OMG, you're brilliant - that is it! I found an online copy here (http://www.scribd.com/doc/3720/Fleming-Ian-Bond-09-Thunderball), and what I'm remembering may be found starting on page 124 of 189 (or search for 'my Hero').
Just goes to show how my memory has mashed things up, then, thinking it was in a children's book. In my defence, though, I read this book at least fifteen years ago, possibly more, and I suppose I can see how I'd have got confused over time, because she is looking back to her adolescence.
Anyway, that's definitely what I was remembering, and I'm thrilled to have been able to track it down and read it again. A great passage, and I can very much see how it would have appealed to me as a female reader in her early teens, irredeemably given to the same sorts of fantasies myself. Could the real-life appearance which I thought happened later in the book be something to do her coming to think of Bond as a kind of incarnation of the Hero, perhaps?
no subject
Just goes to show how my memory has mashed things up, then, thinking it was in a children's book. In my defence, though, I read this book at least fifteen years ago, possibly more, and I suppose I can see how I'd have got confused over time, because she is looking back to her adolescence.
Anyway, that's definitely what I was remembering, and I'm thrilled to have been able to track it down and read it again. A great passage, and I can very much see how it would have appealed to me as a female reader in her early teens, irredeemably given to the same sorts of fantasies myself. Could the real-life appearance which I thought happened later in the book be something to do her coming to think of Bond as a kind of incarnation of the Hero, perhaps?