Emma was devastated right away. She was sitting on the bed, knees pulled up to her chest, her face buried in her arms. Melanie C had her arm around her shoulders in a poor attempt to comfort her, but nothing could stop her from sobbing uncontrollably. Victoria was pacing down the hotel-room with a phone pressed against her ear, her eyebrows furrowed in a mix of anger and desperation, trying to ring Geri over and over again, knowing that she was not going to pick up. She stamped her heels on the floor in frustration when she was transferred to her voicemail again.
"What the fuck are you doing, Geri!" She exclaimed, looking over at Mel B, who was sitting in a fauteuil near the window with her legs hanging over the armrest.
Melanie C realized that she herself also kept looking in that direction, as if the both of them were expecting her to explode in anger any minute now, but her expression was unreadable.
"Emma is inconsolable and nobody knows where you are," Victoria went on, speaking louder with every word. "The least you can do is ring us back to let us know what the fuck is going on!" She was shouting now. She wasn't saying anything she hadn't said in the last 10 - actually, they stopped counting - voicemails, but what the fuck were they supposed to do?
Victoria hung up and threw the phone on the table, a distraught sigh escaping her mouth before a moment of silence overtook the room. The only sound came from Emma's soft sobs and Melanie's hand rubbing her arm. Victoria looked over at her and they had known each other long enough for Melanie to know what her eyes were asking her: why was Mel B so calm and when will the bomb burst? Any minute now, Melanie thought, looking at Mel, who was staring out of the window while playing with a string of her curls. But the truth was that you never knew with her.
"Now what?" Melanie C asked, breaking the silence.
Victoria reached for the phone again, but Mel B suddenly grabbed her wrist firmly to stop her.
"Fuck her." It was the first thing she had said in two hours, which Emma must have realized as well, because she stopped crying. Mel shot up. "Fuck her. We don't have time for this. We have a bloody show tonight. We have lines to redistribute and other shit to worry about, because it is going to happen with or without her, innit."
She was right, they all knew that, but that didn't stop them from looking at her in confusion. They didn't know exactly how they expected Mel to react to Geri's departure, but this wasn't it. She and Geri had always been the closest of the group. They could fight like there was no tomorrow, swearing and screaming at each other like crazy, and then make up two minutes later. It had always surprised the other girls how quickly they were able to forgive each other: they would literally scream at each other at the top of their lungs, swearing and sometimes even throwing things, but a while later they would be running around laughing uncontrollably, arm in arm as if nothing happened.
"Em, wipe your tears will ya," Mel said, standing in front of the blonde girl, but she herself wiped the tears of Emma's cheeks before she had the chance to do it herself and took her hands to pull her of the bed. Her plateau shoes made her a full head taller than Emma. She put her arms around her neck from behind and gave her a short squeeze. "Come on now," Mel said, firmly but comforting, before pushing her in the direction of the bathroom so that she could quickly clean herself up. "We have to move quick, all right? We have an entire show to reconstruct."
Victoria sighed. "I don't know where to start," she said, looking at Melanie and Melanie.
"Do you guys really think she won't be coming back?" Melanie C asked.
Mel B threw her hands up in the air. "I don't know, Mel." The words came out quickly and fast and semi-annoyed, as if she didn't want to think about the answer to that question. "And at this point I don't really care." Lies, they thought. Actually, they knew. "We really have to talk to the crew and staff and god knows who else," Mel B finally said.
"Why don't the two of you go ahead and meet with the crew," Victoria said, massaging her temples. Her head was hurting. She nodded her head in the direction of the bathroom. The door was half-open. Emma was standing in front of the mirror, wiping her tears, but her sobs were still hearable. "Emma and I will be down in a minute."