“Oh, yeah, hundreds and hundreds.” You clicked the lid back on your pen and gave me a sideways smile. “Kidding,” you said. “About twenty.”
“Long way to come, to sign twenty books.”
“I tend to agree with you.”
You slid the pen into your jacket pocket and turned away from me, looking about for a person to whisk you away, no doubt.
“Well,” I said. “I’ll let you get away. I hope you have a safe journey back to London. Whereabouts do you live?”
“North London.”
“Oh,” I said, an Oscar-worthy moment of fakery, “snap. So do I.”
“Oh!” you said. “Whereabouts?”
“Stroud Green.”
“Well, well. What a coincidence. Me, too.”
“What? You live in Stroud Green?” This I had not known. This I could never have believed to be possible.
“Yes! Latymer Road. Do you know it?”
“Yes,” I said, joy virtually pouring out of my ears and my eyeballs and my nostrils. “Yes, I do know it. I’m just a few roads down from you.”
“Well, well, well. Maybe our paths will cross again then?”
“Yes,” I’d said, as though it would be no more than a fun coincidence if they did, not the culmination of all my hopes and worldly dreams. “Maybe they will.”
Two weeks later, they did.
28
To say that I’d been stalking you would be an overstatement. We lived but two hundred feet apart after all. It would be fair, though, to say that I was going out a little more than I usually tended to. Coming upon a nearly empty bottle of milk in the fridge would fill me with delight.Oh dear, I shall have to visit the corner shop again. And if I returned to the realization that I should also have bought a newspaper while I was out, well, that really wasn’t the end of the world. On with the coat, back to the high street, one eye open for you in one direction, another eye open for you in the other. And anything that gave me cause to pass the end of Latymer Road was a particular bonus.
And then one evening, there you were, in the convenience store, in a blue anorak and jeans, a bottle of red wine hanging from your fist, studying the breakfast cereals intently. I said, “Floyd Dunn.”
You turned and you remembered me immediately. I knew you did. I hadn’t expected that. No one ever remembered me immediately. But you smiled and you said, “I know you. You were at the NEC.”
“Yes, I was indeed. Noelle.”
I gave you my hand and you shook it.
“Noelle. Of course. The unwanted Christmas present. How are you?”
“I’m truly grand, thank you. And you?”
“I am moderately grand, if that’s possible.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “There are many shades of grand.”
There was a small moment then, I recall. It was likely awkward, though I’d be hard-pressed to judge as my whole life until this point had been vaguely awkward. But you stepped into the moment and saved it and that was when I knew.
You said—and I shall never ever forget this because it was so remarkable to me—you said, “Rice Krispies or Mini Shredded Wheats?”
Which may not sound like much of anything, but it was what itwasn’tthat was so important to me. It wasn’t a rebuttal. It wasn’t a glance at your watch and anoh, is that the time, I’d better get on. It wasn’t a suggestion that I was taking up too much of your life; that I was somehow blocking your view of better things. It was an invitation to banter.
So of course I seized it. “Rice Krispies,” I said, “are delicious, but five minutes later you’re hungry again. All that air...”