The Beatles were also very busy. They were recording the songs for their next new album at Abbey Road and they hardly had any time to spare. But we all gathered to celebrate George’s birthday. Now he turned 21. He received a lot of sacks full of letters and even a door with lots of keys! John laughed a lot when he heard George was taken the piss by the rest of the Beatles. He had come of age in all senses now, but John kept on seeing him like a baby.

And George phoned Edu in the middle of the party the other three Beatles had prepared for him. Edu hadn’t forgotten about George’s birthday and had been trying to phone Eli and me during the whole day. With no success, of course, we were all out buying presents for the youngest Beatle and everything. And for once in my life, I saw George drink. John drank a lot too, yeah, but that was normal now and Paul got quite dizzy without being drunk, but George... Oh, God! It was so funny seeing George drunk. We all had a great time and went to bed late.

Next day was off for the Beatles. And John had woken up with an idea rummaging his head. I was preparing breakfast when he came to the kitchen all dressed and all and told me:

• "I’m going to talk to Eli", I almost dropped the glass I was holding.
• "Why? What’s wrong?", my mind was on the blink at that moment and I couldn’t see what John had to talk to Eli about. Was I feeling jealous? Yeah, sure.
• "You asked me to talk to her about Paul’s cheating on her, remember? Well, I’m gonna talk to her now", then everything was clear in my mind. But I couldn’t help feeling bad about having to tell her.
• "Couldn’t we leave things the way they are, John? I think it’s better..."
• "C’mon, luv! She has to know, she’s a sweet girl and she deserves better. If Macca is a bastard, she'd better know now than when it’s too late", he came to me and kissed me. Well, I wasn’t very convinced. Had it been the other way ‘round I wouldn’t have wanted to know. But John was persistent and when he had a bee in the bonnet, nobody could make him change his mind.

So I stayed at home, in anxiety, not knowing how Eli would take the news. I didn’t even know if John would come home to have lunch or would have lunch with her. I was about to phone Eli to know when I heard the doorbell rang. Ever since I had lost my baby, every time I heard the doorbell I felt scared, remembering the fans who had threatened me and had caused me so much pain. So with trembling voice I answered the intercom:

• "Yes?"
• "Hey, it’s Paul!", Paul!!! I couldn’t believe it. What was he doing here? Oh, my heart started beating fast. What would he want? Instinctively I opened the front door for him and run to the bathroom to make myself visible. No offence against the rest of the Beatles, but Paul was Paul. After a couple of minutes I heard Paul’s voice: "Hello? Is anybody at home?", I took a deep breath, counted to three and came out of the bathroom. I saw Paul’s face change. "Hi, Vicky! I’ve come for John. Is he in?", Oh, God! How could I tell him John wasn’t at home because he had gone to tell Eli about what he had done in America? John had chosen the worst moment to go...
• "Oh, mm, eh... I’m sorry... John has gone somewhere, I don’t know...", I tried to think quickly, "I think he’s gone with Brian to do something. I don’t know".
• "Oh!", he said but somehow he didn’t feel disappointed at all. He just stood there, looking at me and I felt so uncomfortable I thought I had to say something.
• "Do you want something to drink?", I offered. He nodded.
• "Yes, please. Scotch and Coke", I went to the little bare we had in the living room and started to prepare his drink. I poured Coke in a long glass for me. When I turned around, he had sat down on the sofa. I handed him the glass and stood there, in front of him, feeling my heart beat quite loudly inside my chest. Once again, I felt I had to say something. I couldn’t stand the silence when Paul was around:
• "Have you had lunch, Paul?", he was looking fixedly at me.
• "Yeah, well, sort of...", again the silence. My hands were starting to sweat. I had never felt like that before. John was different, he was a joke teller, a funny person. He was always cracking jokes, pulling faces, and when he was alone with me, he was himself. If he had to cry, he cried and if he had to shout, he shouted. But Paul... He was just there, looking at me, not doing anything. Until he finally said: "You’re so gorgeous...", I didn’t understand at first. I thought it was my imagination, it was impossible that Paul had said that to me. Impossible! I stood still, in front of him, standing on my feet holding my glass of coke with my right hand. He started to move. He left his glass on a glass table we had near the sofa and grabbed me by the waist. The strangeness of the situation made me visualise the scenario like outside myself. It was impossible that Paul was doing that to ME. It had to be to any other, but not me. I was his best friend’s girlfriend. I was with John and he was with Eli. What was he doing? But I couldn’t resist. It was like a sort of magnet that drew us together. No matter how hard I tried to resist, an invisible force drew us together. Still holding me by the waist, he pushed me towards him and started kissing me on my stomach. It was cold and I had a long neck sweater, so he just kissed the sweater, but anyway, I felt butterflies flying inside my stomach. As though he was thinking the same, he tugged my sweater out and pulled it up, so now my stomach was in the open air. And he started to kiss it again, and this time he was kissing my skin. I felt his lips stroking the thin skin of my stomach. I was involved in the moment and I let my head hand backwards. Oh, God! It felt so good. I felt Paul unbuttoning my trousers, while stroking the line of my stomach with his tongue. He went down and down and kissed my belly. Then he pushed me down in front of him. He stroked my face and my hair and then kissed me passionately on the lips. And I kissed him back. I felt wild and aroused and Paul’s kisses were definitely great. But suddenly the old Vicky came back.

I immediately broke away from Paul’s lips and arms. I got up, zipped my trousers and tidied my sweater. I looked away from Paul:

• "Paul, you have to leave", nothing. Silence. I didn’t dare to look at Paul for fear of feeling weak again and go back to his arms. But there was silence all around. After a while I wasn’t sure if I had actually said the words or they had been a product of my imagination. So I repeated: "Paul, you have to leave".
• "I heard you the first time!", Paul almost shouted. Now I couldn’t help but looking at him. He was drinking of his glass, still sitting on the sofa. He sipped another swag of his scotch and coke and then told me: "What I don’t understand is why?"
• "Why? Paul, this is not correct! You’re with Eli and I’m with John. And John is going to come in any minute".
• "Yeah, you’re with John, you don’t need to remind me!", I couldn’t believe it. Was Paul talking seriously??
• "But Paul... You’re with Eli, she’s my friend!"
• "Yeah, I know, and I care for her and she’s special to me and..." I stopped him.
• "But do you love her?", the phone started to ring at that very moment and that didn’t let Paul answer my question. I looked at the phone, then at Paul and went to pick it up. "Hello?", someone was very upset on the other line.
• "Vicky! This is Eli! John’s been here and he’s told me everything! But please, I just phoned you because I don’t want you or John to tell Paul I know", my instinct made me look at Paul. He was getting up to leave. I saw him grab his coat and head for the door.
• "Ok, Eli, we won’t tell Paul. You can rely on us", I heard her sigh with relief and without saying goodbye, so upset she was, she hung up. I was left alone again, with Paul, John and Eli gone.

When John came home in the early evening I tried to act normal. I had had a shower, I didn’t want John even to smell Paul’s after shave or anything. I asked him how everything had gone. He shrugged:

• "She’s very brave and intelligent. She didn’t cry or anything. I can see she’s a bit like me. The only thing she wanted was us not to tell Paul she knows", I nodded.
• "Yeah, I know, she phoned me telling me the same".
• "This Macca!" John almost shouted. "I’m not going to cover him up again! If he wants to shag, let him shag, but he doesn’t have to hurt all the girls he’s with".

That made me think. Paul had hurt Jane Asher and now he was hurting Eli. And I had been about to do the same thing with him too! But his face when he was with me was different. I could see he wasn’t joking and he wouldn’t risk John’s friendship just playing around with me. I know there was something more but I didn’t want to find out.

Anyway, I tried to forget what Paul and I had done for the next few days. And in March, the Beatles started filming. They were all so excited. They’re musicians, but anyway, being in a film was something new for them and they had been quite film avid viewers when they were kids in Liverpool. I went on with my classes and Eli too. I also was in touch with Edu. I phoned her quite regularly. I didn’t want her to phone because the bills were quite expensive and she was not doing well there. She wasn’t working and so she couldn’t afford long distance phone calls. I always updated her with the news about the Beatles and she always asked me if George was dating someone. Well, George wasn’t dating anyone exactly, but I had to tell her that he had taken out Hayley Mills a couple of times. Hayley (she was a British prodigy girl, an actress) and he and gone out a couple of times as a couple. I asked George regularly if he had already forgotten Edu. Every time I named Edu, George’s face changed. I could see he still loved her very much but somehow he had got used to the idea of not seeing her anymore. And yes, he liked Hayley Mills. So I had to tell Edu. She understood, although I didn’t want to hang up on her that day because she was very upset.

But the Hayley Mills thing was noting compared to what came afterwards. One day, Eli and I decided to skip off school and went to see the Beatles film. They had been waking up very early every morning. I think they started filming at 8.30 a.m. every day or so, so John and I woke up at the same time. He went to film and I went to university. But that day, Eli and I decided not to hurry and went to Paddington, in London, more or less at lunchtime. We both were very excited about seeing the Beatles film but when we arrived there, once we could make it through all the barrier of press cameramen, journalists, and fans, we were welcomed with an unexpected scene. The Beatles, the four of them, John included, were surrounding two or three girls but were paying special attention to one of them. Eli and I looked at each other. Eli took things in her stride better than me. My face showed that I was jealous. We walked closer, but still didn’t want the Beatles to see us, so, hidden among a group of extras that were working in the film, we examined the girl closer. She was really beautiful, one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. She had blond hair, was more or less as tall as John and Paul and definitely looked like a model. I had to swallow and close my eyes because my jealousy was almost killing me. Eli told me:

• "God, she’s beautiful!"; I looked at her.
• "We have to do something"; I told her. At that very same moment, George stroked the girl’s hair while the others started to say ‘ohhh, ahhh’, in a romantic way. What was going on there? I had to make myself visible, I had to fight for Edu, seeing that John not only didn’t move a muscle but he was also flirting with the girl himself. Like a hare, I jumped forwards and Eli followed me. Some policemen tried to stop us but thankfully one of them recognised us and let us approach the Beatles. Paul was the first one in seeing us. He greeted us with an (excessively) enthusiastic hand movement:
• "Hello, luv!", immediately, like a reflex, John walked backwards and when he saw me he smiled at me. But I knew John quite well, and I saw that smile was not genuine. He had been flirting with the girls (there were three at that moment). Ringo, who was wearing a cap (weird, because it was usually John who wore it), was talking to one of the blondies and George kept on smiling sheepishly to the most beautiful girl in the group.
• "Hi, Vicky!"; that was John. Now his smile was genuine. He went on. "Look! Here our baby George has fallen in love again"; I looked at him as though he had gone crazy and then at George. George was still flirting with the girl and she started giggling stupidly. She had heard John’s comment. "OH, let me introduce to you to her. Vicky, this is Battie and her sisters, Paula and Jenny".
• "Oh, John, I’m Pattie", she said. The girl had with the most beautiful grin I had ever seen.
• "Oh, sure, Battie", kept on John. "And this is Vicky and she is Eli", she came to me to shake my hand. I was petrified, I couldn’t move. I felt I was betraying my best friend. Taking advantage of one moment that George seemed to recover consciousness, I told him:
• "George, can I speak to you for a moment?", Pattie looked at me really amazed but George came to a far away corner with me. "George, how serious is this?"; George’s expression tightened.
• "I don’t know, Vicky, I’ve just known her for a couple of days now..."
• "Yeah, but George... What about Edu?"; I noticed George’s eyes change and I felt glad inside because that meant he still felt something for her and that he cared for her.
• "Vicky, Edu is in Spain, and the last time I phoned her she wasn’t sure whether she would ever be able to come back to England. When she said she didn’t know, I knew she wouldn’t come again", I looked at the floor. What George was saying made a lot of sense and I hated myself, George, Pattie and Edu for making things so difficult. Suddenly George held my chin and lifted up my face. "Hey, luv, I’ll never ever forget your friend, never... I’ve been so in love with her that I couldn’t forget her even if I tried... But I must resume my life, mustn’t I?", I let George go while I stayed behind thinking to myself. Then I felt somebody come tome. It was John.
• "Don’t behave like a little child, luv, and go back with all of us...", I looked at him. Of all the things I would have imagined he would tell me, that was the one I less expected.
• "I’m not behaving like a little child..."
• "Yes, you are, luv. Taking away George... What for? To tell him about Edu, I’m sure..."
• "But John, Edu was your friend too! How could you allow that?", John laughed.
• "You’re fucking crazy, girl", and he walked away, leaving me behind with an immense pain in my heart.