Seeing Other People Read Online Free PDF

took our seats. ‘I can’t believe I’m sitting in a café with the great and good of the media world.’
    ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ I replied. ‘They’re just people and anyway I’m sure one day, in the not-too-distant future, some new intern will be looking at you eating lunch in here and won’t be able to believe they’re in the same room.’
    We ordered two cappuccinos and I tried to make up for that morning’s mistake by showing an interest in her life. She was born in Kent but raised in Hereford by an army officer father, who she didn’t really get on with, and a homemaker mother who divorced her father and remarried when Bella was nine. She did her first degree in modern languages at Durham then went travelling around Australia for six months, which had turned into eighteen before she realised that she needed to turn her attention to her career. On her return to England she decided that she wanted to practise law but by the time she’d trained up and got a job at one the big law firms in the City she realised that it wasn’t for her and gave it all up at the age of twenty-five to get into journalism.
    ‘Anyway,’ she said in conclusion, ‘that’s enough about me. How about you? I can’t believe you never wrote another novel.’
    ‘It wasn’t for me,’ I replied. ‘I think I only ever had the one story in me.’
    ‘I don’t think that’s true for a minute,’ dismissed Bella. ‘And even if it is, I can’t imagine a better book to have written: “The image of her moved like liquid honey in my mind tracing all the words she never said to me and I knew from that moment on that neither life, nor love, would ever taste the same again.’’’
    She was quoting a passage from Hand in Glove when the protagonist realises that the girl he’s waiting for is never going to arrive. The idea had come from a row Penny and I had at Florence’s Santa Maria Novella train station. It was during the summer break and I’d told her that I was thinking about dropping out of university and moving to London. She’d asked me what I thought the move would mean for us and I’d told her that I didn’t know and that was when she’d run out of the station. I spent two hours alone with the luggage, wondering what to do, by which time I had made up my mind that if Penny ever did return then that would be the last row we would ever have.
    I didn’t know what to say. I was simultaneously flattered, self-conscious and not a little confused.
    ‘I don’t understand. You’ve committed lines from my novel to memory?’
    ‘That’s the sort of thing seventeen-year-old girls do when they read a book that changes their lives.’ She laughed and briefly touched my hand. It was like a bolt of lightning ran straight through me. In an instant I felt alive, energised and strangely invincible.
    And then it was gone.
    ‘I’ve been carrying this book around with me hoping to see you since I started last week, just for a moment,’ she said as I drew my hand away from the centre of the table. ‘When I spotted you in the office today I thought I’d scream. I hope I didn’t embarrass you, it’s just that it was too good an opportunity to miss.’
    ‘I’m not embarrassed,’ I replied, ‘I’m just . . . I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s not embarrassment.’
     
    We talked for just over an hour, mostly about the paper, but also the future of the industry, the difference between working on newspapers and magazines and even about our favourite books. I’m sure we could have gone on much longer but then I looked at my watch and remembered that Carl had booked a car to take us over to the shoot at two and so I paid the bill and we headed back to the office.
    ‘I can’t thank you enough for taking me for coffee, Joe,’ said Bella as we stood outside the revolving doors to the building. ‘It was really kind of you to take time out to talk to me.’
    ‘It was nothing,’ I replied casually. ‘I’m just sorry