Greatest Love Story of All Time (34 page)

As always, I was early. I liked being early for dates. I took a swig of my soda water, which I’d asked the
barman to disguise as gin and tonic, and looked around. Still no sign of Benj. The afternoon sun was hard and pale but still warm; it illuminated thousands of little bubbles cruising round and round in my glass and bathed the fashionable people around me with a lovely antique sort of glow, like a sepia picture, suspended in 2010, young, happy, beautiful.

Ten days until 23 March.

Bored, I pretended to read a leaflet about something called ‘Dances with Cupcakes’ in Dalston.
Dances with Cupcakes?
For crying out loud!

I got my phone out to call Leonie, knowing this would make her day. But as I did so, Benj plonked himself down opposite me, dumping a breezy kiss on my cheekbone on the way. He didn’t bother to take his Wayfarers off and I knew immediately that I would not find love with him. He had a fashion moustache.

‘Hi there, Frances,’ he whined, pulling limply on the sleeves of his jumper. ‘Sorry I’m late. I was, y’know, tied up with some really difficult shit, man. God, life can be so fucked up at times, but I’m just playing it cool and letting everyone else run around screaming. Oooh, bit of an accident with fake tan on your hand there.’

I downed my ‘G and T’ and wished it was the real thing. I’d not missed alcohol all that much but the prospect of two or three hours in the company of this whingey moustache person suddenly made a glass of wine seem like the greatest thing on earth. ‘Oh dear,’ I said brightly. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Well, I’m running this creative event with my ex-girlfriend and she’s being really difficult about it – Oh, shit, man, you’ve got one of our flyers there. Well, you’ll know all about “Dances with Cupcakes”,then. She’s cooking the spare cakes, right, and she wants me to go halves with her on the ingredients and even the bloody
electricity bill
for her flat. And I’m just like, “Flora, this is about
creativity,
not electricity bills,” and then her flatmate gets all arsey with me and, well, you know what it’s like. Now they’re stressing and sending me pissy texts and, fuck it, I’m so not in that sort of a space right now.’

I wondered if it would enrage him further if I asked for a sneak preview of his most recent cupcake dance when his phone went.

‘Flora. Dude. Can we not fight? I’m on a date.’

Way to go, Benj
.

Flora, even if she’d only been calling to make peace, let rip completely. I blotted them out and thought about Dave. He’d sent me a very sincere email of apology this morning, which had been full of remorse and humour. ‘I’ve had a bit of a rough time of late,’ he’d said. I wondered what that meant. Dave generally didn’t have rough times; his life was universally regarded as peachy. Beautiful girlfriend, top-ranking news cameraman in London, and owner of stunning old house in Wimbledon Village. Had he and Freya fallen out? Or was something going on with his family in Glasgow?

I glanced back at Benj. His face and voice had taken on a thundery tone and he clutched his iPhone with the kind of ferocity that Duke Ellington employed when holding on to my feet during an ambush. Keen to escape I raised my hand and eyebrows in a pint gesture and he nodded.

Relieved, I went inside where they were playing rather unexpected piano music. Next to a clump of teenage trendies, a single old lady sat at the bar wearing a pinafore dress over a ribbed turtle-neck jumper with long socks and sandals. The incongruity of London never failed to delight me. ‘Pint of Kronenberg and another fake G and T,’ I said to the barman, and fished around in my wallet.

The woman tapped me on the shoulder as I handed over a grubby tenner. ‘Young lady.’

She had a lovely face, knowing if not a little wild, and bobbed grey hair pulled back under a neat tortoiseshell clip. ‘Hello,’ I said. She seemed like the most normal person here.

‘I saw you outside just now. You looked like you were contemplating suicide,’ she said, without any trace of irony.

I sniggered. ‘Not far off. I’m on a bad date.’

She nodded, as if she already knew. Was I talking to some sort of witch?

‘Yes, I saw that. Dear, I felt that your heart was elsewhere. Not with this man. Am I right?’

I suddenly had a vision of the first time I’d met
Michael, so clear and sharp that it almost winded me. There he was, standing in the doorway of the UN office in Mitrovica, winter sun splicing over his shoulder, looking sleepy and kind. In the third person I watched myself, young, silly, dressed like a 1980s Easter egg, buffooning my way through our first five minutes in each other’s lives.

The woman was watching me in a kindly manner. She cocked her head to one side.

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘My heart is
definitely
somewhere else.’ She beamed. ‘And, in fact, you’ve just done me a favour. Thank you. I don’t need to be here,’ I said. I took the drinks and the change from the barman and stood before her, smiling. ‘I’m going to go home.’

She smiled.

This was all a bit bizarre. ‘Er, thanks …’ I added lamely.

‘No problem. A contribution to my beer fund wouldn’t go amiss,’ she said.

Amused and appalled in equal measure, I handed over a fiver from my change and left. This was not the place for me today.

I snaked my way back through the tables to where Benj was sitting, still yelling into his iPhone. I felt very calm and clear. Unless I was going to fall wildly in love with Benj, which I was most definitely not, I would far rather be cracking open an elderflower cordial on the steps with Stefania and Duke Ellington, and preparing myself for my reunion with Michael. It
wasn’t honest for me to sit here and talk to this wazzock about his cupcakes.

I put his pint in front of him, picked up my coat and caught his eye. He saw what was going on and waved me off dismissively.

I was free. I bought a pot of Ethiopian stew from a smiley man at a stall and got on the bus home, feeling unnaturally serene. When a teenager sat next to me and started playing speed garage through his mobile phone, I jiggled along with him to the flavas.

I arrived back in my yard forty minutes later to find Stefania exploding from her shed looking flustered. I began to say hello but was cut short – very short, in fact – by the sight of Dave shuffling out behind her, blinking like a mole.

I was stunned. ‘Dave! Er, what’s going on? You’re not having an affair with Stefania, are you?’

He reached for his fags. ‘All right, Fran. Er, no. I was having a massage.’

‘A
what
?’

He raised his eyebrows and lit up.

Stefania and I said, ‘Stop smoking,’ at the same time.

‘A massage. My back’s all fucked up from shooting all the time. How was your date?’

I sighed. ‘Oh, useless. I walked out on him, actually. I couldn’t take it.’

Dave whistled. ‘You walked
out
on him? Jesus, that’s a wee bit rude, isn’t it?’

‘No. He was a complete bell end. How he’d managed
to take time out of his busy schedule masturbating lovingly in front of a mirror I have no idea. Anyway, what on earth are you doing having massages at six p.m. on a Saturday? Are you
sure
you aren’t knocking off my neighbour?’

Stefania went back inside abruptly.

Had I hit on something?
Surely not …
I felt a bit ill.

Dave’s smile had disappeared. ‘Your manners, Franny, are fuckin’ bad,’ he said softly. ‘Stefania is wonderful. Stop embarrassing her.’

I felt a little bit uneasy.
Why
was Stefania massaging him in her shed? She came back out with a broom and started sweeping the yard.

I was mortified. ‘Dave, you know I adore her,’ I whispered, as Stefania stalked across towards the tree. ‘Why are you being so weird?’

But he was off.

Astonished, I watched him walk out of my yard. ‘Hey, Dave,’ I called.

‘Aye.’ He didn’t even bother to turn round.

‘Dave, I was just messing. Come back.’

Now he turned and smiled wanly. ‘You’re OK, Fran. No worries.’ And with that he was gone in a cloud of messy hair and fag smoke.

Stefania was still sweeping. ‘Stefania, what on earth was that about? Since when did you start giving people massages?’

She carried on sweeping. ‘Since always. I just do not invite you for ze massage because you are a pain
in ze fanny and you vill always be vanting ze massage,’ she said, smiling evilly.

‘Come up to mine for some of that elderflower stuff. I want to celebrate getting to the end of this Eight Date Deal.’ Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

‘
Nearly
to the end,’ I added.

She smiled and came with me.

I managed not to interrogate her about Dave but it was hard. A busy roll-call of possible explanations was tapping away in my head but none of them really felt right. Why the hell was she giving him massages on a Saturday evening? Something about this situation was wrong. I felt uncomfortable about it. And I felt uncomfortable about feeling uncomfortable.

After twenty minutes I was dragged out of my reverie by my first ever text message from Freddy, which restored my smile pretty quickly. Fran. Freddy. I hope your date today is shit. Our date tomorrow is going to be amazing. I giggled. Freddy was awesome! It was really quite a shame I’d met him at a time like this.

‘Who is zat message from?’ Stefania asked suspiciously. She was curled up on the sofa with a large cup of horrible green tea.

‘Freddy, my date for tomorrow,’ I said, as I closed my phone.

She beamed. ‘And he sends a good message?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, he does, actually. A really good message.’

Stefania beamed even harder. ‘I sink maybe he
could be Ze One!’ she announced excitedly, karate-chopping the air. ‘Seriously, Fran! Zis could be it!’

‘Stefania, do you not want it to work out with me and Michael?’ I asked. ‘Do you not care how I feel about him?’

She eyed me beadily. Stefania really did have quite amazing eyes. Dark, feline and secretive, shaded by long eyelashes that had no need of mascara. ‘I do care,’ she said abruptly. Duke Ellington, who was sitting quietly on her knee, as if he was the sort of cat who always sat quietly on knees, looked up benevolently at her. ‘But I sink you are forgetting zat he ended ze relationship, Francees. I vant you to be viz someone who really, really loves you. A wild love! A crazy love! I want yours to be ze greatest love story of all time!’ She threw her arms wide and grinned ecstatically.

‘And you think I’m going to find this with Freddy off the Internet?’ I asked eventually.

She shrugged. ‘Vhy not?’

I decided that Stefania was functionally insane. ‘Have
you
ever felt love like that, Stefania?’ I asked suddenly. She looked down at her tea and I knew straight away I’d made an error. Time after time we’d been here – me asking about her personal life and her turning into a brick wall. So when she broke into a seemingly uncontrollable smile I was more than a little surprised.

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Yes, I know vhat it is like to
love someone like zat.’ She smiled down at Duke Ellington. ‘And, Fran, it’s vonderful.’ Then she giggled and hugged herself.

Later on as I twirled some home-made coleslaw round my plate, I pondered this bizarre exchange. Stefania did not make faces like that. Stefania did not giggle like a schoolgirl and hug herself. Stefania liked to scream and karate-chop things!
What was happening?

I batted away the image of Dave coming out of her shed earlier on. It was impossible. And wrong. And … something else, which I couldn’t put my finger on.

As I changed into my pyjamas a few minutes later, my phone buzzed. I smiled: Freddy!

But it wasn’t Freddy. It was Michael. And his message was the best thing I’d ever read. Furthermore, it proved that this was
exactly
the kind of fireworks-and-explosions love Stefania had described: Franny. My beautiful girl. Sorry for breaking the rules but I can‘t take any more! I’m in Paris working & I want you to come out here this weekend. I know it’s 2 days too early but I’ve taken the liberty of booking you Eurostar tickets & have all my fingers crossed you’ll say yes. Have emailed details. Love you so much. M xxxxx

I shrieked, delighted. Paris! Me, Michael and a tearful reunion! Not to mention steaming cups of
chocolat chaud
and berets and moustachioed chaps playing accordions! And sunsets over the Seine and
lovemaking in a grand and splendid bedchamber, and maybe a cheeky wedding proposal in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower! This was perfect!

It was official: THIS WAS THE GREATEST LOVE STORY OF ALL TIME.

Date seven: Freddy

Bonnie Tyler drawled sexily about being in love, lost somewhere in France, while I poured some Whiskas cat milk into Duke Ellington’s bowl and danced around my kitchen. Sunlight was streaming in through the window, which I’d opened wide even though it was only March. I didn’t care. I was the happiest girl on the planet! I sat down at my table with my phone and some marmalady toast and wrote a grovelling cancellation text message to Freddy.

It was a shame to miss out on meeting him, really. He’d made for a very lovely distraction from the cesspool of Internet dating but it would have been mean to meet up with him now. It was all about Michael Slater for me, the man of my dreams who did posh journalistic assignments in Paris for the
Independent.
MICHAEL AND FRAN: the greatest love story of all time! I could barely contain myself!

I pressed send and mouthed an apology:
Sorry, Freddy. In another life, maybe.

I took a large bite of toast and wriggled my legs excitedly. This time next week I might have a beautiful
old Egyptian ring on my finger! I might know what it was like to wake up with Michael again!
I might not be on my own
. In my state of wild overexcitement I forgot that it was only nine twenty-three a.m. and I called Leonie.

‘Mmpfff?’

It was Alex. ‘Oh, God. Sorry. I’ll call another time. ’Bye!’

Gross.

‘Holding Out For A Hero’ came on and I started jumping and dancing. I had to share this with someone.