Susan Leigh had planned this all perfectly. She would slip into the boot of the Beatles’ car while everyone else was distracted, while the Beatles were running away from all her fellow mashabiki and they tried to catch the Beatles kwa chasing them. She would stow away to their hotel with them, hidden kwa the instruments and luggage in the back. And then when the boot was opened, and the Beatles found her, she would climb out and face her beloved boys, and she would look deep into Paul’s dreamy eyes and say....
“Eee! Paul!! Huminaminama....”
The Beatles stared at her. Susan twisted her fingers together nervously, eyes shining with excitement and tears. What had she wanted to say again? She knew she’d thought of something, but – oh, there were Paul’s eyes for real, those breathtaking long lashes, and – what colour were they? Susan had always wondered about that, and now even looking at them up close in person, she couldn’t tell.
“Umignabah,” she stammered. au something like that. Come on, Susan! She’d played this out in her head a million times....
“Oh – hello,” alisema Paul, in his wonderful soft, warm voice. “What were wewe doing in our boot?”
Paul had spoken to her... Susan could hardly believe it. With a squeal, she launched herself at Paul, arms outstretched to wrap, upangaji pamoja around his neck... She just had to kiss him right now, this wonderful, beautiful man....
An arm reached out in front of her, blocking her way and pushing her backwards. “Maybe you’d better leave now,” alisema the Beatles’ driver sternly.
“No! No, I... Paul!” cried Susan, straining to get closer, stretching out her hand to Paul, hoping desperately that he’d take it. There was so much she’d wanted to say to him – and now she couldn’t remember any of it. How could she leave before she’d even got the chance?
But the Beatles were already going, heading for the door while Susan struggled to follow. The Beatles’ driver held her back until the Fabs were inside. “Paul!” she cried, tears falling from her big blue eyes. “I upendo you!!”
Paul turned in the doorway, giving Susan a small wave with his slender left hand – and then he was gone. Susan collapsed in a heap on the ground, sobbing outright now, as their driver let go of her and made his own way towards the door with the instruments. She wouldn’t be able to follow them now. The Beatles would have gone up to their room, and the hotel would never give her the room number, not even if she told them how she and Paul were meant for one another....
Why hadn’t she been able to talk to them? She’d spoken to her mum about the Beatles coming here when she’d first found out. “What do I say to them, Mum?” Her mum had told her that the Beatles were just ordinary people like anyone else, and she should talk to them as though they were. But Susan, who had always been rather shy, knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with the Beatles if she talked to them the way she’d talk to anyone else. So she’d planned a speech in which she told the Beatles how much she loved them and told Paul that she would be his forever – and even now, she still couldn’t remember a single word of it.
Her mum had been wrong. The Beatles weren’t ordinary people like anyone else. Ordinary people didn’t make wewe feel the way she’d felt when she’d first seen Paul for real just now. Ordinary people didn’t make your moyo beat a million times faster, until your thoughts were completely overwhelmed and wewe were reduced to a sobbing heap, knowing that your life would never, never be complete until wewe and he were together....
Susan sat up, smoothing her short brown hair, which had gotten messed up in the car boot, trying to work the flip back into it. She had to make this work somehow. Because Paul was anything but ordinary, and that one little taste of seeing him had only made her want him more.