Page 99 of I Knew You Were Trouble

‘Bianca! Bianca Lawson!’ he says, his voice echoing, looking upwards to closed windows. ‘Bianca, it’s me, Caleb. I need to talk to you, can you come to the window, please?’

There’s no reaction. Instead, one of the lower windows is tugged open, an elderly female in her robe sticking her head out, speaking with a strong New York accent.

‘Hey asshole! It’s Sunday! What the hell ya think ya doin’?’

‘I’m sorry, lady,’ Cal shoots back through the loudspeaker. ‘I gotta have words with a special girl.’

‘Ya can’t just go upstairs and knock on her door like a normal fucking person? Instead, you gotta run your mouth in the street?’

Again, with the loudspeaker, his Australian accent brash, Cal says, ‘Sorry, love, I gotta make a statement here.’

‘On a goddamn Sunday?’

‘I’m telling ya, it’s the Lord’s work.’

‘Get the fuck outta here!’ the elderly woman blurts and slams her window shut. I grit my teeth.

‘Biaaanca,’ Cal yells again, and more windows open. Finally, Bianca Lawson appears bleary-eyed from a fourth-floor window, still in her pink velour pyjamas, hair loose around her shoulders.

‘Cal?’ she says, looking perplexed, glancing around to see where the music is coming from. ‘What are youdoinghere?’

Cal cranes his neck back further just to see her. ‘I’m sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep, darlin’, but I needed to talk to you.’

I watch as Bianca absorbs the situation below her, covering her mouth in disbelief. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she hisses. ‘You can’t just show up here. You released your song; I got the message.’

‘See, that’s just it… I think the message may have gotten a little lost in translation.’

‘You ruined my life!’

Cal falters for a moment, his throat working. He raises the loudspeaker once more, softening his tone. He knows this isn’t going to be easy. ‘Can you just hear me out? Please?’

Bianca sobers. She sees me filming. She seems to consider his offer, the humour not entirely lost on her. ‘Talk to me then,’ she eventually answers him tersely.

Pavarotti’s glorious voice swoops up into the street. ‘I brought my mate Luciano along to help me out,’ Cal says. Windows are opening everywhere now, people grabbing their phones when they realise who it is doing the talking. ‘I watched your interview… It broke my heart. I’m so sorry, I fucked up. It was my fault that night. I was so mad about the tweet that I didn’t realise what a moron I’d been. You should have shredded me on Twitter, Bianca, I deserved a lot worse. You should have told everyone what really happened.’

I glance around. The music swells. Bianca looks like she’s trying not to smile. Cal has a sizeable audience now.

‘I’ve made your life a bloody mess, too,’ he continues, ‘by writing a shitty song about it, so that one’s on me, as well… But, that aside, I’m tryna tell you that… I like you. Alright? You are seriously the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes upon… That’s partly why I wrote the song… I can’t get you out of my head, see? You’ve had that effect on me. So, the song, it’s kinda like a compliment when you think about it… From the moment I met you, you blew my mind. So… I just wanna get to know you better… if you’ll let me? D’you think you might fancy it? Getting to know me too, I mean. Seriously, I’ll accept any punishment you can give me, but please don’t say no. I’m in New York, I can work my arse off to gain your forgiveness. Just say you’ll go out with me. Please, Bianca.’

I glance around again, keeping my camera steady on Cal. Duncan is filming Bianca, Meredith sweeping around the apartment blocks and the rest of Rebel Heart. I glimpse more than fifty individuals leaning out of their windows, all taking footage on their phones, and I know this thing is about to go viral. Through the subwoofers, the choir on the soundtrack is now singing, building to the climax of “Nessun Dorma”, the swell filling the entire street.

‘Donotgo anywhere,’ Bianca shouts from her window, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m coming down.’

She disappears inside. I hold my breath. Cal lowers the loudspeaker. Moments pass, Pavarotti’s voice exploding back into the song, the crescendo of his operatic masterpiece causing the surrounding birds to flap out of the trees. Cal hops up and down on one foot, trying to keep his cool whilst fixing his eyes on the main door to the building. I glance to the sound van, seeing Aidan, Ravi, J.B. and Miller all with their arms around one another’s shoulders. All eyes on Cal and the door.

Hoping. Waiting.

As the music comes to a head, Pavarotti’s sublime voice climbing up above the Manhattan rooftops, the front door to the apartment building is thrown open. Bianca Lawson comes walking out onto the street in her baby pink pyjamas, straight into Cal’s warm embrace, just as Pavarotti hits his last, triumphant, final, climatic note.

As the crowd on the live track explodes into rapturous applause, so do the remaining members of Rebel Heart, Bodhi and his security guards, the onlookers who have stopped to watch on the street and every spectator who is watching and filming out of their apartment windows. Miller and Aidan are wolf-whistling, wide grins on their faces. Ravi clutches his own cheeks in disbelief. My heart soars, never quite having witnessed such a unifying moment between two people, who until the day before, had been caught up in a kind of conflict fuelled by press and public interest. Keeping my lens firmly on Cal and Bianca, I manage to look over at Duncan and Meredith, who are, along with everyone else, laughing and smiling at the spectacle of it all, whilst trying to capture the whole thing on film without dropping the camera and bursting into a round of applause.

Cal wraps Bianca inside his faux-fur coat to keep her warm, and they smile shyly at one another.

The tender, almost romantic moment is brought to a sudden collapse when the blast of a nearby police siren from Fifth Avenue sends everyone scurrying for the sound van. Aidan beckons to me as he climbs down from the roof. I follow Duncan and Meredith, running across the street, the camera still filming, Bodhi climbing into the driver’s seat as the amps are quickly hauled inside. The last thing I see before the sliding door closes is Cal holding onto Bianca’s hand and saluting us goodbye, as though thanking us for a job well done.

Inside the large private chill-out suite back at the hotel – the same one where I showed Cal Bianca’s interview – the remaining members of Rebel Heart gather, still pumped at the turn of events. Other members of the crew are present, along with myself, Meredith and Duncan.

‘Well, I’m amazed nobody got arrested,’ Ziggy chuckles in a gruff tone, when the band explains the events of that morning, all talking over one another. ‘I had the lawyers all prepped.’

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