Waking up a few hours after Harry had left was tough. The sun shone through the blinds as I realised with a groan that I had forgotten to pull the blackout curtains closed before I climbed in to bed. Even yawning took more effort than I felt I had amassed in the 4 hours of sleep I had actually managed to get after tossing and turning and flipping the pillows over to the cool side at least 3 times. Turning over I pulled the covers over my head figuring I could maybe get at least another hour. I had just started to drift back off to sleep when my bedroom door swung open and I was unceremoniously pounced on by my overly excited daughter.
"Come on mummy, why are you still sleeping?" she was stood over me straddling my legs and bouncing hard enough that she actually managed to bounce my back off the bed a couple of times.
"I think the better question is why are you not still sleeping Madison? Its only 6.30am you know," I pulled the covers from over my head and glared at her, but I couldn't stay mad seeing her dressed in her oversized t-shirt with a very young looking Harry's face plastered on the front, and calling her hair 'bedhead' was possibly the biggest under statement. She looked like she had slept in a bush not in a queen size bed in 5 star hotel. Her cheeky smile had me laughing and pulling her down under the covers with me for a cuddle, hoping to delay actually having to get out of what was probably the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in. It didn't last long though, when Madison decided she would rather watch cartoons and I was dragging myself in to the en suite bathroom to shower.
"Mummy! Your phones ringing... its Emily!" I had never felt more annoyed at not being able to get through a shower without being interrupted by either my phone or my daughter, or in this case both. Letting Harry stay until 2.30am was seriously coming back to bite me in the ass and I really needed an iced tea to wake me up a bit more.
"Answer and tell her I'll call her back in 10 minutes Madison, I'm almost finished," I rinsed the conditioner from my hair before stepping out of the large glass shower cubicle and wrapping one of the hotels fluffy blue bath towels around my body and another around my hair. When I walked in to my room Madison was sat on the floor with her back against the bed and my phone pressed to her ear still chatting away animatedly to Emily, the principal of the dance school I taught at. Emily had been a lifeline to me after meeting her at a fashion event a few months before I decided to move to London. When I needed somewhere to stay she had put me and Madison up in the spare room of her Hampstead apartment and offered me a job teaching alongside her at her dance school in Primrose Hill, even letting me take Madison along to classes when I had no childcare available. She was undeniably my best friend, and coincidently also in New York to visit her sister who lived here while our dance students were on summer break.
Sitting on the edge of the bed I tapped Madison on the shoulder and held my hand out for the phone, "Hi Em," I said putting the phone on speaker and balancing it on my knee so I could towel dry my hair at the same time,
"Hey Nikki, How was your flight? Madison was just telling me about the new friends you've made already," I could hear the smirk in her voice and shook my head.
"Oh has she now?" Madison smiled up at me from her place on the floor at my feet, "the flight was good but I'd hardly call them friends. We met Lou, their hair stylist, in the lobby when we were checking in. They showed up just after and she introduced us that's all." I wanted to tell Emily about my late night guest last night, but it wasn't a good idea with Madison in ear shot.
"Well lucky you, I'd kill to be in the same room as Niall Horan again! That guy is beyond gorgeous, and I heard on the grapevine known as Twitter that he's single again." Of course she did, being the celeb gossip queen that she is. Emily was probably as big a fan of One Direction as Madison, and had once managed to talk herself in to being invited to a party a few of the boys had attended. To this day she swears it was the best night of her life, apart from the fact that she never worked up the courage to actually talk to Niall, but one of the other boys had brought her a drink and taken her number which gave her enough of a buzz to relay the story to everyone she met at least three times.
