It was the early hours of Thursday 24th of August and the majority of the neighbourhood was asleep. The quiet desolate street, and dew covered grass was lit by street lights dotted around corners and houses. However in one small house within the cul-de-sac a quiet beeping alarm could be heard being emitted from a mobile phone. A young girl, with long blonde hair, raises herself onto one arm and grabs the mobile telephone and dismisses the alarm, silencing the house once again.
Amy Stride lived with her mum in a small town, where she had friends, a job and was happy with her life. At the age of 19, she enjoyed partying with friends and having a laugh, however work commitments had left her unable to socialise as much as she would have liked. But this weekend was the weekend of one of the biggest music festivals of the year and Amy was pleased to be going. 4.00am was the time shown on the phone. Amy sighed. Unpleasent as this hour was, it would all be worth it in the end. In a few hours she would be camping with friends and enjoying many live bands. This weekend was Reading Festival. After much deliberation, Amy had decided to go despite her best friend bailing on her in the final weeks. Instead she would be going with a collegue from work and her best friend. It was Hannah who was driving to the festival and had decided that 4am was a reasonable time to go in order to miss traffic and get a good camping spot. Originally this had seemed like a good idea, but at 4 o clock in the morning, there's not much that sounds like a good idea, except tea. Tea is always a good idea, no matter what the time.
Sitting downstairs, all packed and ready to go, Amy glanced over to the pile by the door. The pile consisted of a suitcase, a large bag, tent, chair and sleeping bag, anyone would think she was going for a month, not 5 days. Amy always overpacked. The amount of stuff made it almost impossible to get in or out of the hallway.
4.30am is a strange time. Not much happens, the sun hasn't risen yet, everything's still dark, streetlights still illuminate the pavements below and the neighbours who moved in down the road and bought their Cockerel makes its usual morning call. Sitting downstairs in the living room listening to her ipod through headphones so as to not wake the rest of the house, Amy had created a Reading Festival playlist and was thinking about which songs she was most looking forward to hearing this weekend. Amy tucked her hair behind her ears and took a sip from her second cup of tea that morning, caffiene was needed at this time in the morning. She put the cup down onto the coffee table and glanced at her phone, it was ringing and the called id said Hannah. Pulling the headphones out of her ears she answered the call.
"Hey, you alright. Sorry I'm late. We've got a slight problem.." said Hannah. The time was 5.25am and Hannah was indeed late, not that Amy had noticed.
"That's fine. Whats the problem" asked Amy. She could hear Hannah's friend Billie in the background on the phone to someone. She could tell the 'slight problem' was going to be a bit more than an inconvenience.
"My cars broken down. We were just on our way to yours and stopped to get petrol and now we're stuck at the side of the road, awaiting the recovery company."
Amy rolled her eyes. It's always more difficult when you're entrusting someone else with things such as transport. However, things like this couldn't be helped. Hannah said that she wasn't too sure how long they were going to be as they had said around about an hour, but you never could be too sure with recovery companies. Amy seized this delay as an opportunity to catch some sleep and headed upstairs, setting her alarm for an hours time.
