Liam Payne’s ex-fiancée Maya Henry’s debut novel Moving Forwards, which fans have speculated has similarities to her relationship to the star, has a shocking scene where one of the main characters threatens to jump off a balcony.
Yesterday, the 31-year-old singer died after falling from a hotel balcony in Palermo, Buenos Aries with sources close to his Texan model ex-partner Ms Henry, 23, telling DailyMail.com she was ‘in shock’ over his death.
The former couple began their relationship in 2019, when Maya was 18, but their stop-start three-year love affair came to an end in 2022, almost a year after they called off their engagement.
Published this year, Maya’s book Looking Forward, chronicles the tumultuous relationship between model Mallory and Oliver, a semi-washed up former member of five piece boy band 5Forward.
The book, which Henry stated was ‘fiction inspired by true events’, sees the main characters battling to establish a stable relationship amidst the constant glare of the paparazzi and Oliver’s unstable drug habits.
After its publication, Maya’s fans were quick to point to alleged similarities between the troubled Oliver and Liam Payne’s own well documented struggles with sobriety, however the One Direction star never publicly addressed the book.
In one heartbreaking scene, Mallory is forced to confront Oliver on the balcony of his London flat after he threatens to jump.
An excerpt reads: “‘Oliver’, I say, ‘Please come back inside..’
“‘Go away, Mal!’, he barks. ‘I’m going to die, so get the f*** out of here.’
“‘Just come in for a second, ‘I say, fighting to keep my voice calm. ‘I mean. What are you doing out there anyway?’
“‘What the f*** do you think I’m doing?’, he bellows, loud enough for half the town to hear. ‘I’m going to f****** kill myself ok! I want to die!'”
It comes as:
The novel includes content warning related to its subject matter, warning readers it contains references to ‘abuse, violence, self-harm, drug and alchohol use, eating disorders and abortion.’
In the novel, Mallory meets Oliver at the age of 18, the same age Maya was when she first began her relationship with Liam – who was 26 at the time.
The novel has several fairly graphic scenes including one in which Oliver forces Mallory to have an abortion.
It ends with Mallory leaving the washed up and drug addicted singer after realising that despite Oliver loving her, he did not love her in the way she deserved.
Ms Henry, who days ago instructed lawyers to issue a cease and desist letter to the pop starafter accusing him of repeatedly contacting her, only found out his death when a member of her team was contacted by a reporter.
Ms Henry previously claimed the One Direction star ‘predicted he would die early’ and ‘tried to get him help’ before he plunged to his death from a hotel balcony.
The 31-year-old singer died instantly from multiple injuries, including a fractured skull, after falling 45ft from a third floor balcony at the Casa Sur hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday.
In a haunting podcast two days before Payne’s death, Texan model Ms Henry, 23, spoke about how she had tried to get the singer help because he often ‘played with death’.
‘There was one time I tried to get him help, but he was not taking it,’ she told The Internet is Dead podcast.
Ms Henry, who served Payne with cease and desist papers last week after accusing him of repeatedly contacting her, added: ‘He would always message me after we broke up, he would say, “I’m not well”.
‘He would always play with death, and be like “Well I’m going to die, I’m not doing well”. I know the lifestyle that he lives and there is a day that something is going to happen.’
‘So I would always be like, OK, he’s saying these things, I am going to have to help him because I am not going to be able to live with myself if something happens to him.’
Also on Monday, it emerged that Ms Henry had started legal proceedings against Payne, accusing him of obsessively contact and ‘weaponising’ his fans against her.
Lawyers for the star told on Monday: ‘Maya Henry issued a cease and desist last week to Liam Payne following the emergence of new and concerning information.’
Following confirmation of his death, a source close to Ms Henry said: ‘Right now she is obviously in shock.’
Just last week, Ms Henry – the daughter of multi-millionaire personal-injury lawyer Thomas J. Henry – claimed he had gone to extraordinary lengths in an attempt to contact her in a video to her TikTok followers.
‘Ever since we broke up he messages me, will blow up my phone, not only from his phone, it’s always from different phone numbers too, so I never know where it’s gonna come from,’ she said.
‘He’ll create new iCloud accounts to message me – it’s always a new damn iCloud account. Every time I see one pop up on my phone I’m like, ‘here we f***ing go again.
‘Also, he will email me… not only me, but he’ll blow up my mom’s phone. Is this normal behavior to you?’
Last week the model also accused Payne of playing on the loyalty of die-hard One Direction fans across social media to pillory her.
A fictional book penned by Ms has been thrown into sharp focus following the One Direction star’s death.
The former couple began their relationship in 2019, when Maya was 18, but their stop-start three-year love affair came to an end in 2022, almost a year after they called off their engagement.
Published this year, Maya’s book Looking Forward, chronicles the tumultuous relationship between model Mallory and Oliver, a semi-washed up former member of five piece boyband 5Forward.
The book, which Henry stated was ‘fiction inspired by true events’, sees the main characters battling to establish a stable relationship amidst the constant glare of the paparazzi and Oliver’s unstable drug habits.
It includes content warning related to its subject matter, warning readers it contains references to ‘abuse, violence, self-harm, drug and alcohol use, eating disorders and abortion.’
After its publication, Maya’s fans were quick to point to alleged similarities between the troubled Oliver and Liam Payne’s own well documented struggles with sobriety, however the One Direction star never publicly addressed the book.
In the novel, Mallory meets Oliver at the age of 18, the same age Maya was when she first began her relationship with Liam – who was 26 at the time.
The novel has several fairly graphic scenes including one in which Oliver forces Mallory to have an abortion.
It ends with Mallory leaving the washed up and drug addicted singer after realising that despite Oliver loving her, he did not love her in the way she deserved.
On The Internet Is Dead podcast, Ms Henry addressed how much of the book is fiction and claimed that fans didn’t think it was about her ex-boyfriend Liam, 31.
Noting some of the things she changed, Maya said: ‘Some of the things that are fictionalised in the book are obviously the name changes, some of the cities are different like I say I’m from Tennessee in the book when I’m from Texas.’
Maya then went on to discuss why some fans didn’t think the book was about Liam, who is father to his son Bear, six, from his relationship with ex Cheryl.
She said: ‘Then also for example another big point was that people were like this can’t be about Liam because when I was talking about the abortion he said ‘oh I’m not ready for a kid’, because he is already a father.’
Explaining why she slightly changed the events, Maya said: ‘And in real life that’s obviously not the case, but for privacy reasons I just wanted to leave stuff like that out of the book and just tell my story so that’s kind of why it is fiction.’
‘Because if you do something that’s nonfiction everything has to be fiction everything has to be so factual and you can’t leave anything out’
Revealing that some of the worse parts of her story were omitted from the story, she said: ‘There are a lot of things that are worse than that I did leave out. So it’s fiction inspired by true events.’
Payne admitted to The Diary Of A CEO podcast that year that he was ‘disappointed’ in himself for ‘hurting people’ and said he was ‘working’ on himself and his emotions.
He added: ‘That’s where I got to in my last relationship. I just wasn’t giving a very good version of me anymore, that I didn’t appreciate and I didn’t like being.
‘I can honestly say I feel better out of it. I didn’t feel good doing what I did but it had to happen. That’s just the corniest way of saying it was the best for us both – whatever, cool, nice story, bro.
‘But it just feels like that. I know it was a problem so I need to sort myself. I already feel good. It has already got me more concentrated and I hope she is happy.’
Payne was in a relationship with influencer Kate Cassidy at the time of his death.
Emergency services have erected a red tent outside the hotel where Mr Payne died yesterday.
Several witnesses said Payne had fallen from his room at the Casa Sur Palmero Hotel shortly after 5pm on Wednesday.
Investigations into the 31-year-old’s death are ongoing.
City ambulance service provider spokesman Alberto Crescenti said he had fallen around 40 meters and suffered ‘severe injuries which were incompatible with life.’
He said: ‘The alarm was raised at 5.04pm local time saying a person was lying in an internal patio at Casa Sur.
‘At 5.11pm an ambulance arrived and the man was certified dead.
‘Afterwards we found out he had been a famous singer. Unfortunately the injuries he had suffered as a result of the fall proved to be fatal. There was no possibility of resuscitating him.’
Following the news of his tragic passing, tributes have poured in for the young pop star.
One friend told the Mail: ‘Liam had been struggling, he just wanted to be a good person.
‘This is a horrible, horrible tragedy. Nobody can believe it. He has the world at his feet, he worked so hard but he just couldn’t quite get over his pain.’
To those who know Payne well, it wasn’t a huge surprise. For some years those close to him have worried for his welfare as he has struggled with the global fame and grueling tour schedules.
While it has been assumed that he has struggled with life after One Direction, friends say that he was a ‘sensitive soul’ before he even arrived for his X Factor audition.
One said: ‘There is perhaps a reason why some people go looking for fame, since childhood Liam was very inward looking, really in touch with his feelings.
‘Then bang, you are singing in front of millions of people on the X Factor. And then you, pretty much overnight, are one of the most recognizable people in the world.’