They fly out first class, leaving a trail of digital stories criss-crossing across the miles, telling and retelling of Cheryl Cole's collapse from exhaustion.
The sceptics see through the code immediately, but the fans continue their adulation regardless.
She spends most of the flight with her eyes closed and the window blind pulled down against the blue expanse.
She feels suspended in limbo, cocooned ten thousand feet above the world, leaving one nightmare image en route to another entirely different personality. She knows that as soon as she touches ground that other person will end and a new, measured response will begin.
A tiny sigh escapes her lips and she wonders at what point her home stopped feeling like a sanctuary and started to be a place of dread.
She knows, of course. Knows that a large part of this is entirely of her own making, furious at her own foolishness and perpetual inability to cope on her own.
They'd floated the idea of rehab and she'd scoffed in disgust, made it clear as day that she most certainly did not have a drug problem, fixed wide determined eyes on the doctor filling out her discharge notes. He listened and looked and took it all in before illegibly scrawling down possible drug problem.
The horizon stretches before her and she pulls her blanket tighter, murmurs to Kimberley who passes her another complimentary pillow, knuckles grazing her shoulder before turning back to her magazine.
Things are better, looser, not perfect, but more settled between them.
She ducks and dodges and sidesteps her way through a cacophony of flashes, an arch of cameras and microphones and urgent directions and crackling walkie-talkies.
She exhales behind tinted glass and toys with the cigarette packet in her handbag, sliding a nail beneath the cellophane wrapper in anticipation.
She sleeps the morning away and listens to messages and music, the television playing with no sound, the phone ignored.
Kimberley visits and asks her what she wants and she smirks at the irony, opens a bottle of wine and presses a glossy kiss against her lips.
They suggest she see someone and it prompts more anxiety. She refuses at first, beseeching Kimberley to understand, her predicament, their eternal dilemma- where the truth ends and the persona begins.
And it's some bearded man, much older and learned, with too many letters after his name and a mismatching suit jacket and tie.
She clams up and dismisses him and the next time they send a woman.
"I'm not goin' into me childhood," she snaps, "I've had enough of rakin' over all that."
But then she's met with the terrifying alternative - the source of it all, the life she's now living, the person she is.
"Is it helping though?" Kimberley asks, a relaxed hand sweeping indulgently through her hair, luxuriating at the softness as each lock falls gracefully from her fingers.
Cheryl shrugs and sniffs and finally concedes that she supposes it is. She supposes it's better than nothing.
And the kiss pressed to her temple makes it that much more bearable, that much more evident why all of this necessary.
"Only for you, though," she looks up earnestly, meeting kind selfless eyes.
"No," Kimberley shakes her head, "You must do it for you."
And it takes a while for Cheryl to understand, truly understand how it's not being self-indulgent to want this for herself. How this sort of reflection isn't the same as her previous outbursts or sudden irritability or drunken heated ranting into her mobile in the middle of the night.
It takes a while, but gradually the layers are peeling away and the wound is left open and allowed to breathe. She still gets scared, of course, when she wakes up on her own and forgets who she is, or rather where she lay her head the night before.
But talking and laughing and being with Kimberley, all of them - out and celebrating or together in someone's sitting room, reminiscing about the early days and cringe-worthy photoshoots, fashion faux pas - it steadily brings her back into that inner sanctum of self-control.
Kimberley sees the gradual return of Cheryl's more comfortable demeanour. Which is not to say the feisty Geordie doesn't occasionally make an appearance - when Kimberley drunkenly compliments a waiter with an ounce too much flirtation she's treated to a cab ride home in silence before a night of impassioned recriminations back and forth.
But overall, she acknowledges that things are getting better. Cheryl's getting better. She also notes ruefully that there's an undeniable correlation between the normality of their routine and Cheryl's more tempered grasp of her emotions. A fact she knows cannot last given their careers, the bursting appointment book that's been only temporarily put on hold, the loitering press hounds waiting for their next feed.
But still, she hopes...
And then Cheryl's sitting on the floor, her head resting against Kimberley's knees, reclining as she is on the couch, her feet tucked under her.
She sips from her glass, staring passively at the television screen, the volume barely audible.
"Kimberley?"
"Mm?"
She strokes absently at Cheryl's hair and wonders when she became quite this beautiful, how she always forgets and delights in rediscovering it.
"I got a call today... about next week. The awards."
"Are you going then?" she asks, mildly surprised but heartened all the same.
Cheryl twists her head to stare back at her. "They've arranged a ...date, you know. So I won't go alone."
Her hand pauses, she says nothing.
"I said no."
She swallows and waits.
"I was thinking... what will happen if I continue saying no?"
Kimberley offers a wan smile. "Do you really want to find out?"
And with that, Cheryl sets her glass down on the coffee table, turns and kneels up so she's facing Kimberley, holds her hands, cool and soft between her own.
"Don't you?" she asks.
* * * * *
