Fiona Gibson - The Woman Who Met Her Match - The laugh out loud romantic comedy you need to read in 2018

A few months after the accident, it all came out that Anneka Salworth, the thirty-two-year-old woman driving the car that killed David, had had an epileptic fit at the wheel. She had been told by her consultant not to drive, and was charged with causing death by dangerous driving. Her defence centred around the snowy road conditions, but she was found guilty and given a five-year prison sentence. I could have gone and seen it all played out in court, but took the kids camping to Cornwall instead.

It was late spring and still a little chilly, but building fires on the beach, and seeing Cam and Amy truly having fun for the first time since the accident, lifted my spirits more than any guilty verdict could. I even braved the freezing water with Amy. Swimming in the sea had been the thing she and David had loved to do together more than anything; he always adored ploughing through the waves. I am a rather feeble, splashy swimmer, and Cam always preferred to lie on a towel with a book. But we swam and cooked and laughed together, and during those few days my anger seemed to blow away on the sharp sea breeze. In fact, Anneka Salworth, with her droopy perm and doleful grey eyes – of course I’d Googled her and read the brief news reports – now seemed no more culpable than the snowy conditions that night, or me asking for a bottle of sauvignon.

I didn’t want to blame anyone. I just wanted to at least pretend to be a normal functioning family, and for the three of us to find a way to be happy again.

Naturally, I still think about David every day but, somehow, during the past seven years, we have all managed to find a new way of living. Work has been a lifeline as I have risen up through the ranks to the position of counter manager. Today, business is brisk throughout the rest of my shift, and by the time I arrive home, Amy has headed off to her best friend Bella’s while Cam, too, is on his way out.

‘Got to go,’ he says, giving me a speedy hug in the hallway. ‘Last-minute call, emergency thing ’cause someone’s sick. Gig on the Holloway Road …’

‘Oh, that’s great, love.’ Hopefully, this line of work will continue throughout Cam’s last school year. After that, he has vague notions to ‘try and get into sound engineering’, and I can’t help thinking, what would his dad have made of that? But then, I can’t think that way. Cam is a sociable, popular boy. He’ll get by . ‘Be careful,’ I add as an afterthought, at which he stops at the front door and smirks.

‘Be careful of what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Wires. Plugs. Electricals .’

He chuckles and pats my head as if I’m a fretful aunt. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not nine. I won’t go sticking my finger into anything.’ And with that, he’s off, clambering into his mate Mo’s revving, battered old van; Mo who, like Cam, is seventeen and barely shaves yet, so how can he possibly be in charge of a vehicle? It seems as scary a concept as the pair of them being let loose to perform a heart operation.

In the kitchen now, I wave through the window at Stu and Bob, his friend and business cohort, who are deep in conversation at the table in our tiny back garden. Prowling for something to eat, I discover prized treasure in the form of leftover spaghetti and fresh pesto – clearly Stu’s work – in a pan on the hob. Too hungry to bother with heating it up, I shovel it down straight from the pan before joining Stu and Bob in the garden.

‘Hey, Lorrie,’ Bob says, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. Parsley Force has certainly knocked back their beer consumption, as most of their call-outs happen in the evenings and late into the night.

‘Hi, Bob. How’s it going?’

‘Really good,’ he enthuses. ‘Better than we could’ve hoped, amazingly.’

I glance at the A4 pad covered in scribbled notes on the wrought-iron table. ‘Plans for world domination?’

He nods and grins. ‘Well, expansion plans. Marketing, social media, that kind of thing. We’ve probably taken things as far as we can just relying on word of mouth …’

‘He reckons we need to start promoting,’ Stu offers. ‘A newsletter, competitions, more activity on the Facebook page …’

Bob laughs, adjusting the black-rimmed spectacles that dominate his boyish face. ‘Poor old granddad, afraid of social media. Thinks it’s just some conspiracy to glean all our personal information …’

‘Well, what else is it?’ Stu retorts.

‘It’s useful,’ I remark. ‘What about keeping in touch with old friends? Everyone’s scattered all over the place these days. How else would we all stay connected?’

‘Er, via telephonic apparatus?’ Stu smirks.

‘Okay, but when are we supposed to phone each other?’ I ask. ‘We’re all working all day and who has time for long conversations at night? Without social media, people would just fall off the radar …’

Stu shrugs. ‘Friends who fall off the radar can’t have been that important in the first place.’

‘But I don’t want to lose people,’ I insist. ‘And anyway, what about my dad? How else would we be able to keep in touch when he’s 12,000 miles away in Australia? It’s over a year since I’ve seen him for real but with Facebook I still get to see him in his silly yellow shorts, trying to light a barbecue, getting told off by Jill for squirting lighter fuel all over the prawns …’

Stu shrugs. ‘Okay, there is that …’

‘And it’s how we’ll spread the word,’ Bob adds. ‘Build up a wider customer base, get people talking, maybe even attract some press coverage …’

‘Who’d want to interview us ?’ Stu asks.

‘I don’t know. Someone might find us inspiring …’

‘You could be photographed looking all macho in your biker leathers,’ I add with a grin. ‘That could boost your customer base—’

‘Or close us down,’ Bob sniggers as I leave them to thrash out their plans in peace.

Alone in the living room, I find myself wishing the kids were around tonight. These days, I barely see them. Cam’s often working or hanging out with Mo and the rest of his mates, and Amy loves being at Bella’s. Who can blame her, with their semi-wild garden and the summerhouse Bella’s dad built? Even at fifteen, the girls still love to ‘camp’ in it. Anyway, I shouldn’t be reliant on my children for company.

I curl up on the sofa with my laptop and, being more of the Bob persuasion where social media is concerned, I log onto Facebook with the intention of catching up with Dad.

Ah, a friend request. I click it open and my heart seems to clunk.

Antoine Rousseau.

Antoine from the Massif Central? Antoine who saw me swimming in my C&A bra and pants? It can’t be him. Occasionally, I’ve wondered what he’s been up to over the years – and, okay, when I first joined Facebook I had a quick search for him. Okay, okay, I spent hours trawling for my teenage love – just out of curiosity, of course. There were so many men called Antoine Rousseau – none of them looking anything like the boy I remembered – that I gave up.

I stare at his name. As he doesn’t have a proper profile picture, I’m still not convinced it’s the Antoine who dumped me in favour of bra-less Nicole. The photo is of an orange sitting on a white plate. What’s that all about?

I open his page but, as we’re not Facebook friends, all I can see is a small selection of pictures: blowsy pink flowers in a garden, a glass of wine on a garden table. And, in bold black type, what looks like one of those motivational phrases, which I have an aversion to in any language and can’t even bother trying to translate.

There is one picture of a person. As it’s taken from a distance on what looks like an otherwise deserted beach, it’s hard at first to tell whether it’s him. I peer at it, and slowly he comes into focus.