Friends Forever! (22 page)

Saul shakes his head and we both begin giggling. “Okay. Start from the beginning,” he chuckles, kissing the top of my head.

“That's odd,” I say to Claude.

It's 8:45 A.M., three days later, and I'm peering out of the West Turret's lounge window down onto the gardens.

“What?” says Claude, fixing her hair into perfect asymmetric bunches.

“Mr. Greenhall,” I say. “The gardener dude—he's mowing a big square into the Tatershall Memorial Lawn.”

“Really?” says Claude distractedly. “Maybe Carbzilla and Three-Minute Egg are going to play cricket. They're unhinged enough.”

Claude grabs her lip gloss and vanity mirror. She refuses to turn up for work looking anything less than perfect. “Hey! Are you ready?” she nags. “Scrumble wants us down there in ten minutes.”

“Yeah, coming,” I say, as a girl wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard hurries over the grass to Mr. Greenhall. She's shouting at him to make the square bigger.

“It looks like a landing pad,” I mutter, shaking my head.

Claude stops preening abruptly. “A landing pad?” she repeats. “You know what that means!” she grins, hopping up and down.

“They're preparing for an alien visitation?” I suggest.

“Noooo! More exciting than that,” Claude squeaks. “For helicopters!”

“Eh?” I say, being slow on the uptake.

“Psycho Killa!”
grins Claude, jumping up and down. “Psycho Killa is coming! All the Booty Quake people must have started checking in!”

In a flurry of arms and legs, Claude runs for the door. “Gonna carve ya up! Gonna bury you!” Claude chants, singing Psycho Killa's international platinum-selling hit “Graveyard Time” from the Grammy Award-winning album
Body Bag Holiday.

“Gonna hide yer body where they won't find ya!” hums Claude, disappearing out the door.

“Bag you up! Bag you up!” I sing, chasing Claude as fast as my feet will take me down the spiral staircase and into the hotel reception lobby.

Wow! Harbinger's lobby is in total chaos.

Everywhere you look there are huge scary hip-hop blokes clad in baseball caps, massive padded jackets, random wonky sports headbands, jeans so baggy they're probably a safety hazard, imported limited edition Reebok sneakers and oodles of bling. Everyone seems to be wearing a huge diamond cross or diamond-encrusted dog tags. Cartier watches and diamondstudded teeth are de rigueur as well.

“It's . . . it's the Mortuary Team! Psycho Killa's crew!” gasps Claude. “They're really here!”

“Unreal!” I say, turning to tell Fleur, then realizing she's not here. “But there's about a hundred of them!”

“Some of them must be Psycho Killa's staff,” says Claude. “ 'Cos I know he travels with two chefs—a sushi chef and another guy who specializes in fried chicken. Oh, and he's got a braid technician who does his hair. And a hip-hop accountant on call 24/7 to talk him out of buying things like Lear jets and nightclubs!”

“I thought Fleur was high maintenance,” I mutter.

Outside on the drive, streams of fabulous vehicles are arriving: Cadillac Escalades, Lamborghinis, Porsches and SUVs with blackened windows, as dozens more hip-hop dudes pour out, throwing their car keys to Cedric, Harbinger's geriatric car valet.

“Watch the rims, man!” shouts one hulking guy, dressed bizarrely in a customized orange prison jumpsuit, flipping Cedric a £50 tip. “Just had those twenty-inch babies fixed up.”

“Man, can I get a coffee around here?” sighs his friend, an exhausted-looking, equally huge hip-hop man-mountain, wandering over and taking a seat on the lobby's leather couches.

“Ronnie! That's Freaky Death Squad and Detonator from the Mortuary Team!” says Claude, nudging me. “And, oh my God! Here's Knucklehead coming in now!”

Detonator appears to be wearing a jewel-encrusted bomber jacket made from an entire Friesian cow.

“They're even scarier than they look on MTV!” I say as the three hulking hoods crouch around a coffee table in the lobby, clearly plotting a sinister gangland hit on a rival hip-hop syndicate.

In the midst of the chaos, poor overworked Precious the receptionist is attempting to allocate rooms to the hip-hop fraternity.

“Er, attention, please!” Precious yells, typing away furiously on the hotel reservation system. “Do we have a Mr., erm, Freaky Death Squad?”

“S'up!” says Freaky D, jumping up, his crisscross braids bouncing as he moves. “That's me, ma'am.”

“Ah, good!” smiles Precious. “Now then, Mr. Death Squad, you prerequested a nonsmoking room with a garden view? But are you the gentleman who is allergic to goose down?”

“Sure am,” says Freaky D bashfully. “Makes me itchy.”

“Worry not, sir,” smiles Precious. “Housekeeping has located you a man-made-fiber pillow for sensitive skin. Sign here, please. Now, Mr. Knucklehead and Mr. Detonator? You're sharing the deluxe twin room, aren't you?”

Claude and I look at each other and dissolve into giggles.

“Right, guys. Psycho Killa ETA in forty-five minutes!” shouts Kelsey, Psycho Killa's personal assistant, whom I saw in the garden this morning. “His helicopter has just left Canary Wharf in London. We'll be leaving for the sound check in one hour!”

As the Mortuary Team begin to disperse to their rooms, three more bodies arrive in reception: a small Japanese guy wearing vast dark glasses accompanied by a leggy, vacant-looking teenage lap-dancer type with her hair in ringlets carrying a small fluffy-faced Pekinese dog wearing a pink collar with a diamond-encrusted name tag, and behind them, a rotund bloke with a skinhead struggling with two large solid-steel record boxes.

“Claude, that's Warren Acapulco!” I say in my very, very worst stage whisper, managing to attract the attention of the whole trio.

“Oh, hi there,” smiles Warren graciously, flipping his sunglasses up and giving me and Claude a big showbiz smile. Warren's girlfriend just rolls her eyes and begins shouting at Precious about dog-minding facilities.

“This is Trixiebelle Frou Frou!” the woman is shouting, pointing at the dog. “And she moves her bowels at 6 P.M. each day precisely. I'll need someone with a poop scoop who understands Pekinese behavior at my suite by 5:45. Is that a problem?”

“So anyway,” Warren Acapulco continues, smiling at me and Claude, “how long have you been waiting to meet us?”

“Erm, oooh, well,” I smile, flushing pink. “We weren't. We were waiting for Psycho Killa.”

Warren's face remains poker straight. He produces a photo from his pocket and a pen, signing the picture, before handing it to me and walking away.

“From now on,” giggles Claude, “let me talk to the celebrities.”

“But I didn't even ask for an autograph!” I laugh, staring at the cheesy publicity shot.

“Never mind,” laughs Claude. “Stick it on eBay. Some fool will buy it.”

This is turning out to be the best day ever!

But just then, a face in the crowd spoils my happy mood. “You girls!” shouts Scrumble. “Come here!”

“Quick, look busy!” says Claude as Scrumble storms toward us, ignoring us and grabbing at two Harbinger Hall cleaners pushing a trolley of mops, brooms and bleach through the lobby.

“Where are you going?” Scrumble shouts at the older of the two girls, clad in a green cleaner's pinafore.

“Er, we're, erm, going to clean the Edelweiss Suite,” the girl stutters.

“Oh, really?” tuts Scrumble. “Can I see your ID cards?”

The girls begin to flap.

“I've lost mine!” claims the younger girl.

“Run for it!” shouts the older girl.

But now Scrumble has a walkie-talkie in her hand, barking orders. “Security! We have a situation here,” she's flapping. “More intruders have infiltrated the building en route to God Created Man's suite!”

“We're not intruders!” squeals the older girl as her overall falls open to reveal a God Created Man tour T-shirt and a digital camera hanging from her neck.

“Tell that to the judge!” shouts Scrumble.

“Claude, God Created Man are here!” I gasp. “Phwooooar!”

“Oh my God, they are so lush,” grins Claude.

“And they're right here in this hotel!” I laugh.

“Well, you can't snog any of them,” winks Claude. “Don't think Saul would like that!”

“Hmmm, good point,” I blush, thinking of the very lovely Saul Parker for the zillionth time that day. Blimey O'Reilly, I have totally lost my marbles over that boy. And he's not exactly remaining sane about me either. In fact, last night, after a moonlight walk down on the private beach, Saul even said he's been considering getting a little
V
tattooed on the bottom of his back so he'll always remember this summer. Serious stuff, eh?

Agh, I cannot stop thinking about Saul Parker! It's like a form of wonderful insanity. I'm like a different person ever since he came into my life. More confident. More alive.

“Ronnie, stop dreaming,” says Claude, nudging me back to the real world as the two fake cleaners are marched past me by security personnel. “You keep drifting off. You've got it bad, you have.”

“I soooo have not,” I blush.

“But we only wanted an autograph,” pleads one of the girls.

“Trespassers must be prosecuted,” huffs Scrumble, looking very proud of herself indeed. And then her eyes rest upon Claude and me and she looks even smugger.

“Ah, Veronica and Claudette,” she smiles. “And three become two.”

“Good morning, Miss Scrumble,” says Claude.

“It certainly is,” she replies, “now that we've trimmed the deadwood from our waitressing workforce.”

Claude and I say nothing. It's for the best.

“Miss Swan arrived home safely, I take it?” Scrumble says.

“I spoke to her this morning,” says Claude. “She's fine.”

“Good riddance to her,” mumbles Scrumble under her breath. “I shall be forwarding her the dry-cleaning bill for my jacket.”

At this point a small giggle tries to surface on my mouth. It happens every time I think of the satisfying
thwack
the cake made colliding with her forehead.

“Now,” continues Scrumble, checking her clipboard, “I have it here that several weeks ago you both booked tomorrow off for this beach party affair.” She wrinkles her nose as she says “beach party.”

“That's correct,” says Claude. “Is there a problem?”

“I'm not sure yet,” goads Scrumble, waddling away. “Let's see how hard you work today.”

And work hard we do.

Delivering room service orders, running messages, serving cocktails and clearing away plates. Scrumble tries to break our spirit with a mind-boggling list of demands, but she can't. We're on cloud nine. Behind every Harbinger Hall hotel room door lies another pop star, rapper or MTV presenter! Standing there live in the flesh!

In Room 307 MTV presenter Lonny Larson begs for hot lemon and honey after he's been up all night partying with God Created Man and feels like hell. Lonny still looks totally gorgeous with his huge green eyes and rich Belfast accent. He signs Claude's and my order books and even lets us snap camera-phone pics of him in his fluffy terry-cloth bathrobe!

Upstairs in Room 404, the Mortuary Team's Freaky Death Squad calls up requesting Harbinger Hall stationery, pens and vanilla ice cream with extra chocolate sauce, as the calm ambience of the hotel, the regency antiques and the regal chandeliers have inspired him to finish his new track, “Gonna Chop You Up, Sucka!”

Our next delivery, at the newly painted Barclay Suite, is for Dita Murray from the Scandal Children, who flew in at 3 A.M. from Singapore. Dita is a tiny little thing with blonde braids and a white pale complexion, much frailer than she looks in her videos. When we arrive with her herbal teas, Dita is with some flouncy guy in a pirate-inspired outfit who is holding up swaths of fabric to her face and muttering “fabulous” and “bella” again and again while a dozen personal assistants flurry around, asking her if the room is ivory enough for her. Weird.

But probably the best job of the day comes from the Edelweiss Suite. Cathy, long-suffering personal assistant to internationally successful boy band God Created Man, calls up begging Rosco to whip up some late brunch for her three pop stars. Siegmund asks if we want to deliver it. Try to stop us!

After a lot of swearing on Rosco's part, Claude and I set off to the Edelweiss Suite with a trolley laden with eggs Benedict, coffee and croissants, only to be met at the door by the one, the only, international sex god Jenson Carter! He's wearing nothing but a cheeky smile and small hand towel covering his dangly bits.

Gnnnnnnngnnnn! Claude and I nearly faint with glee.

“Come in! Come in, ladies!” Jenson smiles, beckoning us into the suite.

Claude just stands there opening and closing her gob. “But . . . but . . . you're nak—” she burbles.

“Move it, sister!” I hiss, dragging Claude into the suite.

The band checked into Harbinger Hall only at 1 A.M. that morning, but the place already looks like a herd of wildebeest stampeded through it. The place smells of feet, farts and pot noodles—the smell of all boys' bedrooms since the beginning of time. Everywhere you look there are clothes, shoes, plates, discarded bottles of booze and dirty glasses.

“Sorry 'bout the mess, girls,” apologizes Jenson. “Me, Lonny Larson and the boys had a little poker game going last night. Things got a little wild.”