clever people. One for every topic, like gardening, cooking, history, stuff like that.” Paul said.

“Well what are our strong points?”

“Music.” Ben said. “We know a lot about music. And we’re all different ages so we know a lot about music from different years, which is good.”

“Yeah, so we don’t need anyone who’s good at music.” Mark said, writing that down on his list.

“How about TV?” Paul asked. “We don’t get much time to watch much TV, that could be a weakness.”

“But aren’t the audience usually pretty good at TV questions?” Chris asked.

“Yeah.”

“I think we’ll be crap at the nature questions.” Paul said. “Like animals and plants and stuff like that.”

“Yeah, I know nothing about plants.” Ben agreed.

“Okay, so we need someone who’s good at gardening and knows things about animals.” Mark said.

“How about history?”

“I can do history!” Paul said. “Or at least, I could at school.”

“Which was about 10 years ago.” Mark reminded him.

“I might still be good at history! You never know!”

“Shall we put it down anyway? Just in case.” Ben said, looking at Paul.

“Fine, don’t believe me. You just wait until there’s a history question and I know it, then I’ll show you.”

“You do that Paul.”

“I will.”

“What other categories are there?”

“Oooh, science!”

“Oh yeah. Do we know anything at all about science?”

“Well I did it for GCSE, but apart from that… I don’t know much. I’m not sure I could remember anything I learnt at school to be honest.” Ben admitted.

“We’re gonna go away with nothing aren’t we?” Chris asked. “We don’t know anything about anything except music! This is hopeless!!”

“No it’s not! We’ll get up to a thousand pounds at least.” Mark said confidently.

“Glad someone’s confident.”

“Someone needs to be around you lot!”

After much debating, Mark, Ben, Paul and Chris had finally decided on all the details and filled in the relevant forms. They had eight phone a friends; Ben’s step-dad Jeremy, a1’s body guard Mike (Ben couldn’t think of anyone else!), Mark’s best friend Lee, Mark’s grandad, Paul’s mum Maria, and his dad Ivan, Chris’s sister Eva and a1’s manager Tim. They also had eight people on the audience guest list; Chloe, Ben’s mum Anita, Rose, Mark’s mum Pamela, Paul’s mates Spud and Heidi, and Christian’s friends Gail and Jelena. They had all the documentation back to Tim by the deadline and in return, received a whole load more pieces of paper to wade through and sign. They dutifully read, filled out and returned these, and the cogs of production started to turn.

The following week went by very slowly for some, and like a flash for others. Ben found it particularly hard being away from Chloe, and every spare second he got he was on the phone to her. Chloe missed Ben in equal amounts and most of the time just sat at home in her room wishing she was with him and thinking of all the things they could be doing.

Rose had slightly more of a life. Although she was counting the days before she could see Mark again, she successfully passed the time by going out with friends, seeing films at the cinema and going to parties of people she barely knew. Mark was counting the days too, but for a totally different reason. While Rose was never far from his thoughts, a huge amount of his time was spent thinking about Sam and the baby. He’d been right when he’d predicted an agonizing wait for the results, but he hadn’t realised quite how agonising it would be. But, true to form, he did everything he could to take his mind off it, throwing himself into his work and gaining some incredibly powerful songs for his pain. It could never be said that he didn’t make the best of every situation.

Chris had a quiet week; wrote a few songs, did a bit of what he thought was well-needed guitar practise and a lot of thinking.

Paul spent far too much time drinking alcohol and not enough time being a pop star. The week was over before he even realised it had begun.