I didn't want to be alone once Charlotte and I had said our goodbyes at the train station and I'd walked back through the door of my empty, cold flat.

With just two rings, my call was answered.

"Abi, baby, how was Paris?" My mum's voice instantly smoothed out the tangled ball of emotions that lay heavy in my stomach.

After almost an hour of banal chat, she began to wind up the phone call. As she told me to call her again later in the week, my mouth opened but no response came out. Only a cracked whimper.

"Everything okay, sweetheart?" she asked.

"Yeah, sorry," I replied, shaking my head to snap out of the sadness creeping back in, "I must have just lost signal for a second there."

"Okay, well I'll speak to you soon. Have a good week, love you baby."

"Love you too, mum."

And then, silence. Emptiness. Living alone is great when you don't have curfews to abide by, flatmates to tidy up after, or parents loitering in their dressing gown ready to pounce when you try to sneak in after a night out.

But living alone when you're feeling lonely. That's something else altogether.

Once I'd filled the last few hours of Sunday evening with an awful cop movie and a couple of loads of laundry, I showered and crawled into bed. Scrolling through my phone, I read back through old texts from Noah. Texts in which he'd spoken about missing me more than he thought possible, sent funny GIFs of overweight kids dancing to illustrate how much he was looking forward to seeing me, and occasionally shared the odd selfie of him looking gorgeous but tired in yet another hotel room.

Since I'd left Paris, he hadn't text at all.

Taking a deep breath, I typed out one simple line before hitting send.

You're all I've ever wanted x

Locking my phone, I laid it next to my head on the pillow and flicked through the channels until the TV in the corner of my room landed on re-runs of Friends. By the time my eyelids finally closed, heavy and tense with the confusion that pounded around inside my head, Noah had yet to reply.

Three days passed without any contact from Noah. When my phone finally flashed up with his name, his message was brief, informing me that they had arrived in Barcelona and that hopefully the management would be giving the boys a few days off after the weekend.

Will give you a call then so we can chat x

It was hardly the romantic declaration of undying love I'd been hoping for, but at least he wasn't completely ignoring me.

That's not to say I felt any better about the whole situation. I couldn't concentrate in any of my classes, resulting in completely flunking a theory test and giving one of the shoddiest vocals ever during 'Classic Soul' week in Friday's performance studies class. As we packed away our things, Cole was less than pleased with me for forgetting the lyrics to almost an entire verse.

"If Aretha hadn't literally spelled out R-E-S-P-E-C-T, you think you'd have forgotten that part as well?" he quipped with an eyebrow raised.

A short, sharp jab from Lina's elbow stopped him before he could say anymore, but I deserved to feel like crap. I'd let them down, as well as myself. Not that it seemed to matter for too long as they walked out of the auditorium ahead of me with their arms tightly around each other.

The day they revealed they had officially become a couple I almost cried with happiness. Having watched their shy flirting grow over the months we'd spent together since being thrown into the same group, I couldn't help feeling as though I'd had some part to play in their relationship.

Shame we'd lost our original guitarist to the bright lights and long nights of the music industry. Shame only one of our relationships still looked stable.

By the time I arrived home, it was gone six o'clock and I just wanted to curl up and sleep the whole weekend away. A long, angry buzzing in my pocket as I flopped down onto my bed signaled I wasn't going to get the peace and quiet I craved just yet.

The unknown number piqued my curiosity.

"Hello?" I answered, frowning at nobody.

"Abi, hey it's Craig from PCJ. Sorry to call you so late, especially when it's technically the weekend, but we've had a really great brief come in just now form LA and I think it's the perfect one for you."

Rolling off the bed to grab my notebook, I perched it on the end of my digital piano as I took down the details and tried to sound as enthusiastic as Craig clearly was.

"Yep, okay. Ah nice, you know I love a ballad. Oh, it's for Arla Breeze? No, no that's not a problem".

If he'd been able to see my expression, he would have known that was a lie. Luckily, I think I got away with it and – as we said our goodbyes – any plans I may have had for a nice weekend of doing nothing were blown apart by his reminder of the tight turnaround time needed for the demo.

Writing a love song for a girl who, just a week ago, had seemed as though she had fallen under my boyfriend's spell? Sure, no problem whatsoever.

Locked away for the next forty-eight hours I tried my very best to push Arla and Noah out of my mind and just write a song, but it was tough. Every time I scrawled a new line down on paper it was from my heart. About my own experience of love. Not hers.

If only her fans knew that people like me wrote the songs she performed with so much raw emotion. People who worked and studied hard for their craft. People who weren't lucky enough to have the looks of a Barbie doll and the silky voice of an actual angel. People who recorded the original demo versions onto their laptop with a single microphone, a piano and some pretty poor string arrangements using illegally downloaded virtual instruments.

Needless to say, the response I got back on Monday morning from Craig was far from positive.

"It's just not right, he sighed down the phone. "I mean, it's like you've gone back twenty years in style. Your stuff is usually on point, Abi, we thought you stood a good chance of being Arla's regular writer but I'm not sure I even want to send this one on."

"I'm sorry," I replied, meekly. "I'm not in the best headspace right now. I can always try again."

"There's no time to try again. They want to get this recorded in the next couple of weeks and drop it as a surprise single alongside her new movie."

I didn't know what to say in response, but Craig barely stopped for breath anyway.

"I've got a conference call with LA this afternoon," he said, disappointment evident in his voice. "I'll see if there's any chance they might be happy with a re-write, but don't get your hopes up on this one."

As if I didn't already feel like a steaming pile of worthlessness, the whole conversation was just a huge fart on top of the shitcake that was my life.

There was only one person I wanted to speak to as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and, without thinking, clicked call.

"Abi?" Noah sounded surprised to hear from me.

"Hey," I said, before realising I didn't quite know how to follow it.

After a second of silence, Noah spoke first. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, well, no. I don't know. I just wanted to chat."

"Oh, shit. I'm really sorry but we're just about to go into soundcheck for tonight. Can I call you back later?"

I swallowed hard. "Yeah, that's fine. I'll be home tonight. All night."

"Cool, I'll give you a shout after the gig."

"Okay. Have a good one."

"Thanks, speak later."

Then the three-beep rejection of the call being terminated cut through my heart like a trio of tiny daggers.

No goodbye, no 'love you', not even a sign that he still cared.

Maybe he'd been for real in Paris when he said he wanted me to be free to enjoy myself. No longer tied to someone I couldn't be with in public, or whatever rubbish he'd spouted. Maybe his radio silence and dismissive attitude was a way to give me that freedom, without ever facing up to the hard work and heartache of ending our relationship himself.

By the time I got back to my flat I was positively fuming. Rather than wanting to cry as I normally did, I wanted to hit something. Someone, even. If he loved me as much as he said he did then why would he treat me like a plaything he could just ignore when it suited him? When he was too busy living his rockstar life to even take my phone calls.

If Noah wanted me to act like some young, free and single social butterfly so badly then fine. That's exactly what I would do.