Фиона Гибсон – The Woman Who Met Her Match: The laugh out loud romantic comedy you need to read in 2018 (страница 10)

In the kitchen now, I wave through the window at Stu and Bob, his friend and business cohort, who are deep in conversation at the table in our tiny back garden. Prowling for something to eat, I discover prized treasure in the form of leftover spaghetti and fresh pesto – clearly Stu’s work – in a pan on the hob. Too hungry to bother with heating it up, I shovel it down straight from the pan before joining Stu and Bob in the garden.

‘Hey, Lorrie,’ Bob says, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. Parsley Force has certainly knocked back their beer consumption, as most of their call-outs happen in the evenings and late into the night.

‘Hi, Bob. How’s it going?’

‘Really good,’ he enthuses. ‘Better than we could’ve hoped, amazingly.’

I glance at the A4 pad covered in scribbled notes on the wrought-iron table. ‘Plans for world domination?’

He nods and grins. ‘Well, expansion plans. Marketing, social media, that kind of thing. We’ve probably taken things as far as we can just relying on word of mouth …’

‘He reckons we need to start promoting,’ Stu offers. ‘A newsletter, competitions, more activity on the Facebook page …’

Bob laughs, adjusting the black-rimmed spectacles that dominate his boyish face. ‘Poor old granddad, afraid of social media. Thinks it’s just some conspiracy to glean all our personal information …’

‘Well, what else is it?’ Stu retorts.

‘It’s useful,’ I remark. ‘What about keeping in touch with old friends? Everyone’s scattered all over the place these days. How else would we all stay connected?’

‘Er, via telephonic apparatus?’ Stu smirks.

‘Okay, but when are we supposed to phone each other?’ I ask. ‘We’re all working all day and who has time for long conversations at night? Without social media, people would just fall off the radar …’

Stu shrugs. ‘Friends who fall off the radar can’t have been that important in the first place.’

‘But I don’t want to lose people,’ I insist. ‘And anyway, what about my dad? How else would we be able to keep in touch when he’s 12,000 miles away in Australia? It’s over a year since I’ve seen him for real but with Facebook I still get to see him in his silly yellow shorts, trying to light a barbecue, getting told off by Jill for squirting lighter fuel all over the prawns …’

Stu shrugs. ‘Okay, there is that …’

‘And it’s how we’ll spread the word,’ Bob adds. ‘Build up a wider customer base, get people talking, maybe even attract some press coverage …’

‘Who’d want to interview us?’ Stu asks.

‘I don’t know. Someone might find us inspiring …’

‘You could be photographed looking all macho in your biker leathers,’ I add with a grin. ‘That could boost your customer base—’

‘Or close us down,’ Bob sniggers as I leave them to thrash out their plans in peace.

Alone in the living room, I find myself wishing the kids were around tonight. These days, I barely see them. Cam’s often working or hanging out with Mo and the rest of his mates, and Amy loves being at Bella’s. Who can blame her, with their semi-wild garden and the summerhouse Bella’s dad built? Even at fifteen, the girls still love to ‘camp’ in it. Anyway, I shouldn’t be reliant on my children for company.

I curl up on the sofa with my laptop and, being more of the Bob persuasion where social media is concerned, I log onto Facebook with the intention of catching up with Dad.

Ah, a friend request. I click it open and my heart seems to clunk.

Antoine Rousseau.

Antoine from the Massif Central? Antoine who saw me swimming in my C&A bra and pants? It can’t be him. Occasionally, I’ve wondered what he’s been up to over the years – and, okay, when I first joined Facebook I had a quick search for him. Okay, okay, I spent hours trawling for my teenage love – just out of curiosity, of course. There were so many men called Antoine Rousseau – none of them looking anything like the boy I remembered – that I gave up.

I stare at his name. As he doesn’t have a proper profile picture, I’m still not convinced it’s the Antoine who dumped me in favour of bra-less Nicole. The photo is of an orange sitting on a white plate. What’s that all about?

I open his page but, as we’re not Facebook friends, all I can see is a small selection of pictures: blowsy pink flowers in a garden, a glass of wine on a garden table. And, in bold black type, what looks like one of those motivational phrases, which I have an aversion to in any language and can’t even bother trying to translate.

There is one picture of a person. As it’s taken from a distance on what looks like an otherwise deserted beach, it’s hard at first to tell whether it’s him. I peer at it, and slowly he comes into focus.

A tall, slim man with light brown hair, squinting in the sunshine. A lopsided smile. Bit Boden, actually, in a loose, windblown checked shirt and stone-coloured chinos. My God, he does look like ‘my’ Antoine. In fact, I’m sure he is. What on earth possessed him to contact me now, thirty years since we last saw each other?

Bob’s voice floats in from the garden. ‘We need a proper website. People expect it. It’s like a shop window …’ His voice fades as I’m transported, as a shy and chubby teenager, back to 1986, and a lake deep in the woods where the most beautiful boy I had ever set eyes on handed me his T-shirt to dry myself …

Antoine Rousseau, trampler of my tender sixteen-year-old heart.

Decline or accept?

Bastard.

I click accept.

Chapter Five

I sit there, poised for a message to say hi, how are you? It’s been a long time! Pathetic, I know. Beneath my undeniably middle-aged exterior, I am clearly still that desperate schoolgirl yearning to glimpse a blue airmail envelope bearing a French stamp. Lorrie Foster, written in his spidery hand – oh, the thrill of it!

Irritated with myself – haven’t I matured one iota during the intervening thirty years? – I call out goodnight to Stu and Bob, who have relocated to the kitchen table, and carry my laptop upstairs in the affectedly casual manner of someone planning to order some new saucepans from Amazon.

While I’m getting ready for bed, I keep checking Facebook, my gaze constantly flicking towards it as if I have lost all control of my eyeball-swivelling muscles. My fingers are tingling with the effort of not messaging him. Hello Antoine, I want to type, this is a bit of a surprise! Or rather, Have you any idea how heartbroken I was, and how I took solace in all those ‘forbidden’ Viennettas Mum kept stashed in the chest freezer in the garage, plus stolen Dubonnet from her drinks cabinet? Of course, I don’t really harbour any bitterness now. It was just a teenage thing, a holiday infatuation that fizzled out. After everything that happened subsequently – meeting David, having our children and then losing him – Antoine seems barely significant. But still … what does the shitbag heartbreaker want? Curiosity niggles at me like an itch, and I can’t help wondering what he’d make of me now, aged forty-six, a generous size sixteen and currently wearing Primark pyjamas with penguins printed all over them.

Of course, now we’re Facebook friends, I can access Antoine’s entire photo archive and pore over his grown-up life. At least, the Facebook version which, as everyone knows, is carefully curated to demonstrate an unfailingly happy and enviable existence. However, as a test of willpower, I decide to postpone the pleasure. Instead, I prop up my pillows in bed and force myself into the calmer territory of eBay, where I try to concentrate on finding a suitable dress to wear to my mother’s wedding in three weeks’ time.

Mum’s love life: now there’s a template to avoid. She grumbled about Dad constantly, yet fell apart after turfing him out of the house when I was ten years old. There followed a series of ill-advised liaisons, all ending in heartbreak – but now, thankfully, she is deeply in love with a nice bit of posh called Hamish Sowerbutt, who’s over a decade younger, terribly kind in his scatty way, and clearly adores her. The fact that I don’t have my wedding outfit sorted is causing Mum no small amount of agitation. However, so far, I haven’t found anything suitable. ‘Remember it’s a classy, formal affair,’ she retorted recently. What is she expecting me to turn up in? Ermine?

Then I’m back on Facebook, unable to resist any longer, and now examining numerous pictures of presumably corporate events Antoine has attended. The men are all dressed virtually identically in dark suits, the women in smart jackets and dresses in navy or grey. How disappointing. This is Antoine at work – all professional smiles and handshakes – and gives away nothing about his personal life. There isn’t even anything to indicate the sort of company he works for, or what his job actually is.

In one picture, Antoine – again suited and, it must be said, dashingly handsome – is standing in front of an audience with a microphone, giving some sort of speech. I picture the honey-tanned boy with floppy, overgrown hair and golden skin, covering my neck in tiny feathery kisses. He now looks like the sort of man who has manicures. I stare and stare until each picture has imprinted itself onto my brain.