Dreaming about London

I decided to log off Skype, not wanting to think about Niall anymore that day.


After a while of talking and discussing the mobile subscriptions Em suddenly asked: “How are you guys feeling about all this? Aren’t you feeling extremely nervous?”



I nodded immediately. “As late as this morning I broke down and needed a pep talk from my mother,” I said.

“Wow, really? I did the exact same thing last night,” Aida admitted. I looked at her to see a slightly frightened look on her face and suddenly it dawned on me that she was not all just a strong and powerful person, though it often was easy to forget. She was just as fragile as Em and I were and just as scared at the thought of having to deal with everything herself.


“It makes me feel better to talk to Liam,” Em began. “Makes me think about how lucky we are to have, not only each other, but also a fantastic group of friends in London that will help us out anytime.”

Aida and I nodded agreeing. “Yeah, we’re pretty lucky,” I admitted.



It made me feel good to get reminded that we were all in the same boat, going through the same challenges. I again tried to cauterize this moment as one of those where I would feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have two friends like these girls. We looked around at each other, I could tell that they were feeling the way as me.



Our breakfast meeting turned in to a lunch, our lunch turned in to a dinner, and at 8 o’clock Aida had suddenly had enough of planning and staring in to a computer screen, so she said quickly:

“Girls, let’s go for a walk at the sea, my butt can’t stand sitting down anymore!”


Em and I didn’t get any chance at all to answer, before she’d grabbed her jacket and was on her way out of the house.

We quickly shut down out lap tops and followed her towards the path at the sea.

“How on Earth am I going to get my running done, when I won’t have my beloved path anymore?” I said to myself as I looked around.

“I do believe they have paths in London…” Aida answered me and I smiled at her foolish comment.



The three of walked along the sea arm in arm, most of the time in silence. I think we were all trying to enjoy some of the last times in Denmark, even though we knew that it probably wouldn’t be until we had left that we would realize how long it will be before we will see this place again. Hopefully it would a very long time before we returned…




I got home at 10 o’clock feeling a bit dizzy of all the information about London recycling in my worn out mind. Anyway I ended up opening my computer once again to finish some last details, just to get it out of my tired head.

When Skype opened, as it always did by itself, I saw that I had received a load of messages – from Niall. With a bit of a surprised and a bit nervous look on my face I started reading them one by one:



“Maja, I’m so sorry I didn’t get to talk to you yesterday, but we finally had a couple of days off…”




I didn’t get to read anymore, before he was calling me. I hadn’t noticed that he was online, so that took me by surprise as well and I picked up.

“Hello,” I said waiting for him to get through.

“Maja! Oh I’m so glad you picked up!” Niall’s voice exclaimed out of the speakers on my computer.

“Well why wouldn’t I?” I said trying to sound casual and happy.

“I just uhm… assumed that you might be a bit mad about yesterday…” he began but I cut him off.

“Hey, Niall relax. That’s not my scene, it’s okay, it can happen to anybody.”


He smiled relieved to the cam that we’d both connected now and I smiled reassuring back at him.


“Oh I’m so happy to hear that. It’s just…” he began explaining, “last night we decided to have fun on our day off, so we went to a bar in the afternoon and things just went completely out of hand – at least for me and to be honest I really don’t remember much of it. It wasn’t until I woke up this morning with the worst hangover of my entire life that it daunted on me that I was supposed to talk to you last night. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay, Niall. Can happen to anyone. How long have you’ve been waiting on Skype?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Uhm since…” He looked at his watch, “since this afternoon when I felt a bit better, I think.”

“Wow that’s some time. Well you’ve never looked better,” I said with a sarcastic tone, cause he honestly looked like utter hell. His hair all a mess and tired bags under his eyes.

“I can imagine,” he said laughing and trying to flirtatious back at me which only made me laugh more.

“You probably need to take better care of yourself, Niall. I mean, if you want to overcome this album recording and hectic time, then you might need to slow a bit down on your days off,” I said being a bit serious.

“Yeah I know, that’s what Liam did, he just felt extremely exhausted and stayed home.”

“Sometimes it’s maybe better to live a moment in the future instead of the moment all the time. So have you found out anything about your recording on Friday?”

“Yeah I’m sorry, but I don’t think that we can make it to the airport that day, we’re really busy.”

He sounded quite sad so I quickly said: “No it’s fine, it was only if you could find the time, but we’ll just see each other another time, don’t you worry.” I smile reassuring once again before I decided that it’s was time to say goodnight, Niall really looked like he could drop dead any second.


The next day I had my last appointment with my psychologist, so I spend most of the day sleeping before I left in the afternoon. I didn’t exactly know what to expect from our last meeting when I sat down in the armchair at her office.


Turned she was just asking about the medication and how it worked and as I answered her, I realized that it might have worked a little bit. When I thought of it I wasn’t binging more than a couple of times a week – whether it was the medication or the fact that I had nothing but London on my mind I didn’t know. She still suggested that I kept seeing a psychologist over there to make sure that this wasn’t just a phase.




After my last session I couldn’t do anything else than to think about more and more stuff to remember to pack. I kept stuffing thing by thing down in to my suitcases, luckily we had sent some of our stuff over there already and it was being stored in a rentable box in the airport.



At this point - Thursday night and only 8 hours away from leaving my home country for 21 years - I didn’t feel excited at all. I was constantly tearing up whenever looking at members of my family, knowing that I would have to say goodbye to them tomorrow early morning. Em and Aida’s parents would drive us to the airport, so I’d have to say goodbye as the first one.


Goodbye. What a depressing word. Maybe I’ll see you soon. No that also felt incredibly depressing. No word could cover up the feelings that rushed through my body.


For each thing I put in my suitcase I felt a pinch in my heart, I kept hugging everybody around the house and at the same time panicking constantly being afraid that I would forget something vital. I tossed and turned all night and didn’t get any sleep at all. At 5 o’clock in the morning I decided to get up and take a shower. My family would leave at the same time as me in the morning for work, so they were up anyway.



I sat in the kitchen feeling sicker and sicker to my stomach for each minute the clock got closer to 7, where they would be here to pick me up. We all sat at the dining table in silence. When the two cars turned in to our driveway, Niels said: “It’s time.”




Oh boy, he really shouldn’t have said that, cause right after his comment I immediately rushed to the dustbin and dry heaved into it, cause I had nothing to throw up. And crying at the same time didn’t make it easier to stop. Niels came over to pat my back and said: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you do that. Just relax, you will be fine.”



Aida and Em came through the kitchen entrance and saw me heaving and sobbing, so they quickly just started taking some stuff out to the cars.



When it felt like the sick stomach had calmed down a bit I looked up at Niels and immediately hugged him, probably way too tightly for him to breathe properly. I sobbed in to each of my family member’s shoulder. I don’t know how long I kept holding on to my mum but it only felt like 5 seconds.


She ended up pushing me away kindly before brushing my cheek. “Remember,” she said. “You’re more than ready.”


Her pep talk helped on the inside but on the outside I was just tearing up again and wanting to hug them all again, and so I half forced myself to go and half got pushed by 5 sets of hands.


Aida, Em and both of their parents looked at me with reassuring looks on their faces, when I walked towards them with small and slow steps still having tears streaming down my swollen cheeks. My two friends – and you could say my new family for the next chapter in my life – rubbed my back as I sat down in one of the cars in the middle of the back seat in Em’s parents’ car. They sat down on each side of me, Em’s parents in the front and Aida’s parents in their own car with most of our stuff.


As we started driving away I felt a hand in each of mine and I held tightly on to them struggling not to cry out loudly. And I didn’t let go until I had to get out of the car at the airport in Copenhagen two hours later.




About one hour later Em and Aida were going through pretty much the same as I – Aida was not as bad as me and Em was worse. She cried and cried and cried, but very silent. As we sat waiting Aida and I didn’t hear a sound, the tears were just quietly streaming down her face while the rest of us sat and stared out in the air, we all knew that there was nothing to do or say that would make any of us feel better.



It wasn’t until the plane left the ground that we all let out a huge sigh at exactly the same time. I couldn’t help but squeal a little and behave like it was my first time flying, and that lightened the mood around me. Now at least some of the sorrow and nervousness had transformed in to a constructive feeling of excitement.


“Hey girls, we need to capture this!” Aida said. “Don’t worry Em, you look fine,” she added when she saw Em touching her face to feel if the swollenness had gone down. Aida took out her iPhone and took the first picture of the three of us and our new life in London.


And of course we had all dressed to the occasion; We were all wearing a black pair of skinny jeans and I had put on my favorite crème oversize sweater, since the weather was now a bit cooler, especially in England, a pair of worn out white All Stars and my hair in a tall, messy bun, which I had spent the most of my morning on to make big and messy, since my hair was naturally so flat. Aida wore a tight black long sleeved shirt that really emphasized her feminine body, her beloved cowboy jacket and a pair of black sandals with an open toe. Em had her hair in her famous tall ponytail a white t-shirt with some grey print on the front, her leather jacket and a pair of blue Vans.



The strange thing was that the rest of the flight seemed like any other, we just read magazines and listened to music for the next two hours. Aida couldn’t resist the urge to do a video on her phone of the seconds where we landed at Heathrow Airport. “Man, this is going straight to Instagram!” she exclaimed and smiling proudly down at her phone.





“Wow, this is huge!” I said when we just kept walking and walking through endless and countless halls. I’d never been to Heathrow, the other times I’d been to London it had always been Stansted Airport.




We waited quite a long time for our luggage, since there were more of it this time than normal. And when we finally got we had to get the things that we’d sent over here earlier. Where ever we went we were dragging and pushing our heavy carts and feeling the sweat forming under our hair.


I took a look at my watch and saw that it was almost half past two in the afternoon, which was the time I had told Niall we would be ready to leave the airport.


“Hey, come on girls, the car is waiting for us now,” I said and we pushed as hard at our luggage carts. God, this was worse than any run I’d been on, even with Niall. As we got closer to entrance G, where Niall had told me that the car would wait for us, I started to look through the doors for a big black Mercedes four-wheel drive. And there it was, to the left when we got outside. This was quite an empty entrance, one of the smaller ones I guess.




Except for the people coming towards us, they were quite a few of them. It looked like five boys and two girls and as we got closer to them, my blue eyes immediately caught their twins in the crowd.

Notes

Finally the girls arrived in London! Let's hope everything will work out for them!! :-D
What do you think they will experience in a city that big? Leave a comment, and ofc don't forget to vote!