Sharon corrected her.
‘Sorry, Finland,’ Denise said, remaining on her knees. ‘I am bowing to her. Join me!’
Sharon quickly got on her knees and the two of them began to worship her feet. Holly looked around awkwardly as everyone in the club began to stare and she once again gave them the royal wave. Nobody seemed very impressed.
‘Oh, Holly!’ her mother said, trying to catch her breath after laughing so hard.
Big burly bouncer turned his back and spoke into his walkie-talkie. ‘Boys, got a situation with the princess and the lady.’
Denise looked at both the girls in panic and mouthed, ‘Hide!’ The girls jumped to their feet and fled. The camera searched through the crowds for them but couldn’t find them.
From her seat in Club Diva, Holly groaned loudly and held her head in her hands as it clicked with her what was about to happen.
Chapter Nineteen
Paul and moustache man rushed upstairs to the club and met the very big man at the gold curtain.
‘What’s going on?’ moustache man asked him.
‘Those girls you told me to keep my eye on tried to crawl through to the other side,’ big man said seriously. You could tell by looking at him that his previous job involved killing people. He was taking this breach of security very seriously.
‘Where are they?’ moustache man asked.
Big man cleared his throat and looked away, ‘They’re hiding, boss.’
Moustache man rolled his eyes. ‘They’re hiding?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Where? In the club?’
‘I think so, boss.’
‘You think so?’
‘Well, they didn’t pass us on our way in so they must still be here,’ Paul piped up.
‘OK,’ moustache man sighed. ‘Well, let’s start looking, then. Get someone to keep an eye on the curtain.’
The camera followed the three bouncers as they patrolled the club, looking behind couches, under tables, behind curtains and they even got someone to check the toilets. Holly’s family laughed hysterically at the scene unfolding before their eyes.
There was a bit of commotion at the top of the club and the bouncers headed towards the noise to sort it out. A crowd was beginning to gather, and the two skinny dancers dressed in gold body paint had stopped dancing and were staring with horrified expressions at the bed. The camera panned across. Underneath the gold silk sheets there appeared to be three pigs fighting under a blanket. Sharon, Denise and Holly rolled around screaming at each other, trying to make themselves as flat as possible so they wouldn’t be noticed. The crowd thickened and soon enough the music was shut down. The three big lumps under the bed stopped squirming and suddenly froze, not knowing what was going on outside.
The bouncers counted to three and pulled the covers off the bed. Three very startled-looking girls, like deer caught in headlights, stared back at them, lying there as flat as they could with their arms stiffly by their sides.
‘One just had to get forty winks before one left,’ Holly said in her royal accent, and the other girls burst out laughing.
‘Come on, princess, the fun’s over,’ said Paul. The three men accompanied the girls outside, assuring them that they would never be allowed back into the club ever again.
‘Can I just tell my friends that we’re gone?’ Sharon asked.
The men tutted and looked away.
‘Excuse me? Am I talking to myself? I asked you if it was OK if I go in and tell my friends that we had to leave?’
‘Look, stop playing around, girls,’ moustache man said angrily. ‘Your friends aren’t in there. Now off you go, back to your beds.’
‘Excuse me,’ Sharon repeated angrily, ‘I have two friends in the VIP bar; one of them has pink hair and the other one—’
‘Girls!’ the bouncer raised his voice. ‘She does not want anyone bothering her. She is no more your friend than the man on the moon. Now clear off before you get yourselves into more trouble.’
Everyone in the club howled with laughter.
The scene changed to ‘The Long Journey Home’, and all the girls were in the taxi. Abbey sat like a dog, with her head hanging out of the open window by order of the taxi driver. ‘You’re not throwing up in my cab. You either stick your head out the window or you walk home.’ Abbey’s face was almost purple and her teeth were chattering but she wasn’t going to trek all the way home. Ciara sat with her arms crossed, in a huff, angry with the girls for forcing her to leave the club so early but, more embarrassingly, for blowing her cover as a famous rock singer. Sharon and Denise had fallen asleep with their heads resting on one another.
The camera turned round to focus on Holly, who was sitting in the passenger seat once again. But this time she wasn’t talking the ear off the taxi driver; she rested her head on the back of the seat and stared straight ahead out into the dark night. Holly knew what she was thinking as she watched herself. Time to go home to that big empty house all alone again.
‘Happy birthday, Holly,’ a very cold Abbey’s tiny little voice trembled.
Holly turned round to smile at her and came face to face with the camera. ‘Are you still filming with that thing? Turn it off!’ and she knocked the camera out of Declan’s hand.
The End.
As Daniel went to turn the lights up in the club, Holly slipped quickly away from the gang and escaped through the nearest door. She needed to collect her thoughts before everyone started talking. She found herself in a tiny storeroom surrounded by mops and buckets and empty kegs. What a stupid place to hide, she thought. She sat down on a barrel and thought about what she had just seen. She was in shock. She felt confused and angry at Declan; he had told her that he was making a documentary about club life. She distinctly remembered him not mentioning anything about making a show of her and her friends. And he had literally made a show of them. If he had asked her politely whether he could do it that would have been a different matter. Although she still wouldn’t have agreed to it.
But the last thing she wanted to do right now was to scream at Declan in front of everyone. Apart from the fact that it had completely humiliated her, Declan had actually filmed it and edited it very well. If it was anyone else but her on the TV, Holly would have thought it most deserving of the award. But it was her so therefore it didn’t deserve to win … Parts of it had been funny, she agreed, and she didn’t mind so much the bits of her and her friends being so silly; it was more the sneaky shots of her unhappiness that bothered her.
Thick salty tears trickled down her face and she wrapped her arms around her body to comfort herself. She had seen on television how she truly felt. Lost and alone. She cried for Gerry, she cried for herself with big heaving sobs that hurt her ribs whenever she tried
