I could think of better ways to spend a Saturday morning.

            For instance, just one of my suggestions could’ve been joining the flocks of tourists all headed for Walden Beach: dense throngs from the town’s hotels and long-stay car parks, all merging to form a continuous gaggle stretching the entire length of the seafront. Though I would’ve inevitably found myself sandwiched between classic examples of Britain’s rowdiest families, doing anything within my power to drown out the noise of screaming kids left, right and centre, that still would’ve had the edge over this, right here.

            Rare sunshine was streaming through the windows of The Beach House, but I was stuck on the uppermost floor, struggling to push the world’s heaviest cleaning trolley through a narrow corridor and doing a job that was, to put it simply, somebody else’s. It had been nobody’s fault that one of the maids had gone home sick in the middle of her morning shift, but it did mean that I was the one enlisted to cover the last three rooms on her round.

            I was now two down, but still with one unfinished: that, of course, had to be the Lighthouse Suite.

            Since we’d decked out the room at the beginning of the year with themed décor and matching furnishings, it had seen an invariably small number of guests through the off-peak season, and therefore never really required much of a frequent cleaning. But now, heading into the chaotic summer period, it was looking inevitable that the maids and I would be spending a lot more time up here on the third floor. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially not to have the extra cash flowing into the business, but the stairs and I were set to get to know each other a lot better over the upcoming six weeks.

            My trolley rolled to a stop in front of the lightwood door at the end of the corridor, its peephole headed by a large silver anchor. I took a deep breath, an image of the boy from yesterday creeping along a familiar pathway into my mind. I hadn’t meant to keep thinking about him, but all of last night had somehow ended up consumed by the version of him, a reflection of the memory, that drifted around inside my head. Maybe it was his strange behaviour in the lobby yesterday – his odd impatience and insistent manner – that drew my thoughts back to him every time I tried to steer them away. Whatever it was, Lenny Maguire remained very much a person of interest as far as I was concerned, and I couldn’t help but feel intrigued by what had to be his role in a much larger back story.

            I knocked the door: three short raps, firm but not intrusive, followed by a pause intended to be filled with a response. When it didn’t come, I tried again, just in case my call had gone unheard. But still there was nothing, and a distinct lack of a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the handle, and so on this I assumed that Lenny Maguire must’ve vacated the room sometime this morning.

            So I went inside.

            My guess, as it turned out, had been correct: Lenny Maguire was nowhere to be found.

            But what I hadn’t counted on was for none other than a very startled, very naked Leon McCarthy to be standing in the middle of the room. Clearly fresh out of the shower, he wore nothing but a towel and a deer-in-headlights expression as we stared at each other.

            And I went to scream.

            However, he beat me to it. Dashing across the room with lightning speed, he reached me just in time to clamp a damp hand over my mouth, effectively silencing whatever sound had been about to escape. I wasn’t exactly sure what the words now lodged in my throat were; I guessed they had to be something along the lines of Oh my God. As he kicked the door shut, I seemed to fall back against it, the both of us ending up awkwardly squished up against the hard surface.

            For a moment we were still, the only sound being that of our slightly hitched breathing, intermingling with one another.

            But I came to my senses soon enough to remember his lack of clothing, shoving him away from me instantly. The force seemed to come as a shock, because he stumbled backwards, gripping onto the fold of his towel in an appreciated effort to keep it in place.

            “Shh!” he hissed, still unnervingly close, sensing my compulsion to exclaim. “Please! Don’t scream!”

            “What the hell,” I hissed, “is going on here?”

            “Look, I’ll sign whatever you want,” he garbled, boyish features creasing into a worried flown. His blonde hair, darkened with moisture, stuck to the sides of his head, his blue eyes inked with worry. “Posters, CDs, body parts – within reason, of course. I’ll sign it all if you just keep quiet.”

            He was much too close, leaning into me in a way that felt like he was on constant alert, waiting for me to overstep the boundaries set by his stern orders. I was here, with my face inches away from Leon McCarthy’s, and though thousands of girls – including my own sister – would’ve killed for a chance like this, I just felt irritated.

            “You,” I told him, jabbing my index finger towards his face, “are disgustingly conceited, you know that? You’re just assuming you can buy me with your autograph? How do you even know I’m a fan?”

            He looked taken aback. “Aren’t all teenage girls?”

            I resisted the urge to shudder. “No, actually,” I said pointedly. “At least, I like to think I have enough sense to be otherwise.”

            “Ouch.”

            This time he looked genuinely hurt, his expression drooping at the seams, and suddenly I felt bad. I hadn’t meant for my declaration to come across quite so harshly; I’d simply let the irritation get to me. Maybe this was partly directed towards myself: for not realising sooner that the strange Lenny Maguire who’d come to the check-in desk yesterday was actually the guy on the cover of the magazine I’d been looking at five minutes beforehand. I was usually on the ball, not one to miss a trick, yet somehow this had been orchestrated right underneath my nose. And that was what seemed to anger me the most.

            “Sorry,” I added apologetically, an afterthought. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean it like that. You’re probably a nice person, really.”

            “You’re just not a fan. Fair enough.”

            I sighed. “I just… not really. To tell you the truth, not at all. But it’s nothing personal.”

            I didn’t know if this weak addition could pass as consolation, but I felt compelled to try anyway.

            “Look, I’m not trying to be rude or anything, but what on earth are you doing staying at my parents hotel? A hotel in Walden-on-Sea?”

            He ran a hand through his hair, dishevelling the damp style. “It’s kind of a long story.”

            “Doesn’t bother me. I’ve got time.” I shrugged. “In fact, the longer I stay here, the longer I get to delay cleaning this room, which is what I’m supposed to be doing right now. So I’m all ears.” My voice trailed off, gaze raking down his still very naked body, stopping awkwardly at the towel slung over his hips. “But, uh, feel free to put some clothes on first. In fact, please do.”

            “What? Are you saying you’re not enjoying this?” He gestured downwards, a mischievous smirk materialising across his impish face. When I kept my eyes firmly fixed on his, expression impassive, he shot me an incredulous look. “Wow, you’re really not a fan, are you?”

            He said it like it was a foreign concept: something he was having trouble getting his head around. Nevertheless he grabbed a couple of items from an open suitcase, ducking into the bathroom to get changed.

            With a closed door between us, I allowed myself to heave a deep breath, trying to piece together and make sense of the events of the past two minutes. It had become a blur in my head: fuzzy, as if snapshots taken from a dream I’d had last night, not real events. The odd stranger from yesterday had not been a Lenny Maguire at all, but Leon McCarthy, the very boy my sister would’ve passed out at the sight of. What on earth was he doing here? Walden was arguably one of the most insignificant towns in England: not exactly a visiting stop for the high profile. I was certain no one even remotely famous had ever set foot within a ten mile radius of the town before – and yet here I was, face-to-face with the hottest up-and-coming teenage musician in the business.

            And I’d thought I was in for a normal summer.

            When he emerged from the bathroom, he’d thrown on a plain white T-shirt and a pair of dark wash jeans, his damp hair still dripping from the shower. He moved over to the striped sofa in the middle of the living area, opposite the doors that led right out onto the sea-view balcony – the Lighthouse Suite’s prized feature. We’d spent all summer flogging this feature in our brochures, but only now did I appreciate its real beauty: the sight of the ocean from the hotel’s clifftop position. He gestured for me to take a seat across for him.

            “Now,” I said delicately, scanning Leon’s oddly familiar features, “how about telling me what the hell is going on here?”

            He exhaled deeply, running another hand through his hair: what I assumed to be a nervous habit. A thought visibly seemed to occur to him then, because he looked back up at me. “You know, I’m about to spill my guts to you and I don’t even know your name.”

            “Coraline.”

            A ghostly hint of a smile curled the corner of his lips. “Coraline. That’s unusual.”

            “Yeah, well, so is Lenny,” I countered, with a sarcastic smile of my own. “Now, care to explain?”

            He sighed again, preparing to dive headfirst into what seemed set to be a lengthy explanation, but appeared to not quite know how to go about it. “I don’t… I don’t really know where to start. I didn’t plan for any of this to happen. It just kind of… did.”

            “Weren’t you supposed to be in Aylesbury, filming a music video?” When he cocked an eyebrow, evidently amused by my sudden outburst of knowledge, I felt a faint pink flush creeping onto my cheeks. “I mean, that’s what my sister told me… I didn’t…”

            “Your sister?” He paused, still smirking. “Whatever you say, Coraline.” Thankfully, he didn’t dwell on my flustering, instead choosing to move swiftly on. “Yeah, well, I was meant to be there. And I was, for a bit. It was… intense, to say the least. It was a massive shoot for one of the singles that’s set for release soon. I was there, slap bang in the middle of it, being forced to do all this crazy stuff, like scaling the side of a freaking cliff and jump off this speedboat with these girls… none of which had anything to do with the song at all. It was stupid.

            “I don’t know… I guess I got sort of overwhelmed, or something. Things have been pretty crazy ever since I finished up the tour a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t had a chance for a break. Management insisted I’d be able to have time off this summer, but suddenly they’re handing me all these schedules for shoots and interviews and one-off concerts, and that’s without all the publicity stuff. And I’m there, in the middle of the freaking ocean with all these cameras trained on me, being told to do this scene over and over because I can’t seem to get it right… and I just kind of flipped. Like it all suddenly got too much. I took off as quickly as I could, before my manager and the team had a chance to get all their shit together and follow me. I didn’t know what I was doing until I started packing my bags.

            “Basically, I panicked. Got in my car and drove without any idea of where I was going. I’ve never been in this area before, so I had no idea where anything was. I ended up driving around in circles for hours. And eventually I stumbled across this place. I’d never even heard of it before, but it seemed like the tiniest town around for miles. Quiet. Peaceful. Like nobody would make me try to play a guitar underwater because it’d make for a hilarious shot in the video, or prance around in front of a stupid camera. So I stopped.”

            His eyes had left me, wandering down to the stripy sofa cushions, tactfully avoiding my gaze.

            “I was so paranoid that someone had followed me. Any minute I was convinced that security would jump out from the bushes and drag me back, or a group of fans would recognise me and my cover would be blown. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to my manager and the clients and having them scream at me for taking off. I just had to find somewhere to stay, and that’s when I saw the sign for this place.

            “I’d looked all over, but turns out that this little town is crazy popular in summer, because all the hotels were packed. And the longer it was taking me, the more exposed I felt, convinced that any moment my cover was going to be blown…”

            “But it wasn’t,” I finished for him.

            “No. I’m here. And nobody except you knows that right now.”

            All I could do was stare at him, dumbstruck; it was too much to absorb.

            “Which is why you can’t tell anyone about me being here,” he added, reaching over to take my hand in his own. I snatched it back, unnerved by his bold move. “I’m begging you. I’m not ready to go back to all that… not to mention my manager’s going to kill me. I’m sick of it all. Please. Promise me you won’t say anything?”

            He was staring at me now, a peculiar combination of hope and raw expectancy painted across his baby features. It was strange, really; all those other times I’d seen his face, a two-dimensional version in printed form, it had been beaming. He was the picture perfect, airbrushed image of teen pop, his blue eyes as bright as the summer sky. It was unsettling to watch his face take on such a different form, burdened by the troubles of a real world.

            “You want me to pretend that you’re just Lenny Maguire,” I stated flatly.

            “Just for a little while,” he pleaded. “I just… I really need this, okay? I can’t go back to craziness right now. I just need one summer.”

            “Look, you do realise my little sister is the world’s biggest Leon McCarthy fan, don’t you? She’ll recognise you the moment she sees you, and I can guarantee she won’t keep as quiet as me. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could smell you out. There’s no way you’ll be able to fool her.”

            “Look, I’ll get a better disguise, I swear. I’ll dye my hair brown, change it up completely, something. Trust me: I know how to get around without being spotted. So will you do this for me, Coraline? Just this one favour?”

            I didn’t know what to say. Really, I didn’t. When I’d woken up this morning, I had been in no way expecting to be faced with a world-famous celebrity and their bargaining for a favour – and all before lunch. But here I was, with Leon’s hopeful expression facing my own, and I could feel my tough exterior melting. As much as I wanted to remain in power over him, to dislike the sugary pop persona I’d been led to believe was his true personality, it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so. There was something genuine about his pleading, triggering the onset of a compulsion to help him. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for dragging him back to a place in his life he was unhappy with; if he wanted to stay in Walden, who was I to say no?

            “So what do you say?”

            “Okay,” I found myself saying eventually, the answer slipping from my lips before I could restrain it, “I won’t say anything. I promise.”

            And though I didn’t know it yet, that, right there, was my summer entry ticket to the crazy, whirlwind world of Leon McCarthy.

            It was only just beginning.

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These two chapters have been surprisingly easy to write. Although now that I've said that I'll probably jinx it. Oops. Anyway, hope you liked it! Finally got to meet Leon, and a bit of explanation as to what on earth he's doing there. This is going to be... interesting, haha. Drop me a comment and let me know what you thought! Love you guys.