No Control (Book 1)

54. Fools Gold

I woke up on Monday morning to hundreds of mentions on Twitter. Louis had favourited my tweet to him and Liam in the early hours, and that, coupled with the retweet and the follow, had set the rumour mill off again. I suspected he had only done it to wind Harry up, particularly as he had overheard Harry's side of the conversation on Sunday, but even so I was chuffed that he had seen it and acknowledged it.

I thought of nothing but Harry over the next two days, but heard nothing, and I made no attempt to contact him. Quite frankly, I didn't know what to say.

I felt the situation was now so awkward I wasn't sure we would ever recover from it. I was still annoyed that he had told me off for tweeting Louis and apparently winding him up. As far as I was concerned I had only done what any dedicated 1D fan would do, but had been singled out for out all the wrong reasons. And I still stood by what I'd said about Harry's reluctance to deny any rumours publicly about his 'womanising ways'. I understood he didn't want to add fuel to the fire by commenting, but I felt I'd still made a valid point.

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait long for the next slap in the face.

As I walked to the tube station on Wednesday morning a magazine stand outside Costa Coffee caught my eye and sent a sick feeling to the pit of my stomach. The front cover of Heat magazine had a picture of Harry and a brunette I didn't recognise, with the headline "HARRY'S NORMAL NEW GIRLFRIEND!" with the subheading "They've been dating for 3 months and already have matching tattoos."

I snatched up the magazine, my heart pounding. I flicked to the right page and was just about to begin reading when the owner of the shop appeared at my side.

"You open it, you buy it, lady."

"Fine," I huffed. I handed him the correct money and scurried down the steps onto the platform and began to read. I couldn't take it in.

There were pictures that this girl, Joy Muggli, had posted on instagram, which had supposedly been taken at some golf resort that Harry had been visiting on the same weekend. There was a picture from her Twitter account of "their lunch date", with a hand that looked suspiciously like Harry's across the other side of the table. And worst of all, there was a picture of this Joy Muggli apparently wearing Harry's leather jacket. I held the picture close to my face and examined it. If it wasn't Harry's actual jacket, it was an exact replica. I wanted to vomit.

I don't know how I made it to my office when I couldn't even see where I was going due to the tears pouring down my face. I could vaguely see camera flashes up ahead as I approached the building and I automatically lifted my hand to cover my face. I did not want the world to see my misery.

Sarah and Gary were waiting for me outside on the pavement and Sarah put her arm around me and ushered me inside, stepping on a pap's toe with her stiletto heel in a gesture that didn't seem particularly accidental. The pap yelped in pain and I felt a fleeting pang of triumph and smiled gratefully at her through my tears.

They guided me along the corridor and straight through into Nicki's office, where Gary bowed out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

"I take it you've seen Heat magazine," Nicki said grimly, and I nodded, wiping my face.

"Is it true?" Sarah asked.

"Not a clue," I said. "We had a blazing row on Sunday night and we haven't spoken since. I don't want to go into details," I said when Sarah opened her mouth. She closed it again and gave me a one armed hug.

"Don't you think you should call Harry?" Nicki asked.

"There's no point," I said. "I can tell you exactly how the conversation will go. 'It's not true, we're just friends, everyone's got the wrong end of the stick and I'm the victim.' And I'll be expected to believe him, even though the pictures prove he's a liar. But he won't say anything to deny it publicly because that would be feeding the frenzy."