‘Let’s go a bit further.’

Jack laid his other hand over the top of our joined ones before relaxing back into the seat as we continued to crawl closer to our exit point.

Sooner than I expected, and certainly hoped, we were pulling up and two men in dark suits each opened the car door. In no hurry, Jack faced me. ‘You ready to do this?’

I wasn’t, but I knew I had to. I’d worked hard for this moment, and although I was terrified, I knew, as Jack had suggested, that if I didn’t do this tonight, I would regret it for the rest of my life. I also knew I needed to do this for Mike. He hadn’t lived to see me achieve the success that I had today, but he’d always been there cheering me on and encouraging me, helping me believe in myself and basically just keeping me at it. I wish he could have been here to see all this, but hopefully, somewhere, he knew how much I loved him for helping me make it happen.

I met Jack’s eyes. ‘Yes.’ He gave me a wide smile, squeezed my hand and then we each got out of our respective side of the car.

The noise was overwhelming. Between the crowds, spectators and the crush of media all shouting names in every direction, with camera flashes going off almost constantly, it felt like barely controlled chaos. I concentrated on the directions Zinnia had given me to just walk up the carpet and head inside, then give her a call. Somewhere in there, she and a collection of people from the publishing company would find me.

I’d been with Zinnia a long time, but the publishing company was one I’d changed to a couple of years after Mike had passed. At the time, it felt like I needed to change everything. The original company had been a large conglomerate and, whilst the glamorous parties had seemed attractive initially, they’d never especially been my thing, and once Mike had gone, they definitely weren’t. I had done OK with them, sitting reasonably comfortably as a mid-list author, but when I read about a new start-up publishing company, something prompted me – perhaps Mike from another plane, which is what I liked to think – to approach them. That was when things really began to take off, and now here I was, in London’s Leicester Square, heading towards the red carpet feeling like I was caught up in a very surreal dream.

I stole a glance at Jack as he walked beside me, my arm tucked through his. He looked calm, relaxed, and as though this was something he did every day. It was also hard not to notice that he looked incredibly handsome. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got mistaken for a movie star. Suddenly, he seemed to sense me looking at him and the green eyes turned and locked onto my blue ones.

‘You’re doing great.’ He laid his other hand over mine on his arm for a moment in a gesture of reassurance as he bent a little towards me so that he could make himself heard over the clamour that surrounded us.