Harry Styles Ate My Hamster (One Direction fan fiction)

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The press room was packed with journalists and cameras. Badges were hung around the necks of every visitor, displaying their name and the name of the company they were representing.

As we were ushered in, I managed to get a look at a few of them: ‘BBC TV’, ‘Mizz’ magazine, ‘Sugarscape’, ‘The Sun’ Newspaper, ‘MTV’. Wow! One Direction were huge!

Brooke and I found two seats together near the back. I could still see the long table at the front quite clearly from where we were. It was set up with five big microphones and five empty chairs.

As we settled down and began to get our notes and our Dictaphones out, my phone rang. It was my Mum. I sighed heavily.

“Brooke, I’m going to have to take this quickly. It’s my Mum and she’s not too good at the moment.”

“Sure,” she smiled. “Go ahead.”

I stepped out into the corridor where it was quieter. “Mum, I can’t talk right now, I’m at a press call in Camden and it’s just about to start so I have to go in and…”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I would have called your sister but she and Kevin are off on that safari tour this week. God only knows why they decided to go all the way to Kenya, it worries me something frantic. They’re in the middle of nowhere and they have no reception on their mobile phones, which means they have no way of calling for help if something terrible happens to them and terrible things happen all the time over there. Remember that woman who went out there with her family and got her face bitten off by that angry monkey? They had to sew it back on, do you remember? And they didn’t do a very good job of it either.”

“Mum!” Jesus! She could still talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles. “I really have to...”

“Sorry darling. I know you’re busy. I just got a bit upset because it suddenly occurred to me that all those times when your Dad said he was playing golf and going away on his golfing weekends here and there with Larry and Nigel, he was actually with her.” She started to cry. “And I even bought him those little furry ‘thingamajigs’ shaped like Muppet characters to go on the end of his golf clubs and sent him off with packed lunches and I was thinking I wonder if Larry and Nigel were in on it too? Isn’t it just terrible? I feel like such an idiot,” She sobbed. I felt awful for her.

“Mum, please don’t cry. It will get better. You’ve just got to give it time. Listen, I really do have to go but I’ll call you later and we can have a proper chat ok? Please be strong Mum. Love you.”

I pressed the ‘end call’ button quickly and slumped back against the wall. Poor Mum, I knew only too well what she was going through and I so wished I didn’t. I hadn’t said anything to her about Josh yet. I figured she had enough on her plate already.

I rushed back into the press room and took my seat.

As we waited, I started thinking about all the days and the weekends that Josh had gone away with the Territorial Army, odd days here and there, at least one weekend a month. I froze. Oh my God! He was with her!

I tried to recall his behaviour when he got back, tried to remember whether he was acting suspiciously. And then it hit me. My Birthday! I’d begged him to try and get out of it but he’d said he had to do a cross Pennines run up in Yorkshire and that it was compulsory. I felt sick. Even on his girlfriend’s birthday her most special day of the year, he was with another girl. I could feel the anger rising inside me. I felt like such an idiot.

A door opened at the front of the room and jolted me back to reality.

In walked the five boys from One Direction and as they entered the room, the atmosphere livened up. They all had cheeky smiles on their faces. Brooke was right, they were all pretty cute.