Bonnie (part 1)

1

Black wig, black leathers, black nails, black lips. Bonnie closed her eyes as Clifton grabbed yet more of the damn colour and brushed it on.

Allowed to open them again, the Southern Pop Sensation raised her eyes to the rain on her trailer roof, and then at the photographs of Bren and her. She was smiling broadly in them, as if her little heart-shaped face between the swags of red hair had to show enough emotion for the two of them, as if grinning grotesquely hard would atone his sin of not giving a bloody damn.

Anxious to prove the flawed experiment (Bren) was worth saving, Bonnie had dutifully stuck the little photos around her mirror as if they were votive offerings to some obscure saint who looked after lost causes. Leaning forward, she squinted at the snaps lurking darkly between the make-up lights. Nope, the poor sap couldn't crack a smile - even in the beach picture.

"Jeez, yer one mis'rable cuss!" Bonnie felt Clifton (her makeup artist) bring the brush to a halt on her cheekbone and she pointed hurriedly at her and Bren at her parents' ranch. "No, not you, Clifton Sugar Pie... Ah mean the moody, mopin’ son of a bitch standin' next to that there nag whose magnificence eclipses all around her... includin' him. You can tell 'em apart easy 'cuz the horse is the one that's smilin'."

Bonnie was dying to scratch her neck. The white foundation was forbidden turf but that was just tough, as the itchy makeup was getting her dander up. Clifton wasn’t too happy either, but a pacifying, home-baked drawl (North Carolina) lay in wait behind her voluptuous black-glossed lips. This occasional White-Southern-Belle twang was self-mocking and made the black make-up artist laugh. Usually. But the grip of a grey London on her long-time friend/employee/confidant was, mused Bonnie, ‘tighter ‘n a skunk’s butt’.  

"Well now, lookie here at all this shit on mah cute liddle face, Clifton - how come the guy don't just shood it all in black 'n' waaht?" Batting her eyelids at the make-up artist, the monochrome beauty resorted to a laugh often employed to cajole the miserable. Bonnie enjoyed flirting with Clifton as, not having any biological features that remotely interested him, it was a game they could play safely, a game where he would reciprocate and make her giggle by winking at her lasciviously, waggling his tongue suggestively and pinching her butt. Not today, though - Clifton, offended, gave a microscopic shrug (and the smallest collapse of a sarcastic smile), and then wilted, as if wax left out in the sun.

Oh, for goodness’ sake, now what?

Ah, right.

"Sorry Clifton, that's 'shit' as in 'what a darned stupid idea that director had', not as in your brilliant - oh, you know what I mean." Another shrug from Clifton, but this time even more dismissive.

"Clifton, you are a miserable cuss after all." Even frank-speaking Bonnie knew this was better just thought, as Clifton was pretty sore at being dragged across the Atlantic to stand in the damp London air and minister to the director's high-maintenance girlfriend. Mind, mused Bonnie, he was getting a grand a day to park his camp little ass on a chair and get up from it occasionally to wave a blusher brush in her direction, so the least he could do was crack a grin.

Ok, Clinton was moody but Bonnie loved being pals with a gay Caribbean make-up artist, and relished the vision of plantation-owning ancestors spinning in their polished marble graves - ancestors who would have hanged him twice over, once for being a ‘Queeah’ and once for being a... heck, she couldn't even think the word, she was that darned liberated, and modern, and downright wonderful.

Bonnie was pleased with her outer self, too. Looking at her own slight, elegant frame in the mirror, Bonnie was certain that various ‘mystic’ experiments with yoga, food and sex had kept her in trim. Indeed, it had (according to her drinking buddy Sophie) worked so well that she was convinced all her happiness required was a well-endowed Buddhist with a wok.

As a hard-drinking devotee of the cowburger saddled with with Strict Baptist roots, her boyfriend Bren hardly ticked the boxes but the eternal optimist in Bonnie refused to believe that his clay was already kilned, and she knew – just knew - that it would, in the right hands, be malleable again. Of course, too much handling can turn clay so dry, brittle and stubborn that in the end it has to be ditched, but Bonnie was reluctant to give up either her methods or her man, because she was so certain he had something. She paused her breathing and looked at the floor.

Just a little teensie weensie something, surely?

Whatever his failings, Bren certainly had something professionally. 

Boyfriend Bren had been called in to shoot this advert (perfume) because he was arty, cutting edge and greatly admired for the way he communicated with a camera: he was, however, also a total bastard and managed to batter all in his path, while leaving small craft tossing about in his churning wake. It was just such a shame that Scruffy, Unshaven and Rude were the default settings of this twenty-eight year-old genius.

No, Bren certainly wasn't there for his social graces. Skilfully capturing fragile, ethereal beauty by day and slugging paparazzi drunkenly by night, this trip saw the sensitive artist going from Aesthete to Arnie in just a few beers, thanks to his dogged conviction that strong English Ale was as mild as it tasted.

And Bonnie - he hadn't tired of telling her – was only there because of him. Heaving her metal-studded shoulders, she breathed a dismissive 'yeah' and raised her middle finger at the picture of Bren winning yet another award. That was him all over - the pathetic little man was always putting her down, his ego rubbed constantly like a raw heel by the annoying, niggling fact that she earned millions as opposed to his paltry hundreds of thousands, irritated by the fact that she had an adoring public while he only had admirers/rivals/enemies in the trade, and a clutch of vacuous, fawning anoraks who lurked in geeky, internet fora.

And Bren's latest commission? The one he was working on now, and the reason they were here? An advert for a fragrance... Three cities, three scenes... Such a simple (“yet elegant”) idea.

Bonnie read the label on the tiny smoked glass perfume bottle with the gargantuan stopper. 'Black Leather'. That puny little pot was the reason she had sat on a cop's motorbike in the Bronx while graffiti artists sprayed her black leather jacket, the motorcycle (and her) for Bren's fickle lens. Yes, it had been one of the worst days of her life, giving the word 'washable' a wider latitude than normal. Some of the paint had come off in the shower, it is true, but the rest got rubbed off on the expensive Oriental rug in front of his fire, thus marking a transient evening of passion with more permanence than the usual wine stains, ash and bodily fluids. The damage to the fine silk pile was so bad that whoever said revenge wasn't sweet had – in Bonnie’s humble opinion - a piss-poor handle on life.

She looked at the perfume bottle. That pathetic little phial of weed extract was also the reason some ’frickin’ two-bit’ animator was depicting her in cartoon form surrounded by a neon-infested ‘Japanese’ city… And it was also the reason she was here in London waiting for the weather to break so they could film her dressed as a Punk Rocker in front of Buckingham Palace while randomly thrashing at a Union Jack guitar and mime-bawling at a camera.

Yes, an advert shot in New York, Tokyo, London… Such a great idea.

And "Such ingenuity! Such vision!" (Bren). "Such a boring, tedious pain in the arse!" (Bonnie). But in the end it was, whatever one's opinion, an idea delayed by a dark cloud over London that seemed to have no intention of shifting.

Scrabbling round among the fan mail, flowers and cans of diet cola, an acolyte retrieved Bonnie's needy phone from where she last threw it. Pressing it, Bonnie silenced the Darkest Heart ringtone (Darkest Heart: only number two in the American charts so far, but her people were working on it) and winced at the abrasive sarcasm, fresh and hot from the other end.

"Hey, Bitch, were you goin’ to pick up or you just gonna to leave me in here to rot for ever?!" Holding the receiver from her ear, Bonnie gently pushed her calmest, most sympathetic tone into play - and she knew it really bugged him.

"Oh, hello, mah poor, poor darlin' Bren." More invective from her man. "That you, my precious?" Bonnie had a good ear and she knew exactly where he was because of the tinny, institutional phone and the background noise - and yes, it was the same place he had been the previous morning. "And now tell me, Sugah, do those adorable English cops require bail, or we just lucky again?" The voice on the other end racked up a notch and Bonnie shook her head, mouthing "Jerk!" to a pink bear which an ardent fan had spent hours of her precious life dressing in a mini vinyl nurse's uniform (Bonnie’s outfit in Saturday Heart/Sunday Tears: number one for three weeks).

Bonnie had already decided Bren’s fate long before this. Normally when Bonnie decides something, it requires an army of pawns to come to their Queen's aid. This simply required her to not hang up, tell him to get terminally lost and for her to never see him again… Yet she just couldn't do it to him.

"Tell me, Honey, we shootin' today?"

"Waddya think, bitch? Seen the weather? Why don'cha look out the f-" And that was it. All his change for the phone used up. It was either that or he'd decided she wasn't worth the extra couple of coins. Probably the latter. Yesterday, she had taken off the black bobbed wig, released her strawberry blonde tresses and wiped a towel around her face so she didn't look so much of a monochrome freak as she walked up the drab, utilitarian steps of the police station.

Today, she was going to leave it all on.

On reaching the shabby, austere building, she asked the nervous cabbie to wait and marched resolutely in with her six foot two Mexican bodyguard, Masona. A giant block of a monstrosity (the police station), its box-like anonymity was pretty universal. Maybe the architect was convinced he was the one who was going to break the mould and produce something that embodied a sacred Bauhaus, Modernist ideal rather than just be another brick box with steel window frames Maybe he was convinced that it was going to be iconic and join the legendary edifices that pop up with boring regularity in heavy coffee-table tomes on cutting-edge contemporary design. There again, it might have been just another boring commission that kept the client happy because it was cheap and utilitarian and which pleased the architect too because it was quick and easy and kept him in pencils.

Despite Bonnie's strident make-up, the policewoman behind the desk vaguely recognised her, but she wasn't sure whether it was from the television, or from last night when a load of women had been rounded up and brought in for soliciting. Yes, it was definitely the former.

"Bloody Hell!" whispered the policewoman, nudging the man on the phone next to her. "It's her." Putting on her best official voice, the woman addressed Bonnie as calmly as she could.

"Yes, moddam, how may I help you?" Bonnie knew the signs well and played along with the little charade. She was, mused Bonnie, probably hoping that little ol' celebrity her would scrawl an autograph. If so, it would be in full view of the man she had come to collect, the humiliated movie director with a hangover whom nobody, judging by their indifference, had shown any sign of recognising.

And that was worth a whole shit load of signing.

Bonnie showed her driving license to put the poor policewoman out of her misery.

"Ah, Ms. Bonnie. Of course." The policewoman looked round the reception area sheepishly and slid a piece of paper and a pen onto the counter. "Um..." Picking up the cheap biro, Bonnie swept a deft hand over the random scrap and smiled, totally disarming the poor officer. "It's not for me, you understand, Ms. Bonnie, it's for my -" Bonnie looked the woman up and down; she was in her early twenties at the most.

"Your… Daughter?" The policewoman blushed and hurriedly shoved the paper under a file on the desk.

The rain hadn't, in all honesty, been that significant but it was enough to make Bren nervous about the whole London thing, so he hired a studio and stuck Bonnie in front of the largest Union Jack available. On reflection, he decided it was too corny and, anyway, he could have done that back in New York, and even Bren balked at having to explain an expensive five-day trip to London for a ten second shot of a person in front of a flag. With another, bigger flash of inspiration, he got his assistant to track down a transport museum where, after closing time, the crew hauled in the gear and he stuck Bonnie in front of a good old-fashioned London double-decker bus. Two hours later and they were done.

The next day, Bren scratched his dark, curly head of hair and passed a huge, tattooed fist over his stubble as he looked through the rushes. Why the heck hadn't he done that before?

"Yee frickin' ha!" And there it was - a smile. If only, thought Bonnie, she had caught that elusive act in a photo; it was a bit like a UFO landing on the back lawn and not having a camera handy. Yes, that handsome radiant face was exactly the thing she had fallen in love with, and here it was.

For a split second.

Bonnie had managed to convince herself a while back that his smiles were like gold, all the more precious because of their rarity... And there was no point flooding the market now, was there?

It was an upbeat Bren who sat opposite Bonnie in the fancy restaurant with the white tablecloths as stiff as a board, a relaxed Bren who ordered an expensive steak and a much more expensive bottle of red. Looking at the label, Bren smiled... He was on familiar territory now and there wasn't an English ale in sight to compromise his evening with its beguiling nutty, bitter taste and heavenly aroma. Ah, yes… English Ale, the mysterious and sinister siren that had called to him twice from the depths of a quaint wooden barrel and, on both occasions, lured him to the jagged rocks of public humiliation. But only a fool would succumb a third time… And yet, a cosy pub with its cut-glass windows and open fire... Aww… It was actually such a harmless a place, really... Just a matter of getting to know its little ways... Perhaps just one quick one after they had finished here...

"No!"

Bren woke from his reverie and looked at Bonnie, dumbfounded. Just what was that the bitch saying 'No' to? Whatever question she had in her head, there weren't many which had 'no' as the right answer. "Honey, would you object to doing that thing we did the other night after I got you hammered on half a bottle of scotch?" would, for example, be one such question where a 'no' would be predictable, but that was about it. Attempting a thin, subtle layer of innocent confusion, Bren just looked stupid, but then he'd never twigged how ridiculous his puppy-in-a-puppy-refuge expression became after three glasses of wine.

"Heck, Bren, pack in the ham performance - you had thaaat look!" Now Bren had another look, the one that always came after a comment like that, the one where he squared his shoulders and got dug in for an evening's arguing, point-scoring, recrimination and good old fashioned yelling. And it was coming on now. Bonnie knew that averting a drama called for a little self-deprecation on her part, something to make him feel less threatened.

"Hey now, pardner... You just leave the bad acting to little ol' me!" Seeing the shoulders relax, she steered the conversation to neutral waters. "Tell me about this Punk Rock thing we're doin'. I wasn't around at the time and I'd like to know more about it." The shoulders tensed again. Now she was calling him 'old'.

"No, I wasn't there either, damn it - I'm only five years older than you." Bonnie’s display of ignorance had, however, just uncovered a rare bright needle in Bren’s huge, dark haystack of negativity.

Bonnie had soon discovered that one of her partner’s few moments of empathy happened when she didn't know something. He usually cut her some slack because, being a sickly child, she had missed out on a hell of a lot of schooling. Bren realised though she was actually very bright, even if facts were always a bit on the scarce side. Civilisation’s epic journey of human endeavour was not immune to Bonnie's vast powers of ignorance and most events before her birth were, apparently, Prehistory - the Vikings, the first powered flight by the Wright brothers and Baywatch might all as well have happened in the same week, such was that woman's grasp of general knowledge.

Settling back in his chair, Bren regaled her with a potted history of what sounded like a crazy time, one that included the Ramones (whoever they were), The Stranglers (ditto), teenagers with safety pins through noses and a man getting sworn at on the television by a band called the Sex Pistols. Bonnie reckoned the Sex Pistols must have been famous because, according to Bren, the lead singer had once appeared on a butter advert and he wouldn't have been asked if nobody knew about him, would he?

Back at the hotel, Bonnie opened her laptop and watched the test shot of her in the black studded outfit. My, didn't she make a cool Punk Rocker? At least, she reckoned she made a cool whatever it was that Bren was talking about. As soon as she came into shot she was posing Rock God poses and making Rock God faces, a less charitable observer seeing an indulged celebrity no doubt praised by gushing acolytes for snarling through a pat shopping list of expressions. Bren had thought as much when he looked at them, the crass performance not bothering him though because it was - for crying out loud - a perfume commercial and not some deep psychological drama, so a bit of over-the-top 'acting' was not such a bad thing.

"You coming to bed, Bonnie?"

"In a bit, Honey. I jus’ want to look it up… You know, this Punk thang… Grassroots stuff an' all that." But Bren didn't answer because Bren was disgruntled; first he hadn't got to go to the pub and now he wasn't going to be catered for in bed, either - still, at least he was going to wake up under the soft meringue of an Egyptian cotton comforter the size of a movie screen and not on some hard, narrow bench in a cell, so that alone was a novelty to be savoured.

It wasn't long before Bonnie realised that, in the beginning, Punk was all grassroots, the essence of home-made – not 'nice' home-made like her mom baking muffins and her grandma sewing patchwork, but fevered ripping and slashing. If it was cut, it was jagged; if it was painted, it was daubed. It was as if a surgeon had been replaced with Jack the Ripper... As if slow, tedious sutures and scalpels had been thrown out and replaced with gaffer tape and a chainsaw.

These people didn't have time to waste on niceties - no, they wanted it and they wanted it now. It was as if it was their last day on earth, as if they had panicked because they were about to meet their Maker and they realised they just didn't have a thing to wear.

Bonnie looked at more pictures and realised it was more than just sartorial laziness and impatience when she saw a shot of a punk next to a poster of Abba. The youth had, somewhat predictably, drawn over the band's faces and added various body parts that the Swedes' modesty usually kept hidden behind their spandex jumpsuits. Mind, stocky though Benny was, Bonnie reckoned he still probably didn't have a pair of breasts like the ones added by the grinning youth equipped with a pink Mohican and a marker.

In fact, what caught Bonnie's attention most wasn't Anni-Frid's erection or Agnetha's beard but the texture of the ripped, taped, safety-pinned, scribbled-on blazer that had gone from regulation school uniform to Punk Junk in the space of only an hour or two's labour. Copying the picture, she pasted it into a document and cropped it so that just a rich, textured rectangle of the jacket remained.

Was it the colours? Was it the layering of exciting, random scraps of fabric held in place by almost any means as long as it didn't involve boring, predictable sewing? It didn't matter - it worked, that's all. Perhaps she had inadvertently cropped it just right so it was like a perfectly composed piece of modern art? Going back to the original, she dragged it bigger so the whole of the jacket was in view. No, it still, somehow, looked stunning - beautiful, wild, bursting with life.

Calling up her own 'Punk' outfit it looked bland and contrived but, fair enough, it worked because an advert required little more than a Lego figure avatar. Choosing a cream-coloured jacket from the wardrobe, she tugged lightly at its sleeve.

And that was as far as she went. Taking a twelve hundred dollar piece of Versace and ripping it seemed very un-Punk... Or was it, perhaps, the most rebellious, Punk statement of all? Putting it back, she clicked the wardrobe door shut, sat down again and found the music.

Oh, wow - if the clothes were the battle standards, then the sounds invading her earbuds were the Hun at the gates of Civilised Rome, savages woken from a long sleep to enter the sleek tablet and ravage her ears.

It wasn't rape, though, it was seduction - wild and relentless indeed, but seduction, nevertheless. Having had her fill, a stunned yet blissfully smiling Bonnie Fenton slid softly, quietly into the quiet calm of the hotel bed.

2

"But I want to stay on, darlin' - just for a coupla days. I've never explored here before and there's just so much to see!" Bren digested this latest breakfast announcement, poured himself another coffee, looked through the hotel window and tried to convince himself that the long awaited blazing sunshine outside would have been just as unsuitable for shooting in as the rain... Ah, yes, the rain that had taunted his trip from the moment he landed to the time he walked out of the transport museum...

...And then stopped.

Bonnie? She could do what the hell she liked. He would be busy with the editing for the next few days and, as Frida their live-in Mexican help was always around, he would be busy with her, too.

Bren saw sex as part of Frida's job description. Washing, cooking, dusting his awards (and putting them back straight and in the right order), a good time in bed; her working day was really very simple. Man, she didn't realise how lucky she was to have such a straightforward life - every waking moment was, for him, either a logistical nightmare (not strictly true as that wasTrudy's domain) or else it was the constant, daily nagging of the aesthetic and technical challenges of his craft, each pulling at his sleeve for their fair share of attention.

Honestly, it was never-ending.

Bonnie examined the unshowered, unshaven man in the dressing gown. She knew in her heart of hearts it was harsh to judge a man on how he had just crawled out of bed but she felt, right now, he deserved no quarter. Even in his tux at awards, Bren came across as shifty, seedy and degenerate whereas the Punk Rocker in the picture, despite his Tippexed, drawn-on, stapled, slashed clothes having just lost a fight with the contents of his pencil case, looked honest and true like a peasant from one of the goddamn paintings Bonnie's parents would stick her ass in front of as they'd dragged their precious little girl round one of their self-improving grand tours of Europe.

Yes, the youth was, despite the 'modern' clothes, like someone from those mediaeval pictures where the villagers were carousing the night away at rough, wooden trestle tables. Mediaeval... Now, that was earlier than the Civil War, right? Obviously earlier than Punk.

Probably.

Frida the maid looked an honest peasant too, but Bonnie knew that she would, in twelve hours time, be servicing Bren's needs, the needs that she herself had ignored last night when she was Googling 'punk venue London 1970s' and printing off a picture of a disused cinema and a location which she would announce to a taxi driver so he could take her to it. It was, in a way, a shame that this would be the last breakfast she and Bren would share as she was going to miss him but, when she had gone through the messages on his phone last night, she saw her suspicions had been entirely justified.

This sudden Punk thing was, if she were honest, a way of buying time while she took stock. There was no denying, though, that it would be good to discover something for herself for once rather than just pick up whatever her parents or Bren had pushed her way. Sure, she'd miss the curmudgeon but the sex had become intermittent and they still had their own houses, so not a lot would change. Watching Bren walk into the bathroom, she realised the next hour would be made up of 'last of' events... The last time she would see his cute butt disappear into the shower, the final view of his wet biceps as she passed him to go to the toilet - except that this time she wasn't even going to even sit down on the john 'til he was well out of the room, let alone chat to him while she was having a pee.

And it wasn't long before he knew that she knew about his recent exploits, this sharp, fatal sliver of knowledge pushed home quietly in the hotel lobby with a sigh rather than with the flailing theatrical tantrums or 'private' sobs of an all-too public martyr. It was a strange parting, one that lingered longer than any other because they both knew it was the last. There again, it was also the least passionate, if the most regretful. Sauntering coolly, slowly back to the lift, Bonnie went up to the nineteenth floor, opened their – now just her – door nonchalantly, entered the huge room, lay face down on the huge bed and sobbed into the fading aroma that had been the sexy, cantankerous bastard called Bren.

3

Bonnie smiled at Clifton, nodded a 'this is the place' at him and got out of the taxi. The cabbie coughed and Bonnie, shaken from her thoughts, fumbled around in her bag and shoved a note into his hand. She was, apart from Masona her bodyguard and her make-up artist, on her own today and she had to think about doing things for herself - that was proving complicated as it had been a while since she had to put her own cream in her coffee, let alone find her way across a totally strange city in a country she'd never been to before.

And this had been a very, very bad idea.

Ah well.

Standing by the side of the road, she looked across the busy traffic at a carpet store, the building that was the old cinema-cum-concert venue in the picture off the internet.

The crumbling pile in front of her was the sole survivor of the buildings in the photograph and it was now flanked by a plumbing supplier and second-hand car lot. Holding up the Seventies image for comparison, Bonnie noticed some of the same cracks in the building right there in front of her - there just weren't any weeds in them then.

Looking up and down the litter-strewn pavement, it seemed to Bonnie that she was in a street with pretty much the same stores as any downtown stretch of road in the States. She noticed too that the area was as big as it was ever going to be and, whereas back home another bit of desert could be commandeered to stick a new car lot in, the only expansion here was either upwards or over some defunct stretch of ground that had held Last Year’s Big Thing… Hence the carpet warehouse in the former bingo hall that had been the old concert venue which had itself once been a picture house.

On the opposite side of the road was a cafe and it was here that she tried to make a subtle entrance, but that was difficult when accompanied by a five-foot nothing black guy with a perm and a six-foot two Hispanic woman with a black bomber jacket and shades, Masona still sporting a coiled white security earpiece which, out of habit, she occasionally pressed into her ear and listened to intently as if picking up some strange message from the cosmos. It wasn't actually linked up to anyone as the other bodyguards had either returned to the States or the Middle East, but anything that helped the woman get through the day was okay with Bonnie. Running the gauntlet of a few staring natives, they stood around and waited to be seated. Seeing this wasn’t going to happen, the trio sat at a table and watched an expressionless woman come over to them with a pad and a biro.

Sitting with a cup of coffee (?) at a scratched, formica-topped table in a restaurant where the chairs were bolted to the floor was so alien to her now it was almost nostalgic and Bonnie drew a strange comfort from the plastic tomato on the table with the thick sauce dribbling down its brash exterior. It was exactly the same as the ones back home and she clung to this mundane little comfort as she considered her next move. The woman behind the counter, realising this wasn't just any old customer, had noticed the mess too and been sufficiently nosey to come over herself and smear a cloth across it rather than send the young woman who was clearing the tables. Leaning over, she saw Bonnie's crumpled print-out of the Punks in front of the building opposite.

"Sorry, darlin' - if you're here for a concert then you're about forty years too late." Bonnie scanned the woman's features and then looked at the half dozen teenagers in the picture. This woman was probably about the right age but, alas, didn't seem to be one of them.

Bonnie decided the woman’s utilitarian haircut said ‘I can’t be arsed with doing my hair in the morning on top of having to get a café up and running’. It was short, shapeless and just over the ears, like a cop letting it grow too long; once a sign of anarchy (but now just plain apathy), it was on the timid side of punk and probably hadn’t changed in the last thirty-five years. Like the crude ‘M’, ‘A’, ‘R’ and ‘K’ tattoos on the woman’s knuckles, the hair had once been bold, a statement... Now it was just dug in for the duration.

At least a hundred and seventy pounds, the woman was stocky like a person who was more than comfortable in their own skin, like one convinced that looking at a lone, out-of-date strawberry yogurt in a fridge packed with Buds and burgers counted as taking in one of those mythical five a day things people kept talking about. The other woman - the sickly-looking younger one with the lank, mousy hair who was coughing all over the counter - she looked half the weight and was skinny as opposed to slender but with the same straight, refined nose. Displaying some of the same mannerisms, she just had to be the boss’s daughter.

Steeling herself first, Bonnie addressed the formidable woman standing over her. She did it in the slow and deliberate manner of someone trying to hide that she was a little afraid and wondering what she was doing in such an alien place.

"Excuse me asking, ma'am... Are you local?"

For her own part, the café proprietor sized up the puckered little redhead whose anus was probably also clammed shut in case her shit became defiled by having to come into contact with air breathed by plebs. Yes I am local, thank you, and what's it to you? Still smarting over a visit from the Inland Revenue and having to explain every receipt right down to the laces for her work shoes, she was wary of anyone who wasn’t a regular. The Yank seemed harmless enough, but just what was she after? Unlike the usual customer in her humble, ten-table café, this bint even sat like a toff… And if she was from the Tax Office then bringing a heavy was a bit of an over-kill, even with her patchy past. With a pair of freaks like that, she had to be some kind of someone who was somebody… Somebody that is who had, for whatever bizarre reason, pitched up at her humble gaff.

Finally putting the red plastic tomato back on the table, the woman drew herself to her full height, pointed at the people in the picture and breathed in deeply.

"Well, I'm local enough to know that lot, for a start. Old enough, too." The American woman was now smiling and seemed friendly enough but, on the other hand, there was definitely something about her being there that didn't hang true. Perhaps if she just removed her damn sunglasses.

As if telepathic, Bonnie removed her shades, smiled at the woman and asked if she could fill her in on anything about the venue.

"Maybe... Maybe not. So what do you want to know?"

"I'm really into Punk Rock and I'm researching it for a, er, article," lied Bonnie, "and I thought it would be more interesting to find out from real people rather than the usual circus of bands and celebrities they normally drag out." The woman narrowed her eyes.

"Perhaps you could be more specific - any bands you want to know about, for example?" Bonnie racked her brains, desperately trying to call up her conversation with Bren the night before. If only he were here now. Heck - did she just say that?

"Well, there were the, um, Sex Stranglers..." The woman let out a 'hmm' and cleared Bonnie and Clifton's table brusquely, standing over them until they got up to go. Bonnie suddenly felt lost, stupid and alone. Putting her head in her hands, she started to cry. The woman put the crockery down on the next table and sat opposite her, plucking a paper serviette from a mug on the table and gently squeezing it into Bonnie's hand.

"Sorry, darlin', a bit harsh of me, I know - we get all sorts, though, and round here you have to look out." Bonnie pressed the serviette to her eyes and put her face on the table to hide her tears. Sitting on the American’s side of the table, the woman put her arm round her and gave her a hug before turning round to nod her daughter to the till where an elderly man was waiting to pay for his cup of tea. Bonnie sniffled and mumbled at the worn geometric pattern on the Formica table top.

"I - I shouldn't have come here... So stupid... I want to go home!"

"Is it far, dear? There's a bus to the tube on the other side of the road and if you ask they can direct you from there." Feeling Bonnie's expensive cashmere coat against her neck, the woman reckoned the American lady probably wasn’t bus material. "I can call a cab, if you like. So, where do you live then?"

"Los Angeles." The woman laughed gently and that made Bonnie laugh too.

"Sorry, darlin' - I'm a bit hazy anywhere west of Oxford Street."

Out in the sunshine, Bonnie stood still and looked blankly at a litter bin while Clifton and Masona stood patiently by.

"Come on, let's get to the airport." But then Bonnie hesitated; it was stupid to be here the other side of the world and not just cross the road to see the venue - after all, the carpet place was open and it wouldn't take long to just have a peek inside. At that moment, Bonnie heard a scuffling of sneakers on the pavement, turned round and started at the woman who had just emerged from the cafe with a large book under her arm.

"Look, darlin', it's quiet in there at the moment so why not have a gander at these for a few minutes?"

The scrapbook started out orderly enough but soon melted like a New Year's resolution into jumbled pages of tickets, set lists and flyers. Even as fans' tributes went, it was pretty comprehensive and included locks of dyed hair, a flake of paint off a dressing room wall and a song lyric scribbled on the back of half a poster. This woman had been - was - obsessed with a band and yet she'd had the cheek to get shirty with Bonnie because she had shown an interest? But, then, a fan's protective possessiveness was no stranger in Bonnie's world, so the woman's behaviour kind of clicked true.

With a cup of tea and a bun on the house, Bonnie was feeling half-human again and after a while she was even laughing with the woman ("please, love, call me Rebecca") as they read song titles that, with their references to things biological, read like evidence from an obscenity trial.

"So, Rebecca," mused Bonnie, "Where were you in all this whole loada hootenanny?" The café owner - who had now taken a shine to this not-so-stuffy American - looked at the counter to make sure her daughter was out of earshot, leaned forward and whispered.

"Under the guitarist, a lot of the time." Despite a supreme effort, Bonnie's attempt at nonchalance failed spectacularly and Rebecca pointed at the podgy body under her pale blue nylon overall.

"Oh, I know what you're thinking, Miss I-Go-To-The-Gym-Three-Times-a-Day, but just have a look... At... This!" Finding the right page, Rebecca heaved open the tattered tome and prodded a finger at a slim, busty girl with a bass guitar; a very pretty girl she was too and dressed in extremely short shorts, fish-net stockings, a ripped white shirt and a tie. Rebecca clocked Bonnie's quizzical expression, nodded to her and smiled with satisfaction as they both bent their heads to look at the picture again, Bonnie noticing that the erstwhile nineteen year-old was standing with another girl in front of a bedsheet bearing the rather shaky legend 'Trashnik'. It was an unusual word and one whose length had taken the sprayer by surprise, the 'ik' shoved up small against the right hand edge of the crumpled, makeshift banner. The girls were behind a microphone and their mouths, observed Bonnie, were possibly saying a word with an 'F' in it. Rebecca looked dreamily into the distance and grinned.

"Oh yes, darlin' - there were a fair smattering of words with an 'F' in. Quite a few nights with it in, too."

"Goodness, ma'am, it could jus' be me but I'm feelin' it's gettin' real hot in here!" Camping up her own accent, the blushing Southern Belle fanned her face with a serviette and laughed. "An' the name's Bonnie, by the way." Rebecca looked at the woman who was now sighing and stirring her tea - she had seen her somewhere. Bonnie looked out at the wide road and, watching a van fill up with gaudy-patterned carpeting, she was comforted by the slow pace of a world framed by the large, shiny window. "You know what's nice about this liddle country o' yours? It’s not like back home where I can't even get to the end of mah drive without some snapper poppin' his ugly little head up an' shootin' a damn picture. It's only a matter of time, though." The proprietress of the unassuming cafe looked at her daughter and beckoned her over. She had been staring goggle-eyed in their direction and it was time to put the poor dear out of her misery.

A couple of minutes later, Bonnie put the top on a felt tip pen and gently pushed a serviette back towards the star-struck young woman sitting opposite. Just what was it with twenty-somethings round here? Rachel, Rebecca's daughter, had finally summoned up the courage to do what she had been dying to do since the megastar had come in. Smiling nervously at Bonnie, she took out her phone and activated the ringtone, a tinny Darkest Heart soon disturbing the calm of the sparsely populated café. Having been determined to be cool, she now just felt silly. Spotting the shy young woman’s awkwardness, Bonnie grinned, took out her own phone and pressed the front.

"Well, now, ain't it a small world? It just so happens... That..." She soon shut the tune off though as even one creaky rendition of her latest hit was reminder enough that, the more popular a creation, the more likelihood of it ending up being consumed as a mere hollow mockery of itself. Wow, thought Rachel; she had the same ringtone as Bonnie – the Bonnie – and it probably came from exactly the same place. That was, she mused, quite some connection and it sort of made them linked somehow, didn’t it?

Rachel's mother, for her part, looked at herself in the large plate window and sighed. Here she was in a pinnie with, she was only too aware, hair that needed a wash and a face on strict makeup rations… And she was apparently sitting next to a real celebrity who was eating and drinking from her crockery! Rebecca was wishing she had inspected the cup better, but Rachel's quality control was pretty good and any foreign bodies were usually history after the deft flick of a purple-varnished nail.

Seeing the cab draw up outside, Rebecca waved at the driver ('he's kosher 'cause he's my ex an' he won't kick up a fuss about waiting neither if he knows what's good for him') and took a deep breath of Bonnie's expensive perfume when the pop star embraced her. Finally releasing Bonnie from her grasp, Rachel for her own part felt a small metal object pressed into her palm. The silver bear key ring had been a present from Bren and not only was this a way of making the young waitress very happy, it also rid Bonnie of a piece of the bastard who had blighted the last few months of her life.

"Thank you, Rebecca, Rachel. I can't tell you how much good this has done me." And she really couldn't, either - for, although she had warmed to the women, Bonnie was always aware that every corner had someone ready to shop her to the tabloids for committing the crime of doing something that might amuse the public.

Ensconced in the taxi, Bonnie took out a used till receipt and looked guiltily at the scrawled row of digits. Rebecca had trusted her enough to give her a home number, yet all she the 'celebrity' had given to Rebecca was the number of the work phone carried by Masona. Hadn't the café owner given as much away as she had? Only if (Bonnie told herself) Rebecca was also suffering from being constantly pestered by the press.

It didn’t take long, though, for Bonnie to take the phone from her bodyguard, call the cafe number and ask to speak to Rebecca.

"Hi, I was wonderin' if you would care to be my guests at dinner tonight?"