Oliver's day

THEREFORE from Day 21's Pryce-callback, Ollie sat at the bookshop counter on Monday morning and an email from Helen at BBC Radio 4 landed in his inbox — the audition was booked for the last Monday of September, lean personal still in the subject line — and he read it three times while a customer waited to pay for a paperback, and the status flip was the BBC logo on his phone screen above the till while Miriam watched from the back without comment. By evening he had typed a reply to Yara — four sentences, I heard you and I'm not changing it and I am sorry in that order — and pressed send before he could delete it. At the bookshop on his break a woman came to the counter with a Margaret Drabble and he recognised her from the showcase — Rae, the Sally Rooney woman — and she said quietly I came to find you, and they stood at the counter for four minutes while the shop was quiet and Miriam smiled her non-smile. The romance: a woman had crossed London to find him in a bookshop. The recognition: she had known his name without him saying it. He walked home and decided, by the time he turned onto his road, that the month was now a countdown to a quiet room in Broadcasting House.