Chapter 18 #2
She shook her head and leaned her forehead against the window, miserable.
How could she still be sitting just ten minutes from home?
Why had she relied on Sunday trains? Why couldn’t she just get out and get a bloody cab?
It was ridiculous. She did the math again.
She was due at the radio station by ten-thirty, and it was already half past nine.
She closed her eyes and wished Charlie wasn’t so far away—he’d know what to do.
She thought back to their conversation after her photo shoot.
What was it he’d said? Be Kate Darrowby.
Buy the outfit, walk the walk, inhabit the skin of the character.
Okay. So maybe the question wasn’t what should Kate Elliott do, it was what would Kate Darrowby do?
Kate Darrowby would look for the silver lining, she’d be storing this up as a scene for her next novel.
Opening her eyes, she looked down at the expensive denim dress she’d bought for the interview and mentally slid herself into her alter ego’s shoes.
Looking up again, she spread her hands wide and forced a laugh.
“Guys, I need a really big favor…”
—
Finally, at just before ten o’clock, the train lumbered into action to a collective cheer from all the hot-and-bothered passengers, most of their journeys sweetened by the thought of a free ride thanks to being able to claim their tickets back.
Not Kate’s, though; she’d been regularly updating Glynn’s show producer, who’d started to consider the idea of rescheduling if she completely missed the slot.
The soccer fans ushered her out of the doors in front of them as soon as they pulled into the station, yelling “You can do this, Kate!” as she ran along the platform as fast as her too-high sandals would permit, waving her notes over her head as a thank-you to her now fully invested new friends.
Hurling herself into a taxi, she collapsed on the back seat, breathing as if she was about to give birth.
She knew there wasn’t a prayer she’d make it for the allotted time, but the producer had said he would see what could be done. Anything was better than nothing.
“Where to, love?”
She took a deep breath. “The News Building, please, London Bridge.”
The driver nodded and pulled into the traffic.
“How long does it take to get there?” she said, just as a “send latest update” text appeared on her phone from Glynn’s producer.
“About twenty-five minutes, I’d say? Busy this morning, a fun run’s closed half the bloody roads.”
“Oh no,” Kate groaned, sinking into the seat.
“All right, love? Still want to go?”
She nodded, holding his gaze in the mirror. “I need to try,” she said. “I’m due on the Glynn Weston show this morning, and I’m running horribly late.”
He narrowed his eyes, clearly trying to decide whether she was having him on. He’d probably been told a few tall tales in his time.
“Famous, then, are you?” he said, and she could hear it in his voice, the creep of disbelief. He wasn’t to blame. Her hair was clinging to her sweaty forehead and she was probably purple in the face with panic.
“No,” she said. “I’m not famous. I’m an author. A new one.”
On that, her phone rang. The producer, of course. She clicked it on to speaker. “Where are you now, Kate?”
“I’m in a cab on the way over,” she said, trying to sound calm.
“Good, good. We can shift things around a tiny bit more, but it’s tight. Glynn’s show finishes in twenty minutes. Where are you precisely?”
She stared wide-eyed at the cab driver for the answer, who’d heard every word and suddenly fired the cab off down a side street at alarming speed, clearly on board with this now he’d heard it from someone other than Kate.
“Hang on to your hat,” he half shouted. “I’ll get you there as fast as I can.”
Her mobile went again. Liv this time, in a fit of laughter.
“Kate, what’s happening? I’ve got Glynn’s show on in the kitchen, he’s mentioned you’re having transport issues getting to the studio?
He’s talked about the book already, and now he’s giving the nation live updates on your whereabouts.
It’s become a whole thing, you’re not going to believe it when you listen back to the show. ”
“Oh my God,” Kate groaned, swiping her hair off her damp forehead. “Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, Liv, I’ll tell you later.”
“Hang on, he’s just dedicating a track to you.” Liv paused for a second, then started laughing again. “It’s ‘She Moves in Her Own Way,’ by The Kooks.”
Hanging up, Kate could barely swallow, her mouth sandpaper dry.
A voice message buzzed in, from the producer again. “Kate, if you can get here in the next few minutes you can do the interview from your phone in the lobby. There isn’t going to be time to get you miked up and upstairs to the studio.”
“Bloody joggers,” the taxi driver yelled out of his window, running red lights and swerving bikes, fully into it now.
“I’ve not read your book but I have read Glynn’s, cracking they are,” he said, and Kate could only agree.
The radio producer called constantly for location updates, the cab driver shouting out street names as he hurled the car around corners, scattering runners everywhere.
“That’s the building we’re trying to get to,” he said, gesticulating over the bridge.
“I can see your building,” Kate told the producer. “I’m almost there.”
The driver took a final detour and screeched to a halt.
“Get out, you can do it!” he yelled, shooing her with both hands.
“Get in here, you can do it!” a tall guy with ear cans and a clipboard yelled from the revolving door, waving her into the building.
There was no time for introductions, just the nearest bench seat to fling her bag on and sit down to talk directly to Glynn, who was ten floors up.
“Kate Darrowby, you’ve made it at last, we hear you’ve had quite the journey.
” Glynn’s Irish voice landed familiar and warm in her ear.
The producer stepped away and threw her an encouraging double thumbs-up, mouthing “You’re live,” most probably as a reminder not to swear, despite the morning she’d had.
“Oh, Glynn, I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “It was genuinely the journey from hell, my train just stopped moving. Stopped dead on the tracks! A whole hour just sitting there in a carriage full of soccer fans drinking lager for breakfast, and then there’s some kind of fun run in London, joggers everywhere.
All of the streets are blocked. I seriously considered getting out of the cab and running with them, except I didn’t know where I was going and I’d never have made it in these heels.
Honestly, I was a fireman’s pole away from complete disaster! ”
“I get the feeling you and Bridget Jones might have been very good friends,” Glynn laughed, thoroughly enjoying her nightmare.
“One of the soccer fans offered me a can of lager for my nerves—I didn’t have one but it was a close-run thing, Glynn, I felt like it.”
He laughed down the line. “Oh, I would have so taken that beer.”
“The strangest thing happened while we were stuck there, though,” she said. “I was sitting there in a panic, and I looked across the table at the guy opposite me, and you know when you get that feeling you know someone, but can’t place where from? We both got that.”
Glynn gasped, always front of the queue for the gossip. “Oh, do tell!”
“Well, we got talking, and after a few minutes we realized we did know each other. More than that—we were at school together.”
“Is this going where I hope it’s going?”
“If you’re hoping he was my first crush—well, my first kiss, actually—then yes! I couldn’t believe it, I’d never have recognized him if we hadn’t been stuck opposite each other for an hour on the train. It was so bizarre.”
Glynn clapped his hands. “You do know the entire nation needs this meet-cute to be the beginning of your own real-life love story, right?”
She laughed, giddy with relief to have made it to the radio station and salvaged the situation. “How funny would that be? They do say you never forget your first love. We said we’d catch up over coffee, so watch this space.”
“I’ll buy my hat!”
Glynn’s good humor was balm to Kate’s tattered nerves, and when he smoothly steered the conversation on to the book, she ignored all of her color-coded notes and spoke for a few off-the-cuff minutes about the story.
It was over before she had time to worry whether she’d said the wrong thing, and she couldn’t recollect a word of the conversation afterward, but she’d done it.
Placing her mobile down on her abandoned notes, she dropped her head into her hands and pressed her fingers into her eye sockets.
Oh good God. She’d talked about lager and first kisses and fireman’s poles.
On balance, Fiona would probably have preferred it if she hadn’t turned up at all.