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…’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Do what?’ said Arthur.
    ‘Oh, fuck!’ said Ellie crossly. ‘I’ve cocked it up now and spoiled my big build-up. I’d drawn graphs and everything.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’ said Julia seriously.
    ‘This is my big plan,’ said Ellie, looking dejected. ‘It’s only going to sound stupid now.’
    ‘We were expecting that though,’ said Julia kindly.
    Ellie pouted a bit more. Then she bucked herself up and smiled.
    ‘Okay. Here’s my plan. We all take some time off work.’
    ‘Can’t be done,’ said Siobhan instantly.
    ‘… say, a month.’
    ‘Ha!’
    ‘Then, go to America and hire a car.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Julia.
    ‘Okay. Here comes the science bit.’
    ‘Hang on,’ said Arthur. He refilled his glass. ‘Okay. I’m ready.’
    ‘We go to California and find the Brat Pack. And demand some answers.’
    She sat back, legs crossed, waiting for the reaction.Everyone looked at everyone else to try and gauge the state of play.
    ‘Hedgehog, darling,’ said Julia, sitting down on the floor next to her friend.
    ‘You know we love you. But what the hell are you talking about?’
    ‘Look at us! We’ve already agreed something’s going wrong somewhere, haven’t we?’
    ‘Err, had we?’
    ‘Yes, we had, Ikea freaks.’ Ellie stood up. ‘We are going to find those Gods of our youth, and get them to explain a few things. Like – what the hell happened? You guys promised us the world in the 1980s, and you didn’t get it and we didn’t get it either and now we’re all getting fat together and it’s WRONG. Your films made growing up look fun. And it’s not. It’s cynical and stupid and boring. It grinds you down and makes you worry about acronyms you don’t understand, like – I don’t know; “ISA” and “SERPS”. And IKEA. And it rains all the time. And my Visa bill is due. It’s time for us to get out for a bit. Because otherwise, we are going to be worrying about fucking PAYE and nothing else for the REST OF OUR LIVES.’
    There was a long silence.
    Siobhan lightly put her hand on her friend’s leg. ‘Hedge, I’m not trying to be horrible about your idea or anything, but – all of them? You know, I’m notsure they all live in the same house like Morecambe and Wise.’
    ‘That doesn’t matter! Don’t you see? Look at what happened. They were told they were going to be the biggest movie stars in the world. Then they told us everything was going to work out great. Well, it didn’t work out great for Robert Downey Junior and it didn’t work out great for Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez married Paula Abdul, and it’s not working out for us either. And I want to know why .’
    The friends looked around at each other.
    ‘Do you think we’d really find them all in a month?’ said Julia. ‘It sounds a bit like Pokemon.’
    ‘Well,’ Ellie sat back down and got out a sheet of paper, ‘I thought we could start with the hardest one. I mean, no point in having a big quest to find Judd Nelson – he’s in LA with Brooke Shields looking fat and disappointed. So I thought we’d …’
    ‘Hang on,’ said Siobhan, putting her hand up. ‘Can we just take a quick time out? Julia, why don’t you remind everyone what happened when we all tried to go and see American Psycho together.’
    ‘Well,’ began Julia with a practised air. ‘We decided we were going to go two weeks beforehand. Then no-one would take responsibility for booking the tickets, so I had to do it at the last minute, so we could only get the five o’clock showing, so Siobhan wouldn’t come because she was working, then theywouldn’t believe Colin was eighteen and he didn’t get in, then the Hedge phoned me up and told me she was bringing some more people so I booked some more tickets then they got drunk and completely forgot – you still owe me £42 plus booking fee by the way – all about it then I had to take Loxy out halfway through because he was frightened.’
    She