Greatest Love Story of All Time

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘But how … how do you know?’ Leonie asked, when I told her about Nellie Daniels. I told her the tale. ‘Oh, Fran, you’re being ridiculous. How the hell do you know he’s seeing her?’ ‘Come off it, Leonie. Why else would he be dropping her home before visiting his sister? That’s what men do in new relationships. They stick like bloody glue to your side. You never get a moment’s peace because they’re always walking you home, walking you to the bus stop, walking you to the fucking toilet. That’s what he was like with me. And now he’s doing it with her!’ I yelled into the phone. ‘You’re being insane,’ she said briskly. ‘You have no proof whatsoever. Until you know for sure that he’s seeing her I absolutely forbid you to stalk her, you mad journalist. OK?’ ‘Fine,’ I muttered. Leonie was no use: I needed to take this up with Jenny Slater. ‘Franny! Wow! How lovely to hear from you!’ Jenny trilled, sweet and lovely as ever. ‘Hey!’ I blustered. ‘How’s it going? Girl or boy?’ It was a girl: Lily. She was six pounds six ounces, tiny, an angel with soft blonde hair who, apparently, had only cried twice in her two-day life. But, happy as I was for Jenny, I wanted to know only one thing. And it had nothing to do with epidurals. Unfortunately, I got my chance quite soon. As Jenny lowered her voice and started telling me how badly she needed her milk to come through, she was interrupted by the arrival of some visitors. And before I had a chance to ask who it was, I knew. I could hear Michael’s soft voice as clear as day. His and that of a girl I’d never heard before. I heard her say a cheery, Sloanish ‘Hi, babe’ and felt my stomach drop out. ‘Who’s that?’ I whispered. ‘It’s Michael and … a friend,’ Jenny faltered. I ended the call. It was time to stalk this bitch. ‘NELLIE DANIELS’, I typed into Google, in furious capitals. I ran my hand through my knotty, greasy hair, drew a breath and pressed SEARCH. There were quite a few links all relating to a company called Spikey PR. It was a medium-sized agency off Brompton Road, dealing mostly with contemporary fashion houses and a few restaurants. Nellie Daniels was a senior account executive and her photograph was flawless. It was black-and-white but that did nothing to detract from her high cheekbones, long eyelashes and miles and miles of fucking luxurious hair. My heart sank even deeper. Game over, I thought. ‘Are you Michael’s girlfriend?’ I asked her picture. She stared back, porcelain and expressionless. A Rolex was clearly visible on her slim wrist and she wore an immaculate fitted shirt that was definitely not from Topshop. A wave of monstrous jealousy broke over me. I’d never win in a fight with anyone who looked like this. She probably had twice-weekly manicures, a sister called Tamara and a flat off the King’s Road. Since when had she been Michael’s type? I thought about us both; Nellie who looked like Angelina Jolie, who probably wore silk knickers and had exquisite taste in wine, and me: after several hours’ makeup application I might just scrape a comparison with Billie Piper on a bad day, with my faded BHS pants and secret love of Irn-Bru WKD. Viewed in those terms, it’d be a clear choice. I scanned her client list. She looked after a restaurant on Westbourne Grove, a Savile Row tailor, a couple of jewellery designers, a Kensington restaurant and … And Dean LaRonda. For a minute I couldn’t remember, but I knew it was a bad sign. My heart thumped as I sifted quickly through my mind for a connection. And there it was. Jenny had told me that a friend of Dmitri’s did the PR for Dean LaRonda; she hadn’t mentioned that the same friend was now boffing Michael. This was who he’d been choosing jumpers with; this was who he’d been walking home on Friday! Shit. It was her! This smooth-skinned monster was going out with Michael! My Michael! She was the reason I’d been dumped! I got under the duvet and hugged my knees, shaking. I knew I had to see her. I had to meet her. I had to know more. I thumped my pillow in fear and frustration. Duke Ellington got up disdainfully and squinted at me as if I were a savage. I swear I saw him shaking his head as he stepped out of the cat flap. ‘Whatever, Duke Ellington,’ I called. The cat flap closed daintily behind him. And that was how it started. That was the moment at which I decided to go in search of Nellie. Chapter Fifteen

  DRAFTS To Subject Saved Time michael@ michaelslater.com Nellie 19/01/2010 03:12:04

  michael@ michaelslater.com I might have a terminal illness 18/01/2010 20:58:44

  michael@ michaelslater.com WHO THE FUCK IS NELLIE 18/01/2010 18:10:00

  michael@ michaelslater.com I miss you so much 18/01/2010 16:05:59

  michael@ michaelslater.com DYING 18/01/2010 12:43:55

  michael@ michaelslater.com You left a sock 18/01/2010 12:36:09

  michael@ michaelslater.com I have met someone else 18/01/2010 12:34:35

  michael@ michaelslater.com CALL ME YOU CUNT 18/01/2010 12:32:27

  The day after I decided to go in search of Nellie, I walked stiffly into ITN, a cold wind roaring angrily around my head. I prepared myself for sympathetic comments about the state of my vagina. ‘Hi, Fran, how are you doing?’ said Stella Sanderson to my crotch. Thanks, Leonie, I thought, as I fumbled with the coffee urn. Hugh came in shortly after and ignored me completely. He seemed convinced that I was dying of syphilis. A tall, skinny man, wearing tight jeans and brogues, was sitting at my desk. As I approached him uneasily from behind I noted several warning signs: a Fashion hairstyle, a Fashion cravat and a Fashion cardigan. ‘Er, hello there, I’m Fran,’ I mumbled, waiting for him to spring up and clear away his stuff. ‘Fran,’ he said, turning slowly. Oh, fuck. Oh, FUCKING FUCK. Oh, fuck up the bottom. It was Alex, Michael’s best friend. Oxford-educated Alex who’d smoked cigars when he’d come round to dinner and who had once told Michael he was ‘surprised’ by Michael’s choosing me. I’d done my best to ignore him ever since. I’d thought he worked at the fucking Millbank office! ‘Oh, my God … Alex!’ I said, feeling the blood pumping into my cheeks. He looked me up and down slowly. ‘Hi. Welcome back. Make yourself comfortable and I’ll get you up to speed when you’re ready.’ ‘Er, well, this is my desk.’ Alex smiled languidly. ‘OK, Fran. You can have the desk if you want. No problem.’ He shifted his neat piles to the hotdesk next to mine. ‘How have you been?’ he asked. ‘Are you OK? I mean, are you OK?’ There was no hope of a bogus vagina story here. This was hideous: it was almost as if Michael was sitting in front of me. ‘Why are you here, Alex?’ I said, as confidently as I could. He smiled slowly. I’d always disliked his thin, aristocratic face: it was the kind of face that gazed solemnly at itself in a mirror for several hours each day. ‘Election show,’ he said silkily, sitting back in his new chair and logging in to the computer. ‘The team’s going to be based here, not Millbank. I’ve been doing your job,’ he added, when the incomprehension on my face failed to clear. I blushed again. Michael’s best friend, doing my job? Was this actually the worst joke in the history of the world? I tried to regain my composure. ‘Ah. Well, thanks for that, Alex, much appreciated. I tell you what, I’ll get logged in and then you can start handing back to me.’ The idea of getting my teeth into Clever Politics was all that had got me out of bed this morning. Alex looked me straight in the eye. ‘Sorry, I’m not explaining things very well. I took your place on the election team because they had no idea when you’d be back. They seem to think you’re suffering from some sort of gynaecological problem so I didn’t say anything about you and old Slater breaking up. Sorry about that, by the way,’ he added, clearly uncomfortable. ‘I’m fine about Michael,’ I said stiffly. ‘And we haven’t broken up, it’s a trial separation.’ He looked sceptical. ‘And I wasn’t having gynae problems either,’ I added quickly. ‘Well, either way, I’m sorry.’ The weasel. I resisted the urge to punch him in the crotch and set fire to the building, yelling, ‘YOU NEVER THOUGHT I WAS GOOD ENOUGH ANYWAY.’ What had happened to m
y smooth transition back into work, during which I was smothered with sympathy and affection? My eyes filled with tears and I looked away towards Hugh’s office. He seemed to be watching me. Alex snapped back into action. ‘Hugh wants you to stay on entertainment but I suggest you go and talk to him. In the meantime Eddie’s emailed you a handover from ents. Have a good morning.’ He put on some expensive Bose headphones and logged on to the election drive. I looked at my screen: I didn’t even have access to it. ‘Fran. Glad you’re better – sounded like a nasty illness.’ Hugh was walking past with a ginormous coffee in his hand. ‘’Fraid it’s back to ents for you – we needed the election team starting three weeks ago. But I’m giving you the Brit Awards to cheer you up – OK? The launch is at Renaissance tonight. You’ve got jis up your sleeve,’ he added, striding on. I should be so lucky. It was butter. As soon as Alex went to lunch I clicked on to Spikey PR and stared at Nellie Daniels’s page. What grooming, what poise, what crisp Chelsea coolness. She held my gaze defiantly. The idea that Michael could have seen her naked made me want to stick my head in an oven. And then, quite without warning, my hand did something exceptionally stupid: it picked up the phone and called her direct line. ‘Hello, Nellie Daniels speaking?’ Her voice was deeper than I was expecting, but unmistakably Sloanish. I was mute. ‘Hello?’ I twirled the cord round my hand, my heart thumping. Lunchtime yoga said an email that had popped up in the corner of my screen. And out of nowhere I started speaking. ‘Hi. My name is Yolande and I’m calling from Inner Calm. We’re a new yoga and, erm, meditation centre in West London set up with the high-flying executive in mind.’ ‘I’m sorry, I’m not interested.’ ‘No problem. But let me at least send you our brochure?’ WHAT THE FUCK? ‘OK, fine. You must have found me on the website. My email’s there too. Thanks.’ Shit. I had to see her, I had to see her, I had to see her. ‘One more thing, Mrs Daniels …’ ‘Miss.’ Bollocks. ‘Ms Daniels. Our meditation classes for busy execs start on Wednesday next week and you’ve been specially selected for a free trial! It’s no strings attached and I know you’ll just love our set-up. The session is candlelit, with free healthy refreshments before and after. Ms Daniels, it’s Paradise!’ A pause. Bloody hell, she was actually thinking about it! I imagined what Leonie would say if she knew I was doing this. Or, worse, Stefania. She’d cut my head off, probably. Well, sod them. I was going in search of Nellie and no one was going to stop me. I needed to know what she had that I didn’t. ‘Well, I can’t say it doesn’t sound appealing. Where do you meet?’ ‘We meet at … er … sorry, we’re new, as I said, so I keep forgetting! We’re based in a private suite at Renaissance in Notting Hill. Oh, and did I mention that you’re welcome to bring a partner?’ ‘Thanks, but no – it’s early days with my boyfriend. Well, Yolande, I’ll say yes. Please email me the details. I have to go now. If you could copy in my assistant Tara Jenkins I’d appreciate it. Thanks.’ ‘Great! See you a week on Wednesday, Ms Daniels.’ ‘Nellie. Goodbye.’ It’s early days with my boyfriend. How could she be going out with Michael? This abrupt, businesslike woman with a husky Prada-sunglasses-type voice and a personal assistant? Did Michael have to schedule blow jobs via Tara Jenkins? What the hell was this? Then, sitting bolt upright, I realized what I’d just done. A meditation class for high-flying media execs? At the fucking Renaissance? The most expensive members’ club in town? This was the work of a complete mental case! Cancel, Frances, cancel! I picked up the phone and called Renaissance. Hoping that perhaps they’d be booked up for months ahead, I was alarmed to find out that yes, they did indeed have just such a room available. It was late January and still freezing after all. After twenty minutes’ hard negotiation I managed to get them to reduce the hire fee to a mere two hundred pounds because I’d be bringing in a raft of desirables to whom they could tout membership. Within minutes, a hire contract had arrived in my inbox and I was entering my credit-card details. And that, suddenly, was that. I had a room, and an exec seeking inner peace. I only needed to find an understanding Buddhist and nine other high-flyers. Piece of cake. Oh, God. I went to the toilet and rested my forehead on the cold white tiles, wondering if I had actually lost my mind. I texted Leonie: Fancy a meditation class next Wednesday? Of course I don’t. How’s work going? You OK? she replied. No. Bloody Alex got transferred over here. Has taken my job on election team. Sitting next to me. Too fucked up for words. I texted back. Oh dear! she replied. It seemed a little jolly, given the circumstances, but I had bigger fish to fry. Over the next week I nearly died with the effort of not calling Michael. On several occasions I started emails but I just couldn’t shake his words from my head: ‘If we have ninety days of total blackout, Franny, I’m sure we can sort things out.’ What ‘things?’ What had gone so badly wrong and, more importantly, how had I failed to notice it? Pondering this painful conundrum, I felt more frustrated and stupid than ever. How had I failed to notice whatever was wrong? I must have seemed to Michael like a child so intent on eating her apple that she couldn’t see it was rotten. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ Leonie said tiredly, when I called her from a meeting room one lunchtime, crying uncontrollably and asking why the hell I’d been dumped. ‘He’s just … urgh, Fran, I don’t know what his fucking problem is.’ Sitting next to Alex was pure torture. It was like staring at a delicious cake I couldn’t eat, its still-warm sugary scent floating softly into my nostrils invitingly. The temptation to wrestle him to the ground armed with a staple gun and demand information about Michael and Nellie was unbearable. How long had it been going on? Was it serious? Was she great at oral? WHAT THE FUCK? But, of course, I remained silent. My pride could not take any further blows. Scraping together the enthusiasm to do the job I’d loved for the last five years bordered on the impossible and the entertainment team seemed to be doing quite well without me. Most of my time, therefore, was divided between stalking Nellie and finding media fools to join my meditation class. By the end of my first week Alex had drawn up a ten-page dossier on David Cameron and I had put together a ten-page fully illustrated dossier on Nellie Daniels. (It was an outstanding piece of work by anyone’s standards. I had ten different pictures of her, featuring seven stonkingly crisp, tailored outfits, and a list of fifteen of her Facebook friends who had open profiles through which I could stalk her in the coming days. I had worked out that she lived on the Fulham Road and had discovered via her friend’s Facebook that she was going to a party at Boujis on Saturday. I knew her birthday, I knew how she’d met Michael’s brother-in-law Dmitri (a power lunch at Kensington Roof Gardens in 2002) and I knew that she was a member of the Richmond Park Running Club. Most of all, I knew that I hated her. And that her life couldn’t have been more different from mine. My dossier on her read like a manual on how to be young and successful and glamorous in London: where to shop, where to eat, who to go drinking with, where to live. I imagined what a dossier on me would look like. It would probably have been dropped down the bog at some point and would be curly and dog-eared. It would note things like ‘eats kebabs’ and ‘wears dirty tracksuits’ and ‘has alcoholic mother’. Next to Nellie’s power-lunching existence, my life felt like a lumpy old cowpat. Of course Michael wanted ninety days off from me if he’d got lucky with Nellie stinking Daniels. It was unbearable. On Thursday morning Alex received a call that I knew straight away was from Michael. ‘Hi,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, hang on.’ He got up and sidled off into an empty edit suite. Naturally, I followed. ‘Sorry, she was sitting right next to me … No, I don’t think she knows. How could she?’ I felt sick. ‘Yeah, she just seems to be spending most of the day on the Internet.’ After a pause he started to laugh. I fled. Later that day I was roused from Nellie-stalking by a voice behind me saying, ‘Someone told me there’s a washed-up old bint who goes by the name of O’Callaghan sitting round here … You don’t know where I could find her, do you?’ I yelped and jumped up into a Dave Brennan hug. He’d been in Copenhagen doing climate chan
ge since I’d been back and I’d missed him. He pushed me away and held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. ‘Fran, are you eating?’ ‘Sort of.’ ‘You have to eat, you scrote. Otherwise you’ll die. Get some pie, love. What happened to the girl who crams bangers and mash down her gob on her own in the Union Tavern?’ Alex looked round and smiled. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘You do that, do you?’ I went red. Dave turned to him. ‘All right, Alex. Great outfit, mate,’ he said casually, peering at Alex’s Hackney waistcoat. God, I loved Dave. Alex reddened and turned back to his Cameron dossier. Dave raised an eyebrow. ‘Seriously, kid,’ he said more quietly, ‘you’ve got to eat. Got to keep up your strength!’ I nodded and, without warning, began to cry. Dave pulled me away, shielding me from Alex’s view. ‘Oh, Franny, don’t cry,’ he said, as he thumbed away the tears that were pouring down my face. ‘Please, don’t cry.’ His kind, weather-beaten face showed his concern. ‘Sorry, Dave. I just – I just miss him so much. I think he’s seeing some posho called Nellie and I might just want to die with the horror of it all,’ I mumbled. After a while he pulled me back into a hug. He smelt of fags and an old-fashioned spicy cologne. ‘I know how it feels,’ he said quietly. ‘Shut up. You’re going out with the most beautiful woman on the planet. You don’t know the first thing about heartbreak,’ I cried into his armpit. He pulled away. ‘Fannybaws, you don’t know the first thing about my love life,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Of course I’ve been where you are now. But it gets better. OK? Easier. Come on. Go to the loo and wash your face – you look like road kill.’ He handed me a tissue from his pocket. ‘OK. But while we’re on the topic of your beautiful girlfriend, could you spare her for a meditation class on Wednesday at Renaissance? I’ve organized one and I need to fill it up.’ Dave suppressed a snigger. ‘Seriously? Since when were you into meditation?’ ‘Stop it, Dave. I need inner calm. Just make sure she’s there.’ He ruffled my hair and loped off into an edit suite where Hugh was watching his footage. ‘How’re the election plans going, Alex?’ I asked, in as companionable a fashion as I could muster. I’d enjoyed Dave’s put-down very much but I couldn’t really afford to fall out with Alex. ‘Stressful?’ I added hopefully. Alex laughed. ‘Not really,’ he said, swinging his chair round to face me. ‘No. Politics is my heartland, just like entertainment is yours. It’s second nature. I’m just beginning a dossier on Nick Bennett, actually.’ I didn’t like his raised eyebrow. Was he giving me a Significant Look? No. I was being paranoid. ‘Oh, right! Lots of material there,’ I said brightly. But he was still looking at me like he Knew Stuff. ‘You picked him at the right time,’ I continued. ‘Bound to be in the cabinet if the Tories win!’ Alex smiled. I decided I definitely hated him. ‘I’m not so sure. I think he’s got some issues in his private life that might get in the way of that,’ he said. My palms pricked. He surely couldn’t know about Nick and Mum. No one knew! Not even Mum’s bloody sister! He continued to watch me with a rather awkward expression on his face. ‘Oh? How do you mean? Has he been fiddling expenses, too, then?’ I asked. My voice was a little shrill. ‘No. I was referring to his … to his family life. I’ve been spending a lot of time with his aides during my research. I discovered some surprising stuff,’ Alex said. ‘But it won’t go anywhere.’ He winked at me. What the fuck? He knew. I felt suddenly like I might like to be sick and knew I needed to change the subject immediately. ‘How’s Michael?’ I blurted out. The name hung in the air like a fart on the Victoria Line. Alex seemed a little surprised. ‘He’s good. But I don’t think we should be talking about him. You’re upset enough as it is.’ ‘I’m not,’ I said tersely. I started to hammer out a report on Tiger Woods’s latest indiscretion. This was not good at all. Mum needed security and peace, not a starring role in a national sex scandal. And I needed a soft re-entry to my workplace: I did not need Michael’s fucking best friend sitting next to me and taking my job. I should have stayed in bed. Chapter Sixteen