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I honestly wasn’t sure where to begin telling Tom what had happened with me and my super fan. “Well, I know who she is. I mean I know of her.” Figuring the most obvious place was the beginning, I started to explain exactly where I had first met up with Natasha.
“She was a fan of the boy band I was in and I met her once about fifteen years ago. It was an event that had been organised by the official fan club. She won a competition to have a date night with all five of us.”
Tom took out a notebook and a pen and started to scribble down anything of value. “Did anything happen while she was with you all, between you or any of the other members of the band?”
“Christ no,” I dismissed, shaking my head. “She was a child, nothing at all happened with her. We each gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and we draped an arm over her shoulder as we posed for photos of the evening for her. Nothing else.”
Tom nodded to confirm he was listening.
“Her name is Natasha Gibson, and she is very much obsessed with me.”
He put his pen down and looked at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. “There was nothing that ever happened with you which could have triggered her obsession? And let me make something very clear before you answer, I’m not here to judge you, I’m here to help you. To do that I need to know everything, even if you think it’s not something you should be sharing.”
Knowing what was at stake, I wouldn’t dream of hiding anything from Tom. “Not a thing. The only contact I have ever had with her is that one time I’ve mentioned. She’s not my type. Believe me.”
For a moment there was a hint of something on Tom’s face, like he was going to ask more about it but had instantly thought better of it.
“So, what was the first contact you’ve had with her recently?”
I thought about it. It had been so easy to overlook the initial interaction with her because at the time it really was innocent. “Umm, I guess it would have been a congratulations card that came in after the news I had been signed by 45RPM broke. I have a post office box for any fan mail.”
More notes were written. “And then?”
My cheeks puffed out with a sigh as I tried to remember the next thing I had received from Natasha. “A birthday gift three months later. There was a stuffed bear and a card, again that came in via the mailbox.”
“And what’s the standard way mail like that is handled?”
“It comes in and gets opened by an assistant. We have a few standard little cards which we reply with. They’re printed out postcards, but they have a little message on them from me, and it’s made to look like I wrote it.”
“A nice touch for your fans, I’m sure they love it. But in this case, it probably made it easier to fixate on you. She might have been able to convince herself that the card really was from you. That she was someone special.”
The thought I had done anything to make this worse made my blood run cold, especially when I was only trying to honour the support from fans. I nodded absently. “That might be something we need to look at going forward. I really don’t want this kind of thing happening again.”
Tom looked at me sympathetically. “I think with the nature of your job, things like this are something that may keep coming up. But we can certainly look at how to protect you from them and try to dissuade any attention like this in the future.”
The fact there could be more problems after this hadn’t crossed my worried mind. Did he really think this could keep happening? Had I been so naïve about this when I was in the band, because I had thought nothing like this had happened before? Or was it just that the management had been very good at hiding it all from us?
Tom seemed to understand what I was thinking, and he smiled. “It’s not something to be concerned about,” he explained. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I didn’t know what it was about the way he made his promise, but it seemed to soothe the raw and worried nerves within me. Despite the comments he had made to reassure me the concerts should go ahead, and how nonchalant he had initially seemed, that one simple statement of not letting anything happen to me, washed all my fears away.
“Mr Thatcher,” I started.
“Please, call me Tom. We will need to work together closely, and calling me Mr Thatcher seems far too formal for that,” he interrupted with a warm smile.
“Okay,” I continued. “Tom, I need you to be honest with me. How bad do you think this can really get?”
“Honestly?”
I nodded.
“In an ideal world, I’d have been on board sooner and none of this would have got this far. But the fact that you’re acting on it now is something that can only work in your favour. The limit this person is willing to go to, to achieve her end goal is something we won’t actually know until we have more information about her. I promise you one thing, Lennox. We will be ready for her, and nothing is going to happen to you.”
Again, his words seemed to give me comfort where I wasn’t even aware I needed it. I didn’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the extra time needed to process just what the fuck was going on, but the gravity of the situation had started to crush me.
“So, what happens now?” I asked, needing to distract myself.
Tom scratched his brow and looked at me. “Well, the idea is that you and I pretty much become stuck together like glue. If you’re in a hotel, you’re in a suite with two bedrooms, or interconnecting rooms. If you’re on stage, I’m just behind the wings. If you need transport anywhere, we take my car and I drive.”
