Right Now

21. You've never loved the sound of your voice

When I got up the next morning it was like the universe had picked up on my sunny mood and had turned on a day that reflected it perfectly. The sky was a perfect cornflower blue, without a single cloud, and the sun was so warm on my skin I felt like I was getting burnt as I walked across the quad towards the School of English, even though it was still first thing in the morning. I was so happy I almost skipped, and it was all down to Harry.

I pulled out my phone and checked the time – 9.14am. I knew he had a meeting at 10am, so he was likely to be up already, even though he hadn't got home until 1.22am – which was when he'd texted me to tell me he'd arrived safely. I opened his message and stared at it as I took a seat on an empty bench in the sunshine. God, I wanted to ring him so much. I was desperate to hear that lovely voice. But what excuse could I come up with to phone him out of the blue?

As I stared at the name Susie Squirrel, it occurred to me that I hadn't actually phoned Harry yet – it had always been him who called me. I thought about the way we had kissed last night and decided, sod it. Who needed an excuse? I would just call him.

He answered fairly quickly but instead of a friendly "Hello" I was greeted by a curt, "Fuck off, I'm not interested."

What the hell?

He was all over me like a rash last night, and now he was telling me to get lost.

Really?

"Harry?"

"Oh, shit – Emma, it's you," he said. And then he burst out laughing.

"Who did you think it was?" I asked.

"Grimmy," he said. "Nick Grimshaw. I'm so sorry."

"Why the hell would you think that?"

He did sound half asleep, to be fair.

He was still chuckling as he said, "When I got home last night I changed your name in my phone to Nicholas G – after your little revelation about your nickname. I thought it would be a good idea to not have you in my phone under your name – just in case somebody goes snooping or I get hacked. And I thought having you under Nicholas G would be funny."

"Yeah, hilarious," I said. I was still mortified my mother had told him that story.

"Trouble is, when I first saw it just now I immediately thought of Grimmy – I'm not quite with it yet this morning."

"Don't tell me you've now got two Nicholas Gs in your phone, Harry?"

"Nah, just one - he's under Grimmy. But I forgot that for a moment. Plus he keeps bugging me to do some stupid prank or other on his radio show, and I thought for a minute that it was him ringing to try to get me to do something. I'm so sorry Emma, that can't have been very nice to hear that."

"Well, it wasn't the nicest greeting I've ever had," I admitted.

"Can we start again?" he asked. "I will answer the call with a proper greeting this time."

"OK," I conceded. "Shall I phone you back?"

"No, just make a ringing noise."

"Really Harry? You want me to make a ringing noise? "

"Yeah, so I know when to give you a nice greeting you deserve. How do I know when to answer if you don't make a ringing noise?"

OK, so that was logical in a kind of loopy way.

"So... any particular ringtone?" I asked him. He'd given me my own special phone nickname, perhaps I had my very own ringtone too.

"Well, now you come to mention it... I haven't done it yet, but I was planning on getting you your own ringtone. I was thinking about that Joe Cocker song, You Are So Beautiful. Do you know it?"