GUIDESTAR

Chapter 2 'The Core'

"I'm not just anyone Carrick, the ATA wouldn't even exist without me or had you forgotten that?"

"No I haven't forgotten, please Paige, just trust me. I promise you you'll understand tonight, look there's just a couple more things that need to fall into place if we're to make it inside and I need to be absolutely certain that wewon't make complete bloody fools of ourselves. It'll be the biggest one we've ever pulled off and this time, the whole world's gonna be watching."

The trailing words of Carrick's sentence caught Paige's attention and she raised her head to look him curiously in the eye.

"Are you going to bring the press in on this?" The look on Paige's face was divine and Carrick deliberately drew it out as he carefully studied the multitude of colourful rags and beads in her hair. He even tried to change the subject entirely with very little subtlety, just to wind her up.

"How do you get those things in your hair, you know they'd probably have burnt you in the middle ages for looking like some sort of evil, walking fruit salad, do you think they had fruit salad in the middle ages?"

Paige was having none of Carrick's subterfuge and proceeded to punch him hard on his upper arm.

"CARRICK!" she shouted.

"Ow! That hurt!" Carrick scowled and rubbed his painful dead arm before continuing,

"I might have," he said with a broad, wry smile developing across his face. "I bumped into an old friend last week when I was up in London at the BBC. We had a long chat about all sorts of interesting things. He agreed to help us Paige, so long as we give him full access throughout the campaign, he wants to treat it like a documentary, he's going to film it all from our perspective instead of the Government's." Paige's face quickly began to wrinkle in disbelief.

"Oh for fuck's sake what did you tell him?" She suddenly sat bolt upright in the chair. "How the hell do you knowwe can trust him? You haven't told him about me or my Dad have you?" Carrick held his hands up in the air at the unrelenting barrage of questions and tried desperately to cram in a reply.

"I didn't tell him anything, I just, made him think I did. Anyway I told you, we can trust him he's... Well he's an old friend,we went to Maudlin together, hell we even shared a flat in Oxford for a little while if you must know."

Paige immediately voiced her distain.

"You're a bloody hypocrite Carrick! You play the big socialist to anyone that's prepared to listen and then retire to your little gentlemen's club up at Oxford at the weekends. You make me sick!" Carrick was more than a little offended by this particular outburst and decided it was time to even up the score a little.

"You're the last person that can criticise my background Paige, your Father's an Etonian that mingles with half the members of the bloody Cabinet and drives a different Bentley depending on which tie he's wearing!"

"Fuck you!" came the succinct reply. Carrick knew her well enough to know that the worst of the barrage was over and he decided to wind it up with a cunning dose of warm familiarity.

"What have I told you about swearing, Miss Brook-Pemberton? It doesn't become your noble and privileged background. What would the Air Vice-Marshal say if he heard you talk like that?" Paige knew she was fighting a losing battle. They both smiled and mimicked Paige's mildly eccentric Father in unison.

"Bloody poor show, Paige, bloody poor, better straighten up your act girl before your mother gets to hear of it!" They laughed briefly before being interrupted by an elderly, bedraggled looking woman at the doorway with shocking purple hair and a king-sized cigarette hanging from one corner of her strangely slanted mouth.