CLARA GASPAR: Liam Payne was dying in real time — and we fans didn’t spot it

On Wednesday at 10.46pm UK time, my phone buzzed as 17 text messages landed, one after the other.

Two were from my sisters, the rest from my former schoolmates (all female) – all stunned by the news of Liam Payne’s untimely death ... and all struggling to express their shock and grief.

Our teenage years were shaped by our collective identity as “Directioners”.

We were in our early teens at the time of the band’s creation on The X Factor – I remember watching in wonder as a 16-year-old Harry Styles sang Isn’t She Lovely in his first live audition – and our adolescence was intertwined with their sensational rise.

One Direction were different from the pop stars we’d idolised before. Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne were only a few years older than us.

They weren’t trained dancers, flawless singers or perfectly groomed models.

For teens like us, they didn’t seem entirely out of reach – that’s why we were hooked.

We were the generation that first signed up to Twitter en masse to follow the boys’ every move. If one got a new haircut, we’d know within minutes.

We could map their tattoos without a second thought and recite their family trees.

When Harry Styles threw up on a Los Angeles highway after a night out in 2014, we all knew about it – and about the shrine erected by a fan at the spot where he had vomited!

The first time I saw the band live – at the O2 in London 2013 when I was 15 – it felt like some sort of ecstatic religious experience.

One Direction – or more precisely the management team behind them, although we didn’t understand that at the time – knew what girls like us wanted.

We believed the boys understood our insecurities absolutely.

We sobbed while listening to the single Little Things, as Liam crooned: “ know you’ve never loved the crinkles by your eyes, you’ve never loved your stomach or your thighs... but I’ll love them endlessly.”

We ignored critics who claimed One Direction was a manufactured cash-cow and we were brainless teenyboppers.

We knew the boys were living their dream – and we might have a role in it, too. After all, they adored us, their fans, and were constantly thanking us for our unwavering support.

Their relentless touring was because they wanted to see us and share their lives and music with us.

Yes, they were inclined to be a bit tetchy in interviews but surely that was down to the weariness of life on the road and the pressure to release new songs?

And when rumours abounded about the boys falling out, we dismissed them. It was only later we came to understand that their rapacious PR machine was doing its best to prevent us from seeing the reality of the boys’ turmoil.

In 2015, when the band cancelled a concert in Belfast at the city’s SSE Arena, we were told Liam Payne was “suddenly ill”.

He later revealed he had been suffering from depression and struggling with “social anxiety” and “stress”.

Zayn Malik later admitted he developed an eating disorder.

Even Niall Horan, who remains with One Direction’s original management team, has said at times he felt like he was in “a prison”.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, it feels as if, even in our innocence, we Directioners were watching the slow demise of Liam in real time – we just didn’t know it.