The Woman Who Met Her Match

by Fiona Gibson

  I shake my head, momentarily floored by his directness. ‘No, I haven’t. How about you?’

  ‘I was, but that’s over now. So, you didn’t mind me sending you a friend request?’

  ‘Not at all. It was lovely to hear from you.’

  His gaze meets mine and my insides seem to somersault. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d want to be in touch,’ he adds. ‘I thought, will she be horrified to hear from me out of the blue like this?’

  I sip my wine, willing him to go on. I want to sit here all night listening to Antoine talking so Frenchly; if I could get away with it I’d record him secretly on my phone.

  ‘Of course I wasn’t horrified. It was a wonderful surprise …’

  ‘And I knew this trip was coming up,’ he continues, ‘and I thought, maybe she’s ended up in London, like she said she wanted to? It was just a hunch.’

  ‘Well, I did and here you are!’ I seem to be having trouble saying anything sensible.

  ‘Yes, just for one night, unfortunately …’

  I assess his face: the dark, compelling eyes, the cheekbones and chin clearly defined. His light brown hair is neatly cut with a hint of grey at the temples. He is wearing a crisp blue and white striped shirt and black trousers – he’s made an effort, or perhaps this is the way he dresses all the time? – and smells gorgeous, of something spicy with a hint of orange. He looks, I realise, as if he is on a proper date, and I wish now that I’d gone for the spotty dress from Nutmeg Gallery day, or even the red one. What made me choose jeans and a Breton top, as if I was nipping out for milk?

  ‘… Flying back to Nice at nine tomorrow night,’ Antoine continues. ‘Wish it was longer. I do love London, I’m usually here a couple of times a year’ – all these visits to my home city and I didn’t know! – ‘and I’ve often thought, I wonder, well …’ He breaks off and I sense the hormonal hotness surging up again.

  ‘So, what does your company do?’ I ask.

  ‘Recruitment. Headhunting. We’re based in Paris but set up a new division in Nice. We’re looking at designing new appraisal procedures to roll out across the company.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’ His English is flawless, laced with that gorgeous French accent. I am finding it difficult to concentrate on what he’s saying.

  ‘Oh, it’s not really so interesting.’ He laughs self-deprecatingly. ‘But it’s all about getting the best out of people, identifying their strengths, focusing on performance and the pursuit of excellence within the commercial landscape.’ He runs a hand over his hair. ‘Do stop me if I’m boring you.’

  ‘No, no, not at all …’ Normally, this kind of talk wouldn’t have me gripped in rapt attention. But right now Antoine could be describing the chemical make-up of owl droppings and I’d still sit here happily and soak it all in.

  He smiles, seeming flustered for a moment. ‘Um, what was I saying?’

  ‘Commercial landscapes,’ I prompt him, noticing now how terribly attractive his eyelashes are.

  ‘Oh, that’s enough about me. So, tell me about your work. It’s make-up, isn’t it? That’s what you do?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right …’

  ‘And do you enjoy it? I imagine you’re very good at it.’

  ‘Well, I hope so. It’s selling, basically, although it feels more, uh …’

  ‘… Creative?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does. It’s a lovely company I work for. French, actually, set up by two sisters from Grasse.’

  ‘That’s fairly close to Nice …’

  ‘Really? There was talk at one time of key team members going over for a weekend, a sort of celebration of beauty. The founders, Claudine and Mimi, like to stay in touch with the staff. I guess they see themselves as sort of maternal types …’ I tail off and sip my wine; it’s in a different league to the usual cheap stuff I quaff at home. Never mind learning to appreciate ‘difficult’ art. Buying less, more expensive wine would surely make me properly grown-up. ‘But big changes are happening,’ I add. ‘We’ve just been taken over by Geddes and Cox, have you heard of them?’

  ‘Yes, of course—’

  ‘Well, I have to admit it’s been a bit of a shock. Looks like there’ll be no trips to Grasse now.’

  ‘That’s a real pity. So, what about your family? Your children’s father?’

  Ah, that one. I should have figured out how I’d handle this, and now it feels wrong to talk about David, to spring it upon Antoine out of thin air. ‘He’s not around,’ I say quickly. ‘It’s just me and the kids, and we have a lodger – Stu, he’s an old friend from up north. Helps to pay the bills, you know. So, um, you mentioned that your kids live in Paris …’

  ‘Yes, that’s right – they’re with Nicole, their mother—’

  ‘You mean Valérie’s friend Nicole?’ I exclaim. White-vest-no-bra Nicole, who taught me the ways of make-up?

  He smiles. ‘Yes, she was my wife. You remember her?’

  ‘I do, yes. Very tall, slim, long blonde hair …’ Baby blue eyes, prominent nipples on permanent display …

  ‘… and completely crazy,’ he adds, ‘although it took me a long time to figure that out …’ Nicole, who he dumped me for so heartlessly! Not that I care about that now. He was just a boy, and what eighteen-year-old would remain faithfully in love with a girl who’d gone back to England when he had a real live girlfriend-in-waiting right there?

  Antoine checks his watch; a simple white face with a matt black leather strap. I can’t think of any other man I know who wears one. ‘We should go through for dinner,’ he says as, right on cue, our waiter glides over and tells us that our table is ready. He deftly places our drinks onto his tray, and we follow him through to the dining room.

  ‘Will this be okay for you?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, great,’ Antoine replies as we take our seats at a table next to a window.

  ‘Look at those lovely flats out there,’ I remark, glancing out at the courtyard as we are handed menus. ‘Imagine living there, tucked away in Covent Garden.’

  ‘It’s a great part of the city,’ he says.

  ‘It is, but I don’t come here very often. I suppose I tend to think, Covent Garden, street theatre, jugglers and all that.’

  He smiles. ‘So, which part of London d’you live in?’

  ‘Bethnal Green in the East End. We moved there when I was expecting Cam, our first child. It’s always felt buzzy and friendly, and there’s quite a community feel. It’s become gentrified of course, like pretty much everywhere.’

  ‘And before that, where were you?’

  ‘In Hackney. Well, Hackney Downs, actually – more like Clapton. A tiny two-bedroomed flat, three floors up, not so great for a baby and bit of a crazy area back then – I mean, there was a park, but you were likely to get attacked by some nut with his snarling devil dog so we thought, okay, enough of “lively” areas with the dodgy cab firm with its terrible cars – you know the type, you glance down and spot a great hole on the floor of the passenger seat, you can see the actual road …’

  I break off and laugh, taken aback by the way Antoine is looking at me as I chatter incessantly now. It’s as if he knows. Amidst the babble about taxis and devil dogs he knows something happened to me after we moved. ‘So we bought a little terraced house,’ I continue. ‘You could do that back then. It wasn’t half a million for a shoebox like it is now.’ Agh, now I’ve lurched into house prices! I never talk about stuff like this. What’s got into me tonight? One large glass of wine, that’s what – on a stomach that hasn’t seen food since breakfast, and after a day spent schlepping around every high street chain known to womankind.

  ‘Oh, we should decide what to eat,’ Antoine says as the waiter reappears.

  I quickly scan the menu, delighted to see that, despite the panelled elegance of the room, many of the dishes would come under the banner of nursery food. ‘Would it be terribly immature of me to go for the macaroni cheese?’

  ‘Not at all,’ the waiter says. ‘It’s our special
ity. It’s been on the menu for ten years.’ I think of joking not the same batch, hopefully, but think better of it.

  ‘And I’ll have the seabass,’ Antoine says, quickly perusing the wine list which we haven’t glanced at either. ‘Did you enjoy the Sancerre?’

  ‘It was lovely, yes.’

  ‘We’ll have a bottle of that then, please.’ He catches my expression as the waiter leaves. ‘This is my treat tonight.’

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly—’

  ‘Please, Lorrie, I want to.’

  I smile. ‘That’s very kind of you. So, tell me about your life,’ I prompt him, ‘in Nice.’

  ‘Well, I have to say it’s terribly work-focused. I live alone, in a top-floor apartment – it’s lovely, I listen to music, read a lot, run along the beach sometimes, try to look after myself, you know …’

  I relax again as he enthuses about running – ‘it’s almost meditative’ – and by the time our food arrives, beautifully presented on fine white china, we are talking over each other as people do when it feels as if there’s so much to tell, so much to catch up on. It strikes me that this is the kind of date I’d hoped for when I’d allowed myself to be frog-marched into the murky territories of datemylovelymum.com.

  The waiter appears and removes the empty wine bottle from its silvery container.

  ‘Another?’ Antoine suggests, terribly un-Frenchly, I’d have thought: I’d always assumed it was only us Brits who guzzled in copious quantities.

  ‘I’d love to, but don’t you have a meeting first thing?’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be fine,’ he says breezily, and so another bottle arrives and now I’m hearing how beautiful Nice is, how diverse and exciting.

  ‘You should visit me sometime,’ Antoine suggests.

  ‘That would be fun,’ I say lightly.

  ‘No, I mean it. I’d love you to.’

  ‘Well, maybe one day,’ I say, dismissing it as a tipsy suggestion as our table is cleared and we are handed the dessert menus. I choose a chocolate tart which somehow manages to be cloud-like and sinfully rich.

  ‘That was delicious,’ I say finally, as Antoine pays the bill. ‘You must let me treat you sometime.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, grinning, ‘you can – when you visit me in Nice.’ Then, without further discussion – Antoine merely suggests ‘You can show me around London’ – we leave the restaurant and step out into the warm night.

  As we wander towards Soho, I tell Antoine how different it was when I arrived here, aged twenty and thrilled to be a part of it all. Living in a rowdy houseshare with a bunch of girls, I loved the sleazy bars and cheap Italians where we’d fuel ourselves on spaghetti carbonara in preparation for nights on the town. I was temping at the time, and somehow managed to eke out my meagre earnings so I could go out nearly every night. My friends and I hung out in shady drinking clubs, deep down in the bowels of townhouses or up dingy staircases, requiring a rap on the door and a few moments’ nervy hesitation as the owner – usually a fierce middle-aged woman with make-up trowelled on – would decide whether or not to let us in. I’d met David in one of those scuzzy little places. We’d found ourselves squashed together on a decrepit sofa at 3 a.m., and stayed there happily sipping terrible wine until we were finally tipped out into the bleary morning light.

  ‘I’d always wanted to live here,’ I tell Antoine as we meander the streets, ‘right from when I was a little girl.’

  He smiles. ‘You wanted to escape from Yorkshire, I remember you saying. You wanted to live someplace where you could be yourself, be anyone you wanted to be.’

  ‘Really? You remember me saying that?’

  He laughs lightly. ‘I remember lots of things.’

  We stop and, for no particular reason, find ourselves looking into the window of a bakery. It’s just a chain, as most places are around here these days.

  ‘So do I,’ I say, smiling.

  We are looking at each other now, and perhaps it’s all that wine but I am mesmerised by his face. The boy I kissed on that bridge, and at the goat farm and down by the lake, is here in Soho! How could that possibly be? ‘What time is it?’ I ask.

  He checks his grown-up-man’s watch. ‘Ten past one.’

  I’m amazed at where the time has gone. ‘Really? That late? I really should be getting home …’

  ‘Me too. I suppose I should be sensible. Shall we get you a taxi?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ I glance down the street for a yellow light, and that’s when Antoine takes my hand. My heart seems to somersault as a cab drives by.

  ‘You really are very beautiful,’ he says.

  I look at this man, the first person to kiss me properly in a way that sent fireworks exploding in my head, and then somehow we are kissing now, spinning back to 1986 and I’m sixteen again, with my mullet and terrible highlights, and all the people and traffic of London fade away.

  We pull apart and smile. ‘Oh,’ is all I can say.

  Without my noticing, Antoine’s arms have wrapped around my waist. ‘Well, that was as magical as I remembered it.’

  ‘It was,’ I murmur.

  ‘It’s been so good to see each other again.’

  ‘Yes, it really has.’ Over his shoulder, another yellow light catches my eye. ‘I should get this cab,’ I add reluctantly.

  He turns and flags it down. ‘Can I see you again? Before I leave, I mean?’

  ‘I’d love to, but aren’t you working tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, but we can’t leave it another thirty years. That would be insane—’

  ‘No,’ I say, laughing, ‘I’d be – Christ – seventy-six …’

  The cab pulls to a halt beside us.

  ‘My meetings finish at two and I don’t need to leave for the airport until six … I don’t suppose you’re free?’

  ‘Yes, I’m off tomorrow …’ I step towards the cab’s open passenger window.

  ‘Let’s text to arrange it.’

  ‘Great,’ I say, turning to the driver. ‘Pine Street, E2 please.’ The driver gives me an amused look and nods.

  I look back at Antoine. ‘It’s been a wonderful night. Thank you for dinner.’

  ‘No – thank you, Lorrie. I’ve had such a great time. So d’you think you can forgive me for stopping writing to you all those years ago?’

  I chuckle. ‘I think so, just about.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I was such an idiot.’

  ‘No, you weren’t. You were just a boy and it’s fine – of course it is.’ I climb into the cab and ease into the back seat.

  ‘Pine Street,’ the driver reiterates.

  ‘Yes please.’ I glance back to see Antoine standing there. He is smiling and raising his hand to wave and looks, I realise, a little shell-shocked, as if something has happened. Well, it has.

  The driver pulls away, and perhaps it’s just the wine and the kisses but London looks amazing tonight, a swirl of lights all around. I close my eyes momentarily, trying to steady my pounding heart.

  ‘Hey, love,’ the cabbie says. My eyes ping open, and I catch him observing me in his rear-view mirror. ‘Looks like somebody had a good night.’

  I laugh, assuming he’s noticed I’m a little tipsy – and on a Sunday night too. But when I pull out my compact mirror to check my face, it seems that La Beauté’s famous all-day lipstick isn’t quite as kiss-proof as we claim.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It’s almost 2 a.m. by the time I’m home and the house is silent. Like a late-homecoming teenager with booze on her breath, I creep in, closing the front door quietly behind me and hanging my jacket on the hook in the hall.

  I pad upstairs to the bathroom and wipe away my make-up, and when I examine my freshly cleansed face in the mirror I see that just-kissed look, a gleam in my eyes and a mouth that just won’t stop twitching into a delighted smile. I think about Antoine’s dark eyes, his lips, that brush of his tongue, and my body starts tingling again. I clean my teeth briskly, trying to normalise myself in case Stu
or one of the kids should get up for a pee and discover me looking all freshly snogged.

  Tucked up in bed, I’m convinced I won’t sleep – my heart still seems to be rattling away at an alarming rate – but what feels like moments later, I am coming to, with daylight beaming in through the gauzy white curtain and Antoine’s kisses still lingering on my lips. I pull on my dressing gown over my pyjamas. At just before nine, Stu is the only one up, also still in PJs – his loose-fitting checked bottoms and a plain grey T-shirt – and making toast. ‘Hi,’ I say, which morphs into a throat-clearing cough.

  ‘Hey, here you are.’ He leans against the worktop and smiles. ‘Didn’t hear you come home last night, dirty stop-out. Thought Frenchie-boy had snuck you into his hotel!’

  I laugh stiffly. ‘’Course he didn’t. As if I’d do that on a first date.’

  It’s a joke, but seems to miss its mark. ‘So it was a date, then?’

  ‘Oh, you know, just a drink. And dinner …’

  ‘Pretty late for dinner …’ He snatches the toast as it pops up.

  ‘Well, er, we had a walk around Soho …’ And the most delicious kiss, the kind that almost stops you breathing …

  ‘Sounds great.’ I watch Stu as he manhandles the lid off a jar of crunchy peanut butter, wondering why he’s behaving like this. There was none of this prickly quizzing after any of my previous dates. ‘Did you mention the fact that he totally broke your heart?’ he asks, slathering peanut butter onto his toast.

  ‘No, of course I didn’t!’ I exclaim.

  He takes a big bite and munches it thoughtfully. ‘So, will you keep in touch, d’you think?’

  My back teeth clamp together, and I busy myself by making coffee which Stu usually does, only he seems to have forgotten this morning. ‘Actually, we’re meeting up again today.’

  He wipes his mouth on his hand. ‘I thought he was here on business?’

  ‘He is, yes, but his meetings finish at two.’

  ‘Two o’clock? It was hardly worth him coming over!’

  I watch, stuck for words, as he studies the remains of his toast and, apparently having gone off the idea of eating it, drops it into the bin. ‘It was just meetings,’ I say rather feebly.