‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he repeated. ‘Will you ever shut up?’

He certainly had a brogue, thought Laura, but it wasn’t really an accent.

There was laughter.

‘Now I’m going to read to you, but I’m not taking questions.’

Laura felt a moment of panic. This was awful news. How was she going to ask him to come to England if he wasn’t taking questions?

‘I’ll take questions tomorrow when the drunks aren’t in.’

Huge relief swept over Laura and then she realised she was probably one of the drunks. She resolved not to drink any more. Monica was now holding a pint glass containing a neon-orange liquid she said was lemonade. Laura accepted she was naïve but felt this was unlikely. She herself had decided to stick to what she knew: namely whiskey.

His voice was like tweed made of silk, rough-smooth, dark brown and the sexiest thing Laura had ever heard in her life.

‘Good evening, everyone.’

‘Good evening!’ the crowd roared back. This was unlike any event Laura had ever been to.

‘It’s nice of you to show up,’ went on Dermot. ‘People have been asking me why I showed up myself, but you asked me, so I came. I wrote these books a long time ago and I’m going to read you some out of both of them. Afterwards I’ll talk a bit about how they came to be written.’ He paused, cleared his throat and began to read.

She knew the words by heart – the opening passage of his first book – the bestseller that shocked the literary world. Dermot Flynn had been only twenty when out came this masterpiece. It won every literary prize it was eligible for.

She had studied his books – there were only two – at university, and of all the books she had read since, and there’d been many, these were the two she loved best.

Laura was not the only person entranced. He had such a beautiful voice. Listening to it was like hearing a musical instrument playing the most beautiful piece. The applause when he’d finished was deafening. And then he spoke about how he’d come to write them, how when he lived abroad for a while he was so homesick for his home, his land, its culture and its geography, the only way he could ease his pain was to write.

Laura clapped until her hands were sore. She drummed her feet and she may have even whooped a bit. The audience was treating him more like a rock star than a writer; the event was the most exhilarating thing she’d ever experienced. She was flying and didn’t want to stop. He was every bit as wonderful as she had always dreamt he would be. When he jumped off the stage she felt as if a magic spell had suddenly been broken.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five