The Woman Who Met Her Match Read online

  God, yes, absolutely sure.

  Click.

  ACCOUNT SUSPENDED.

  Good. I know their types now, joining the site thinking: aw, poor mums in their stained dressing gowns, desperate for a bit of attention. Tragic middle-aged women sitting at home reading Take a Break and nibbling custard creams; what they really want is a creepy phone call from a solicitor’s office loo.

  Maybe he thought I’m so sex-starved and desperate, I’d actually enjoy it. It’s seeming less and less likely that I will ever enjoy a normal relationship with a man.

  Curled up on my bed now, I log onto Facebook. Although I still haven’t replied to Antoine’s last message – his declaration about that summer making him ‘come alive’ – he has sent two more pictures without any accompanying comment. In the first, we are holding hands on a country lane and both looking back at the camera, smiling. How handsome he was, all tanned and rangy with a smile that flipped my heart. I thought I was chunky then, but in fact I can see now that I was a pleasant-looking girl: not eye-catchingly beautiful like Amy but pretty enough, and excited to be away from home.

  The other picture is of me and him in his kitchen, cooking together as if playing at being grown-ups. I remember him showing me how to make soup with onions and beans and fresh herbs scattered in it. It seemed terribly exotic, and was delicious, I recall. At home, our herbs came from jars, our soup from a Heinz tin. Maybe Jeanne, Antoine’s mother, took the photo. I can’t imagine Valérie did.

  My breath catches. A message has appeared.

  It was so nice finding these old pictures!

  I pause, wondering how to respond.

  You’re very quiet, Lorrie. Hope I haven’t upset you by sending these?

  I stare at the screen. What on earth does he want after all this time? In fact, why am I allowing myself to become all stirred up when I have this mysterious conference looming in two days’ time? Oh, sod it. Sod Ralph and sod Antoine, suddenly rearing up in my life like this, bombarding me with photos from when I was fresh-faced and unlined and serum hadn’t even been invented.

  I glare at his profile picture – Mr-Quirky-Tangerine-Head – and tap out a reply:

  No, I’m not upset now. But I have to remind you that you broke my heart.

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday, 6.13 a.m., still not properly light. I ease myself out of bed and check for messages.

  Oh Lorrie, I’m so sorry. Did I really? It wasn’t intentional. I was eighteen years old and an idiot. That summer meant a lot to me, you know. I thought you were a beautiful and fascinating girl. I loved getting your letters all about your interesting life in Yorkshire!

  Oh, really? I remember it now: trying to amuse him with tales about how Mum behaved whenever a Man Came to the Door. It would go like this: quick peek through our ruffled lace curtains before answering it. If it was a woman – a neighbour or someone collecting for charity – she’d open it all normal with her feet stuffed into flattened-down slippers. But if it was a man, she’d rush about fixing her hair and smearing on lipstick in the convex hall mirror as if any visiting bloke might turn out to be a potential future husband.

  Mum had called time on her marriage when I was ten. Although only in her mid-thirties, she seemed to hold the view that time was of the essence in finding a new man. Soon after the divorce – to her intense annoyance – Dad met a kind and courageous Australian lady called Jill, a single woman without kids and quite the adventurer. She was exploring Europe on her own, staying at cheap hostels and marching about in walking boots, corduroys and charity shop sweaters. The very opposite of Mum, I doubt if Jill owns even one item of make-up. She and Dad fell in love and relocated to her home city of Melbourne, where they eventually married. Mum has never forgiven him for finding happiness with someone else.

  Thank God she has now – at seventy years old – found someone who loves her deeply, I reflect as I dress for work. I just wish she could relax and enjoy life instead of panicking about the wedding. After work, I have the pleasure of picking her up and bringing her here for dinner so she can delegate some tasks off her colossal list.

  At work, my first customer happens to be an older bride-to-be. ‘I’m so out of touch with make-up,’ she explains as we peruse colours together.

  ‘What sort of wedding are you having?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, just two close friends as witnesses, my daughter and son-in-law, and my little granddaughter. I really couldn’t face a lot of froth and nonsense. I mean, what’s the point, really? We’ve both done it before. It’s not about the show and ceremony. It’s more about …’ She pauses.

  ‘… Just wanting to get married because you’re in love?’

  ‘Exactly.’ She beams at me. ‘So I’d just like to look like me, on a good day – on a brilliant day actually. You know those days when everything feels … just right?’

  I laugh. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  In her early sixties, Maggie is a delight to make up and buys her entire wedding-day face, including our new foundation (£35 for something that’s basically nothing! as Amy observed).

  After work, I come home to find Stu and the kids crowded around Cam’s phone, watching a YouTube video of baboons flinging themselves into a lake. I only have time for a quick cup of tea, before I’m on my way out again.

  My mobile rings as I climb into my car. ‘Hi, Mum, just setting off now.’

  ‘Oh, good. You are still coming?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. Are you okay? You sound a bit—’

  ‘It’s nothing. Nothing to worry about. Well it is, but I don’t want to discuss it on the phone …’

  My chest tightens. She sounds horribly tense. ‘Please just tell me what’s happened, Mum. Aren’t you feeling well?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Well, sort-of fine …’

  It’s a beautiful warm evening. I lower the driver’s side window and exhale slowly. ‘Hamish hasn’t changed his mind, has he?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s not that …’ She makes a small, whimpery sound. ‘Please come over right now, Lorrie. I don’t think I can cope with this on my own.’ With that, she finishes our call.

  Whatever it is – however shocking and dreadful – I wish she’d at least hinted at what’s wrong rather than leaving me worried sick on the half-hour drive to Leyton, where she’s lived for twenty years, lured down from Yorkshire by Brian Horley, a scaffolder whom she’d imagined would offer lifelong happiness but instead ran amok with her credit cards. And now, as I crawl through traffic – my usual route is snared up with roadworks – my brain whirrs with terrible medical diagnoses.

  By the time I pull up outside her small sixties block in a quiet residential road, I am feeling quite sick with dread.

  I clatter up to her first-floor flat, where her door flies open.

  ‘Well, thank goodness you’re here.’ As if am a tardy plumber and the whole place is flooded.

  ‘What on earth’s wrong?’ I step into her living room. Immaculate as ever, and smelling keenly of furniture polish, it’s a jarring vision of clashing patterned upholstery.

  ‘Hamish’s bloody parents’ place, that’s what’s wrong. Look!’ She grabs a paper wallet of photos from the cluttered sideboard and thrusts them at me. I take them out and flip through them; they are various interior and exterior shots showing Lovington Hall in all its glory.

  ‘I’ve seen these before, Mum. What’s the problem?’

  I hand them back to her, and she jabs at one of the prints.

  ‘It’s not like this now. It’s suffered storm damage, roof’s in a terrible state, apparently. The grand hall’s unusable …’

  I frown. ‘Aren’t there other rooms you could use? The place is enormous.’

  ‘I’m not having our reception in a kitchen or a billiard room …’

  No, heaven forbid … ‘Can’t it be fixed in time? The roof, I mean?’

  ‘No, because it’s historical, a Grade One listed building. It can only be repaired with the right kind of slate
s …’

  ‘Can’t someone get hold of the right kind?’

  She shakes her head. ‘The original ones came from a particular quarry and it closed down fifty years ago. The roof tiles have to match, apparently.’ She snatches her packet of cigarettes from the ornament-covered sideboard and lights one up.

  ‘Oh, Mum … could you put the wedding back?’

  ‘No, Lorrie. It’s going to take months – maybe years – to import the right slates from God knows where. We could be waiting forever!’

  I breathe slowly, trying to emanate calmness. ‘Well, can’t you have a marquee in the grounds instead?’

  Her lips purse. ‘Haimie’s parents won’t have that. It’d ruin the lawn, they said. Their gardener’s very particular about it – it’s taken years to get it looking that good …’

  ‘But it’s only a big tent …’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she says, exhaling a gust of smoke.

  I frown and step back. ‘You can still have the actual ceremony in that lovely church, though, can’t you?’ I’ve seen photos of that too; Saxon, ridiculously picturesque, its vicar having only agreed to marry Hamish and my mother – a wanton divorcee – due to his family’s standing in the area.

  ‘Yes, but what about the reception?’

  ‘Well, there must be other places nearby you could use. A hotel, a restaurant or a village hall …’

  ‘A hotel instead of a Jacobean manor?’ she exclaims. ‘That’s the whole theme, Lorrie – Jacobean. You know Dolores has made my dress? Tight bodice, red velvet, gold detailing – it couldn’t be more Jacobean …’

  ‘Um, could she un-Jacobean it, or at least tone it down a notch?’

  Mum stares at me as if I’ve suggested she gets married in her bra and pants. ‘What d’you mean?’

  I shrug. ‘Well, maybe hold back on the gold detailing?’

  ‘You can’t un-Jacobean it,’ she splutters. ‘The Jacobean-ness is the whole point …’ A bubble of mirth starts to rise in my stomach. ‘As if I don’t have enough on my plate already,’ she adds, tapping her cigarette into a large onyx ashtray.

  ‘It has been a lot of work,’ I concede.

  ‘Tell me about it. Don’t you ever have a wedding like this one, Lorrie.’

  ‘No, well, I can’t imagine I’ll be having any weddings at all,’ I say with a wry smile.

  ‘Oh, please don’t say that. Don’t be so defeatist …’ Funnily enough, I remember her saying exactly the same thing when she was packing me off to the Massif Central.

  ‘I’m not defeatist – just realistic. Anyway, never mind that. It’s your wedding we’re concerned with now. I hate to see it stressing you out—’

  ‘It doesn’t help that Haimie’s left it all to me …’

  ‘Only because he didn’t really want a huge do,’ I remind her.

  ‘He’s perfectly happy with our plans!’

  ‘Yes, of course he is, but he knows you’re so much better at organising things than he is.’

  At this, Mum seems appeased; I have learnt from ex- perience that it’s better simply to nod and agree and flatter her. However, I also know she’s the one who’s been driving the whole thing, and that Hamish is only going along with it to make her happy. ‘I’d have settled for a nice quiet dinner,’ he confided recently, ‘but it’s what Marion wants and it’s her day.’ It’s your day too, I wanted to say, but thought better of it.

  Perhaps I just don’t get the huge, flouncy wedding thing with the towering cake and little gauzy bags of sugared almonds – dyed dark red and sprinkled with edible gold dust, to echo the Jacobean theme – never having been a bride myself. Naturally, Mum had been eager to know when David and I were planning to ‘do the decent thing, especially as there are children involved now’. We had to explain (through gritted teeth) that we were together and loved each other, and the kids were fine, thank you very much – we just had no need for the almighty palaver and expense. I don’t see why you’re so anti-marriage, she lamented. We weren’t, we just didn’t want it for us. If you had a wedding planned, it’d be a great incentive to lose weight! Thank you, Mum. But what if he just ups and leaves you? Well, he did leave – or rather, he was taken from us – and no signatures on the marriage register could have altered that.

  ‘Let’s go, Mum,’ I prompt her now, as she stubs out her cigarette. ‘Stu’ll be waiting. He’s cooking for us tonight …’

  ‘Oh, Stu’s going to be there! I wish you’d said.’ Mum adores Stu. She always has, ever since he hung around in our kitchen as a teenager, politely deflecting her awkward quizzings: ‘Any girlfriend on the go, Stuart? Bet there is. Ooh look, Lorrie, he’s blushing! Read into that what you will …’

  All sparkly now, she pulls on a tan leather blouson-style jacket over her hip-hugging navy skirt and embellished blouse. ‘Oh, I can’t understand you and Stu, this arrangement you have,’ she adds.

  I blink at her. ‘What d’you mean, “arrangement”? He moved in with us when he split up with his girlfriend and needed somewhere to live, and I was grateful to have a bit of rent coming in. Why does that seem so strange?’

  ‘What I mean is, there you are, all alone with this wonderful person right under your nose, and you’re not taking advantage …’

  ‘You think I should take advantage of Stu?’ I splutter with laughter.

  ‘No, no exactly …’

  ‘You mean, fondle his bottom while he’s taking a carton of milk out of the fridge?’

  Mum tuts and frowns. ‘I’m being serious, Lorrie. It just baffles me. What a crying waste of a perfectly lovely man.’

  In the hallway now, she checks her reflection in the mirror and rummages in her bag for her gold quilted make-up pouch. Out comes the lipstick and mirrored powder compact; a fresh coat of iridescent peach is hastily applied in preparation for some heavy-duty flirting with my housemate.

  ‘I’m sure Stu doesn’t feel he’s going to waste,’ I tease her. ‘He’s probably up to all sorts and I don’t even know.’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she says, shaking her head in exasperation as we make our way downstairs to my car.

  Chapter Ten

  Mum has never been the tactile type. She responds to hugs as if being frisked at the airport, which is why, I suspect, her grandchildren always insist on embracing her enthusiastically on arrival.

  ‘Hello, Cameron,’ Mum says, patting down her hair as she disentangles herself.

  ‘Hi, Grandma. Great to see you …’

  She endures Amy’s hug with a rictus smile while looking around anxiously, probably for Stu.

  ‘Looking forward to the wedding?’ My daughter grins mischievously.

  ‘Don’t ask!’ Mum exclaims.

  ‘We are,’ Cam adds, catching my eye, ‘aren’t we, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, of course we are.’ I catch him glancing at the clock on the hall wall. Although he’s off out later to a party with Mo, I’ve asked him to hang around and at least have dinner with us. Not that my mother has ever been particularly interested in her grandchildren, or in young people at all, for that matter; ‘One child is quite enough for me’, she was always fond of saying when I was a kid, as if I was forever smashing windows and setting fire to things. She rarely involved herself in my life as I was growing up, aside from providing essentials (I always suspected she attended parents’ evenings only for the opportunity to flirt with my rather dashing maths teacher). Of course she loves Cam and Amy in her own, rather distracted way, but if you were to ask her anything about their interests or young adult lives, she’d be stumped for an answer.

  ‘Where’s Stu?’ She whips off her jacket and hands it to Amy to hang up for her.

  ‘Hello, Marion, I’m here.’ He strides out of the kitchen, hair a little dishevelled but still looking smart in a new white T-shirt, dark jeans and a stripy butcher’s apron. The sparks that fly off her are almost visible as he kisses her cheek. No shying away this time.

  ‘Hello, Stu,’ she says, beaming at him. ‘Busy i
n the kitchen, I see!’

  ‘Er, yeah. It’s just simple, I’m afraid …’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be wonderful. You look great, Stu. Very handsome and trim. Must be all that zooming about you do!’ Her tinkly laughter fills the kitchen as we follow him out through the back door to the garden.

  ‘On my motorbike, Marion. Not sure that counts as exercise …’

  ‘Yes, but out there in all weathers … you’re terribly brave, I always think.’

  Out there, in the wilds of Crouch End and Walthamstow.

  He catches my eye and winks. ‘I thought we’d eat out here, if that’s okay for everyone. Seems a shame to waste such a lovely evening. Cam, Amy, can you help me bring things out, leave Mum and Grandma to have a chat?’

  ‘Sure,’ Cam says, clearly stifling sniggers as my mother and I take our seats at the garden table. Dinner is brought out with remarkable efficiency: perfectly baked salmon with a chilli-spiked sauce, new potatoes flecked with chives, a multi-coloured salad, plus a beer for Cam and wine for Mum, as I’m driving her home and Stu is on Parsley Force duty later on tonight. There’s a bottle of sparkling water, and another of orange juice, for the rest of us.

  As everyone takes their places at the table, Mum fills them in on the Lovington Hall roof slate disaster. ‘The trouble is, they’re discontinued,’ she laments, as if we’re talking about a beloved shade of lipstick. God, I could murder a drink …

  ‘The only thing to do is embrace it,’ Stu remarks. ‘Okay, your plans have been shaken up, but sometimes the best things are thrown together at the last minute—’

  ‘But we’ve already sent out the invitations!’ she exclaims as Stu fills her wine glass.

  ‘That doesn’t matter, Grandma,’ Amy offers. ‘You can find somewhere new and explain to everyone what’s happened.’

  Mum purses her lips. ‘More work for me.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Stu adds, ‘the huge, grand reception – that’s not really what matters, is it?’

  She turns to him, adoration beaming from her pale blue eyes. ‘What d’you mean?’