The atmosphere in the overheated TV studio was thick enough to cut with a knife. She had a sudden vision of just that: a knife chop-chopping its way determinedly and erratically through the heavy coagulating air as it clotted and curdled around her. She turned slightly, remembering she wasn’t entirely alone, but the demeanour of the one other girl standing next to her, awaiting the final, irrevocable decision, was inscrutable.
She felt another single bead of sweat descend between her breasts to join the dampness that was in danger of turning the scanty light-blue dress Aunt Georgina insisted she wear, navy, but her smile never wavered. She wanted this. Wanted it so much it hurt. She wouldn’t think about the alternative. There wasn’t one.
Gemma Joseph, the charismatic compere who’d orchestrated and held the whole thing together since the very start of this round of TheBest, held up one slim, tanned hand and that was enough. The studio audience, made up of crucial members of the music industry together with the press and those who’d schmoozed their way in for whatever reason, as well as the near hysterical families who’d accompanied their girl through all the stages, was spontaneously and instantly silenced.
‘We are now left with two exceptionally talented girls standing here with me this evening. These two have battled their way through all the odds over the past ten weeks to end up here while you, the audience, and you at home, make your final decision. The girl that you decide is the best, the absolute best, will work with Steve Silverton either as a solo singer or be the lead vocalist in his next girl band. One of you…’ She turned to the two girls now holding hands. ‘One of you will be going home.’
She closed her eyes, willing, praying that all she’d ever wanted, all she’d worked so hard for the past two years or so, would be hers. She couldn’t go home now; she couldn’t go back north after all she’d been through. It had to be hers… It just had to.
‘You, the audience have chosen.’ Gemma Joseph slowly and deliberately opened the gold envelope. ‘And the winner of TheBest 2004 is…
‘…Lexia!’
Lexia Sutherland stood rooted to the spot on the stage unable, it seemed, to open her eyes as the audience erupted and some sort of gold tickertape started to fall, landing on her blonde hair, her face, her shoulders.
She’d done it. She’d done it. She’d won, and there would be absolutely no stopping her now.