Free Beneath the Blonde by Stella Duffy Page B

doesn’t do the music any harm, Alex can think what he likes. If thinking he’s in charge makes him happy, I’m not going to tell him otherwise. I like an easy life wherever possible.”
    Greg’s reference to Alex was further underlined when the man himself arrived in the kitchen, grabbed Greg by the arm, allowing him time only to place a lid over the pan, and led him to the basement door. Alex called over his shoulder to Saz, “Whatever he’s been telling you, it’s all bullshit, darling. We’re just a pitiful foursome of satellites floating around the queen bee. She’s the one who’s really in charge of it all. Only, you see, Greg is a man blinded by lust.”
    At which Greg tried to protest his innocence but Alex shouted over him, “He always has been. Ever since he first laid eyes on her. Siobhan Forrester’s just a fancy pants who likes to do what she wants whenever she wants it. A right little bism, as my granny would say. If Granny hadn’t been rotting in her grave these past twenty years.”
    Alex stopped, as if knowing what Greg would say next, gave him just a moment to open his mouth and then added, “And no, Gregory, that’s not what I call artistic temperament, that’s just showing off.”
    He then pushed Greg out the door ahead of him and smiled sweetly at Saz, “And I do hope you don’t mind my saying, but are we really paying you to stand there and ask questions all day, or are you actually going to do some work?‘Cos if it’s just a star-struck fan is all you are, then we can get half a dozen of them any time we like. For free. Or for fucks. Or better still, both. Off you go now. Petey’s waiting for you.”
    He then flicked his hand, shooing her out of the room and Saz heard him laughing as he went down the stairs to the basement, announcing to the rest of the band, “I just saved him, lads, the lovely lezzie had him in her clutches!”
    Dan and Siobhan’s loud condemnation didn’t stop the bile rising in Saz’s throat but it did prompt her to whip through her business in Peta’s office in record time and then out of the house as fast as she could.
    With Peta mostly out of the office at meetings with the tour booker and PR company, Saz was able to spend all of the following day on the phone. She contacted over two hundred florists to no avail. She made contact with sixteen of the twenty-two letter writers, all sounding very sane on the phone, mostly female and mostly in the thirteen to sixteen age range. She also managed brief chats with Dan and Steve over morning coffee in the kitchen. Both were helpful and rather more friendly than Alex, but both were also a little too concerned with their own roles in the band to be paying much attention to Siobhan’s problems. Saz left them with the feeling that success had not necessarily cemented their friendship ties, particularly not now that Alex and Greg were starting to earn royalties from their songs. And while Dan and Steve acknowledged that this was fair and right and just, they couldn’t help comparing their rather smaller bank accounts with those of their co-workers in what had started out as a collective endeavour and was now becoming much more of a financial oligarchy.
    After a couple of hours of phone calling for Peta so she could look like she wasn’t entirely avoiding all office work, Saz enjoyed a more successful post-lunch conversation with Dan, getting what else she could on the genesis of Beneath The Blonde, although she felt no closer to finding anyone who might be considered a threat. So far her only suspects were Alex, for no good reason other than that, from what everyone said about him, he might enjoy upsetting Siobhan even more than usual, or the disgruntled Kevin, who didn’t look like he could get the cash together for a bunch of daisies, let alone huge bunches of yellow roses. From Dan she learned that the New York trip wasn’t the only time Siobhan had disturbed the schedule for the rest of the band. He told her