‘No, I don’t mean the plane. I mean the London Eye.’
‘You want to do the interview on the London Eye?’
‘It was Jonny’s idea and I thought it might be fun.’
‘It’ll be busy, won’t it?’
‘I’ve reserved a pod.’
Of course he had.
Nick looked at his watch. It was one of those sleek Swiss affairs, with too many buttons and dials. ‘We should get over there.’
Jonny was waiting by the ticket office, along with our photographer David whom I’d spoken to yesterday. Two minders were waiting discreetly to one side while David watched something on Jonny’s phone. He was grinning and nodding at whatever was on Jonny’s screen, but suddenly stopped when he saw me, as if he were a schoolboy caught with a girly mag by a teacher.
‘Jonny was just showing me his new bike,’ he said.
Yeah, right. Nick must have read my mind because he held open his palm and Jonny duly dropped his phone into it. Nick frowned at the screen. ‘Who buys a Ducati in lime green? I had a cat who used to shit that colour.’
My jaw dropped at Nick’s rudeness, but Jonny hadn’t seemed to take offence because he was grinning. ‘It’s a custom colour, you fucker. Only twelve of them were ever made.’
‘Sweet,’ said David, who looked as relieved as I was that Nick’s comment had evidently only been banter.
Jonny took his phone back and gazed once more at the screen. ‘I’m picking this beauty up in a couple of hours, so can we get started, please?’
‘Follow me,’ said Nick.
A few people were milling around the embarkation pen; but surprisingly, no Hands Down fans. How had Jonny resisted broadcasting this on Twitter? A couple of Japanese girls seemed more interested in a police boat motoring along the Thames than this multi-million-selling pop star. Even Jonny’s day-glo orange biker jacket wasn’t attracting attention.
He was going to look a bloody sight on that Ducati.
The slow-moving wheel seemed to come to a complete standstill and the four of us were shepherded into an empty pod. Once the door clanged shut, it was remarkably quiet in our glass cocoon.
David was manoeuvring Jonny to one corner and getting off a few early shots, while Nick sat down on the central bench with his back to them, his eyes following a train rumbling over Waterloo bridge.
I walked over to the corner furthest from them. The capsule’s glass walls and steel supports made me feel like I was in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Except instead of an expanse of stars, I had a blue sky overhead and a murky brown Thames beneath my feet.
Whoa. When had we got so high?
I pressed my hand against the glass to steady myself, and planted my feet more firmly on the floor.
Was that a wobble?
The central arc of the wheel loomed above, and a hundred steel sinews cobwebbed around us.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. We weren’t wobbling; we were barely moving. My mind was playing tricks on me.
‘Zoë?’ Nick was beside me. ‘We should get started with the interview.’
I prised my eyes open then quickly shut them again. We were higher up now.
‘Zoë? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. Just a bit hungover.’
I swung round to face the middle of the pod, but it was useless; I was surrounded by glass, so couldn’t get away from the fact that I was suspended God knows how many feet above ground in a spindly bauble that could come away from its hinges at any second. Sweat pricked the back of my neck and my palms grew slippery.
‘Oi, Nick!’ came Jonny’s voice from miles away. ‘There’s a fat naked fucker on the bank who’s about to go for a swim in the river!’ Nick went over to Jonny, but I kept my eyes firmly trained on Big Ben. It was only ten past. We had forty more minutes of this. My knees started to buckle as I crept towards the central bench.
