Emma Woodhouse knows the world loves nothing more than a celebrity romance. And, as a rising star at Mega! Management, she match-makes some of the biggest names in the business. Who cares if it’s all for show? For Emma, fauxmance beats the real thing any day!

But Emma has a huge task ahead. She needs to find fake girlfriends for every member of Breach of the Peace, the world’s hottest new boy band. Rich, talented heart-throbs, they should have their pick of the ladies – but, with band mates Will and Ed determined to undermine her every move, and her best mate Gee voicing disapproval about her chosen profession, Emma’s carefully ordered world begins to fall apart.

Is it possible that Emma doesn’t know best after all?

A new laugh-out-loud retelling of a Jane Austen romance, perfect for fans of Lindsey Kelk and Fiona Collins, from the winner of the 2015 Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Scheme Award. Available to pre-order now!

Also by Brigid Coady

Persuading Austen

Emma Ever After

Brigid Coady

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Brigid Coady 2018

Brigid Coady asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-827032-2

BRIGID COADY was born in the UK but raised round the world with most of her childhood spent reading.

Brigid works for a communications and digital marketing agency as a producer and storyteller. Much of her writing is done at weekends in various Starbucks around the world.

In the past, she has been the official Writer in Residence on the 06:37 train from London Victoria to Canterbury West.

Brigid is also a voice-over artist, loves country music and has had her own radio show. Brigid’s obsession with One Direction and Kenny Chesney is perfectly healthy, no matter what anyone else says. She lives in London.

For the One Direction fandom and the five boys that brought us together.

Thank you for the music and the muse.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Letter from the Author

Excerpt

Endpages

Chapter One

‘Wipe that smug smile off your face, Emma Woodhouse,’ Gee said, punctuating it with his elbow in Emma’s ribs.

She absently rubbed her side, her eyes not leaving the newly married couple who were posing for photos.

‘They make such a wonderful couple, don’t they,’ she said, as the feeling of a job well done bloomed, making her smile bigger.

‘Yes, they make a lovely couple. And yes, their kids will be genetic masterpieces. Yada yada yada. And they’ll both have to keep working forever to pay for the psychiatric help they’ll need,’ Gee grumbled as he slouched next to her. ‘So, when do we get to the drinks? I need something to numb my pain. You promised me a free bar when you dragged me along to this.’

Emma could feel her smile slip from smug to exasperated. She should’ve known what she was getting into inviting Gee as her plus one to the wedding. Weddings alone were enough to make him snippy and judgemental but when you added in the celebrity factor it made him exponentially worse. Celebrity things always rubbed him up the wrong way and made him cranky.

‘There!’ She tore her gaze away from the picture-perfect scene that she’d helped to create and pointed to the tuxedo-clad waiters who were starting to pour out of the stately home venue carrying silver trays replete with full champagne flutes. They looked like a black and white tsunami, the sun glinting off the crystal as they came down the ‘so-green-it-looked-fake’ lawn.

‘At bloody last,’ Gee stood up straighter, pushed his sunglasses back up his nose and headed to cut off the nearest unsuspecting server.

Emma watched him stride away.

The long lean lines of his back shifting under his tailored suit jacket. His legs eating up the ground easily, the muscles on his thighs bunching and releasing under the material…

No.

She looked away, and held a hand to her cheek.

Damn this weather. She hoped that her make up wouldn’t melt.

She glanced back at Gee – the waiter he grabbed the glasses from was blushing and staring at him as if he were a god. He had that effect on everyone, she needed to give herself a break. She was only human, and although she should be immune to his general hotness after ten years, there was something about him in a suit… It made him look like her perfect man. As if he could be that ideal partner she’d imagined. The one she had subsequently written a full page of bullet points listing his attributes and which she kept in her planning file. But, she thought, looking at him, it was an illusion; he wasn’t that ‘ever after’ man, he was Gee. She wanted calm and ordered, not emotional ups and downs.

Bloody hell, this must be a good wedding if it made her resurrect her Gee crush. The heavy, overwhelming smell of roses causing her brain to short circuit and making her want to believe in the fairy tales she told the general public for her job. No, her Gee crush, which had lasted until midway through their first term at uni, had been dead and gone for almost a decade. Now, he was her best friend and flatmate. Anything else was not part of the plan. She didn’t need the mess of being with someone who believed in living in the moment or someone who had opinions on everything she did. No, everyone had to stay in their assigned roles.

That was the way the world worked.

She took a deep breath to steady herself.

Definitely no mess in her life – she wanted everything tied up in a bow, the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. A perfectly realised strategy that would roll out with no blips. Just like this wedding.

Emma smiled. She couldn’t help it.

To quote Hannibal Smith, she loved it when a plan came together.

Who would’ve thought that nine months ago, this relationship had been a bullet point on one of her PowerPoint presentations.

Take one semi-famous actor who wanted to raise his profile. Add a singer from a now defunct girl band. Mix together in a PR relationship, a fauxmance. Make sure there are multiple pap walks and public dates. Make sure there is a cute relationship portmanteau name, or a ‘ship’ name, that the media picks up on and that can be hashtagged. Include soppy social media posts written by their PR team, and quite brilliantly if she did say so herself. She’d been especially proud of the little nicknames she’d told them to give each other. And it all added up to both their profiles shooting up exponentially.

The actor had new jobs flooding in and the singer got a solo deal plus some TV presenting.

A-plus, happy clients, happy managers.

But who would’ve thought the fake snuggling would turn to real snuggling? And suddenly there were engagement announcements and weddings to plan.

Damn, she was good at her job.

‘You’re looking smug again. Stop it.’ He said in her ear.

She ignored the slight shiver it always gave her when he did that, and elbowed him in his side.

‘Oi, watch it. You almost made me spill the drinks.’ He stepped back to make sure nothing splashed on either of them.

‘I can’t help it,’ she grabbed the glass from his hand and took a sip. ‘I’m happy.’

‘For a product of divorce, you are remarkably chilled around the smug marrieds,’ he said, using his height to look round them at the wedding guests who were huddling together in pastel coloured groups.

‘My parents had a very happy divorce,’ Emma said, ‘as well you know.’

And it had been happy, she thought. She felt the bubbles tickle her mouth as she sipped the gradually warming champagne. Happy because they had left each other and been able to marry other people.

Her feet twinged from standing too long, so she leant some of her weight on Gee, and he shifted to hold her up without thinking.

Her parents’ divorce and remarriages hadn’t stopped them from still being as flighty as each other. In fact, it had doubled the chaos. She sighed. There had been no one to hold her up then, because she had been the one who had to make sure there were plans and a structure.

She squinted into the distance. Where was the signal to go into dinner? She shifted and felt Gee move with her, a hand hovering just under her elbow.

Why did he have to bring up the ‘Rents. Her whole life had been spent making sure that she greased the wheels of any interactions to ensure no one could argue. Hey presto, you had a happy divorce. It was all in the spin and the story. And underneath she kept it all ticking over with meticulous planning. It was tiring but… she hated mess.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t love her, or weren’t proud of her, because they did and were. And that was what counted, surely? Not whether they’d left her alone in the immigration area at Delhi airport or not.

An hour later, they were crammed into a marquee that was sagging slightly at one side. The late August weather was sultry, no air or breeze moved through the tent, and the light and wispy draperies were limp.

Emma fanned herself with her place card.

‘I’m taking bets on who makes the most inappropriate toast.’ Gee was sprawled back in his chair, sunglasses still firmly on his face, his jacket now hanging off the back of his chair. His legs stretched out into the aisle. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. She refused to look at his tanned arms.

‘Nope,’ she said sitting up straighter as the sound of a fork on a glass rang out, quietening the room. ‘I’m not taking your bets.’

It would’ve been easy money to win though. She had drafted all the speeches and finalised them during the run-through this morning. There were only three speeches; the best man, the father of the bride and then the groom. Not an inappropriate remark in any of them.

As the best man stood up to speak, she leant forward, her lips sounding out the words as he began.

She batted away the linen napkin Gee wadded up and threw at her without taking her eyes off the wedding party.

‘Perfect,’ she said after the father of the bride sat down after his speech and toast. ‘One more to go.’

All but one of the speeches had been beautifully delivered so far, the words full of heartfelt meaning. And the best man kept to the official narrative that the bride and groom had met backstage at a Feckless Rogues gig. Smooth and organic, just like her boss wanted.

She thought back to the couple’s first meeting, where there hadn’t been a Feckless Rogue in sight, unless you counted the cover of NME in reception. And although the conference room at Mega!’s offices was quite comfy, they’d sat at opposite sides of the table and hadn’t looked at each other, he’d been talking to his manager and she’d been checking her phone.

How times change. Emma sighed as she looked at the top table. They were glowing.

Phil, the groom, leaned over and kissed Brooke’s cheek before he stood. ‘Phooke’, was their ship name; she’d tried for ‘Bril’ but for some reason it hadn’t taken. Like Hiddleswift had taken off instead of Taytom or Swiddleston. The public liked what they liked.

But this was the perfectly constructed story, she thought. It ticked all the boxes that any star and their management could want. It was the fantasy wedding and happily ever after that people wanted and it was clickbait for internet sites, the type that generated advertising revenue. The story just needed the photos that Emma would carefully select. The ones that would show the perfect wedding, framing it so no one saw the page boy having a temper tantrum or that the bride’s mother refused to sit with the bride’s father. And with every blemish airbrushed. It would sell all over the world, raising the profile of both Phil and Brooke’s names in the minds of the masses.

And the bonus was that for once it was actually real, with none of the usual subterfuge and spin underneath it all ending in a statement from their teams that they’d split but were still friends. No, this was merely a tweak to make the truth bigger. With this wedding, no one could crack the surface and see something different because this went down deep. They were in love.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ Phil began cutting through the buzz of conversation. ‘Before I move on to thank my beautiful wife, I’d like to thank someone else. She was the reason I was backstage at the Feckless Rogues’ concert in the first place. Emma Woodhouse, my wonderful publicist, if you hadn’t managed to find me those access all areas passes, we wouldn’t be here today. So, thank you, Emma. May you continue to work your magic.’ Phil raised his glass to her and winked.

She laughed and raised her glass back.

Chapter Two

‘Jesus, they aren’t even telling the truth at the wedding? How can they keep track of all the lies?’ Gee said, folding his arms and baring his teeth in the semblance of a grin.

‘It’s all in a spreadsheet, I keep it updated on Google docs,’ she answered, frowning as she listened to make sure that Phil hit all the important points in the speech. They were only white lies, she didn’t understand why Gee always got so wound up about it. Everyone did it – bent the truth or hid it to make them look the best they could. And it wasn’t just famous people, hell, what were filters on Instagram for if not for gilding the truth.

She looked behind her to make sure that the intern was stationed at the rear of the tent and was still filming all of the speeches on her phone. She’d have the other intern ready to capture any video of the dancing later. Then they would leak the videos from some of the guests’ social media accounts to get around the ‘we want to keep this a private event for family and friends’ story they had going. Keeping the illusion, even though the leaks were fully signed off by the happy couple.

‘It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, Ems.’ Gee pushed his glasses to the top of his head as he turned to look at her.

His eyebrows furrowed over hazel eyes.

‘Oh my god, didn’t you used to be Gee Knightley?’ One of the guests at the next table called over loudly.

Everyone in their vicinity turned around to stare.

Here we go again, Emma thought, trying not to smile.

Gee slumped further down in his chair if that was possible, his frown deepening. It was the same perplexed and bad boy look that had looked down from a poster on her wall when she was sixteen. And probably also been on the bedroom wall of the girl currently bouncing in her seat behind them.

‘I’m still Gee Knightley,’ he muttered, before sitting up, smoothing over his face and turning to smile.

‘Hey,’ he said with a small wave.

The girl squeaked, her face crimson and her eyes shining.

Ems rolled her eyes. This happened at least once a day. You would’ve thought that ten years after Gee’s boyband had broken up people would forget.

‘Oh my god, you were always my favourite in Status Single. Are you ever going to reform? I saw that Johnnie was acting now, what do you do? Oh Luke, Luke… you remember Status Single?’ The girl, who was really a woman in her late twenties, poked her companion with her finger.

The bloke looked grumpily impressed and also as if he were worried that Gee was either going to run after his girlfriend or himself and he wasn’t sure which one was better.

‘I’m sorry, but I think we need to listen to the speeches, maybe we can catch up afterwards?’ Gee whispered with a finger to his lips and a wink.

He turned back round, the practised smile falling from his lips.

‘This is all your fault, Woodhouse,’ he griped. ‘We’ll be all over social media in about a minute.’

‘Hush,’ she said. Not that she wasn’t used to it.

If she’d told her sixteen-year-old self that Gee Knightley would walk into her tutorial group her first week in university, she would have screamed and flapped in a fan girl panic. As it was, her eighteen-year-old self had gone bright red and tried to remember how to breathe.

They didn’t actually talk until two weeks later, when Gee had leaned over and asked if she knew what the hell the tutor was talking about.

And by the time they’d been made partners for a group project, Emma could just about forget that he had been Gee Knightley, lead singer and bad boy in Status Single, and the star of her teen fantasies. He’d become merely Gee, the annoying mature English and Business student whose main source of fun was making dry and sarcastic asides about their tutor or poking fun at her very carefully thought out plans for the future.

‘Okay, but we are getting out of here as soon as we can. I refuse to stay for the dancing, because they’ll start playing that song,’ Gee whispered.

‘I’ve got to meet with the team to choose which of the pap shots we want released, we can’t go till that is done,’ she replied.

Emma tried to hide her smile, because she knew that the Status Single song he was referring to was on the playlist.

Sometimes you had to get your little jollies where you could, even when you were working. And Gee’s grumpy face when a whole dancefloor did the dance that went with the song was always priceless.

‘I hate you,’ he said as he reached for his phone which was on the table. ‘And yes, I was right. The back of my head is already trending on Twitter.’

He flashed the screen at her. Yes, there was the back of his head and hers.

‘Damn it, Gee, why didn’t you tell me my hair was coming down at the back?’ Her hand went up to fix it.

‘I thought it looked nice, less corporate, more my Emma,’ he said, putting the phone back on the table and slid his sunglasses back on.

He reached a finger up and tickled the back of her neck interfering with her attempts to repair her hair.

She couldn’t help but laugh even as a tingle went down her spine.

‘You aren’t helping, and you are such a drama queen. You’ve had people taking your photo at least once a day since I’ve known you. And I know you aren’t as grumpy about it as you make out to be.’

‘Fine, Woodhouse, but you need to make it up to me, now my privacy has been violated. You have to deal with taking the rubbish and recycling out for the rest of the week for making me come here. Pinky promise?’

He held his pinky finger out, while he stared ahead as Phil was still proclaiming his love for Brooke.

She brought up her hand and let him wrap his finger round hers. Warmth spread through her. Life was always good when she had Gee next to her. Partner in crime, platonic soulmate.

And even if he was always trying to upset her plans and get her to let loose, he’d never leave her. Sometimes she thought he knew her better than anyone else did. Maybe even herself.

There was rustling and movement as everyone got up for the last toast to the bride.

‘And that is my cue,’ he squeezed her finger and under cover of everyone seating themselves again, he managed to slip out of the tent. How he managed to do it when he was over six foot she didn’t know, it was like he had a force field round him that made people part in front of him.

Emma got her bag together. This might be a wedding, but she was working, which is why she’d brought Gee. He kept any single men who thought they would get lucky at bay and he didn’t get the wrong idea. He also knew how to behave at these sorts of things, even if he grumbled. And, he didn’t need entertaining or babysitting. When she had a plan that was this detailed and finely tuned she couldn’t be distracted.

Not that Emma had time for a relationship, working in the publicity and PR department of Mega! Management took way too much time. But she had a timeline for a relationship and marriage and all that, because you couldn’t leave these things to chance.

She shuddered at the thought of not having a plan. If you didn’t plan, anything could go wrong. So she had her checklist for the right sort of bloke she’d end up with. Not that she was due to meet him or date him for another year or so, according to her timeline.

So yeah, Gee was perfect plus one material.

‘Oh, did Gee Knightley leave?’ The girl stopped Emma as she got up to meet the rest of the team in the room they’d taken over as control centre. Otherwise known as the library.

Emma took a deep breath, poor Gee. No matter where he went he could never really hide.

‘Yeah, sorry he had a call from Johnnie that he had to take.’

The girl’s eyes widened and her hand came up to her mouth.

‘Johnnie? But I thought they… are they dating?’ she whispered.

Emma winked and walked off.

That was probably a shitty thing to do and wasn’t completely fair, she thought. Gee had never lied about dating both men and women. If he had lied then Status Single would still be going. But he hated lying about himself, which she thought was very short-sighted. He could make his life so much easier if he lied or even just prevaricated more. But whoever he dated it didn’t matter because over the years the rumours about Gee and Johnnie’s relationship, ‘Genie’, ran rampant. One day they were supposed to hate each other, the next they loved each other, then they couldn’t stand to be in the same room as each other. Or, the one that made them laugh the most, was the rumour that they were secretly married. Whichever version it was, everyone believed it was the reason the band broke up.

Really, it was their record company that had thrown their toys out of the pram when they realised that neither one of them was going to play into the heterosexual rock god persona.

Anyway, she shouldn’t be stirring.

But then again Johnnie had been round the house last night with his overly cute pug, Georgie. Between the pair of them they’d eaten the leftovers she had been saving to have for dinner. And Gee had let it happen. And added to that, Georgie had humped her favourite hugging pillow from the sofa.

No, she wasn’t feeling very gracious towards either of them. Well, Georgie got a pass because he was cute, and it wasn’t his fault Johnnie hadn’t had him fixed.

Emma had a flash of guilt when she thought of the way Twitter was about to explode with ‘Genie’ ship conspiracy theories all over again.

They were big boys. They’d deal with it.

She shook her head to get rid of the distraction. She was working.

Bugger these shoes, she thought as she wobbled on the slightly uneven flooring. Why did your feet have to swell in the heat? What she wouldn’t give for some comfy shoes.

Sadly, comfy shoes were fine for everyday wear but for weddings, nope. She needed to look enough like she belonged at the party without standing out.

She was the power behind the throne, she thought, the person behind the curtain pulling the levers. She could hear Gee’s voice saying, ‘the person holding the puppet strings.’

Chapter Three

An hour and a half later the photos, taken by hired paparazzi conveniently hiding in bushes not too far from the marquee, had been picked over and checked for narrative consistency. They were then sent to the tabloids and gossip sites for publication.

Emma stared at one rejected image which had her and Gee in the background, and he was leaning down to talk to her. They looked… happy, like proper wedding guests. She itched to send it to her private email.

No, that wasn’t professional.

‘Okay, Brooke, Phil,’ she said concentrating on the task at hand. ‘As you know Don Warton from the Daily Planet, has the exclusive interview on the wedding. It is as per the usual agreement Mega! has with them. I’ve already drafted your quotes which have been signed off by your teams so you don’t actually have to speak to him.’ Emma ticked off the list of things in front of her. ‘But just a quick photo as if he were a close personal friend and that’s why he’s a guest. Yes?’

Emma looked up to see the pair pull almost the same completely unimpressed face. It was the face everyone pulled when Don Warton’s name came up.

He might be the worst kind of snake but he was a Mega! paid snake.

She looked back down at the list.

‘So, other than that, we just need you to do the first dance. We’ve chosen Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud, which gives just the right forever love vibe, followed by I Had The Time Of My Life. Then you change into your going away outfits, before going outside for the photos with the car. And once you’re at the airport we have some paps there as well. We’re leaking the honeymoon destination but only when you’re in the air, then we’ll release it all with a congratulations statement from the management and a plea for privacy.’

‘But we have the beach photos booked in, don’t we?’ Brooke asked quickly. ‘I’m not wasting all that dieting and training if we don’t have shots on the beach.’

‘Babe, that could never be wasted,’ Phil cooed as he kissed her cheek. Brooke giggled.

Emma smiled.

Perfect.

She couldn’t have scripted it better herself.

***

‘The wedding looked amazing,’ Jamie said as he crowded round Emma’s desk on the following Monday morning.

It had been amazing, hadn’t it?

She’d checked the gossip sites all day yesterday, up until Gee had threatened to throw all her electronic equipment out of the flat, telling her that gloating wasn’t an attractive look on her.

‘It was stupendous,’ Emma smiled up at her new assistant. ‘It is a pity we couldn’t get you to be part of the team on such short notice. Next time though. Promise.’

Ever since her coup with Phil and Brooke, the powers that be had taken her skills seriously. Now she had a list of their clients who needed her magic fauxmance matching skills – which meant she needed help.

Jamie had come into the interview a few months ago, all gangly legs and eagerness. He’d been the fifth person she’d interviewed that day. He stood out from the cookie cutter blandness of the previous candidates. He’d tripped over the threshold of the meeting room and floundered in, and she couldn’t help but smile. He was like a puppy who was still growing into his feet.

‘If you had your pick of any artist on Mega!’s books and you were told that you had to make a publicity plan for them who would you pick?’ She’d asked her standard question. Everyone up until then had focused on the company’s highest profile clients, Breach Of The Peace, the famous boyband.

‘I’d work with the Candy Rebels,’ he said, mentioning the girl band who were beginning to make waves. Emma sat up straighter. This was at least different.

‘Why?’ She replied.

Jamie had then proceeded to tell her an amazing but completely implausible and unworkable PR and publicity plan for the four-piece band. It was genius. She could work with someone who had that much creativity. He just needed a bit of common sense and direction. She could give him that.

Before she knew it, she’d been standing up, shaking his hand and asking when he could start. Sometimes you had to go with your gut with plans. She could see Jamie as her right-hand man, taking her plans and making them reality.

And she hadn’t been wrong. It was great having Jamie working for her, no one had fitted into her life as well since Gee.

‘I think what you did was fantastic. Actually, properly, matchmaking people.’ He said

She could feel the pleasure unfurl in her at his praise. She knew she shouldn’t care what people thought but she seemed hardwired to want praise for her organisational skills.

Every time something she planned went well, she could shake off the uncertainty and take a step away from the horrible swooping feeling she’d had all her childhood that things were within a handspan of spinning out of control.

What she wanted was a smooth, clean and successful life.

No bumps, no mess. It was all in the planning.

‘Well, I have to say, Jamie, it wasn’t easy. It isn’t just taking two people and smashing them together, there is some science behind it.’

Science might be stretching it but she had done research and pulled the data and insights from the analytics team. This involved looking at the fan demographic for each of the people in the relationship, working out if they could amplify each other’s reach. It was all about making the media coverage larger, which made them more attractive for sponsorships or jobs. They had to be bigger than the sum of their parts.

‘Well I saw the figures you pulled the other week and I was thinking that we could probably design an app to help do the matches. Automate it, pull in the data – get it to suggest matches maybe? Or at least generate a shortlist,’ Jamie said, his arms waving as he got into it. It wasn’t a bad idea, she thought. They could match so many more people, much quicker. See, this was why it was great working with him, he took her ideas and thought differently.

‘I was talking it over, in a purely hypothetical way, with Rob Martin from Tech Dev, last week.’ Jamie finished. His voice hitched as he mentioned Rob.

Was he blushing?

He was.

So, Jamie had a crush on Rob. Which was sweet, she felt an urge to make Jamie’s life better, to give him a plan, almost as a gift. Everyone needed a life plan. And, okay, so she didn’t think he should be dating at this stage in his career; she couldn’t stop him, but she could make sure he was with someone who would help him.

She racked her brain. Which one was Rob? Was that the one who sat by the door on the next floor down? Well, he wasn’t bad, definite potential, he could be an asset to Jamie’s career. Oh no, she was thinking of Jason and he was definitely straight.

She tried to picture the IT team and… oh, hell no.

Chapter Four

This wouldn’t do.

She looked at Jamie, all eyes and legs. He could do so much better. It wasn’t that Rob was ugly, he was just… just… a blank. He blended into the wall, which was why she was still trying to work out what he looked like. She was sure he was perfectly nice, but he wasn’t the sort of person who Jamie should be with. He seemed to lack drive and you needed someone who met you in terms of career aspirations if you wanted to get ahead. And there was something tickling the back of her brain about him…

Oh, now she remembered, she shuddered. It had been last year, a particularly difficult meeting. There had been screaming, and Rob had stutteringly taken the blame for the loss of a whole batch of social data from the Radio One Music Awards. It hadn’t been pretty. And he’d been a complete doormat because it subsequently came out that it had been his boss who’d done it. Nope, it wouldn’t do. Rob wasn’t going to help Jamie get ahead.

‘That sounds like a really great idea,’ she said with a smile, her mind working feverishly. There was no point in going in too hard at the moment, she thought. You had to ease people into these situations. Make it seem like their idea. If she said too much against Rob at this point it would only make Jamie like him more. People rarely knew what was best for them. What she needed was to find someone more suitable, wave them in front of Jamie’s nose and distract him from Rob…

She really didn’t have time for this but she liked Jamie, and she couldn’t stand by while he made potentially disastrous decisions. She looked round the office. Who…

Max, maybe? No, he’d posted a cute coupley Instagram about moving in with his boyfriend last month.

Who else was gay? She tapped her lip.

Oh, of course, Dan Elton. He’d be perfect. He’d moved from Psyco Records’ publicity department six months ago. He was tall, camp and charming, a little too slick maybe, but he didn’t seem to have a boyfriend. And he was the kind of guy who was going places and would drag you with him.

Maybe he was a bit too competitive, Emma wasn’t a hundred percent sure he hadn’t deliberately buggered up the blind gossip she’d planted about Will Elliot and Annie Elliot on the Pride and Prejudice shoot. But he had just started the job then, so she could give him the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, Dan Elton would be perfect for Jamie.

Now she had to work out a way to make it happen.

She loved a good plan.

Chapter Five

‘Oi, Ems. Why do I have a calendar alert saying we’re having a party next weekend?’ Gee called from the front door as he walked through, letting it slam shut.

Emma flinched, which was more movement than she wanted to make in this blistering Indian summer heatwave. The fan in the corner moved the sluggish air round.

Surely, she thought, when planning a party, it was better to just do it without telling your anti-social housemate and beg forgiveness afterwards? Leave it as a fait accompli.

‘It is only a tiny party, positively bijou, more of a soiree in fact. Not much for you to worry about. A few work colleagues…’ The heat was making her less than concise.

His head popped round the door to the living room.

‘Work? Really? All those fake arse publicity types who wouldn’t know the truth or proper talent if it leapt up and bit them on the bottom?’

Here we go again, she thought, rolling her eyes to the ceiling – Gee getting on his high horse about the purity of the music, and how music wasn’t a commodity and that the business was ruined by all the lies.

‘It’s bad enough that you work for the dark side, but now you want to bring it home? You know I hate all those fake smiles and schmoozing.’

‘Gee, you work in the music business too. All you do is hang round with the same sort of people.’

‘Hold on, my sort of people are not your sort of people. Mine are the people you make stories up about. When I see them it isn’t fake, they don’t bring their pretend partners out. And no one is trying to be someone they’re not. Or making other people something they’re not.’

And there it was. Gee having a dig at her job. Again.

It always came down to this. He didn’t respect what she did, because of his experience he had painted all PR and publicity at all management companies as awful.

Things had moved on from ten years ago. He knew that.

‘Look Gee, I know you and Johnnie had a rough time of it. But Mega! isn’t like your old management company. We don’t make someone pretend to be something they aren’t, we just give them a storyline to showcase who they are in a better way, one that works with their brand strategy. And we make sure all our clients are fully bought into any of our plans. They all have a choice, if they didn’t want to do it they wouldn’t.’

‘Ems…’ Gee started.

‘No, I get it.’ She interrupted. ‘Johnnie should never have been blackmailed into having to pretend he was straight or get engaged or any of that horrible mess he went through.’

She shuddered when she thought back to the headlines after his fall from grace, when all the lies were exposed and the blame firmly shifted off the record company.

‘But if you pick it apart intellectually, you could see why it happened. There was a marketing strategy and if all the players had done their part…’

Emma couldn’t finish.

‘Still can’t say it?’ He sighed. ‘How the record company and my own management company were using my sexuality as a weapon? Forcing me to stay quiet along with Johnnie. Making us lie. But you don’t ever seem to get it.’ He sighed as if he were exhausted. Which was probably true, they seemed to have picked over the carcass of this particular argument for years.

‘But I don’t understand.’ She couldn’t help going back over it, maybe one day she’d get it. ‘What was wrong with telling a little white lie, and saying you weren’t bisexual? It wasn’t that big a deal, surely? You could’ve hidden it and then, when you needed to, told people later. It wasn’t about lying, it was more a matter of timing. Because announcing it right before the start of your US tour was, well… And you were dating that girl, whatshername, then anyway so no one needed to know.’

She felt herself wince. No one usually mentioned the tour that never was. It was amazing how many parents in Middle America didn’t want their daughters idolising a band which included two guys who weren’t completely straight.

Tickets stopped selling, and Status Single were ‘has-beens’ almost the next month and the month after that the record company quietly jettisoned them.

‘Her name was Felicity, as you well know.’ He frowned at her. So sue her if she always pretended to forget the names of his girlfriends and boyfriends. She knew it was petty but it relegated them to the insignificant pile, where they wouldn’t encroach on their life.

‘I’m not having this argument with you again, Ems. A lie is a lie. They wanted to deny my identity, is that something you can swear Mega! would never do?’

Mega! wouldn’t. She knew they wouldn’t. Not that any of their acts were LGBT, but if they were…

‘They wouldn’t,’ she said with certainty. ‘Don’t judge me or my job because of something that happened a decade ago. The business has changed, no one has a problem with an out gay artist now. Look at Sam Smith.’ She could feel her hands curl into fists.

Sometimes she wanted to punch him. He was only three years older than her but he always did this holier than thou spiel about how he knew more because he’d been in the industry for years.

There was a pause, the tension between them quivering. Was he going to walk off, with his superior face in place?

She watched as the tension flowed out of him, his wide shoulders in the grey faded T-shirt falling. He reached his hand out, and it engulfed her fist, making her feel small.

‘Ems, please.’ His overly mobile brows scrunched up in a plea, ‘I don’t want to fight.’

Damn it, why did he pull out the big guns? She was incapable of staying angry when he brought out the puppy dog look.

‘Let’s agree to disagree?’ She hated fighting with him too. ‘So, the party?’ She made her eyes big and blinked slowly. She knew she wasn’t in the same league as Gee in terms of physical beauty or charisma but…

‘Damn it, Woodhouse. You know I can’t take it when you do the Bambi eye blink.’ He reeled back from the door, throwing his arm over his eyes as if hiding from Medusa. ‘Not today, Satan,’ he howled dramatically.

And just like that the tension faded, and was blown out of the room by the fan whirring in the corner.

‘That wasn’t an answer, Knightley?’ she called into the hall.

‘Fine,’ he said coming back into the room. ‘You can have your party. But if anyone starts doing karaoke with Status Single songs, I will not be responsible for my actions.’

‘You should probably take the Brit award out of the loo and the Teen Choice surfboard off the landing then,’ she said. He threw himself on the other sofa, landing with a grunt.

Differences of opinion on her job aside, Gee was a great housemate.

Make that landlord.

She stared at him as he slumped across from her, trying to angle his body to get a blast of air when the fan rotated back in his direction.

Their house was in a terrace near Victoria Park in Hackney, and the area had gradually become full of professionals and yummy mummies the longer they’d lived here. Gee had bought it back when he’d been in the band and it was one of the few things he had hung on to, and with the music studio he’d built at the bottom of the large garden, it meant security.

‘It’s my pension,’ he’d explained to her, ‘because god knows I didn’t make much money. Enough to buy this outright, build the studio. The rest of it…’ Gee had made a whooshing gesture with his hand.

He’d told her this a few months into their first year at university, when Emma had come around to work on a project.

Compared to her cramped halls of residence, it had made Gee seem like a grown up. With a plan and a structured life. So far removed from her experience.

Any structure in her childhood she’d put there herself.

And when it was time move out of halls… well, there had been a bit of a mix up but Gee had pulled through and made one of his spare rooms ready for her. Saved her. Maybe it was weird that she was still living in the same house she had lived in all the way through uni, but it was the longest she’d ever stayed anywhere.

It gave her roots that she’d always craved.

She’d made him up the rent as soon as she’d started earning some money. Just because he could afford the house without a tenant didn’t mean she could freeload. There were some things you didn’t do and that was mooch off your famous best friend.

And now that he was one of the most sought after music engineers in the business, he didn’t really need the pension. She couldn’t help but smile, she was so proud of him.

She loved their house – the way it was spread over five floors, with the kitchen in the basement and the living/dining room running from the front of the house to the back on the ground floor; the two battered leather sofas diagonal to each other facing a massive flatscreen TV mounted above the fireplace.

Home.

It meant they had a sofa each. And whoever got into the room first was in charge of the remote control, that was the rule. If there were still wrestling matches and sofa cushions flung on occasions then that was kept between themselves and these four walls.

Filled bookshelves lined the walls either side of the chimney breast.

‘Have you been mucking around with my books again?’ Gee said from his prone position on the sofa.

Emma groaned. This happened every time she picked any book off the shelf, and she was pretty sure she’d put it back exactly where she’d found it.

‘You are so OCD,’ she said, wondering if Amazon could deliver an extra fan in the next hour? How did September end up being this hot? June had been a soggy mess.

‘Little Miss Planner has no cause to throw stones in glass houses, I’ve seen what you can do with a spreadsheet,’ he said as he leveraged himself off the sofa and moved a book from one shelf to another. He stepped back and scanned it before nodding his head.

It looked like too much effort for her, she was sweating just looking at him. And not in a good way.

‘It has been ten years, Ems. When are you going to remember I don’t like my fiction and non-fiction to get mixed up. Fiction on these shelves,’ he pointed, ‘in alphabetical order by author – not title.’ He glared at her.

‘I did that once, when I thought I was being helpful,’ she squawked, some people were so ungrateful.

‘It took me a whole weekend to sort it out.’ He pointed to the upper shelves. ‘And this is where the non-fiction goes.’

‘I know, Gee. You go through it every time.’

‘Well, I’d expect it to stick. Maybe it’s because you don’t know the difference between fact and fiction at work.’

‘Ha, very funny,’ she said. ‘Sit down, I’ve ordered Turkish because I’m not going anywhere near an oven and we’re marathoning the latest season of Ten Peaks.’

‘Ah, the rock and roll way we spend our Friday nights.’ He pulled his T-shirt up to get some of the air underneath it.

Had he been waxing his chest again, she thought?

He usually only did that when he wanted to impress someone. It always seemed to happen just before Emma would start falling over some random woman, or more unusually a man, coming out of his room, who would then use her Nutella and not replace it.

Damn.

She should be happy. She should, no, she was. Of course, she wanted Gee to be happy and if that meant dating, then so be it. Just because her plan wasn’t about prioritising dating at the moment.

Gee worked too hard, he needed someone nice. But… he would have less time for her. Instead of the two of them, there would be three. And other than when it was musketeers, Hanson or Destiny’s Child, three was a crowd.

‘Earth to Ems.’ He chucked a pillow across at her, she was too slow and it smacked her in the face. She couldn’t complain as the displaced air cooled her for an instant before it hit.

‘What?’ She said, letting the cushion fall to the floor without stopping it.

‘Turn on the TV, and there are some tissues on the side table to wipe up your drool as soon as Austen Wentworth comes on.’

‘I don’t drool.’

Gee laughed.

‘You drool just as much,’ Emma muttered as she picked up the remote and clicked onto Netflix. ‘That is the reason Harry won’t invite us to meet Austen,’ she said, mentioning their friend, Harry Harville, who also starred in the show. His husband Lewis worked with Gee.

‘No, Lewis was very clear it was because of your high-pitched squealing when you caught sight of the topless photo of Austen on his phone.’

She turned on the episode and turned up the volume. He didn’t know what he was talking about. She had merely gasped in surprise.

Half an hour later they paused the show when the Turkish takeout arrived.

‘Do you think we’re stuck in a rut?’ Gee asked around a mouthful of carrot dipped in humus.

What did he mean? There was no point her going out on the town and getting drunk for at least another twelve months. Then she’d have to put some serious thought into finding ‘the one’.

The hummus was a bit drier than normal, she thought as she struggled to swallow.

‘What do you mean a rut?’ she answered.

He definitely was dating, that was what this was about. Or he wanted to. Who was it? No, she didn’t want to know. There was no point in her getting attached to them.

As if she ever did.

Maybe she could make sure her next clients needed someone to travel with them? Then at least she wouldn’t be around. And by the time she was back it would be over.

But then they would have a clear run at him, she thought, they wouldn’t know that Emma and Gee came as a pair.

‘I mean, it’s a Friday night and we’re staying in with takeout and Netflix. And we aren’t even using it as a euphemism. You’re not yet thirty and I have a Brit Award and a VMA in the downstairs toilet. What has happened to us?’

Okay, maybe he wasn’t dating. But he was obviously having a midlife crisis. Early.

‘See, this is all because you don’t have a life plan,’ she said as she found the energy to wrap her kebab up tighter, so she didn’t lose any. She watched in fascination as Gee stuck his tongue out to lick the juice travelling over his hand. It was disgust she was feeling, definitely disgust. It couldn’t be anything else, she thought, as she watched, mesmerised.

‘What has a life plan got to do with us being stuck in a rut?’ He gestured with his kebab, another stream of juice starting to coat his fingers.

She had to stop staring. She shook her head. Life plan. That is what she needed to think about.

She swallowed her mouthful of kebab. How many times had she had this conversation with him?

‘Okay, you map out your life, right. Break it down first by year. Then work out where the big milestones are going to be. When you want to be promoted at work, when you want to get married, when you want to have kids, that sort of thing. Then you make sure that you put in month by month all the stuff you need to do to get to achieve it.’

Why didn’t he get that it was as simple as that? Everything plotted out.

‘So, you’re telling me you have a calendar entry for September 3rd that says “Netflix and takeout with Gee”? Because that is weird and slightly scary. And I’m not sure how that adds up to you getting your life plan done?’

He put his feet up on the large battered coffee table and actually started eating his kebab instead of waving it around.

‘No, it isn’t that detailed. Well, only in places.’ Was he seriously asking this? Maybe he wanted to make it up to her since their earlier fight about her job.

If only she could get him to understand. She put her kebab down, wiped her fingers with a napkin, because she wasn’t a savage, and picked up her phone so she could illustrate her points.

‘See, at the moment I’m in my career growth period.’ She waved the graphs on the Google doc that she checked every morning and updated weekly at him. ‘All social events that I go to need to be focused towards growing my professional network or be somehow related to work. Anything else would be a waste of time and energy. But if we move forward to next year, that is the beginning of my professional and personal period. I’ll start having to go out socially, I’ll probably join a dating service. Then after a period of three months, I should find Mr Right. I give it another six months before we move in, then engaged a year after that…’

She looked up.

Gee was staring at her with his mouth open, his kebab halted halfway to it.

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