I went to bed that night feeling quite good, even also when I looked at my phone to set the alarm and I saw another three unanswered calls from Niall. I really didn’t know how to react or what to say if he wanted to talk to me – on the other hand I might not be the one to say anything if I actually let him talk to me some time.



I lay in bed thinking and thinking about Niall. Now it wasn’t only about how he could treat me like that and lie to me, but mostly about how I should react on his attempt to make it up to me and some place I probably knew that I might not be ready to let go of him completely – at least not without knowing what he had to say.




All these thoughts made it another uncomfortable night for me and when the alarm woke me up the next morning I started to feel the consequences of no sleep for three days. I fell asleep again and woke up at 7.15 where I jumped up hitting the wall because of my head not being ready for the sudden movements.

I rushed in to the bathroom to wash my face and put on some makeup, which ended up taking me much longer than normal because of me destroying my mascara over and over again.
I ran to the tube at 7.45 where I stood up sweating because of my early workout and also all the people that were crammed in the slim underground train.
I ran all the way down Tottenham Court Road reaching Aunt Betty just on time.



“Hi Nathalie,” I heaved when I saw her getting ready in the staff room for work as well.

“Someone’s had a rough night,” was the first thing she said when she saw me.

“Excuse me?” I asked confused.

“You look horrible. Like you haven’t slept in ages,” she then elaborated. “Rough weekend?”

“You can say that,” I answered not wanting to talk about it at all. Luckily she sensed my reluctance against the subject and just went in to the café with me following her close behind to start preparing the food.


“What about you?” I asked suddenly remembering to be polite and less selfish. “How was your weekend?”

“Uhm… it was good,” she said. “I got in to a fight with Brady’s dad though.”

“Oh no. Why?” I turned towards her with an almost rude curious look on my face.

“It was just something silly. I asked if he could take Brady until tonight instead of just the weekend, since his kinder garden are closing early this week because of a renovation project. And I don’t get off till 5 o’clock, so if he could have him it would make it a bit easier.”

“And what did he say?” I asked concerned.

“Loads of stuff, most of it not having anything to do with our problem, but just mainly that he was stressed enough as it was with his work and that he really couldn’t take care of my problem and that I could’ve picked the kinder garden that was closer to his home and then nothing of this would have happened and so on.”

“What an asshole!” I exclaimed before I managed to behave myself. I put my hands in front of my mouth. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be judge mental…”

“Yes, he’s an asshole. God, it feels nice to say that out loud,” she said smiling slightly.

“Oh. Happy to help,” I smiled back at her. “But how did you end up with him anyway then? I mean, has he always been like that?”

“Most likely. We were a couple of fools in love with each other and the idea of having a happy family together.”

“That’s classic.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. We were way too young to make such decisions.” Nathalie shook her head as she said. “So now I actually don’t know what the hell to do with Brady while I’m at work, since he needs to be picked up at half past three every day this week.”

“Wait, Nathalie uhm…” I began while quickly reconsidering my suggestion. “Don’t you think I could be here instead of you? Just those couple of hours?”

“What? I can’t let you do that, you just started last week and to be in charge of an entire shop is a bit much for someone that inexperienced,” she objected.

“But don’t you think I do a good job?” I asked rhetorically.

“Well yes, but…”

“It’s only for a couple of hours. And if you just keep your cell phone extremely close to you to answer all my questions at any time during my time here alone, then I think the café and maybe also I will survive.”

“You would really do that for me?” she asked.

“Of course! It’s not that difficult and I know almost all the features around here. Don’t you worry about me, you sound like you have worries enough as it is.”

“That is really nice of you, Maja. I will not forget that.”

I hugged her lightly still not knowing her well enough to know if she was going to find it awkward or nice to hug a colleague, but she seemed very happy and grateful for what I had done for her.




And so the day went on with her spending every available moment to make sure that I remembered everything right and at three o’clock in the afternoon I literally had to force her out the door in order for her to leave and pick up her son.


I think everything went pretty well even though I was in the café all alone, except for the huge amount of costumers that all needed serving. I was all sweaty when a girl, named Ann, came and replaced me at 5 o’clock, and I really couldn’t get home fast enough feeling my legs and feet hurt more than ever.




At home I knew that Aida and Em would be home waiting for me so we could rehearse after dinner. We ordered in some Chinese since none of us had been home to make any proper food. Again I found myself in no position of eating – a situation I’d never had been in before, but all the worries and thoughts about Niall still made my stomach turn every minute.


We practiced two of the songs that we were performing all together; Copenhagen and Gone, and since we’d already an arrangement on both of them we just tried to make them sound completely flawless. I kind of liked the feeling of perfecting a song at this stage.



Liam visited Em late that Monday night after he was done recording at the studio. At a moment where both Aida and Em had gone in to the kitchen to make some coffee for us he sat down next to me at the sofa.


I looked at him waiting for hearing what he had to say but he looked like he was struggling to find the right words.

“He…” he stumbled. “He’s feeling terrible,” was what the words he decided on.

“Liam…” I began, but he continued: “I’ve never seen him like this before, none of us have. He’s not focused at the studio, his recording impairs every day. He asked me to ask you to pick up your phone, when I said that I would be going over here tonight.”

“I don’t need any other people to bother about this than me and Niall,” I said looking away.

“Yeah, but you also have to remember that we’re a group, Maja. We’re all friends. And I think you both owe it to us to solve these problems out, cause to be honest it feels a bit weird to be visiting Em, when I know that there’s nothing else he would rather do than to visit you. And all these tensions is not very comfortable to be around,” he said.

“I know,” I said now looking at him. “It’s just… it’s a little more complicated than I would like it to be, I don’t think any of us are really good at you know… feeling hurt.”

“I understand,” he said and I could tell at his eyes that he really was that truly understanding person that Em had told me about.




That was the first night since Niall had told me about Sheila where I managed to open my mailbox on my phone to listen to all the messages that he’d left on it during the last couple of days. The first one was received at Saturday morning at 3 o’clock – right after I’d left, I guess.


“Maja, please don’t be sad, I never meant to hurt you, you mean such a great deal to me, call me please!” He sounded both drunk but also deeply desperate and the sound of his anxious voice made me squirm every second. A tear escaped my eye as I the picture of him feeling alone and helpless.


I moved on to the next message that was received at Saturday morning at 5 o’clock:

“I’m trying to sleep but I can’t. I feel so awful. Awful that I was capable of hurting you like that, you’ve been nothing but good to me, I feel so lucky that I’ve met you and now I’ve fucked it all up. You don’t understand how much I hate myself right now.”



Next message, received at Sunday morning at 8 o’clock:

“Got one uncomfortable hour of sleep, where I did nothing but dream about you. Seriously. Please pick up your phone soon, Maja.”



I listened through them one by one and within each second where I heard his voice I missed him even more. But the violation of the trust kept me from picking up my phone and call him.







And that’s pretty much how I spent the next week. The days were long at work, extremely long, but at home the time rushed by with rehearsing all the time, perfecting song after song. And believe it or not I gradually liked my own very emotional song even more for each time I played it.


The nights were also always very long and very short at the same time. I couldn’t sleep and I felt more and more exhausted for each day I had to get up at half past six to go to work. My appetite was still missing, but every once in a while I could chew on a piece of fruit but the gag feelings wasn’t really my scene, so that was only when I literally felt dizzy from not eating anything. It bothered me a lot that I felt so sick both physical and mental all the time, so at Wednesday – only a few days from our concert – I chose to finally call the psychologist that my old one had given me the number on.

She didn’t pick up so I left a message on her machine instead.



The first week in London had been really great in terms of not binging so much, because of all the new impressions and things to take in and also because of the medication, but since my problems with Niall I hadn’t had any appetite at all and when I did eat a little bit I would instantly feel the need to throw it all up again. And as weak has my pathetic excuse of a person is I gave in to my head and punished my body. I knew that I had a problem that wasn’t so easy to solve as I would like it to and unfortunately now, whenever something else wasn’t going so well, I let out my sad feeling through my mouth.


Cigarettes was the only thing that seemed to satisfy my stomach just a little bit, so I quickly became a regular at the kiosk on Tottenham Court Road.




And at that Thursday I got just as scared of what I saw on the cover of The Sun as I had been a few weeks ago spotting the familiar long ponytail of Em’s.

I was me. Right next to Harry at the lake. Running. And sweating.



ANOTHER MEMBER OF ONE DIRECTION SPOTTET IN THE MIDDLE OF SOME HEATED ACTION



Ugh, what a terrible headline, I thought as I quickly bought the paper while looking down and not up at the sales man.


Harry and I had been running a few times together that week after we’d both recovered from our first hard work out. He had become a really good friend to me and it seemed like we could talk to each other about everything.

I kept my sunglasses on while sitting in the tube, where it wasn’t necessary at all, being afraid that some might have seen the cover of The Sun today.




When I got home at half past five Aida was cooking dinner and Em was reading a book with a beautiful old cover.


“Guess it’s my turn now,” I said and put down the paper in front of her. Her eyes flew open as she read the awful headline out loud.

“Jesus, do those journalist become more and more stupid?” Aida exclaimed from the stove.


Em read the rest of the story:


“Member of the boy band, One Direction, and womanizer, Harry Styles, has several times the last week been spotted working out with an unknown girl. You’d think they were just running buddies, but a picture of them sitting at the lake throwing bread to the ducks and laughing and sending flirtatious smiles at each other, tells another story. Apparently the boys like to find their girls from somewhere down the underground.
We wonder if the two young people are just as hard working in bed as on the running path. The Sun will quickly find out about this.”




“That is disgusting!” I exclaimed when she had finished reading.

“Don’t people have a life?” Aida said.

“But maybe it’s just like me,” Em began, “I mean, you are friends and the world has to know that sooner or later.”

“Yeah, friends,” I said, “and not working out in bed, Jesus Christ. This is not good. And I look like shit, god damnit!” I ran my fingers through my hair to try to figure out what to do about this.



“This is all wrong!” I then exclaimed. “One thing is that people know we are friends, that’s completely fine, but the fact that they think we are a couple is fucked up. Especially when Harry is together with Aida. Man they will make a great story out of this.”


“I don’t really know…” Aida began and both Em’s and my eyes shut open at what she was about to say. “I’m not really sure about whether he wants to just be friends…”

“Rubbish!” Em said. “He’s totally in to you. He’s your little Hazza,” she teased.

“Well, Hazza hasn’t even kissed me yet,” Aida said looking down.

“Wait what?” I said. “You haven’t even kissed?! But he’s sleeping in your room every time he spends the night here?”


She didn’t say anything but just kept looking down. And I didn’t know what to say either, all I could do was to stare at her returning to chopping up some vegetables for what looked like was going to be a chicken wok for dinner.


“Can’t you just kiss him? Let him know how you feel?” Em tried with hesitation.

“Girls, I have been friend zoned my whole life, maybe this is just one of them as well,” Aida said in a tone that made my heart feel so heavy, it was easy to tell that she was sad.



None of us said a word through the dinner. I just sat poking at the food, Aida didn’t look up at us any second and Em tried to make eye contact with her to lighten the mood but it didn’t work.
The rehearsal later that evening didn’t involve anything else but music. Not much talk, not much laugh and not much smiles. It felt weird going to bed having spent the night with two friends that were in same lousy mood as I’d been myself for the past couple of weeks.

Right now London didn’t seem like the perfect place to be...

Notes

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