Chapter Thirty-One
The rest of Petra’s journey passed in a dream. Hours went by, and Petra allowed herself to be funneled through the public
transport system until eventually she arrived in her beige hotel, with its beige hotel room that was so anonymous it could
be anywhere in the world.
Alistair’s secretary had set up text reminders for Petra’s schedule, and her phone duly pinged to tell her she was expected
at the main stage to see Ross’s live, onstage interview, a coup secured by his publicist to help ensure bidding around translation
rights would reach a fever pitch.
She barely had time to splash water on her bare face and swipe her deodorant under her arms, fearing her long, sweaty journey
might have made her stink. Fleetingly, she wished she had brought something smarter to wear, but her trusty navy trousers
and blazer, with chunky sneakers for all the walking from one hall to another, would have to do.
Petra remembered her first trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair as a very junior member of her editorial team.
The arrival at the airport, the study of the hall plans and the seminar timetable, the insane meeting schedules, and the effects of living with minimal access to daylight for several days while subsisting on Danish pastries and bad coffee .
. . It felt like something that could be fun only in a past life.
She was exhausted.
But then, she was always exhausted these days. It had been tempting to skip day one of Frankfurt and just arrive for the meetings,
but she had to face him eventually. After this one event, she was reckoning on an early return to her hotel, a glass of wine,
a hot bath, and early bed, in preparation for all the meetings she had scheduled the following day.
Marching through the interminable conference spaces to her destination, the thought that she and Ross might inevitably have
to be in the same room, seeing each other for the first time in the six or so weeks since the Portneath Literary Festival,
filled her with queasy excitement—or possibly dread. She slipped into the back of the hot, stuffy room, packed full of shiny-faced,
slightly sweaty humanity, and—because she could see no empty chairs at all—propped herself against the back wall.
Checking her phone for last-minute schedule updates from her assistant, Petra missed the moment when Ross and his interviewer
walked out on the stage and took their seats. She looked up and there he was, perhaps sixty feet away. He was clean-shaven,
she noted, and was wearing a blindingly white cotton shirt, open-necked under a black jacket with dark blue jeans—new, Petra
thought. He looked so handsome, and so very agonizingly dear and familiar, Petra had difficulty swallowing.
The applause died down, and they were off.
First, the interviewer, an esteemed Radio 4 arts presenter known universally as simply “Declan,” bigged up Ross’s career to date, while he bashfully stared down at his feet.
Then they were into his early influences: an inspiring English teacher, a primary school success with a national writing competition.
Petra was soothed, hearing this now familiar story play out.
The room was warm, and she had not slept well.
Seeing Ross up onstage, being charming, handsome, and clearly “together” gave her the first peace she had felt in weeks.
He was okay, thank goodness. And Henrietta was nowhere to be seen. Also thank goodness.
“So tell us what it was like when your first book became so remarkably successful. How did that feel from the inside, looking
out?”
“‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” Ross quoted, shaking his head. There was a silence while he stared
at the floor. It felt like the whole room was holding its breath. Petra was definitely holding her breath. “Okay, so . . .” he said at last, raising his head again and fixing his eyes directly on Petra at the back of the
room. “It’s the fairy-tale ending, isn’t it? I mean, it’s what everyone here in this room wants, for a book to be published
that does well. As an author, writing a book, getting it published, having it be a huge success, ‘’tis a consummation devoutly
to be wished,’ but—not to be ungrateful—for me, at that time, it was anything but a fairy tale. I felt as if I had made a
Faustian pact, where I sold my soul . . .” He stopped, put his hand to his mouth and then used it to ruffle his hair distractedly,
“So—yeah—I know now that I believed I could only be successful if I capitulated to this ‘romance’—at least, I thought that
was what it was at the time. I realized later—much later—it was an unhealthily controlling relationship where I mistakenly
believed I owed this person my success. I gave them a lot of power. Which they then abused.”
At these words, the room collectively gasped, and then hummed excitedly, and then—straining to hear Ross’s next words—it fell silent again.
Petra was relieved that Henrietta was not present. If she could hear herself be described in such a way in front of a roomful
of her industry peers, Petra feared Henrietta would lose her shit. Which would actually be quite exciting, she admitted to herself, with something approaching schadenfreude.
Her heart swelled with pride that Ross was brave enough to talk about it in such a public arena. At the center of Henrietta’s
world, of all places.
“. . . and I carried a lot of shame from that situation,” he went on, his eyes still resting on Petra as if he and she were
the only people in the room. “I had this idea my success was a fluke, a construct created by this woman in return for my obedience.
I was beguiled. But I was also kind of trapped. I began to think this woman’s input was necessary for me to be able to create
and that meant I was paralyzed. I was basically suffering from a terminal case of imposter syndrome.”
“We can all relate to that,” joked Declan, and there was a ripple of laughter. “But what happened next?” he probed. “It seems
you disappeared for five years. What was that all about? Writer’s block? Publicity stunt?”
“A hell of a publicity stunt,” contradicted Ross. “Lasting five years? No. I was in a dark place, all right. I got myself
out of this destructive relationship, but that wasn’t the entire solution. Without that prop, I was in a hell of my own creation—a
dark, lonely, isolated existence . . . I was lost in my own head. And that wasn’t a great place to be at the time,” he added
with a self-deprecating smile.
Petra couldn’t feel her feet. There had been too many revelations that day—first the Bookseller article, and now this?
And if Miranda was . . . No. Petra wasn’t yet ready to tell herself that she was Miranda. With difficulty, she made herself
focus on the rest of the presentation.
As soon as questions were invited from the floor, someone stood up and asked who Miranda was.
Ross laughed aloud. “She knows who she is,” he said, his eyes boring into Petra’s and then looking away hurriedly as members
of the audience turned to follow his gaze. “I’m not going to drag her into the limelight. That’s her decision to make. Next
question.”
Of course, someone also wanted to know who his destructive relationship was with, and he demurred over that too, to Petra’s
relief. He could hardly name her because of the slander laws. More or less everyone in publishing would know already, of course.
Despite her dawn start and her exhausting journey, Petra felt light and full of energy. As the audience filed out, her phone
buzzed. It was Ross.
Cocktails to celebrate? it said. Meet me at the Eiserner Steg 7pm?
Petra texted back a thumbs-up, put it into Google maps, and checked her watch. Forty-five minutes’ walk away. There would
be no time now to go back to her hotel room to get glammed up unless she took an Uber instead. No. She needed to walk off
this fizzing nervous energy she felt. Frankfurt—and Ross—were going to have to take her as she came.
She set off straightaway, invisible to the chattering, smiling hordes who were meeting and kissing and finding their way into
the bars and restaurants that would be mobbed right through until the fair was over.
She would get to the bridge first if she was quick. There she could gather her thoughts and calm her mind.
But she was too late. There was a solitary figure right in the center of the bridge, and there was no mistaking that height
and those broad shoulders. Ross had his back to her as he gazed out at the city, twinkling with light and spreading either
side of the river under a navy sky.
Petra’s legs shook as, unobserved, she quietly walked to his side, gazing at the barnacle clusters of padlocks that had been
attached to the bridge by thousands of lovers. Taking up position, facing the view, she asked: “Am I Miranda?”
Ross made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “What do you think?” he said, turning and looking down at her with a sad smile.
“I think I thought you had gone back to Henrietta,” she said.
“As if I would go back to the hell I spent five years escaping from,” he said softly, his eyes blazing with love.
“You were damned well flying very close to the sun in that conference hall back there,” she scolded, changing the subject. “Jemima’s lot will be panicking
that their latest acquisition is just about to be sued for libel.”
“Slander actually,” Ross corrected her. “And I named nobody, remember? If Henrietta wants to cast herself in that role, she’s
very welcome to. If I know her, she’ll seethe a bit, but she’ll have the sense to keep her head down.”
Petra nodded. She hoped he was right. “So, what about your final chapter?” she asked. “Does your guy get his girl in the end,
or what?”
“I don’t know,” Ross whispered at last, gazing down at her tenderly. “Does he?”