Steve reads on. Fairbanks is met at the airport, the same airport Steve is now flying to, by a driver, no name provided, and driven to Lowesport, where he was to meet a yacht, and a photographer. Again, no names provided. Steve takes out his Dictaphone.
“Who met him? CCTV at the airport.”
On to François Loubet, a new name for Steve. Amy has sketched out a few details for him. Finding him seems to be her priority. And Amy also mentions a Joe Blow, perhaps an insider at Maximum Impact Solutions. Both these names had come from Jeff Nolan. Steve takes out his Dictaphone.
“Who is François Loubet? Who is Joe Blow?”
Brad arrives with twelve shot glasses, each filled with liquids of varying shades of amber.
“Shall we?” asks Brad.
“Will you join me?” Steve asks.
“Not allowed to drink with passengers, I’m afraid.”
“Says who?”
“I think it’s international law,” says Brad. “But the pilot too. She needs me sober. In case of emergency.”
Steve raises his finger, asking Brad to give him a moment, and walks to the cockpit. As he opens the door, Saskia looks up from her book. It is Rosie D’Antonio’s latest, Dead Men & Diamonds.
“Can Brad have a drink with me?” he asks. “It’s a long flight.”
“Sure,” says Saskia. “There’s a wrap of coke in the Business Suite too. Fill your boots.”
“You’re okay,” says Steve. “But thank you.”
Shutting the door, Steve takes out his Dictaphone again. “Debs, I’m on a private jet. There’s a gold toilet, and cocaine, but no crisps. Anyway, no doubt we’ll crash, but, if not, let’s chat later. Love you, babe.”
Steve returns to his sofa. Brad raises an inquiring eyebrow.
“Saskia says go for it.”
Brad smiles, and raises the first glass. “We start with a cheeky little lager from Japan.”
28
Bonnie Gregor’s influencer dream had started small.
And yet here she is, just a year later, on a train to Letchworth Garden City.
Bonnie had posted a photograph of her newly painted pink toilet door on Instagram. At the time she had six followers: her mum, her sister, two of the girls from work, Gail and Reba, Reba’s husband, Mike, and a pornographic bot from South Korea.
Bonnie scrolls through her Instagram now—14K followers, thank you very much—trying to choose some highlights to show to Felicity Woollaston at Vivid Viral Media. Felicity doesn’t know she’s coming, but sometimes you have to make things happen. Big things happen to other people, so why not to her too? The kids are with her mum for the day.
Bonnie has no sense of Felicity’s age, but she’s guessing mid-twenties hipster. Fourteen K followers in just a year. Imagine where she could go next? Reba and Mike have since divorced, but the porn bot is still there. That’s loyalty.
She had included #LooWithAView in her photograph caption. She had taken the photo while sitting on the loo, and you could just see the tips of her knees in the bottom of the shot. It got four likes, Mike and the porn bot being the only dissenters. Early signs there that Mike was not to be relied upon.
It soon trailed off into that vast forgotten ocean of Instagram posts that fortunate future historians will spend whole careers interpreting.
A few weeks later the paint started peeling a little; she’d bought the wrong sort, it was only a bit of fun. So she scraped it off. She briefly experimented with hanging a picture of Harry Styles on the door, but it seemed disrespectful to him, and what if, unlikely Bonnie knew, he ever came round? His car broke down on her street, say, and he needed the toilet?
The train is now pulling into Letchworth Garden City. Bonnie is a little nervous, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. It was Reba really who planted the idea. “Fourteen K followers? That makes you an influencer.”
She had Reba to thank for the whole thing. It was Reba who had posted Bonnie’s photo on Facebook in the “Bathroom Inspiration” group, where it had been seen by a woman who had turned out to be Fearne Cotton’s mum; so then Fearne Cotton had seen it and had posted it on her own Instagram with the hashtags #ILoveMyLooToo, #LoveThisIdea, #GoBonnie in her caption.
The followers started flooding in, but, after they liked the toilet-door post, there was nothing else for them to see, other than a photograph of Bonnie’s lunch that day, a tuna bake. They soon started flooding away again.
So, as a stopgap, Bonnie had painted “ILoveMyKitchen” on one of her kitchen cabinets. Pink again—she had a bit of the paint left. That photo seemed to please the hordes. “Love this idea,” “So fresh,” “Makes you think about kitchens. Like, what are they? Thanks for the inspo.” And so Bonnie then painted on her living-room wall, her bedroom wall, and the spare bedroom wall, realizing after she had finished that she had run out of rooms.
The walk from Letchworth Garden City Station to the high street is surprisingly pleasant. Bonnie sits on a bench and takes out her phone. She unpeels one of her stickers (“£4.99 for a roll of 60,” direct from her website), which reads “I love my ______.” She writes the word “bench” with a pink glitter pen (“£6.99 for 6,” direct from her website) and sticks it onto the bench. She then takes a photo of herself on the bench, next to the sticker, and pulls a mildly bemused face as if to say, “Wait, I love a bench. I might be a little crazy,” applies a few filters, adds #LovinLetchworth and #BenchesNeedLoveToo, and posts it.
As she sets off to meet Felicity, she feels her phone buzz with notifications as people like the post. That gives her some confidence. She knows it’s silly, really, but she also knows that she spreads a tiny bit of happiness in a world that needs all the happiness it can find. Who knows what advice Felicity Woollaston might have for her? The stickers and the pens and the paint sets and the stencils are all well and good, but she barely covers her costs. She certainly couldn’t give up her job. Maybe Felicity can change all that? Elevate her to the next level. Bonnie has plenty of ideas, but she knows that Felicity is the expert.
And, above all, Bonnie knows you have to dream your dream, and see where it takes you.
29
Amy is still driving.
“Will I like him?” asks Rosie. “Your father-in-law? Is he rugged?”
“Do you like the type of man who eats all his meals in his local pub?” asks Amy. “And looks like a roadie for Iron Maiden?”
“Well, you’re hot, which means that you probably married a hot guy. And hot guys usually have hot dads. So I like my chances.”
“No touching,” says Amy. “I mean it.”
