well, thanks anyway.’ I press the Exit button, relieved to feel the cool, unscented air on my cheeks, and almost equally relieved to see that the paparazzo has got up, dusted himself down and is walking back across the piazza, presumably to moan about his confiscated Nikon to his comrades.
And I need to go back to Mum’s and tell Cass she’ll have to send Stella out for her nail polish instead.
I’m halfway across the piazza when I see Dillon O’Hara walking towards me.
He’s talking into his iPhone.
‘… fourth message I’ve left for you this morning,’ he’s saying, tersely, into it. ‘I thought you might have gone to your yoga class, so I’m heading to your stupid bloody gym now. We need to talk about this, Rhea. Call me when you get this message …’
There’s a flicker of recognition in his eyes when he glances up from his phone, a moment later, and sees me a few feet away from him. He’s about to pass me by, I think, with the merest of polite smiles. Which would be fine by me, because I’m not sure I can look him in the eye after hearing him leave that message, and having just seen what Rhea is doing in her ‘yoga class’.
But the flicker of recognition has turned into – no pun intended – more of a spark.
‘Do I …’ He stops. ‘Sorry, do I know you from somewhere?’
‘Yes. From yesterday.’
‘Sorry, love, but I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning.’ He does look a bit rough, it’s true: unshaven and slightly bleary-eyed (albeit still simmeringly gorgeous). ‘You’ll have to remind me.’
‘I’m Libby. From The Time Guardians. Remember, with the, er, unfortunate cigarette incident?’
‘Oh, yeah! Of course! Fire Girl!’
Which is a much better nickname than I thought anyone would come up with. Quite charming, in fact. Makes me sound a bit dangerous, a bit sexy.
‘Did you do something different,’ he goes on, ‘to your hair?’
‘You mean apart from burning half of it off yesterday?’
He grins. ‘Apart from that, yeah.’
‘Well, I had to go bit shorter,’ I say, putting a hand to it, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know, to even it out.’
He puts his own (perfect) head on one side and looks at me, hard, for a long, long moment.
‘It suits you.’
I’m unable to reply anything other than a mumbled, ‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. I’m liking the little …’ He wafts a hand near the top of my face. ‘This bit. The fringey thing.’
And then his phone bleeps.
While he reads the text that’s just come through on his phone, I digest (no, I savour) the last nine words he’s just said.
When he looks up again, his face is frozen.
He doesn’t say anything at all for a moment.
Then he says, ‘You know, I don’t know why more girls don’t get their hair cut really short. I mean, it makes a bit of a change, doesn’t it? You know, from all those long, swooshy manes.’
Rhea. He’s talking about Rhea.
Or, I suppose, any one of the fifteen bazillion other leggy Amazonian models he’s dated.
But, most likely, given the text message and the icy look on his face when he read it, Rhea.
I get this sudden twist, deep in my gut, on Dillon’s behalf. It’s sort of horrible to be standing right here with him knowing exactly what I’ve just seen Rhea doing with Big Blond Willi, and knowing that Dillon doesn’t have a clue.
He shoves his phone back into his jacket pocket. ‘So!’ he says, in a dangerously light-hearted tone of voice. ‘Looks like I’ve got a spare hour or two on my hands.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, I thought I might be able to meet my sort-of girlfriend here – you know, that one you’ve been doing all that reading about in the gossip magazines, during your once-every-five-years trip to the dentist – but that’s not happening. Needs a massage. Pulled something in her yoga class.’
You have to give Rhea credit. Pulled something in my yoga class isn’t, technically, lying.
‘So I can get stuffed, apparently. Even if I blew off a big meeting with my agent to find her this morning.’
‘I’m really, really sorry, Dillon.’
He gives me a distinctly funny look. ‘Jesus, there’s no need to sound so devastated. My agent will forgive me.’
‘Of course. I just … feel bad. That you went to all the trouble. Cancelled your plans, and all that.’
The funny look softens. ‘That’s really sweet of you, darling.’
Darlin’.
I actually feel my heart jump up into my throat. And then stay there, so that I’m incapable of saying anything in reply.
‘Tell you what, Fire Girl. Why don’t you come and say more nice things to me while I eat my lunch?’
‘Hhnh?’
‘I’ve got a couple of hours on my hands, didn’t you hear?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘So I need someone to come with me while I eat my lunch. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m terribly, terribly famous. If I eat lunch alone, I’ll get pestered the entire time by people wanting their picture taken, wanting me to sign their bras, women shoving their phone numbers into my pocket …’
‘How awful for you.’
‘I know. It’s a burden.’ He glances over his shoulder at the coffee bars in the piazza and lets out a little shudder, though whether because he knows they’re full of paparazzi or because he just thinks they look a bit snooty and pretentious, I couldn’t say. ‘I know a great little sandwich bar not too far away from here. What say I treat you to a tuna baguette. Throw in a packet of Wotsits, too, if you like.’
The trouble with all this charming banter is that I don’t know if he’s serious, or joking.
And, let’s face it, the most embarrassing thing in the world right now would be for me to assume he’s being serious, stride out towards this sandwich bar with a spring in my step and a song in my heart, only for him to call out after me that he was just kidding. The best strategy, probably, is just to banter back.
‘Well, if you’re really serious about those Wotsits …’
‘Oh,
