I Knew You Were Trouble

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A little before seven a.m., in the back of a Toyota Avensis hire car, Duncan is giving Meredith a follow-up tutorial on how to use one of the video cameras. I sit in the front with the driver, the windowless, slate-grey sound van we are following containing all five members of Rebel Heart, squished inside. To avoid the fans, we escaped out of the service entrance to the hotel, and it felt exhilarating. Bodhi’s driving the van, and the band is accompanied by two other security guards up front. Bianca agreed to my request for another interview, yet she has no idea of the spectacle about to arrive at her door, two hours earlier than our supposed follow-up.

The boys agreed they need to move fast, like a SWAT team reacting to an incident: in and out. Plus New York in January is freezing. Last night, at the meeting, we made sure we had everything we needed.

I grip my camera. What Cal is about to do borders on the ridiculous. But Cal being Cal, I imagine he might just be able to pull it off.

Bianca’s apartment building is situated on the corner of East Eighty-First Street and Fifth Avenue, but due to the one-way system, it has to be approached from the east, from Madison Avenue.

There is a single car parking space available, into which Bodhi pulls the van. I ask our driver to pull over so that Duncan, Meredith and I can all get out. He screeches to a halt. We all pile out, then our driver then takes off at speed.

We’ve rehearsed our movements, our positions. Watching the boys move quickly, a smile tugs my lips. We are dressed low-key. In contrast, Cal is wearing an oversized tan-coloured suede and faux-fur coat, because, as he explains, where he comes from, the cold is seen as exotic and he thinks it’ll make him look attractive in Bianca’s eyes. He’s holding a sizeable loudspeaker, which Ziggy sourced at short notice. Ziggy, incidentally, has told the boys to call him from their prison cell.

Within moments, the back doors to the vehicle open up. I glimpse four sizeable speakers in the centre, and eight subwoofers wired up to the interior of the two doors. Meredith films Ravi, Aidan and Miller all clambering on top of the vehicle, to get a better view.

I keep my lens focused on Cal, walking to the other side of the street.

‘Good luck, mate,’ Aidan shouts to him.

Cal walks backwards away from the van. ‘Here goes nothing,’ he says with a wink.

Cal nods to J.B. who starts the music, then follows the others by climbing up onto the roof of the van. They are using a recorded performance of Luciano Pavarotti singing live – the most famous of all Pavarotti’s recordings – that Cal already has downloaded on his phone, complete with the euphoric audience reaction to his magnificent operatic voice at the close. Cal crosses the street and switches on the loudspeaker as the choir and the strings reverberate to the strains of “Nessun Dorma”. The noise of the choir and the accompanying strings is a lot louder than I expected, perhaps because it bounces off all the surrounding buildings. I raise an eyebrow: Cal said he was going to wake the neighbourhood with his declarations, and he wasn’t lying.

Cal crosses the street to the side of Bianca’s building, stopping opposite the entrance. I cross with him. He allows Pavarotti to begin singing before he makes his first address into the loud speaker.

‘Bianca! Bianca Lawson!’ he says, his voice echoing, looking upwards to closed windows. ‘Bianca, it’s me, Caleb. I need to talk to you, can you come to the window, please?’

There’s no reaction. Instead, one of the lower windows is tugged open, an elderly female in her robe sticking her head out, speaking with a strong New York accent.

‘Hey asshole! It’s Sunday! What the hell ya think ya doin’?’

‘I’m sorry, lady,’ Cal shoots back through the loudspeaker. ‘I gotta have words with a special girl.’

‘Ya can’t just go upstairs and knock on her door like a normal fucking person? Instead, you gotta run your mouth in the street?’

Again, with the loudspeaker, his Australian accent brash, Cal says, ‘Sorry, love, I gotta make a statement here.’

‘On a goddamn Sunday?’

‘I’m telling ya, it’s the Lord’s work.’

‘Get the fuck outta here!’ the elderly woman blurts and slams her window shut. I grit my teeth.

‘ Biaaanca ,’ Cal yells again, and more windows open. Finally, Bianca Lawson appears bleary-eyed from a fourth-floor window, still in her pink velour pyjamas, hair loose around her shoulders.

‘Cal?’ she says, looking perplexed, glancing around to see where the music is coming from. ‘What are you doing here?’

Cal cranes his neck back further just to see her. ‘I’m sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep, darlin’, but I needed to talk to you.’

I watch as Bianca absorbs the situation below her, covering her mouth in disbelief. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she hisses. ‘You can’t just show up here. You released your song; I got the message.’

‘See, that’s just it… I think the message may have gotten a little lost in translation.’

‘You ruined my life!’

Cal falters for a moment, his throat working. He raises the loudspeaker once more, softening his tone. He knows this isn’t going to be easy. ‘Can you just hear me out? Please?’

Bianca sobers. She sees me filming. She seems to consider his offer, the humour not entirely lost on her. ‘Talk to me then,’ she eventually answers him tersely.

Pavarotti’s glorious voice swoops up into the street. ‘I brought my mate Luciano along to help me out,’ Cal says. Windows are opening everywhere now, people grabbing their phones when they realise who it is doing the talking. ‘I watched your interview… It broke my heart. I’m so sorry, I fucked up. It was my fault that night. I was so mad about the tweet that I didn’t realise what a moron I’d been. You should have shredded me on Twitter, Bianca, I deserved a lot worse. You should have told everyone what really happened.’

I glance around. The music swells. Bianca looks like she’s trying not to smile. Cal has a sizeable audience now.

‘I’ve made your life a bloody mess, too,’ he continues, ‘by writing a shitty song about it, so that one’s on me, as well… But, that aside, I’m tryna tell you that… I like you. Alright? You are seriously the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes upon… That’s partly why I wrote the song… I can’t get you out of my head, see? You’ve had that effect on me. So, the song, it’s kinda like a compliment when you think about it… From the moment I met you, you blew my mind. So… I just wanna get to know you better… if you’ll let me? D’you think you might fancy it? Getting to know me too, I mean. Seriously, I’ll accept any punishment you can give me, but please don’t say no. I’m in New York, I can work my arse off to gain your forgiveness. Just say you’ll go out with me. Please, Bianca.’

I glance around again, keeping my camera steady on Cal. Duncan is filming Bianca, Meredith sweeping around the apartment blocks and the rest of Rebel Heart. I glimpse more than fifty individuals leaning out of their windows, all taking footage on their phones, and I know this thing is about to go viral. Through the subwoofers, the choir on the soundtrack is now singing, building to the climax of “Nessun Dorma”, the swell filling the entire street.

‘Do not go anywhere,’ Bianca shouts from her window, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m coming down.’

She disappears inside. I hold my breath. Cal lowers the loudspeaker. Moments pass, Pavarotti’s voice exploding back into the song, the crescendo of his operatic masterpiece causing the surrounding birds to flap out of the trees. Cal hops up and down on one foot, trying to keep his cool whilst fixing his eyes on the main door to the building. I glance to the sound van, seeing Aidan, Ravi, J.B. and Miller all with their arms around one another’s shoulders. All eyes on Cal and the door.

Hoping. Waiting.

As the music comes to a head, Pavarotti’s sublime voice climbing up above the Manhattan rooftops, the front door to the apartment building is thrown open. Bianca Lawson comes walking out onto the street in her baby pink pyjamas, straight into Cal’s warm embrace, just as Pavarotti hits his last, triumphant, final, climatic note.

As the crowd on the live track explodes into rapturous applause, so do the remaining members of Rebel Heart, Bodhi and his security guards, the onlookers who have stopped to watch on the street and every spectator who is watching and filming out of their apartment windows. Miller and Aidan are wolf-whistling, wide grins on their faces. Ravi clutches his own cheeks in disbelief. My heart soars, never quite having witnessed such a unifying moment between two people, who until the day before, had been caught up in a kind of conflict fuelled by press and public interest. Keeping my lens firmly on Cal and Bianca, I manage to look over at Duncan and Meredith, who are, along with everyone else, laughing and smiling at the spectacle of it all, whilst trying to capture the whole thing on film without dropping the camera and bursting into a round of applause.

Cal wraps Bianca inside his faux-fur coat to keep her warm, and they smile shyly at one another.

The tender, almost romantic moment is brought to a sudden collapse when the blast of a nearby police siren from Fifth Avenue sends everyone scurrying for the sound van. Aidan beckons to me as he climbs down from the roof. I follow Duncan and Meredith, running across the street, the camera still filming, Bodhi climbing into the driver’s seat as the amps are quickly hauled inside. The last thing I see before the sliding door closes is Cal holding onto Bianca’s hand and saluting us goodbye, as though thanking us for a job well done.

Inside the large private chill-out suite back at the hotel – the same one where I showed Cal Bianca’s interview – the remaining members of Rebel Heart gather, still pumped at the turn of events. Other members of the crew are present, along with myself, Meredith and Duncan.

‘Well, I’m amazed nobody got arrested,’ Ziggy chuckles in a gruff tone, when the band explains the events of that morning, all talking over one another. ‘I had the lawyers all prepped.’

‘It’s all over TikTok already,’ Miller grins, waving his phone, and I’ve already seen some of the footage spreading like wildfire across social media.

Aidan is holding my video camera, rewatching my footage of Cal, grinning as he does so. He pauses it, the image showing Cal and Bianca looking into one another’s eyes.

‘It’s like the New York Post all over again,’ he jokes, the boys gathering round to look.

Ziggy comes over. ‘’Ere, let’s see that.’ He takes the camera from Aidan. ‘Management will want a copy of that.’

‘Why?’ J.B. asks.

‘You’re on GMA tomorrow. Be great for publicity.’

J.B. rolls his eyes distainfully.

‘It’s a great picture,’ Ravi adds. ‘Cal would flip.’

‘I’ll run it past Management,’ Ziggy says.

‘Can we do it?’ Aidan asks, looking to me.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Come to my room, I’ll hook it up to my laptop,’ I throw in casually, and, not that anyone else would notice, but his eyes flash in my direction.

I’m not even inside my room when Aidan’s arms wrap around me from behind, still holding onto my camera, and I feel his lips on my neck. The lock beeps twice and I nudge the handle, the pair of us colliding with the door as it opens. Inside, Aidan draws me into his embrace, kissing me deeply, before pulling back and placing my camera on the table.

‘That was incredible, this morning,’ he whispers into my neck. ‘You did that. Cal and Bianca, that was all you.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I laugh, before he’s captured my lips again. ‘It was Cal’s speech that made her run downstairs.’

‘But if you hadn’t contacted Bianca, none of that would have happened,’ Aidan says. He presses his forehead to mine, breathless. ‘He would never have had the balls to contact her himself, he’s too stubborn. You’ve forever altered Cal’s destiny. Just like you did for J.B. You’re an incredible human being, you know that?’

I pull back, looking up into his eyes. My heart flips over.

‘Will you come to my room again tonight?’ he asks softly.

‘Yes.’

He takes my hand in his. ‘Last night was…’ He sighs.

‘I know,’ I whisper when he can’t finish his sentence.

Back in the suite, breakfast is being served by the hotel stewards. Everyone is digging in hungrily. Ravi is quick to come bounding up to me.

‘Can I talk to you for a second?’ he grins, his delightful dimples on full display.

I offer him a big smile. ‘Of course.’

He lowers his voice conspiratorially. ‘Can you interview me again?’ he asks. ‘I want to… I wanna come out. I want to do it in an interview for the documentary. Things between Tun and I… well, they’re serious. I can’t keep sneaking around like I am anymore. I feel inspired by what happened this morning.’

‘Ravi, we haven’t even finished making the documentary yet, then it has to be edited, publicised… it might not be released for another year… more than.’

‘I know that, I do. But… baby steps, you know? First, I need to come out to the band. To the boys. That I trust. So Tun and I can at least be open in front of them. I don’t know how my family will react, the management company will react, the record company, let alone the fans. I feel like I need a platform… to announce it to the world. Then I can’t go back on any of it. I think I’d like to do it this way.’

‘Is Tun happy with that?’

Duncan is coming over. Ravi nods and grins.

‘Let’s find a time.’

Ravi grips my hand before rejoining the rabble.

Duncan is munching on a pastry. He hands me a glass of orange juice then helps himself to one. ‘How’d you think it went today?’

I feel a little bad that I can’t tell him about Aidan and me, though I remind myself that Aidan’s not telling his bandmates either. ‘It’s certainly going to spice up this documentary,’ I say, chinking my glass with his.

We drink.

‘I took a leaf out of the Cal Whitlock playbook today,’ Duncan continues. ‘I asked Meredith out on a date just now.’

I almost spit out my drink in delight. ‘And…?’

‘She said yes. Maybe Cal inspired her too.’

I want to jump up and down. ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

‘That’s amazing.’

‘Well, you know me. I’m the king of first and only dates.’

‘But you like this one.’

His cheeks flush a shade of raspberry. ‘Aye. I really like this one.’

‘Did you book somewhere? This is New York, you can’t just turn up.’

Duncan is about to respond when a familiar voice pipes up from behind me. ‘And here was me thinkin’ you weren’t gonna be any trouble. At least, not again.’

I turn to find Ziggy staring at me with a raised brow.

‘Management has emailed that picture to the New York Post ,’ he carries on. ‘Local news won’t know what’s hit ’em, and on a bloody Sunday. Don’t think anyone was expecting this kind of documentary. I see now, why they fired the last bloke.’

‘Would that be a compliment you are giving me, Ziggy?’ I hum.

‘Might be. As long as you don’t mess about with them lads, you’ll keep me happy.’

I swallow tightly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

He gives a curt nod and is about to walk away.

‘Ziggy, can we ask a favour?’ I blurt.

‘What?’

‘Is there any way you can swing a booking at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan for tomorrow night?’