I was terrified the first time I had to pick up the phone to call Edna O’Brien at her house in London. I pictured a grande dame in a Georgian manse.

At the time, the mid-90s, I was a 28-year-old senior publicist in the publishing business, working for Dutton and its paperback line, Plume, and Ms. O’Brien was more than three decades into a storied writing career.

But she was easy to talk to, and we became fast phone friends. As we discussed plans for promoting her most recent novel, “House of Splendid Isolation,” we found we had something in common: men. The unavailable kind, in particular.

Ralph Fiennes had, unbeknown to him, captured our hearts. That year he was playing Hamlet on Broadway, and so in love was I that I saw the play four times.

I’d buy a cheap seat high in the balcony and spend the first act searching out empty spots in the orchestra. At intermission, I’d steal one to watch the rest of the play — and the blessed spit flying from Mr. Fiennes’s mouth with every “fie” — in style.

I thought about Ralph like he was actually in my life, which is probably why I mentioned him to Edna on the phone. While I was busy arranging her tour stops and dates, The New York Post’s Page Six was reporting on the backstage romance blooming between Mr. Fiennes and Francesca Annis, an actress 18 years his senior who played Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. I’d share these updates with Edna who, I sensed, was a bit envious of Ms. Annis.