Zander stared. Breathed out slowly. ‘You’re a good person, Georgia Stone.’
She lifted her chin. ‘I know. I’d be my friend if I wasn’t already me.’
His lips parted in a classic Zander chuckle.
‘I’d better go. Your producer’s taking my absence out on your work-experience girl.’
He looked into the bright booth and she turned for the door. His voice stopped her just as she reached for the handle. ‘Georgia...’
She turned.
‘You’re looking good.’
No, she looked pretty much the same as she always did. With the exception of the grey smudges under her eyes that she’d worked hard to disguise. ‘Thank you.’
‘And you’re sounding good.’
She could easily have said something flippant, but these might be the last words they ever exchanged. She wanted them to count. ‘I am good. I’m finally doing what makes me happy. Regardless of what everyone else expects. It’s very...healthy.’
‘Healthy.’ He turned the word over on his lips. ‘It’s very compelling.’
Her chest tightened. Two minutes before going live on air was not the time to mess with a woman’s head. ‘See you later, Zander.’
Though, no, she wouldn’t. Not after today.
Today was the end.
She stepped back out into the full fluoro-brightness of the radio station and crossed back to her own studio. She smiled at the young girl who passed her a cup of tea as she walked in and let the producer set her up with her headphones and mic, again. And she did a cracking job of ignoring Zander’s presence. Even though she could barely see him now in the darkened studio next door, she felt his every breath.
The two announcers ran through a barrage of vocal warm-ups, which she figured were mostly for show, and she gave the young girl now inside the control box two thumbs up for a great cuppa.
Amazingly the hot drink did help, just slightly.
‘Thirty seconds,’ the producer announced over the studio loudspeaker, and the sudden sound of commercials filled the room. The announcers sat, smiled at her, and readied themselves.
Georgia took a deep breath and forced her mind off the man whose gaze burned into her back.
* * *
‘You’re listening to EROS: all the best music all the time. We’re back with The Valentine Girl, Georgia Stone, who has just finished the most amazing year of self-discovery. Georgia—’ the announcer was gifted at sounding as if he hadn’t used the last song break to go over in detail what they were about to say ‘—what was the highlight of your year?’
She leaned a little more into the microphone and did her best to imagine she was speaking only to her gran, not to three million Londoners. ‘There was a moment, just a heartbeat really, high above Cappadocia in the balloon, when everything in my life just—’ she struggled for the right word, then found it ‘—reconciled.’
‘Reconciled?’ the younger announcer said.
‘Everything just clicked. Into place. And I knew that I’d found what I was looking for.’
‘What were you looking for?’
She forced herself not to even flinch in Zander’s direction. ‘Myself, mostly.’
‘That sounds very Zen.’ The second announcer giggled, dubiously.
Introspection. Broadcasting death, Zander had warned her all those months ago. She closed her eyes and gave in. ‘And spy school was pretty cool, too.’
And they were off...asking with enormous relief how she’d felt firing a gun and what it was about numerical codes that made her such a natural at solving them.
Empowered and no idea were the respective answers.
‘An empowered woman with a gun in her hands, look out!’ the male announcer said.
Georgia didn’t even bother laughing out of courtesy.
The man’s eyes flicked up to the control booth window where the producer was making uninterpretable hand signals.
‘We’re going to take some of your calls now...’ the announcer said. He glanced at his computer monitor. ‘Lucinda from Epping, go ahead.’
Lucinda from Epping wanted to wax lyrical about belly dancing and how much she enjoyed it since starting it on Georgia’s recommendation. She was easy to enthuse with because the belly dancing was something she’d kept up even after the necessity to go had ended. It was somewhere she could escape back to Göreme in her mind. Back to Zander.
And back to the way he’d made her feel when his arms were around her.
Russell from Orpington wanted to complain about his girlfriend and her high standards and how impossible it was for an ordinary man to meet the expectations of empowered women.
‘Just try, Russell,’ she murmured. ‘None of us are looking for perfection. Just a decent effort.’
That even birthed a knowing smirk between the surly producer and her teenaged slave.
‘Alex from Hampstead. You’ve had your own—’ the young announcer stared at his computer screen and did his best to pronounce what was obviously an unfamiliar word ‘—epiphany?’
‘That’s Alek,’ the quiet voice said, and Georgia tightened up like a barrel bolt. ‘With a K.’
The announcer rolled his eyes. ‘Clock’s ticking, mate.’
Could they not hear it? She glanced between them all and none of them seemed to have the vaguest idea that it was their boss on the line. Her chest started to rise and fall. She forced herself not to turn around but her inner eye was focused squarely on the glass of the mirrored studio behind her.
‘I’ve had exactly the same moment,’ Zander murmured down the line. ‘That moment where everything just falls into place and works. Effortless.’
‘It’s a great feeling,’ Georgia pressed past her dry throat. Was he talking about his engagement fifteen years ago?
‘And once you’ve had it and then you lose it it’s...intolerable. Worse than never having it at all.’
Yeah, he was. Her chest tightened up.
‘But once you’ve had it,’ she whispered, ‘then you at least know what to strive for. You know what your bar is.’
‘True.’
And she didn’t meet his bar the way every man out there would struggle to meet Zander’s.
The announcer glanced at his producer for assistance; clearly this wasn’t his idea of riveting radio.
‘What if you fear you’ll never reach it again?’ Zander said, low and personal.
His voice, in her earphones, was like lying on that daybed in Göreme with him. Intimate. Breathless. She closed her eyes, pressed the ear pads harder to her head to keep him close. To keep it private.
‘If you reached it once,’ she whispered, ‘then you know you can reach it again.’
Even though he was talking about his fiancée, she hated the pain she heard in his voice. She loved him; she didn’t want him suffering. The way she was.
‘Is that what you believe?’ he murmured.
‘I have to. Or I’d go crazy wondering if I let the best thing in my world go.’
The announcer suddenly saw an in. ‘And someone else has snapped him up now,’ he said.
Georgia’s