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‘Your Finn might be a dickhead, but I have to admit, he’s every bit as hot as you said he was.’
‘He’s notmyFinn,’ I hissed back. ‘Or a dickhead.’
Hannah sat back in her seat with a knowing smile.
It took me a moment to realise I hadn’t refuted her third observation: that Finn was hot. Probably because it was a truth that was impossible to deny.
The interview was surprisingly entertaining. Finn was both amusing and engaging, and as a former journalist he seemed to instinctively know what the audience wanted to hear. He was good at this and seemed happy and relaxed when they opened up the session to questions from the floor.
‘You could ask him why he never bothered keeping in touch,’ Hannah suggested, not nearly sotto voce enough for my liking. I shot her a look that promised a slow and painful death if she said another word.
Finn’s eyes were travelling along the rows of audience members as he sought out those with raised hands. I could feel his gaze coming towards me, like a spotlight swooping through the crowd at a concert. I braced myself for the moment of recognition, for when his voice faltered or he lost his train of thought on seeing me.
My heart was beating so hard it was impossible to hear what he was saying as his eyes travelled past the stranger sitting beside me and finally found my face in the audience. But he didn’t hesitate or stumble or even miss a beat. With a smile that was pleasant but entirely bland, his gaze continued its journey down the row of seats.
‘Well, as much as it pains me to admit it, that was actually quite interesting,’ Hannah declared some twenty minutes later. Finn had followed the audience Q & A with a short reading from his novel, and you could have heard the proverbial pin drop as he held the room spellbound. With his eyes focused on the book in his hands, I could finally study him without worrying that he’d unexpectedly catch me doing so.
He looked, if anything, even better than I remembered. He was perhaps a little leaner these days, his jaw more chiselled, although it was hard to tell beneath the shadow of dark stubble. His skin was evenly tanned to the colour of summer honey, and despite the current cold snap, he’d rolled back the sleeves of his shirt. My eyes kept straying to his forearms, covered with hair that my fingertips remembered was soft to the touch. That was the trouble. I’d forgotten nothing, and he’d remembered none of it.
‘Do you really think he didn’t recognise you?’ Hannah asked, firing an arrow with deadly accuracy that went straight to my heart.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, glancing across the room to where Finn had now been ushered. He was sitting at a table beside two towering, Jenga-like piles of his book, with a Sharpie at the ready. A long, snaking queue had already formed of people who wanted their copy signed by its author.
‘Perhaps it’s my hair that’s throwing him. It was blonde last time he saw me,’ I said, running my fingers through my auburn curls, which seemed to have lost some of their usual bounce.
‘You may have a bit of a hat-hair situation going on there,’ Hannah said, in a way that only an old friend could have got away with.
I hurriedly scoped the shop for a Ladies’ room.
‘So I take it we’re not beating a hasty retreat,’ she guessed wryly. ‘You really are determined to take this all the way, aren’t you?’
‘It would be rude not to say hi,’ I replied, finally spotting a sign for the loos.
‘No ruder than ignoring you for years,’ Hannah batted back.
I said nothing as I hunted in my purse for a twenty-pound note, which I held out to Hannah.
‘You’re bribing me to stay?’
‘Ha ha. It’s for a copy of Finn’s book. Can you get me one while I fix my hair?’
The mirror in the Ladies’ sadly confirmed my worst fears: without a set of straighteners or a qualified hairdresser, there was little that could be done. I spent several minutes trying to make it look less like someone had accidentally sat on my head, fluffing up the damp curls until they fell around my face in copper tendrils. It was only when I turned away from the mirror that I realised how much I looked like the first version of me Finn had met, on the day of the job interview. My hair was awry and I was flustered and more than a little out of my depth. It felt like serendipity.
Hannah was waiting beside the till with not one but two copies of Finn’s book tucked beneath her arm.
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I know. But that extract sounded pretty interesting,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘Although that still doesn’t mean I like him.’
The queue for the signings had alarmingly grown even longer. As well as a personal dedication, most people appeared to be having a selfie taken with Finn. It was a request I definitely wouldn’t be making.
Finn’s publicist was positioned behind him at the desk, looking for all the world like a personal bodyguard. Not that Finn appeared to be in need of protection. Had he been that muscular before leaving for Australia? An image of us on a moonlit beach surfaced from its locked vault. I swallowed down a memory of my hands travelling over his skin beneath his untucked shirt before it caught in my throat and choked me.
The line was moving slowly as Finn chatted amiably with each customer. Between signings, I saw the publicist lay her hand on his shoulder and whisper something in his ear. A dart of something that felt an awful lot like envy caught me by surprise. Finn and the publicist glanced at the wall clock and then at the row of customers still waiting in line.
In a move to speed things along, an assistant began travelling down the line, passing out Post-it notes for customers to write their chosen dedication.
‘At least this way he’ll remember your name,’ Hannah said darkly, looking at the small yellow square on which I’d neatly printed:GEMMA.
