Greatest Love Story of All Time (32 page)

He arrived next to me, put down the basket and removed his hat. ‘Frances, hello,’ he boomed grandly. ‘Martin Spencer-Hartley. A pleasure.’

‘Nice to meet you. I can’t believe you’ve brought a
hamper! That’s wicked!’ I said enthusiastically. Why was I talking like a teenager?

He paused and wiped a slick of forehead sweat on to his handkerchief. A large expanse of white hairy belly was visible through the gap caused by his straining shirt buttons. Martin wasn’t fat, exactly, he was just … massive. All over. His hands were larger than my head. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Pavarotti, actually, but little resemblance to the picture I had seen online.

‘I stopped at Fortnum and Mason
en route
from Fulham and bought refreshments,’ he said eventually. I waited for an ironic twinkle in his eye but there was none. It was becoming increasingly clear that this man was taking himself seriously.

I glanced at the hamper, not without excitement. The date was already a write-off but there was at least some good cheese to be had!

He opened the hamper with a flourish. And what was inside made me want to cry. Not with joy, or even with laughter, but with pity. And vicarious embarrassment.

Martin had obviously ordered his hamper online. I knew this because on top there was a large receipt, saying ‘Thanks for ordering with
hamperkings.co.uk
! Enclosed is your discounted Fortnum and Mason Christmas Hamper! We draw your attention to sell-by dates!’

Martin snatched away the receipt. Underneath, I’m
afraid to confirm, there were two Christmas puddings, an assortment of pickles, a bottle of warm champagne, and spice sachets for mulled wine. There was a box of amaretti and a large panettone and – particularly useful for a spring picnic – a tin of goose fat. There was no checked cloth, no shining cutlery, no sandwich selection, no smoked salmon. There were probably some currants in the Christmas pudding but that was as close to strawberries and cream as we were likely to get.

A horrible silence descended as we stared at Martin’s lie. I had to say something fast. This man – who clearly wasn’t any of the things he’d said he was – had been carrying a massive, disastrous, out-of-date, knocked-off Christmas hamper from God only knew where. He must want to top himself.

‘Oh, good, we can have an early Christmas,’ I faltered, thinking that we could at least try to eat some panettone and drink the champagne. But Martin was utterly silent, staring in paralysed horror at the hamper’s contents.

I felt desperately sorry for him. All that email bravado, all that chivalrous masculinity, that big boomy voice and … this. ‘Tell you what, I need to nip to the Ladies. How’s about I pick us up a couple of ice creams on the way back?’ I said brightly.

Martin said nothing.

I went.

Sitting on the toilet, I tried to think up a way of
improving the situation but I couldn’t. I started writing a message to Leonie to make myself laugh a bit but I knew there was nothing to say: it was just total mortification for poor old Martin.

And so, a few minutes later, when I walked back to the lawn, I was in no way surprised to find that there was a hamper but no Martin on my checked picnic rug.

I scanned around me. Just as he disappeared out of view I spotted him, a large white shape running at full tilt into the woods.

Well then our date is confirmed. I am excited! Most girls off the Internet want to know if I have long-term plans to start a family; you want to know if I like 80s rap. I think I’m in love with you.

Actually, I’m not. You have a foul mouth and terrible taste in men by all accounts. What the fuck do you mean he brought an out-of-date Christmas hamper? I don’t believe you. No one would do that.

Oh my God, maybe they would. Tell me more.

‘VELCOME!’ Stefania hissed, as I tried to slide unobtrusively into the back of Meditation. ‘I am delighted you have returned to Meditation as you come close to the conclusion of your dates!’

‘Ssh,’ I said, embarrassed. I was thirty seconds late and the room had fallen silent in anticipation of Stefania’s preamble. They goggled at me.

I threw my bag into the corner, straightened my dress and sat on a chair near the back, closing my eyes
and stretching my neck from left to right. A finger jabbed me from the right. ‘HI, BABE!’

I opened my eyes again. Nellie. For once it was genuinely nice to see her. The Daniels as a friend was a lot better than The Daniels as a foe. I smiled sideways at her. ‘Hey. Thanks for not ignoring me.’ She batted me away. ‘Hon, I told you, I’m
soooo
happy to have found another stalker. I was stalking Michael’s ex-girlfriend last night and I just couldn’t stop giggling. We’re two of a kind!’ I looked wistfully at her impeccable white tailored shirt and super-smart high-waisted jeans, and knew we were nothing of the sort. I was wearing a shabby old dress that Leonie had rejected three years ago and there was a hole in my tights. But I enjoyed the warmth of her greeting. And, most importantly, she wasn’t making the sex with my ex-boyfriend.

‘OK, I vant you to close your eyes and try to relax,’ Stefania crooned. ‘Let us start viz a body scan. Start at ze top of your head. Are zere tense muscles zere? Let zem go …’

Afterwards I munched a vegan quiche and watched Nellie talking to some of the other media bitches. Back on show, she seemed as she always had – possessed, commanding and completely in control. And yet she was in reality a puppy, hysterically overexcited about her Posh Fiancé and prone to the same mad stalking outbursts as I was.
How funny life is
, I thought, trying to identify a strange rubbery ingredient within
the quiche. People were so rarely who they appeared to be on the outside.

‘I’m learning how much I compare other people’s outsides to my insides,’ Mum had said to me the other night after her AA meeting. ‘I’ve spent my whole life thinking I know what’s going on in other people’s heads but of course I don’t!’ It was a pretty good point.

I picked up a little tablet of raw chocolate and popped it into my mouth. Urgh! Stefania was outstanding at raw chocolate but today’s offering was like crunchy turd. As I tried to remove it from my mouth as inconspicuously as possible, she arrived in front of me with her arms crossed. ‘Zis is not a good advert for my cooking, Frances,’ she hissed. ‘Vhat are you doing?’

I wiped my lips. ‘I’m spitting out this chocolate. Have you tasted it? It’s terrible! You’re brilliant at this stuff, what went wrong?’

She reached over and put some in her mouth with a face of fury, then reached for the napkins and ejected it at high speed. ‘Zeus! Zis is TERRIBLE!’ She grabbed the plate and shoved it under the batique bedspread that was covering the table. ‘I offer you a full apology! And a refund!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s fine. You must just have had a bad day.’ I pulled on my faded leather ankle boots and reached for my coat. Stefania didn’t reply. She had gone red. ‘Yes, I vas a bit preoccupied today,’ she said, with a strange expression. It hovered somewhere
between embarrassed, secretive and excited. A slight blush played at the edges of her porcelain cheeks.

I sat down again. ‘Er, what’s going on, Stefania?’

She pulled herself together, an imperceptible shift that closed me out. ‘Nozzing. I was just distracted today sinking about your eight dates. Zat is all.’

‘Bollocks.’ I folded my arms. ‘What’s going on?’

‘NOZZING, Frances. I shall see you tomorrow.’

‘Aren’t we going to travel back home together?’

She coloured again, this time more deeply. Blushing suited her. ‘No, I have business to attend to.’

I was about to interrogate her further when Nellie bounded up, excitable and beaming, pawing my arm. ‘BABE! We
so
need to talk! I’ve got something
rully
exciting for you!’

Stefania escaped delicately. I made a mental note to watch for her return later. She was
never
busy in the evenings. Ever.

‘Sounds interesting,’ I said to Nellie.

‘Well, babe, here’s the thing. My Michael also works in PR …’ My eyebrows shot up. I would have put at least a grand on him working for a bank. ‘… and he has some clients who would be, let’s say,
extremely
interesting to you. He called me earlier, asking what your exact role was at ITN because he’s going to offer the project to your boss tomorrow.’

‘Tell me more,’ I said, trying to sound excited. The chances of any ‘extremely interesting’ project being given to me at the moment were slim.

But as soon as Nellie began to speak, I knew I wanted it. I didn’t just want it, I really
, really
wanted it. I listened to her with growing excitement and despair, knowing that this could make or break me, but keenly aware that it would take an act of God for Hugh to entrust it to me.

Five minutes later, I stood up to leave. Nellie grabbed me and hugged me. ‘I just
knew
this was up your street, babe! When Dave told me about the way you always weed out the normal people in your stories … well, I just knew it was perfect for you!’

I smiled, touched.

‘Listen, babe, Michael’s going to ITN with the offer tomorrow and unless they’ve lost their minds they’ll say yes. So all we need to do then is convince them that you’re the man for the job! Should I get Michael to put in a good word?’

I shook my head sadly. ‘Nellie, I can’t lie – it sounds like my dream project but there is just no way on earth Hugh would let me do it. I’m in the doghouse with him at the moment.’ Nellie’s face fell. She really was very sweet, in spite of her toned legs and power fragrances and wall of shiny hair. ‘Trust me. He’ll give this job to one of the old-timers. But thank you for thinking of me. It was really kind of you.’

‘Oh, babe … I hope you’re wrong. Well, I’d better scoot. I’m meant to be meeting Portia downstairs for a bottle of wine ten minutes ago.’

‘Portia?’

‘Yeah, you know – the blonde woman who was sitting closest to Stefania? She’s the VP Worldwide Media Relations for Tower Media. I bloody want
them
on my books, babe.’

That was the difference between Nellie and me, I thought later, as I cobbled together a store-cupboard meal of canned sweetcorn and a half-defrosted beefburger. Duke Ellington was laying into his Tesco Finest rabbit terrine with gusto, casting occasional pitying looks at my student dinner. I believed in my career, and to a certain extent in myself, but I just didn’t have Nellie’s killer instinct. I was far happier sharing a dinner table with my evil cat than I was plying good contacts with expensive wines in exclusive West London clubs. Back in December when I’d asked Hugh about joining the politics team he’d just laughed in my face, yet Alex had come in and within three weeks had been given the frigging election special to produce.

‘I’m a failure,’ I told Duke Ellington, as I fired up my computer. He gave me an affirmative miaow. ‘Shut up!’ He started purring.

You have two new messages
, my homepage told me. With a tiny but not insignificant buzz of excitement, I clicked through, delighted to see that one was from Freddy. Our emails over the last few days had been deliciously enjoyable. He really seemed to get me, this dude, and I felt good emailing him.

Hello again Fran.

I agree: I do look like an iconic film star in my photo. Yes. But you’ve got the decade wrong, of course. It’s more 1950s, non?

Anyway, I am on my way back to London in a couple of days and looking forward to Sunday. Here is what we are doing. 1. We are going to see my favourite mad transgender folk singer at the Roundhouse. 2. Then I am going to feed you tapas in a little place by Mornington Crescent. 3. Then we will go home in opposite directions and I will stare at my silent phone for weeks, wondering what happened. Or we will go for a dirty hump on Primrose Hill. Or maybe we will just have an awkward kiss/hug loaded with the promise of more next time.

I sat back, grinning. ‘This is quite exciting!’ I whispered. Duke Ellington miaowed again. ‘He likes the sound of you, although God knows why.’ Duke Ellington marched over and allowed me to stroke him, then spun round at lightning speed and scragged my hand.

I typed with my left hand: Sounds ideal. ME LIKE TAPAS. The cat just attacked me again. Cunt. Yours, injured, Fran X

‘Little scrote,’ I said, as I got up to wash my hand. I was smiling. I liked Freddy. It felt easy with him. A date with a truly nice chap just before I saw Michael would give me just enough confidence to be able to lay things out to him on my terms. My beautiful Michael Slater with his slate grey eyes. Michael, who
slept curled up like a prawn. Michael, whom I admired more than any other man I’d ever met. Jesus, I honestly didn’t know how I’d got through nearly three months of not seeing him. But he was going to have to give me answers. Good answers. And some things were going to have to change.

‘This time round Michael and I are going to have more fun,’ I told Duke Ellington.

There was a bunch of daffodils in one of Mum’s jugs on the table. Spring was here. Michael and I would start again. The world was still turning. I was OK.

‘Will you sodding well
stop
that?’ I shouted at Leonie. She was snogging Alex, with tongues, about a metre from me. ‘This is Gin Thursday! It’s not a bloody sex show!’

Alex, looking thoroughly intoxicated, pulled away from her reluctantly and went a bit red. ‘Sorry. I just can’t keep my hands off her. You’d understand if you were male.’ His long thin face was shiny and beaming, and his suspiciously clear-looking glasses were wonky. I smiled despairingly as Leonie giggled and grabbed his hand, straightening her cardigan. She rubbed a little bit of her scarlet lipstick off his chin but left the rest on, winking at me. Alex was so overwhelmed by the situation he resembled a small child.

It was funny to be feeling fond of Alex. But the transformation in his behaviour at work really had
been radical. I’d been allocated to help his team three afternoons a week (albeit grudgingly) by Hugh and I knew that the things Alex was sending my way were producer’s jobs, rather than the humble research and guest-booking I’d been quite happy to do. Only three hours before, he’d forwarded my Nick Clegg VT proposal directly to Hugh with a note, saying, ‘This is from Fran. I think it’s excellent. I wouldn’t change a thing – do you agree?’