A pregnant hush descended upon the blackened auditorium. Anticipation cut dead the flattening ripples of applause. Out of the silence a familiar voice:

“And so to the final act of this year’s Britain’s Got Talent live final. Please put your hands together for the nation’s favourite baristas, Espressoccino”

Everybody waited with bated breath for the surprise act that had taken the country by storm. Suddenly the notes of the pentatonic blues scale rose from the piano as the spotlight fell upon the coffee bar. A trumpet drove though the smoke as the three baristas began their routine. Grinding beans, swaying and singing, their perfect routine combined dance, coffee and exquisite jazz blues vocals. It was like Billie Holliday, Bessie Smith and Nina Simone convening over an espresso in heaven. There had been nothing like it before. The same excitement that had greeted Pudsey the dog and the Hungarian shadow theatre. The judges smiled and waited for the drinks that would be delivered in the finale.

The production team watched from behind the scene.

“Camera 2- zoom in on Rachael’s hands on the beans. Perfect.   Camera 3- close in on Bronwen’s eyes as she sings. Camera 1….”

For a few seconds the director paused, thinking she had spotted something unusual but she went on,

“Camera 1- close up on Gemma, ready for the chorus.”

And there it was again. That niggling doubt that refused to go away. She couldn’t say anything though. Not during the live final.

********

Three days previously

It had been a euphoric moment. Picked for the live shows, the girls had taken the audition performance to a whole new level. It was polished. It was slick. It was tight. The newly named coffeography was intricate but had been practised and practised to a pinnacle of performance art. The adrenaline rush was still pumping through them hours after leaving the stage but for one the aftertaste was a bitter one that had not been sweetened by the adulation they had received. There was no escaping those words once they had left his lips, nor could she pull out the dagger now embedded in her spirit

********

The live final

The act was mesmeric. The three baristas had the live audience spellbound. Their moves were timed to perfection and the smoky vocals oozed ecstasy. A heaven-made accompaniment for the dark Colombian blend espresso which filtered out every burden that had weighed down upon the audience as they arrived. It felt as if racism was suffering its final defeat as the dusky coffee came together with the hot milk, black harmonising with white, no apartheid or segregation but a seamless assimilation and togetherness. As the jazz wail reached its orgasmic crescendo, with the trumpet in tow, so too the flat white was brought to completion, a symbolic leaf of hope carved out of the milk. The audience knew exactly what to expect next but had no idea what would happen next.

********

Two days previously

 

The CCTV camera was the only witness to the first semi-public unravelling. The young lady alone in the kitchen. A tall trolley of dirty cups and plates. A cup teeters. It falls and smashes, fragmenting to all four corners of the floor. The wall is punched. A torrent of restrained abuse. A muffled scream. Another young lady enters the kitchen. Grainy, grey, flickering images. They laugh at the cup. The second lady leaves again. The first takes out and unfolds a piece of paper. Her face contorts again. She curses the image of a dark haired man. The paper is screwed up and she goes back out to serve the public.

 

********

The live final

The three girls emerged from the smoke, each carrying a cup of coffee. The judges had placed their orders. Now the baristas would deliver. They stepped down from the stage and headed towards the panel. As they approached, one of them stopped abruptly. Looking flustered, she was seen in animated discussion with her band mate.

“Close in on them, Camera 2. Let’s see if we can pick up what they’re saying.”

It was impossible to make out the words as the two girls swapped the drinks they were carrying.

Whilst being interviewed later, the taller one would admit that she had suddenly realised that she was carrying the drink for the wrong judge and had ordered the swap.

The judges’ smiles beamed and their hands clapped furiously as the girls approached them.

At that very second the director had a flash and the various unconnected head threads were woven into one terrifying revelation. The dark niggles and hazy doubts were as clear as midsummer daylight. She realised that she had literally seconds to act. Live final or not, this was a matter of death or life.

 

********

The barista

She was a happy child. One early photograph showed her lying in a field of buttercups, flashing a smile that would have lit up an Arctic winter. In another she giggled while being tickled by her sister. In later ones, however, she was seen with long, greasy hair completely obliterating her eyes and her mouth turned downwards in the direction of desperation. It was said that she had become a different person entirely on her father’s arrest. He had received a life sentence for the brutal attack which had left her mother unable to function in her vegetative extinction. The future barista had spent her adolescence moving from relative to relative, in between extensive stints in foster homes. It was hardly surprising that she had issues with men, especially ones who bore a striking resemblance to the father who had upended her blissful existence.

 

********

The director jumped up and ran to the wall, where she smashed the glass on the alarm. Then she screamed into the ear of the cameraman, who recoiled from the shock,

“Camera 2, grab Rachael! Quick!”

Viewers at home watched, unsure what was happening, as the siren wailed, the images went completely out of focus and then the screen went black. It was assumed that Espressoccino had engineered this dramatic finale.

********

Inside the studio the audience stayed in their seats, unsure whether this was a false alarm or not. Stewards urged them to start heading for the fire exits. As they rose they looked across to see the judges’ reaction. They were shocked to see a man leave his camera and go hurtling towards the panel’s desk. Mesmerised, they saw him tackle to the ground the bewildered barista as the cup flew through the air in slow motion and landed in front of the head judge. The contents spilled across the desk, deactivated. In the immediate aftermath it was assumed that the cameraman was a disgruntled ex-boyfriend with a grudge, or a supporter of another act. It didn’t take too long for the truth to emerge as the singing starlet confessed to everything, live on national TV.

********

A TV special the following week pieced together the dramatic denouement of that year’s live Britain’s Got Talent final. Rachael Grice had spent years trying to forget the evil father who was locked away in a high security wing. She thought that she had moved on. Unfortunately, as she stood before the judges in the live show, she had seen in the arrogant remarks of the chief judge a mirror image of that other man. His veiled put down about her appearance had so distressed and enraged her that she had gone home, torn a picture of him from a TV listings magazine, and immediately plotted her dual revenge. This was for both of them. The director had seen the vial hidden in her left hand as she was grinding the beans, the same vial of deadly poison that had later been emptied into the killer flat white. Her quick thinking had averted the certain death that toxicologists had been discussing over previous days.

********

When police searched Rachael Grice’s house they found a CD in the player. It was I Don’t Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats. It all made perfect sense. The song told the story of a sixteen year old girl who had carried out a shooting spree in San Diego in January, 1979. Her reason for doing it was that it was simply a way to make this Monday a bit more exciting than every other one. She had gained notoriety and Rachael Grice had done so too. Escaping from the daily routine of the coffee shop into a glare of publicity, she was no longer the quiet barista who went unnoticed. She was a performer on national television and had stolen the show in the most dramatic of ways. Inside her cell she read stories about herself and smiled to herself. She was somebody.

©Cre8ivation