How to Get Over Your Ex (18 page)

‘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 eyes flew open and her stomach heaved. Had Zander
moved on already? ‘What?’

‘Your ex. He’s spoken for.’

Relief and anger pulsed under her skin in equal measures.
Daniel. Not Zander.

The producer’s lips formed a string of swearwords clear enough
to be readable even by her. The announcer seemed to remember he wasn’t supposed
to mention Dan. He flushed to his roots. And then paled.

She wondered if Zander hadn’t exaggerated how stern a warning
he’d given them all.

Silence screamed live on air. She was so conscious that she had
to say something. ‘I still adore Dan.’ She picked her way carefully to an
answer. ‘But, no, I wasn’t talking about him.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me where it was?’ Zander murmured down
the line.

The announcer circled his finger above his head, signalling his
producer to wind up the call. She moved to disconnect the call.

‘No!’ Georgia said out loud and stilled the announcer’s
gyro-finger and the producer’s steps.

‘No?’ The husky voice grew amused.

‘Not you,
Alek
,’ she corrected,
matching the warmth. ‘So go ahead. Where did you have this epiphany?’

How could she be alone in the dark with Zander when three
million people were listening? Yet she just didn’t care.

‘There’s a tiny town up near the Scottish border. Great for
viewing sunsets.’

Her breath caught.

The radio staff threw up their hands in silent protest as their
segment started to unravel before their eyes.

‘I kissed a woman there and it changed my life.’

The blood rushed from her face. ‘A kiss can’t change your life.
Only you can do that.’

‘I’m beginning to understand that.’

Both announcers and the producer all snapped their focus behind
her and their mouths gaped open. She turned and saw the studio lights now fully
blazing next door. Illuminating Zander leaning casually up against the glass,
his mobile phone to his ear.

‘You taught me that,’ he said.

Georgia stared, lost in the fixed focus of his eyes. ‘I
did?’

‘I watched you week after week, plunging into situations that
you weren’t comfortable with, taking the best parts out of them. Always
positive. Always interested in the people you met. You only had to do the
minimum but you didn’t, you applied yourself fully to it.’

‘I wanted to fix myself.’

‘You weren’t broken. You never were. You’re perfect the way you
are.’

‘Perfectly crazy?’ She smiled through her tears.

‘Perfectly competent.’ He tipped his head. ‘I want to be
competent, too.’

‘You are.’

‘No. I’m not. I do a job I hate because someone once told me I
was good at it. I live a life I hate because someone once convinced me I wasn’t
worthy of better.’

Lara.

She stood and tugged her headphones and mic with her. They were
her lifeline. An umbilical cord to Zander. She crossed to the glass. ‘
She
was never worthy of
you
.’

‘I believe that now. It’s taken a long time. She didn’t have
your courage. Your character.’

No, she didn’t. ‘What life would you lead, if you could
choose?’ This moment was too important to care whether EROS’ listeners were
interested. They might have gone to a commercial for all she knew.

‘I want to go back to my roots. Making audio documentaries for
syndication. It’s what I always wanted to do.’

She thought about all those unnecessary hours of additional
sound he’d recorded. ‘Is there a market for that?’

‘I’ll make a market. My house would make a great studio.’

She smiled. His optimism was so infectious.

She placed her small hand on the glass, over his large one
where he leaned on it. His eyes glowed down into hers. ‘What else?’ she
whispered.

‘I’m going to travel more. See amazing things. Record amazing
things. My world has grown way too tiny.’

‘You won’t be able to travel.’ She laughed, though it was more
of a cry. ‘You’ll be poor.’

‘You forget, I run marathons. I’ll run the world on foot if I
have to.’

He would, too, this new Zander. The best of the two Zanders. A
tear streaked down her face. She curled her fingers on the glass and wished she
could touch his.

‘What else?’

‘I’m going to get a new gardener.’

The rapid change in direction threw her. ‘What happened to
Tony?’

He shrugged and smiled, but it was nervous. ‘Tony won’t live
in.’

‘You want a live-in gardener?’ He might not be able to afford
that, either.

He nodded. ‘If you’re free.’

Behind her, the announcers gasped, as one. And it saved her the
trouble.

She had to swallow twice to get the words out. ‘You want me to
be your gardener?’

He curled his fingers to match hers. ‘I want you to have the
garden. And you’re going to need to tend to it every day.’

‘You want me to live in your house?’ she whispered.

‘For ever, George. With me.’

‘But you don’t want to get married? You told me.’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to get hurt. But that hasn’t
worked. I hurt every day because I’m not with you. So I’m cutting my
losses.’

All over London women probably gasped, but Georgia knew exactly
what that meant.

‘Ever the romantic, Alek,’
an
announcer said in both their ears.

Zander didn’t laugh. Neither did she.

‘I love you, Georgia,’ he whispered through the glass, down the
line and out of three million radio speakers. ‘I thought I was managing the rest
of my life but the moments with you were like a blazing beacon and they spilled
light on just how dull the rest of my existence has become.’ He took a breath.
‘It’s lucrative but it’s nothing without you. Totally empty.’

Tears clogged her throat. She struggled to clear them.

‘Are you proposing, Alek?’
the
second announcer prompted, scenting a ratings slaughter.

‘Marriage? No,’ he breathed, and her heart lurched. ‘When I do
that I’ll do it somewhere infinitely more special than my workplace.’ He tucked
his phone to his ear and pressed a second hand up against the glass. ‘But I am
proposing a future. A life together. A second chance for both of us.’

Georgia stared at him through the glass, speechless. Then she
ripped her headphones and mic off and turned for the door.

The announcers went into panic mode but she didn’t care. They’d
talk their way out of it; they always did. They could earn their enormous pay.
She threw her gratitude to the young work-experience girl, grinning from ear to
ear, who held the studio door open for her so that she could practically run
through it.

Outside, the whole office stood, transfixed, staring at the
studio doors. She ignored them. Except for Casey who bounced on two feet, tears
streaming down her face, both hands pressed to her excited mouth.

Zander met her the moment she burst through the door. Swept her
up and locked her to his strong body, turning slowly, eyes squeezed shut.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he murmured over and over.

‘For what?’ she gasped, lifting her face from the crook of his
neck. ‘Practically proposing on air?’

‘For letting you go. For making you go.’

‘I needed to stand alone. I needed to find that part of myself
and know I could survive it.’

He sighed. ‘Your courage shamed me.’

‘No...’

‘But it inspired me, too. To be authentic. To risk
everything.’

‘Did you think I’d say no?’

‘I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t planning on calling in when I went
into that studio. I just saw you and you were so radiant and...
fine
...it boiled my blood.’

She tipped her head. ‘It made you angry that I was doing
well?’