Free Love Lies by Adele Parks Page A

because the media, books, movies and Friends – especially Friends – have conspired between them to somehow create the impression that life would be just a little bit more than this. Especially today.
    I’m bored watching Adam play chief and decide I might as well take full advantage of my ‘Access All Areas’ pass by wandering into the catering hall. It’s quite something; clearly, feeding the team is taken seriously by Scottie Taylor. There are two chefs and about six more staff cooking breakfast. There’s a choice of bacon butties, eggs (fried, scrambled, poached, boiled), sausages, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, even black pudding – who the hell eats that? Maybe it’s an ironic nod at Scottie Taylor’s northern roots; he’s from Hull, a city that (as far as I’m aware) is famous for absolutely nothing other than Scottie – I’ve heard him joke in interviews that Hull is the new Manchester but no one believes him. Still, it’s nice that he’s proud of it. Besides the cooked breakfast there are yogurts, croissants, Danish pastries, mountains of fresh fruit and about a dozen cereals to choose from.
    I’m not hungry, but like most women when I eat, and even how much I eat, has little to do with hunger. I eat because it’s a mealtime, I eat when I’m fed up and when I’m in a really good mood, I eat loads when I’m premenstrual and often just because food is there. So far, this complete lack of discipline has had no adverse effect because I’m lucky enough to have inherited my father’s metabolism. Honestly, he eats like a pig but looks like a whippet. It’s the one thing worth inheriting (as one of five in a family that tends to ‘make do and mend’, I’m not holding out for any family heirlooms). Today I feel entitled to pile my plate with everything I can, except for the black pudding, and I wash the lot down with two huge mugs of tea.
    I eat really quickly (again it’s the result of being one of five kids) and so despite the mountain of food I find that by 10.35 a.m. I am once again twiddling my thumbs, or more accurately the cord of the weighty AAA pass which hangs around my neck. Idly, I wonder exactly how far it can get me. Maybe I could have a snoop around the dressing-rooms. I have no interest in what Adam is doing front of stage, but as an avid reader of glossy gossipy magazines I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being just a tiny bit interested in seeing what Scottie Taylor’s dressing-room is like. After all, I’m flesh and blood. Yes, disappointed flesh and blood but all the same… I wonder what sort of riders and demands Scottie Taylor makes? Adam once worked on a gig for a very famous boy band and they all insisted on having their own dressing-room with en-suite bathrooms, which isn’t so strange, except they all had their baths filled with M&M sweets. Total madness but I can’t criticize. Who’s to say what I’d ask for if I could have anything? I bet those guys couldn’t believe their silly request had been taken seriously. Scottie and his band won’t be arriving for hours yet. Usually the artist arrives by helicopter just before the gig starts; it’s part of the theatre of the event. I think I could have a little poke around the dressing-room without disturbing anyone.
    I follow my nose through a labyrinth of corridors. I hope that stars’ dressing-rooms truly do have enormous glittering stars on the door or else I won’t have a clue which door to open. I pass a few busy-looking people, all of whom are smoking, which is illegal as this is a public building. I don’t think they care; breaking rules is what they do. Some are carrying clipboards or instruments, everyone nods at me but no one strikes up a conversation or demands to know what I’m doing aimlessly wandering about backstage. Other than the smoking, the people I run into seem to have little in common. They are not uniformly young and breathtakingly beautiful, as might be expected from a Scottie Taylor