Greatest Love Story of All Time (9 page)

Leonie’s eyes stopped smiling but her mouth stayed fixed. ‘Fran’s flying the flag for both of us,’ she said carefully. She went to sit down with Stefania and downed the rest of her gin.

‘I’ll get in the cab with you to Victoria, OK, Mum?’ I said, unable to abandon her. Michael looked sharply at me.
Sorry
, I mouthed at him, shrugging. He shook his head briefly to reassure me that it didn’t matter and kissed me quickly as I walked past, Mum swaying on the end of my arm. ‘’Bye, guys,’ I muttered, as we teetered away.

Dave sat back. ‘Take care, Fran,’ he said. He didn’t look impressed. I ignored him. My
boyfriend
got it, even if Dave didn’t.

Stefania looked away: she had always disapproved of Mum’s drinking.

As soon as I’d put Mum on a train to Cheam, I sat on a bench in a deserted Victoria station and stared at the picture of Mum and Dad I kept in my wallet. They were sitting on a beach in Devon, Mum with long hair, a hippie headband and poncho, Dad with a mop-head haircut and tight swimming trunks. They were hugging each other and Mum was doing some sort of ballet thing with her left leg. Both of them had beautiful grins stretched across their faces. I was in the background, chubby and determined with a
mound of patted-down sand in front of me and a cloth hat on my head.

I still had no idea how or why it had started. Mum and Dad were in love, they had a child upon whom they doted and ‘enough money to afford a cleaner once a week’, as Mum used to say to her own mother on the phone. Mum always seemed so happy – I remember her singing softly in the kitchen and sweeping me up into her skirt, hugging and tickling me until I begged for mercy. Yes, there had always been bottles of wine at dinner but none of the hidden whisky bottles and the Drink Voice that I’d come to dread by the time I was a teenager.

‘This illness affects everyone. It doesn’t care how much money they earn,’ said the man at AA, whom I’d phoned for advice when I was twenty-five. ‘Get her to come and say hi. You can come with her, if you want,’ he added, when I found myself too choked to respond.

Three years on, I was still no closer to getting her anywhere near an AA meeting. The first time I’d brought it up she’d laughed in my face, the second she’d burst into tears and told me that she was shocked and appalled by my disloyalty, and the third she had thrown me out of her house ten minutes after the last train back to London had left. After that I’d stopped trying. She simply wouldn’t have it. I knew further intervention was needed – but what sort?

‘She’ll get here when she’s ready,’ the AA man had
said, when I called again two years later. ‘Not before. Just make sure she knows we’re here.’

I put the picture back in my bag, watched a lone tramp combing a platform dustbin and fought the tears that were gathering in my eyes.

After several years of scraping Mum off the floor and being shouted at and generally abused, Dad had run off with Gloria, the once-a-week cleaner of whom Mum had been so proud. They lived on the Costa del Sol now and he had turned into a rotund but very jovial man with leathery brown skin and a string of upper-crust fry-up cafés in the wealthier resorts. Leonie and I periodically went out to stay with him, and before he had even greeted me, he’d always ask if Mum was still drinking. His disappointment when I nodded was evident.

In the meantime, Mum had begun her affair and in the process had become a person I barely recognized. It was only when she passed out in bed and I came in to check that she was still breathing that she was the mum of my childhood. Wavy-haired, pretty, vulnerable. Watching her sleep, I’d entertain lonely fantasies of torching her power-suit collection and carrying her off to some remote hippie commune where she could overcome her drinking and become Mum again. I wanted her back.

Michael was asleep when I got in, warm and prawn-like in a corner of my bed. I crept in as quietly as I could but
he rolled straight over and hugged me, nuzzling the back of my neck. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said sleepily.

I squeezed his hand gratefully. ‘Thanks.’

‘Does she do that a lot?’

‘Yes. Sorry. I need to sort her out.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Michael?’

‘Mmm?’

‘I was wondering why your name isn’t in the paper too. Does that mean you’re, like, the political editor or something?’

‘No. Actually …’ He paused and I turned over to face him. The shadows falling lengthwise across his face made him seem suddenly sad. ‘To be honest, I’m a bit gutted. I’ve not been allowed to write anything yet. I just said that about editing because I didn’t want your mum to be disappointed. But it’s early days. I can’t expect to take over during my first month.’

‘No. Well, I think you’re the cleverest man on earth.’

He pulled me closer. ‘Do you really?’

‘Yes. In the universe.’

He kissed me. ‘Thank you. That’s good to know.’ He closed his eyes, smiling.

‘Michael.’

‘Mmm.’

‘I’m a specialist producer! Howzaboutit, eh? High five!’

He raised a hand, smiling sleepily.

‘Alex looked a bit scornful,’ I said, after a careful pause.

‘Not surprising. He’s a snob, Fran, he doesn’t approve of ents and culture.’

‘But that’s ridiculous! I’ve just spent the last week at the British Museum – it’s not like I’m working on
Heat
! For fuck’s sake, I’m a specialist producer aged twenty-eight. He knows what that means! I can crack politics another time.’

‘He has no idea what you do. Just thinks it’s a soft option. You’re a princess, he’s a prick. No contest.’

I smiled myself to sleep.

January 2010

Thursday night came, and Gin Thursday relocated itself to my local, but I didn’t go. And when I heard their voices outside and, later, heard them knocking at my door, I didn’t answer. Dave had been texting, Leonie had been calling and Stefania had been shouting through my cat flap but I couldn’t face human company. I just didn’t see the point in socializing: I wanted to die quietly in my bed and have a moving obituary in the
Observer
stating that I had died of natural causes, leaving an evil homeless cat. Hopefully Leonie would give them a picture of me when I was sixteen and a size eight.

The knocking continued. ‘Fran, let us know you’re OK or we’re kicking the door down,’ Dave shouted.

Duke Ellington stared at the window with an expression of such black fury that I couldn’t help smiling.

Then I heard a very loud noise and realized my friends were breaking into my flat.

Once they’d confiscated my phone and stared, shouted and laughed at me, they settled down to tell
me about this ‘amazing’ plan they’d drawn up. The plan that would allegedly prevent me dying of malnutrition in my bed and maybe even help me get Michael back after our three months apart.

Leonie cleared her throat. ‘It’s … er … it’s called the Eight Date Deal.’

I sniffed. ‘The what?’

‘The Eight Date Deal. It’s simple, Fran, you go on eight dates with eight different men before you meet up with Michael in ninety days’ time. You’ll see what else is out there and then,
only then
, can you think about getting back together with him.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘And we’ve just taken his number out of your phone to be on the safe side,’ she added.

I gazed at them with complete incomprehension. They gazed back at me. ‘I can email him. You can’t stop me doing that.’

Stefania butted in. ‘STOP being stupid,’ she barked. ‘Do you vant to get better?’

‘Yes.’

‘Zen you need to go and meet ozzer men. As soon as possible.’ She came over to my bed and pulled my sheet to dislodge me.

‘No, Stefania. I’m staying here.’

Dave snorted.

‘You are filthy animal,’ she replied, shooting a warning glance at Dave. ‘It is time you vere alive again. Come now. Up.’

‘No.’

‘DRAT, Fran, do you vant Michael back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Zen you get out of ze bed and start ze dating. NOW.’

‘Stefania,’ I asked, incredulous, ‘are you on drugs? You expect me to start dating
now?
When I’m in the middle of the worst heartbreak of my life and I can barely even eat?’

She looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘Frances. Ve have done many things for you for nearly three weeks. Many things. Ve are asking one thing of you in return. Please vill you do it for us. It is all ve ask. Please.’

I glanced at Leonie, waiting for her to get Stefania off my back. But she was smiling and nodding.

Dave? Oh, my God, even Dave was grinning. ‘It’s a good plan, Fran. You need to meet some other men. Get your mind off Michael. Pay these girls back for looking after you.’

My eyes fell on the packet of weed that Leonie had brought round yesterday and I knew I couldn’t say no. These people had gone out of their way for me. They had even kicked my door down. I had no option but to nod numbly.

The day after my friends had set me their stupid task, I decided to disobey them and email Michael. Enough was enough. I
had
to know.

‘Thought you’d been clever, confiscating my phone,’ I muttered, as I fired up my laptop. Cretins! Emailing was just as good. In fact, emailing was better. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? An email was a blank canvas, an unlimited space in which I could lay out my plans for being a model girlfriend when Michael took me back!

My heart pounded as I scanned the 168 messages in my inbox. ‘Dear Friend, Your Penis is definitely too small,’ I read. Then: ‘Colonic irrigation for only £19.99!’ and ‘Don’t let incontinence spoil your fun.’ A lot of gynaecology and bum stuff; less on the Michael front.

And then, among the penis extensions, I found a name that made my heart leap: Jenny Slater. My stomach turned itself inside out.

Dearest Fran,

I don’t know what to say. I’m so very sorry to hear about you and Michael – I just can’t believe it. We are all
devastated. I have absolutely no idea what went wrong but I really hope that you two manage to work it out after this trial separation. If it helps at all, he is in pieces. I just hope to God he sorts himself out over the next three months because you two were made for each other.

If you want to meet up for a cup of tea and a hug, I’m totally here for you. I’m huge at the moment but still mobile!

Lots of love and big hugs

Jen XXXXX

Jenny. So perfect, so lovely, so … so
mini.
I’d always felt like a big fat hairy gorilla next to her. But she’d become a good friend over the last two years. She must be due any day now; the no-doubt-perfect second baby she had made with her perfect husband Dmitri. I read the email again and again, as if it were from Michael himself, hoping desperately that him being ‘in pieces’ meant that he’d changed his mind already.

I wondered if my friends would allow me to see her.

Fat chance! Well, bugger them. I wanted to see Jenny more than anything else in the world. Through her I could get close to Michael. It was a simple equation.

Guiltily, I picked up my phone.

‘Fran! I’m so pleased to hear from you!’ she cried, in her safe, kind, comfortable little voice. I wanted to be her. (Actually, thinking about it, I wanted to be
anyone other than me. Even Peter Stringfellow’s girlfriend.)

We arranged to meet for lunch on the South Bank at two o’clock.

Getting ready, I jangled with nerves, the Michael-shaped hole in my chest suddenly replaced by pumping adrenalin. This was much better than emailing Michael! The allure of an hour with Jenny and the information she could give me about her brother was overwhelming.
I’m the crack whore, she’s the crack
, I thought, as I stabbed myself in the eye with my mascara wand.

Jenny, waiting for me on a sofa in the BFI restaurant, looked nothing like a lump of crack. Her clean, mousy hair was clipped to one side and her face was glowing, even though she was wearing only a dab of lip gloss. She wore a beautiful grey silk maternity dress that covered her well-proportioned bump very stylishly, with a grey cashmere cardigan over the top that must have cost the sum total of everything in my wardrobe. There wasn’t so much as a centimetre of fat on her.

I wondered briefly how I’d be in pregnancy – vomiting, bulky, pallid – then cut myself short, remembering that pregnancy was not likely any time soon. ‘Wow, Jenny, you look lovely!’ I said, hugging her awkwardly. ‘Where’s that dress from?’

‘Dean LaRonda, actually. I’ve been so lucky, Dmitri’s great friends with their PR who’s given me all sorts from their new maternity collection. Lots of
nice soft cardigans and stuff, just the sort of thing you want when you’re pregnant!’ she said happily. It was impossible to hate her.

Jenny and Michael really were so similar, I thought, as I sat down opposite her.

Michael.

‘How is he?’ I blurted out, unable to bear it any longer. She looked at me with such sadness and kindness that the familiar stinging in my eyes started before I had time to leg it. Warm, salty tears fell out of my eyes as I said, ‘Oh, sorry, it’s fine, just, you know …’ She let me cry it out, ordering a tonic water plus a large glass of red for me. As my sobs subsided into snuffling piglet sounds, she rubbed her tummy, wincing slightly. It couldn’t be comfortable hauling yourself across London when you were that pregnant.

‘Franny, my brother is an idiot. I know he’ll come round. If he had an actual reason for it then that’d be different but he’s not talking to anyone. I think we should just assume that he’s gone mad,’ she added firmly. I gulped, trying desperately to control myself. ‘It’s just that, I just really … I miss him so much and I don’t understand what I did but it must be my fault and I feel so wretched and miserable and I … ugh …’ I sobbed.

‘I know,’ she said, rubbing her tummy and shifting in her seat.

‘… and I can’t imagine ever not loving him and not caring about how he is and what he’s doing and …’

‘Fran …’

‘… and I don’t understand why he hasn’t contacted me. I mean, I know that’s what we agreed but doesn’t he
care
?’

‘Of course he does. In fact, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but … Oh, shit, Fran …’