Greatest Love Story of All Time (37 page)

As I cancelled the call, the next message came through: Turn right out of the station and walk along Dunquerque. Look for a silver Beamer parked by a flower stall. Get in it!

I started jigging up and down with pure, childish excitement and ran towards the car, which was only metres from me. ‘Françoise?’ the driver said, with a lovely French smile.

‘
Oui!
’ I breathed, hopping in. We pulled off smoothly and I hugged myself. I couldn’t believe he’d done this for me!

I knew now that I would do pretty much anything to get him back. Whatever he wanted, I’d give it to him.

Michael’s next message said, You’re coming to meet me for lunch in my fave brasserie. Exploring this afternoon. And then something very special tonight … X

As we passed through the streets filled with people I drank in the city. Bikes with baskets containing small
dogs, chestnut trees laden with fat fluorescent green buds, smiling people drinking coffee on pavements and then – I drew in my breath – the pyramid of the Louvre. I saluted to the
Mona Lisa
as we chugged on towards the river. ‘Wow,’ I whispered as Notre Dame cruised into view.

The taxi driver cocked his head in the opposite direction. ‘
Regardez
,’ he said. I regarded.

‘Triple wow!’ I breathed. It was only the bloody Eiffel Tower! ‘
J’adore Paris!
’ The misery of the last few months evaporated out through the window across the Seine.

Leonie tried me a couple more times but there was no sound and eventually I turned my phone to silent. I wanted to be able to concentrate fully on my boy.

And there, twenty minutes later – as I stood in the doorway of a cavernous art-deco brasserie called La Coupole – he was.

My stomach somersaulted. My precious Michael Slater with the slate grey eyes. Sitting alone at a table by the window, fiddling with his stiff white napkin. Under the high ceiling, surrounded by gaily chattering diners, he seemed small and lonely but rather romantic. He was thinner than last time I’d seen him; he was wearing my favourite of his jumpers and his shoulder bones seemed sharply visible underneath. Even across a crowded restaurant I could see the fear in his face. It made my heart burst as I manoeuvred my way through
the tables behind the maître d.
I’m coming, Michael
.
I can make whatever it is go away. I can fix this!

I stood in front of him and he looked up. For a second, he didn’t do anything, he just looked at me, almost shocked. And then the smile started. The smile I’d fallen in love with the moment I’d met him. The slow, lazy smile that made his eyes sparkle and his cheeks dimple. I felt the same stirring in my womb I’d felt on the day I’d walked into his life with Barry Manilow hair.

‘Franny?’ he said eventually, getting up.

‘Actually, yes. Do I look like someone else?’

‘No, I– What?’

I started giggling. ‘Sorry, it’s just you put a question mark after my name. As if I was someone else. I’m definitely Fran.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’ And then he did what I’d been desperate –
desperate
– for him to do every moment of the last three months: he pulled me into his arms and kissed me properly on the mouth. Then he hugged me so hard that I feared for my ribcage. ‘Michael! I can’t breathe down here.’ Nothing. ‘Michael! You’re killing me!’ A deep rumbly laugh travelled out through his rather spare ribs and jumper and into my ear. Eventually he let go. ‘Christ, I’ve missed you. So badly.’

He traced a finger along my collarbone in exactly the way he had in my mind when I’d bought this blouse. I didn’t trust myself to speak. There was so much to say and so much pain to try to file away.

Instead of saying anything I began the meal in the
way that only I knew how, which was to smash a glass off the table with my handbag as I sat down. A large, beautiful wine glass, which splintered into a million rainbow-tinted pieces as it hit the floor. Unsurprised but mortified, I sprang to my feet to pick it up while Michael laughed. ‘For God’s sake, Franny! You haven’t changed.’ He bent down to help me.

‘I’m so sorry!’ I whispered, puce. I didn’t dare look up at the people around us and kept my eyes on the shards of glass all over the place. Something wet fell on them. A tear. Me? A quick mental check confirmed that I wasn’t crying. Michael? Yes, Michael. He was picking up glass and
actually
crying.

‘What the blazes is going on?’ I whispered to him. ‘Why are you crying?’

He made a weird snuffly noise like the one he made when he was sleeping. ‘Because I’ve missed you. Even your bull-in-a-china-shop ways. I need you in my life. I can’t function without you,’ he said simply.

That seemed a very decent explanation. I tried to put my hand over his briefly but stabbed him with a glass shard. ‘Oh, fuck, sorry!’

‘Ssh!’ he hissed. ‘You can’t say “fuck” here!’

People were by now ignoring us as we scrabbled around on the floor. ‘We’re in France, Michael. These people speak French. Of course I can say “fuck”!’ The waiter arrived and swept the glass briskly into an elegant silver dustpan, which he whisked away. We sat down and looked at each other.

Michael’s eyes were watering but he’d stopped crying. ‘Sorry to start blubbing,’ he said ruefully. ‘Didn’t plan to do that straight away. But it’s true. I can’t live without you. You don’t know what the last three months have been like.’

I took a deep breath and straightened my top with shaking hands. ‘So why did you end it?’ I said. I wasn’t far off crying myself now. All the pain, the shame of stalking, the nights where I’d cried myself to sleep, the stupid dates, the SOS calls to my friends. Why had we both gone through this? The waiter came back. He scanned the floor quickly to check I hadn’t broken anything else and then got a bottle of wine out of a bucket behind Michael. Bloody hell, it was Puligny Montrachet.

‘Yes, great,’ Michael said distractedly, after sipping the sample the waiter gave him.

‘Très bien,’ the waiter muttered waspishly. He poured wine into our glasses, deposited vast leather-bound menus on the table and turned on his smart clicky heel.

‘Um, I can’t drink at the moment,’ I said.

Michael looked surprised. ‘Eh? You’re a born drinker!’ I flinched. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Er, antibiotics. Anyway. You were about to tell me why the hell we’ve spent the last three months in Purgatory, I believe.’

Michael had coloured slightly and my heart melted. He looked so precious and vulnerable. And thin. I
resisted the urge to get up, hurl myself into his lap and curl up there with my arms around him.

‘Because …’ he said eventually ‘… because you abandoned me, Franny. You had left the relationship. You were living on your terms and finding time for me as and when you could fit me in. I just couldn’t take any more.’ He stopped, anguished. ‘By the time we got to your thirtieth I felt like you weren’t giving me anything at all. I felt like this hanger-on and I just cracked up, Franny, I couldn’t take any more.’

‘Um … Go on,’ I said slowly. My brain was exploding with confusion, frantically re-scrambling my picture of our last few months together and cross-checking it against what he was saying.

‘Fran, I know you worked on the six thirty news so you were never going to put in really normal hours, but it just felt you were throwing your whole life into it. When you weren’t working, you were out with Leonie
drinking,
’ –he spat the word out as if I’d been shooting up skag – ‘or hanging with bloody
Dave
or, worst of all, you were looking after your
mother.
’

I put my hands up. ‘Whoa, Michael, Mum was sick! I saw her once a fortnight. What are you
on
about?’ But he was crying again. Silent sobs that convulsed him in agonizing spasms. ‘Franny, I was so lonely I didn’t know what to do with myself,’ he said. ‘I just felt like I was spending my life waiting for you to come home from your big important job or from nights out with your big important friends. You completely
abandoned me. I couldn’t take any more.’ Silently I passed him a slightly snotty tissue from my handbag. He winced as he appraised it before blotting his tears.

I was rendered completely mute by now so he carried on: ‘I always loved you, Fran. From the moment we met. I wanted to be with you for ever. I still want to be with you for ever. I was going to ask you to marry me that night on your thirtieth and then you kept me waiting for an hour at ITN while you were calling Nick Bennett and trying to get into the election team, and when you finally came out all you could talk about was that you’d got the job even though I’d
said
I didn’t want you doing it. It was like you didn’t even care. And I realized I had to get away from it all and sort my head out. I wanted to spend some time apart so I could figure out whether or not you wanted to be with me and whether I was prepared to accept you on your terms.’

I stared at him.

‘I heard from Alex that you were dating and it nearly killed me.’

‘That was why you started texting me,’ I whispered.

He nodded. ‘But then eventually you replied and Jenny said she’d seen you and that you’d been miserable too and you’d been stalking Nellie Daniels thinking we were together and … well, I suppose I realized you were in as much of a state as I was.’

I was flabbergasted. ‘You mean the three months was a
test
? To see how hard I’d try to get you back?’

He looked sheepish. ‘Not so much a test, I just needed to know if you cared.’

‘JESUS, Michael, you told me not to contact you for three months! It was the only bloody thing you
were
clear about! If I’d known you were testing me I’d have been on the phone twenty-four hours a day! I nearly had a breakdown. Seriously.’ I felt hollow and exhausted. ‘I nearly had a breakdown,’ I repeated softly.

He studied my face closely and put his hand over mine. ‘I know. Jenny told me. I realize now it was a stupid thing to do. I should have been straight with you –’

‘You’re not bloody wrong there. I can’t believe you did this to me.’ I regained my composure. ‘You do know that my friends made me go on those dates, don’t you?’ He nodded. ‘And that nothing came of them?’ He nodded again. I made a mental note to ensure the story of my sleeping with Charlie Swift was deeply buried.

‘Michael, the last three months have been the worst in my life. And if it’s been that bad for you, too, then quite frankly I think you’re insane.’ His face clouded. ‘I just think it was a ridiculous thing to do and it didn’t pay off. I thought you were sleeping with Nellie and you thought I was dating everything that moved. And we were both miserable. If this is going to work, you’re going to need to be honest with me. One hundred per cent honest.’

The waiter came over and hovered slightly malevolently, pointedly ignoring the fact that we were engrossed in a deeply personal conversation. I looked up at him with watery eyes. ‘Er … pâté?’ I said, taking a stab at what might be on the menu. ‘
Et, um, moules frites?
’ The waiter nodded and I smiled wryly, grateful for my GCSE French. Michael muttered, ‘
Moi aussi,
’ and the waiter swept off.

Michael smiled and put his hand on the side of my face. ‘I agree, honesty is the only way. So here’s me being super-honest, Fran. I love you. I’ve missed you terribly and I want us to be together. I just need to know that you’re serious about us. I can’t go on feeling alone in our relationship.’

Scared of losing him again I gabbled, ‘Of
course
I’m serious about us. I’m so sorry you felt abandoned, darling Michael. I never intended to make you feel that way. I promise I’ll spend less time drinking – in fact, actually I lied about antibiotics. I’m not drinking at all these days’ – Michael was stunned – ‘and, anyway, Leonie is in complete La-la Land with Alex and Dave’s being weird, but none of that matters. Even if they want to see me every night I promise I’ll make more time for you. In fact, I’ll give up Gin Thursday, OK? That’s it. Gin Thursday’s gone. Done. Finished.’

Michael nodded hopefully.

‘And Mum’s in AA! She’s sober! It’s a miracle, but she doesn’t need much looking after now; she’s got all these people from AA she hangs out with and she’s
talking about working again and she’s seeing her old friends …’ Michael smiled. It didn’t feel quite right, batting away Mum as a drain on my time, but I couldn’t lose him again. ‘And as for work, well, I …’ My new project was going to take up a lot of my time.

I looked at Michael’s face and knew what I had to do. ‘As for work, I was just asked to make a prime-time documentary for the ITV news. It’ll take up hours of my time, there’s no point denying it.’ Michael lowered his eyes to his napkin. ‘But there will be other opportunities.’ He looked up again. ‘If Hugh trusts me with this I’m sure he’ll trust me with a similar thing when you and me are solid again. Maybe for now I could quit the six thirty news and apply for a transfer to the lunchtime bulletin so I’d be home earlier.’

He fiddled with his fork, evidently still concerned. My heart pounded. I could not go back to where I was three months ago.
Nothing
was worth that sort of pain. ‘Michael, I’ll do whatever it takes, OK? I’ll put you first. Just please believe me when I tell you I’m sorry because I love you and I am willing to make
whatever changes
I have to for this to work.’

The waiter returned, wearing a rather horrid smirk, and we stopped talking as he replaced our starter cutlery with pâté knives. Michael was thinking hard.
I had to get him back
. The waiter swept off again.

‘OK.’ Michael smiled. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s be us again. I trust you. I love you. I want to be with you.’ He leaned forward and kissed me softly on the lips.

I felt a Mexican wave of relief go off inside me. I grabbed his hand and smiled, weak with relief. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘Thank you for giving me one more chance.’ We kissed again.

The meal was delicious. Rich gamey pâté with squares of light brown bread and glorious salted butter, followed by mussels in a sauce so exquisite I had to fight hard not to lift the bowl up and slurp at the end. We talked and laughed as if none of the last painful ninety days had happened, me filling him in on Duke Ellington’s evil machinations and him groaning about Alex’s descent into complete Leonie-based insanity. Apparently he had been obsessed with her from the moment he met her. ‘Does he talk about it all the time?’ I asked.