It was a photo of you.
I’d never been a fan of anything much before I read your book. There were TV shows I enjoyed,Brooksidebeing a particular favorite; I watched that up to the last episode. And I always perked up ifTake Thatcame on the radio, although on the whole I was more of a classical fan. Andof courseI’d had crushes across the years. Loads of them. But this was different.
Youwere different.
Do you remember, the first time we met? I know you do. You were signing books on your publisher’s stand at the Education Show at the NEC. I go every year. Tutoring is a lonely world and you have to plug yourself into the mains every now and then and get a fix of what everyone else is getting. You can’t be yesterday’s flavor of the month when it comes to these north London mummies. You have to keep on top of things.
But mainly I was there because I knew you were going to be there. I’d made an extra-special effort: I had on a skirt and tights and a lipstick the color of toffee apples that set fire to my hair and made my blue eyes shine. I was forty-one years old. The autumn of my youth. Christ, virtually the winter. And yes, I was still a virgin.
You sat on a high stool at a high table, a small pile of your books in front of you. There was no one there, no queue, only a small sign on the wall behind you that said “Author Floyd Dunn Will Be Signing Copies of His Book ‘Bad at Maths’ Today, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.” And next to it a photo, that photo of you, the same one from inside your book that I’d stared at for so many hours, memorizing the way your hair fell around your ears, the line your mouth made as it attempted a serious smile.
My eye went from the photo to you and back to the photo. You were thinner than I’d imagined. I’d expected a little belly, maybe. I don’t know why.
“Hello!” you said at my approach, as though someone had just plugged you in and switched you on. “Hello!” You wouldn’t have known how nervous I was. You wouldn’t have guessed. I played it very, very cool.
“Hello,” I replied, my hands tight around my dog-eared copy of your book. “I have my own copy. Would you mind signing it for me?”
I passed it across to you and you smiled that smile you have, the one that makes your eyes into fireworks that gobang bang bangin my soul.
“Well,” you said, “that is a well-loved copy.”
I could have told you I’d read it thirty times. I could have told you that your book made me laugh more in a week than I’d laughed in the year before I read it. I could have told you that I was completely in awe of you. But I wanted you to see me as an equal. So I simply said, “It has been a very useful tool. I’m a maths tutor.”
“Well,” you said, “I am very glad to hear that.” You took the book from me and held your pen over the title page. “Shall I sign it to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Please. Noelle.”
“Noelle,” you said. “That’s a lovely name. Were you a Christmas baby?”
“Yes. December the twenty-fourth.”
“Best Christmas present ever, eh?”
“No,” I replied, “apparently not. Apparently I ruined Christmas Day for everyone.”
You laughed then; I hadn’t imagined a laugh for you. In your photo you looked as if you might go so far as a chuckle, if tickled to the point of no return. But no, you had a proper laugh where your mouth opened wide and your head tipped back on your neck and a big thunderclap boom exploded from you. I liked it, very much.
You wrote something after my name, I wanted to see what it was, but I didn’t want to look as though I cared.
“You’re American,” I said.
“To a certain extent,” you said. “And you’re Irish?”
“Yes. To the fullest possible extent.”
You liked my little joke and you laughed again. It felt like someone massaging the inside of my stomach with velvet-gloved hands.
“Where are you from?”
“Near Dublin,” I replied. “County Wicklow. Where all the sheep live.”
You laughed for a third time and I felt emboldened in a way I’d never felt before in my life. I looked behind me to check that a queue hadn’t built as we’d talked. But I still had you all to myself.
“Are you here again tomorrow?” I asked.
“No. No. They’re putting me on a train back to London after this. Which leaves in, oh”—you looked at your watch—“approximately two hours. I should probably be wrapping this up soon.”
“Have you signed many books?”