The Woman Who Met Her Match: The laugh out loud romantic comedy you need to read in 2018

A few months after the accident, it all came out that Anneka Salworth, the thirty-two-year-old woman driving the car that killed David, had had an epileptic fit at the wheel. She had been told by her consultant not to drive, and was charged with causing death by dangerous driving. Her defence centred around the snowy road conditions, but she was found guilty and given a five-year prison sentence. I could have gone and seen it all played out in court, but took the kids camping to Cornwall instead.

It was late spring and still a little chilly, but building fires on the beach, and seeing Cam and Amy truly having fun for the first time since the accident, lifted my spirits more than any guilty verdict could. I even braved the freezing water with Amy. Swimming in the sea had been the thing she and David had loved to do together more than anything; he always adored ploughing through the waves. I am a rather feeble, splashy swimmer, and Cam always preferred to lie on a towel with a book. But we swam and cooked and laughed together, and during those few days my anger seemed to blow away on the sharp sea breeze. In fact, Anneka Salworth, with her droopy perm and doleful grey eyes – of course I’d Googled her and read the brief news reports – now seemed no more culpable than the snowy conditions that night, or me asking for a bottle of sauvignon.

I didn’t want to blame anyone. I just wanted to at least pretend to be a normal functioning family, and for the three of us to find a way to be happy again.

Naturally, I still think about David every day but, somehow, during the past seven years, we have all managed to find a new way of living. Work has been a lifeline as I have risen up through the ranks to the position of counter manager. Today, business is brisk throughout the rest of my shift, and by the time I arrive home, Amy has headed off to her best friend Bella’s while Cam, too, is on his way out.

‘Got to go,’ he says, giving me a speedy hug in the hallway. ‘Last-minute call, emergency thing ’cause someone’s sick. Gig on the Holloway Road …’

‘Oh, that’s great, love.’ Hopefully, this line of work will continue throughout Cam’s last school year. After that, he has vague notions to ‘try and get into sound engineering’, and I can’t help thinking, what would his dad have made of that? But then, I can’t think that way. Cam is a sociable, popular boy. He’ll get by. ‘Be careful,’ I add as an afterthought, at which he stops at the front door and smirks.

‘Be careful of what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Wires. Plugs. Electricals.’

He chuckles and pats my head as if I’m a fretful aunt. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not nine. I won’t go sticking my finger into anything.’ And with that, he’s off, clambering into his mate Mo’s revving, battered old van; Mo who, like Cam, is seventeen and barely shaves yet, so how can he possibly be in charge of a vehicle? It seems as scary a concept as the pair of them being let loose to perform a heart operation.

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.

At around midnight, I hear Cam coming in. ‘Okay, darling?’ I call out.

‘Yeah, good, thanks,’ he replies from the landing. ‘Managed not to fry myself on all those terrifying wires …’

‘Glad to hear it,’ I say with a smile. There’s some pottering about, then music starts up in his room – low volume and pretty mellow, nothing to complain about really – and I detect a whiff of smoke, which Cam might have brought home with him, although of course, venues have been non-smoking for years. He’s probably having a shifty roll-up out of his bedroom window. I know he does this – I’ve found the odd Rizla lying around, and those tiny cylindrical filter things. Although I don’t love the fact that he smokes, he’s assured me that it’s only occasional. When you think of the kind of stuff he could be getting up to, is it really worth falling out over something like three roll-ups a week? Anyway, at his age – post-Antoine, having just started my first job – I was smoking proper ciggies, sneaking them out of Mum’s packets.

Christ, I must have dozed off. I come to, groggily, with the main light still on and my laptop balanced perilously close to the edge of my bed. It’s 3.47 a.m. ‘Get a grip,’ I mutter, placing it on my bedside table.

Just one more check … a message! Whoop!

Hi Lorrie, here’s a recent pic from not so sunny Melbourne. Hope all’s good with you and the kids, love Dad xxx

My father, grinning in a wetsuit, the wet black rubber with banana yellow flashing doing a sterling job of holding in his small paunch. His arm is thrust around Jill, his wife, who’s bare-faced and grinning in a pink T-shirt, baggy shorts and a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Both looking great, I reply.

Hey, you’re up late! Been out at a party?

Who comes home from parties at this hour on a Monday night? Oh God, plenty of people do. How old and sour I have become.

No, just having trouble sleeping for some reason. Night, Dad. Love you. L xxx

*

I manage to get through the whole morning at work without checking Facebook on my phone. But at lunchtime, on my way out to buy a sandwich, I crack and message him.

Hi Antoine, I type, my heart rattling only slightly, what a surprise to receive a friend request from you. How are you?

There. Pretty neutral, I’d say.

I glide through the afternoon, reminding myself that this is nothing – just an innocent little friend request – and the very fact that I’m all het up about someone I haven’t seen since 1986 suggests that I really should get out more. Not on dates – definitely not dates – but out in the world generally. Take this summer, for instance. It’s not just my shaky finances to blame for the fact that I have no holiday planned. It’s the issue of who to go with. Naturally, Cameron doesn’t want to come away with me anymore; he and Mo have a vague notion of going to a couple of festivals. Pearl, who works as a nanny to extremely well-heeled families these days, is due back soon from working in Dubai, but the last thing she’ll want is to go away again. Other friends are happily ensconced with their families – two-parent families – and I can’t imagine Stu would want to come away and abandon Parsley Force for a week. Anyway, we’ve never been on holiday together. I think he’d be a bit taken aback if I asked.

In contrast, Amy is off to Bella’s family’s holiday home on the Algarve. ‘They’re so looking forward to it,’ Bella’s mum, Cecily, tells me when she drops off Amy that evening. ‘They’ve been talking about nothing else.’

‘Thanks so much for inviting her again,’ I tell Cecily as the girls disappear to the living room.

‘Oh, she’s such a pleasure to have around, and Bella would be bored stupid, stuck with just her brothers for company.’ She pauses and sips her tea at my kitchen table. ‘How about you? Are you managing to get away?’

I shake my head. ‘Maybe later in the year, I’m not sure yet.’

‘I should have asked you to come too. There’s room, you know, and you could get a last-minute flight, just fly to Faro and we’ll pick you up—’

‘Oh no, Amy would hate that …’ I correct myself, ‘I mean, she loves coming away with you. She had the best time last summer. It wouldn’t be the same if I tagged along.’

‘You wouldn’t be tagging,’ she insists, and it occurs to me that the real reason I have turned down previous offers to stay in Cecily and Gerry’s Portuguese villa is because … well, I don’t quite fit into their world. Although we have only got to know each other through our daughters’ friendship, I admire Cecily immensely; she’s a powerhouse of energy, taking charge of her four children without ever seeming to break into a sweat. However, en masse the Kentons are just a little too, well, perfect. No sugar is allowed in their house – ever. The only ‘biscuits’ permitted are seed-covered crispbreads by someone called ‘Dr Kaarg’; Cecily is always asking Stu to pick some up for her when he visits a certain out-of-the-way supermarket which stocks the entire Dr Kaarg range. Plus, it’s true that Amy enjoys the novelty of being away with the Kentons. Other people’s families always seem a little shinier than your own.

To swerve us away from my lack of holiday plans, I fill Cecily in on my latest dating adventure – the living sculpture, the conceptual art – at which she honks with laughter, strawberry blonde curls tumbling into her eyes.

‘Oh God, Lorrie. You must find a decent man who isn’t completely weird. Let me find you one. There are lots at work, handsome guys in their forties, divorced, bit of baggage, but then who hasn’t amassed some of that, at our age?’

‘Oh no, please don’t set me up. I’m not looking for any more dates …’

She helps herself to a slice of Stu’s recent bake – a particularly moist and delicious gingerbread – and takes an enthusiastic bite. The sugar ban doesn’t seem to extend beyond the boundaries of the Kentons’ home. ‘Well, what about meeting more men from that dating site?’

‘Oh, no, I’m coming off that …’

‘But you’ve hardly given it a chance!’

‘I have, Cecily. Three dates is quite enough—’

‘Three’s nothing in that sort of world.’

I laugh. ‘You don’t know that sort of world. You have no idea what it’s like to spend an evening with someone who drones on about how much he hates work – how the insurance business is killing him – and all you can do is stare at the three little brown pegs which you suspect might actually be teeth …’

‘Ugh, really? It provides good stories, at least.’

But who wants to go on dates just for stories? I reflect as Cecily takes another bite of cake. She and Gerry have been together since, well, forever, and still adore each other. As well as Bella – who’s an excellent pianist – they have Matthew, Oliver and George, all accomplished classical musicians with impeccable manners and hearty red cheeks. Their Victorian townhouse gleams with gilt-framed accolades.

‘Oh, there is someone who’s crawled out of the woodwork,’ I add, lifting my laptop from the worktop. ‘See what you think of this …’ I open Antoine’s Facebook page and click on the beach picture.

‘Mmmm, he’s a bit of a fox. Who is he?’

‘First love,’ I explain. ‘Well, first obsession really, but it felt like true love at the time. Mum packed me off to France at sixteen to stay with my penpal. He was her older brother and he’s just sent me a friend request …’

‘So you had a thing with him?’

I nod. ‘Just a holiday romance, I suppose, although there wasn’t any “just” about it at the time …’

‘Let’s see more pictures,’ she enthuses as I start to click through them. ‘So many work events,’ she adds. ‘Conferences, meetings, that kind of thing …’

‘It’s all very corporate,’ I agree, hearing the front door open and Stu striding in.

‘Hey, Stu,’ Cecily says with a smile.

‘Hey, Cess.’ He always calls her this. I’m not sure she likes it much, but she does like Stu, so she lets him get away with it. ‘What’s this?’ he enquires, glancing over my shoulder. ‘You’re Facebook friends with an orange?’

‘It’s actually a person,’ I explain. ‘Remember Antoine, from that French trip? The one who stopped writing—’

‘Not the shithead who broke your heart?’ Stu asks.

‘Yep, that’s the one,’ I say wryly.

He turns to Cecily. ‘She was devastated. Cried for weeks. Of course, it was left to me to pick up the pieces …’

I sense my cheeks colouring as Cecily crooks a brow. ‘And you accepted his friend request?’ she remarks.

‘Well, yes, but only because—’

‘So, did he poke you?’ Stu cuts in.

‘Stu, she was only sixteen!’ Cecily exclaims.

‘No, I mean a Facebook poke.’

I laugh derisively. ‘No one pokes anyone these days. No one’s poked anyone since about 2007 …’

‘No, I heard it was coming back,’ he says, suddenly quite the social media guru. ‘People are poking each other all over the place. So, you didn’t tell me he’d been in touch?’

Cecily and I exchange a quick look.

‘It was only yesterday,’ I remark.

‘Oh, right. So, what does he want?’ He cranes forward for a closer look, radiating disapproval.

‘Just to be friends, I guess …’

‘Friends?’ he repeats.

‘Yes, is there anything wrong with that?’ I’m starting to feel rather crowded in now, and slightly regret turning this utterly insignificant incident into a public event. I decide not to mention that I have already messaged Antoine, and have yet to receive a reply.

‘I s’pose not,’ Stu says with a shrug, ‘if you really want to be in contact again …’

‘Well, I think he’s gorgeous,’ Cecily adds with a grin.

‘He’s all right,’ I say lightly.

‘Oh, come on! Look at those lovely dark eyes, Lorrie. The chiselled cheekbones. Very sexy in that polished professional sort of way …’

‘Puh.’ With a snort, Stu ambles away. He opens the fridge, peers inside and closes it again.

‘Well, that’s enough Antoine for me,’ Cecily adds, jumping up. ‘Better head back before I get overheated.’ She turns towards the kitchen door. ‘Bella darling? We really need to get going …’

And off they go, shortly followed by Stu, who’s called out on another job – emergency unsalted butter required in Crouch End – so, with Amy enjoying one of her customary soaks in the bath, I hunker down at the kitchen table and scroll through yet more of Antoine’s pictures.

More personal insights into his life is what I’m looking for: a wife, a girlfriend, children. A couple of photos I missed earlier were taken at some kind of gathering in a garden, in which he’s wearing a casual shirt and jeans, but there are no couply pictures, and there’s nothing to indicate whether he’s married or not. I examine picture after picture like some rabidly obsessed teenager, and when I check the clock on the cooker I realise over an hour has passed since Stu went out. That’s how long I’ve spent gawping at someone I haven’t seen since I was sixteen years old. What’s wrong with me? I am forty-six, I have a tunic to iron for work tomorrow, there’s a load of saggy old vegetables to dispose of in the fridge.

Allowing myself one final peek, I click on the picture that isn’t of a person or thing, but a phrase – perhaps one of those mottoes for life. Nuala pins them up whenever we’re all gathered together in a hotel for a La Beauté away-day: Because every woman is beautiful. Antoine’s reads: La vie est comme une bicyclette. Pour garder votre équilibre, vous devez continuer à avancer.