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*
I called him the morning after the book signing. It was early, just after eight, and it was only when I heard his voice, still croaky from sleep, that I stopped to consider there might be such a thing as looking too eager. But in my head the reasons I’d given Hannah for not delaying were all still true. I had no idea how long Finn was going to be in the UK. I could waste days on playing it cool, only to find that he was about to disappear off to the other side of the world yet again.
‘Hi. Good morning. It’s me,’ I said on a rush. ‘Er… Gemma, that is.’
‘I’m not sure if I actually know anyone of that name,’ Finn said, his voice clearer now as he shook off the last hold sleep had on him. It was disconcerting, as though he was waking up beside me.
‘You found my note,’ he continued, and I could tell from his tone that he was smiling.
‘No. I’ve just been dialling random numbers for the last two and a half years, and you won’t believe it, but today I got lucky.’
Finn’s laughter was low and rumbling but not quite loud enough to mask the female voice I heard in the background.
I closed my eyes and saw it with a clarity so sharp, I wondered if I might be clairvoyant. A gorgeous blonde (they were always blonde) would be emerging from his bathroom, her long, bronzed limbs still damp from the shower, with something the size of a hand towel draped around her. Or worse, no towel at all.
How could I have been so stupid?
‘Over there is fine,’ said Finn, sounding momentarily distracted.
‘I’m sorry, you sound busy. I can call back later,’ I said, already knowing that I never would. This would be our last conversation.
‘No, don’t go,’ said Finn. Surprisingly, his voice sounded panicked. ‘It’s just room service with my breakfast.’
I heard him mumble his thanks and was very glad he couldn’t see the colour embarrassment had painted on my face. ‘Well, I should probably let you eat it in peace before it gets cold, or something.’ Dear God, did I really earn my living from finding just the right words to use at any given time? Why was it suddenly impossible to find any that didn’t make me sound like a total idiot?
‘It’s only fruit and yoghurt. It can wait.’
I smiled, for no other reason than that he’d ordered exactly what I would have chosen from the room service menu. It was hardly proof of lifelong compatibility, but I was building a dream out of fragile glass bricks here and was willing to take a win wherever I could find one.
‘It was really good of you to come to the book signing.’
‘You already said that last night,’ I replied, determined to keep the tone of the conversation breezy, but then went and took the wind out of my own sails by adding, ‘I really thought you didn’t recognise or even remember me.’
Finn’s indrawn breath sounded genuinely shocked. ‘What on earth made you think that?’
I fanned my face with my hand, but it did little to douse the flames engulfing my cheeks. ‘You looked right through me, not just once but several times.’
There was a long pause before he replied. ‘I didn’t want our first conversation after all this time to be overheard by a roomful of strangers. And as far as looking right through you goes, well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been lookingforyou at every stop on this book tour. I’ve searched every face that’s come through the door, telling myself I had no right to expect you’d want to see me again, much less come and find me.’
‘But if I hadn’t turned up last night, would that have been it? Would you have got on a plane and gone back to Australia without ever bothering to make contact with me?’
‘No, Gemma Fletcher. That most definitely is not what would have happened. I’d already cleared my diary for today, with the sole intention of tracking you down. I was going to turn up at theGlowoffices, and if you didn’t work there any more, or they wouldn’t tell me where you were, I planned to sit outside your flat until you came home or your neighbours called the police.’
‘Oh.’ It was an incredibly small word in response to such a huge admission.
‘Which leads me to an important question: are you by any chance free today?’
I spent longer than I should have done considering whether I could pull a sickie, for I could already hear a soundless clock ticking away the time Finn and I had before he left again. But I had commitments, not just to my job but also to my colleagues. I was due to travel to London to interview a family for a major featureGlowwould be running in next month’s edition. I couldn’t just blow it off for a man who’d probably be long gone before my article was even in print.
To be fair, Finn understood perfectly when I explained.
‘I’ve got an idea. How about I come to London and meet you after your interview is over? I can check out of the hotel where I’m staying now and find myself a room in London instead.’
I should have paused. I should have made it sound as though I was weighing up all the options. At the very least I should have made it clear that I hoped he was talking about a hotel room for one and not two. But I did none of those things. He’d had me at ‘I’ve got an idea’, even before I knew what he was about to suggest.
*
Arranging to meet beside Covent Garden’s sixty-foot Christmas tree was a bit of a cliché and, in hindsight, perhaps not one of my brightest ideas. It might have helped if I’d remembered that the Christmas lights had only just been turned on, so the area was even more crowded than usual.
