looked up expectantly. ‘Ready?’
‘Think so,’ I replied but my voice gave me away. It was like a vole had swallowed a helium balloon.
Fumi arrived with her agent and a bodyguard the size of a mobile home. He had a Russian accent as thick as his neck and was called Igor. Against a backdrop of shrieks outside, where the queue now snaked down the street, Zach introduced everyone. Fumi was wearing a short pink dress under a furry coat, spotted black and white like a Dalmatian. Her feet were laced in a pair of black ankle boots, her nails were long and silver and her hair was bubble-gum pink. The dog was asleep in her arms. Norris’s mouth fell open and he gasped as if seeing the Pyramids or the Coliseum for the first time.
‘This is Percy,’ Fumi said, holding one of the pug’s paws out for Norris to shake. She had a girlish American accent and didn’t seem like the sort of diva who’d demand fizzy water and apples in her dressing room. Standing between the twin pillars of Igor and Norris, she seemed more like a schoolgirl.
Norris extended a hand and shook the paw. Zach lifted his camera from the strap around his neck and quickly took a picture. ‘Hello and welcome,’ said Norris. ‘We’re delighted to have you here.’
‘The pleasure’s ours,’ said the agent. She was an American called Jennifer who looked like she’d never eaten a carbohydrate in her life. ‘Where can we put ourselves?’
‘Downstairs,’ said Zach, ‘follow me. Watch your head there, Igor.’
Norris told me to open the door and let the ticket-holders in; Eugene directed them to their seats, mostly gangs of teenage girls.
I smiled at snippets of chat I overheard as they filed past.
‘I saw her hair!’
‘I saw Percy!’
‘Do you think she’ll do selfies?’
‘I need that coat in my life!’
Ruby was hovering at the back. ‘Hi, Flo, I was waiting for Rory but I can’t see him.’
‘Don’t worry. He’s not here yet. Will you just save a seat? And I’ll text him your number.’
She nodded. ‘How you feeling?’
‘All right.’ This was a fib. I was now so nervous I thought I might throw up on my shoes.
I apologized to the dozen or so fans left outside without tickets, locked the door and texted Rory with Ruby’s details in case he needed to be let in. Upstairs came the scraping of chairs and murmur of excited voices; downstairs I could only hear Jennifer’s undulating American murmur. I picked up my notecards and headed for the stockroom.
‘Everyone ready?’ I said, sticking my head inside it. Igor was holding Percy, a ludicrous sight in his tree-trunk arms. Fumi was sitting on a chair, busy with her phone. Jennifer turned and smiled brightly at me.
‘I think so. Shall we do this?’
Feeling as if a strange, autonomous power had overtaken my legs, I led them upstairs and gestured at a couple of reserved seats for Jennifer and Igor, who handed the dog to Fumi. As she, Percy and I made our way to the front, the room went quiet. We sat and I squinted at the back to see Zach holding his thumb up. I glanced at Fumi, who was clutching a copy of her own book. Percy had settled on her lap and closed his eyes.
That was when I realized I could hear my own heart beating. It seemed unfeasibly loud.
‘Hello, er, everyone,’ I said, leaning forward into the microphone. ‘And welcome to Frisbee Books for an evening with a special guest who needs very little introduction, the supremely talented poet Fumi and her dog, Percy!’
I glanced at Percy as the claps and cheering filled the room. His eyes remained closed. Presumably he was used to this.
‘Thank you. Thank you all, thank you so much for coming,’ Fumi said, her voice hushing the applause. ‘I’m delighted to be here in London with you all to celebrate my new book, Bad Fairy’ – a few whoops in the audience at this – ‘so I’d like to read a few extracts if I may.’
She read to silence in the room while I tried to stop my notecards from wilting in my clammy hands. There was another rowdy burst of clapping when Fumi finished the final haiku. Called ‘Apocalypse’, it was about the time she broke a nail.
‘Thank you, Fumi, that was brilliant,’ I said when the room had fallen quiet again. ‘And as you said, this is your new book, your second anthology by the age of twenty-one, following on