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count!” says Duncan. “What happened to Fanny, George? She’s desperate to give you a guided tour.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” says George, noncommittal. “She’s just a bit weird.”
    Fanny Arundel—the UK’s answer to Katy Perry. Irreverent, wry and super sexy, she provokes controversy wherever she goes, singing about puppies and nipples and the war in Afghanistan, sometimes covering all three subjects in one song. She used to be a nurse before being discovered by Sebastian Stonehill, a respected record executive, who happened to be her patient in Intensive Care. He signed her to his label two weeks before succumbing to an infection, post open heart surgery. Much to the public horror of his wife, Fanny sang at his funeral and now wears numerous variations of a nurse’s uniform on stage in his memory. She drives young men to distraction.
    “George, mate, weird is wonderful. Who knows what she might get up to—all sorts of kinky shit. Handcuffs, whips—you ever tried any of that?”
    George should be accustomed to Duncan by now, so why does he still squirm when Duncan talks about sex? He’s almost positive Duncan should have been diagnosed with ADHD when he was a child. He is in his element perched behind the drums, but even without his sticks in hand, he is in perpetual motion.
    The band have gathered together at their recording studio in Camden to continue brainstorming ideas for the next album and to discuss the upcoming North American tour with their manager, Gabe. George likes to describe Gabe as half Prince Charles, half Bob Marley. He is the product of a very rebellious aristocratic mother from Hampshire and an equally rebellious music producer from Kingston, Jamaica. As a result of straddling the two worlds effortlessly, he has all the finesse of a diplomat and his strategic choices for Thesis have been crucial to their rise. He also buys lunch.
    Gabe walks into the room with a tray piled high with sandwiches, conveniently allowing George to dodge answering Duncan’s question.
    “It’s my boys!” he says with a big grin. “Names are on the wrappers, dig in, and Simon, keep your comments to a minimum.” Simon lunges to grab his baguette and unwraps it carefully, holding it up to savour the moment before taking a bite.
    “Now you’ve all got food in your faces, let’s get down to business,” says Gabe, pulling out his Blackberry. “We’re scheduled to fly to Las Vegas on the twelfth of November where we have a three-day video shoot for ‘I Knew It’. On the 16 th we’ve got five radio drop ins and some print interviews. On the 17 th we fly to LA. I’ll give you the schedule of interviews and TV appearances closer to the time, but we’re booked in for
The Tonight Show
for certain. Then there’s breakfast with the competition winners—”
    “Oh man, Gabe, give us a break! I hate those bloody breakfast things—do you remember the whack job last time with the rancid breath?” Duncan shakes his head disgustedly.
    “Dunc, these things are important,” says George, “I mean what’s the point of all of this if we become too superior to meet with our fans?”
    “Meet with them is one thing, having to smell them while we eat with them is another.”
    “Don’t come, then,” says Mark, renowned for being blunt.
    “Well, of course I’ll come, I was just—”
    “Whingeing,” interrupts Mark. “You were just whingeing as usual.”
    “Sorry we can’t all be so bloody unflappable like you!” mimics Duncan in a forced English accent, his unpredictable temper rapidly heating up.
    “Now, now, children,” says Simon.
    George starts to feel the familiar anxiety rising in his chest again. Sometimes he has a nightmare that this… all of this… could crumble and deteriorate as quickly as it appeared and then he would be… and then he would be who? The horrible question haunting him more and more frequently.
    The room is suddenly silent.
    “Okay, then,” says Gabe, “can we get back to the