I pull my suitcase out from under my bed and start randomly piling clothes into it, stopping now and then to sing along with a particularly emotional moment of Safety Pin. If you haven't heard of it, then you should have. When I've reached the point of not being able to stuff anything else into the case, I zip it up and fling it onto my bed.
The song finishes and the audience erupts. I can hear a scream that sounds vaguely like mine and smile again as I remember that night. I'd not been able to sleep with excitement for at least 3 days before. I remember the music vibrating my chest, making my throat fill with tears so I couldn't even sing. I remember standing still, with the swirling atmosphere all around me, fully aware that this was possibly the best moment in my life. I felt fully free and fully happy, like I'd been filled with helium and I was floating over the pulsating crowd.
My mum's voice brings me back into the room: "Charlotte! You done?"
"Yup," I respond, kicking off my slippers. I don't know why she refuses to call me Lottie, like everyone else. I grab the suitcase, and my phone and my notebook from the shelf, run downstairs, stuffing them into my "hand luggage" bag that Mum made me pack the night before for the plane. I can't wait to be in the plane, I think. I'll be above the clouds, for real.
The journey to the airport is slow, the traffic crawling along so painstakingly, it makes the motorways look asleep. I listen to Jake's Playlist on the way, and all 2 hrs 34 mins of it pass before we arrive. But soon enough, we are in the air, the rumble of the engine inside me and around me. Your problems go away when you close your eyes - or leave the earth's face it seems.
I think I must have dropped off at some point, because next thing I know, Mum's nudging me and whispering that we need to get off. The lights are dim and I squint outside. It's completely dark in Madrid - about 10 o'clock. I remember someone saying it stayed light til 10 in Spain. Maybe that's just in summer.
I'm too tired to do much when we arrive in our hotel, but I do see a boy in a fluorescent orange hoodie through my bleary eyes and joke to my mum that it must be Tom. She rolls her eyes at me and I laugh.
But only when I'm in bed, in the darkness does it dawn on me that it might well be him. And that possibility keeps me awake for a long time.
