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

A tall, slim man with light brown hair, squinting in the sunshine. A lopsided smile. Bit Boden, actually, in a loose, windblown checked shirt and stone-coloured chinos. My God, he does look like ‘my’ Antoine. In fact, I’m sure he is. What on earth possessed him to contact me now, thirty years since we last saw each other?

Bob’s voice floats in from the garden. ‘We need a proper website. People expect it. It’s like a shop window …’ His voice fades as I’m transported, as a shy and chubby teenager, back to 1986, and a lake deep in the woods where the most beautiful boy I had ever set eyes on handed me his T-shirt to dry myself …

Antoine Rousseau, trampler of my tender sixteen-year-old heart.

Decline or accept?

Bastard.

I click accept.

I sit there, poised for a message to say hi, how are you? It’s been a long time! Pathetic, I know. Beneath my undeniably middle-aged exterior, I am clearly still that desperate schoolgirl yearning to glimpse a blue airmail envelope bearing a French stamp. Lorrie Foster , written in his spidery hand – oh, the thrill of it!

Irritated with myself – haven’t I matured one iota during the intervening thirty years? – I call out goodnight to Stu and Bob, who have relocated to the kitchen table, and carry my laptop upstairs in the affectedly casual manner of someone planning to order some new saucepans from Amazon.

While I’m getting ready for bed, I keep checking Facebook, my gaze constantly flicking towards it as if I have lost all control of my eyeball-swivelling muscles. My fingers are tingling with the effort of not messaging him. Hello Antoine, I want to type, this is a bit of a surprise! Or rather, Have you any idea how heartbroken I was, and how I took solace in all those ‘forbidden’ Viennettas Mum kept stashed in the chest freezer in the garage, plus stolen Dubonnet from her drinks cabinet? Of course, I don’t really harbour any bitterness now. It was just a teenage thing, a holiday infatuation that fizzled out. After everything that happened subsequently – meeting David, having our children and then losing him – Antoine seems barely significant. But still … what does the shitbag heartbreaker want ? Curiosity niggles at me like an itch, and I can’t help wondering what he’d make of me now, aged forty-six, a generous size sixteen and currently wearing Primark pyjamas with penguins printed all over them.

Of course, now we’re Facebook friends, I can access Antoine’s entire photo archive and pore over his grown-up life. At least, the Facebook version which, as everyone knows, is carefully curated to demonstrate an unfailingly happy and enviable existence. However, as a test of willpower, I decide to postpone the pleasure. Instead, I prop up my pillows in bed and force myself into the calmer territory of eBay, where I try to concentrate on finding a suitable dress to wear to my mother’s wedding in three weeks’ time.

Mum’s love life: now there’s a template to avoid. She grumbled about Dad constantly, yet fell apart after turfing him out of the house when I was ten years old. There followed a series of ill-advised liaisons, all ending in heartbreak – but now, thankfully, she is deeply in love with a nice bit of posh called Hamish Sowerbutt, who’s over a decade younger, terribly kind in his scatty way, and clearly adores her. The fact that I don’t have my wedding outfit sorted is causing Mum no small amount of agitation. However, so far, I haven’t found anything suitable. ‘Remember it’s a classy, formal affair,’ she retorted recently. What is she expecting me to turn up in? Ermine?

Then I’m back on Facebook, unable to resist any longer, and now examining numerous pictures of presumably corporate events Antoine has attended. The men are all dressed virtually identically in dark suits, the women in smart jackets and dresses in navy or grey. How disappointing. This is Antoine at work – all professional smiles and handshakes – and gives away nothing about his personal life. There isn’t even anything to indicate the sort of company he works for, or what his job actually is.

In one picture, Antoine – again suited and, it must be said, dashingly handsome – is standing in front of an audience with a microphone, giving some sort of speech. I picture the honey-tanned boy with floppy, overgrown hair and golden skin, covering my neck in tiny feathery kisses. He now looks like the sort of man who has manicures. I stare and stare until each picture has imprinted itself onto my brain.

At around midnight, I hear Cam coming in. ‘Okay, darling?’ I call out.

‘Yeah, good, thanks,’ he replies from the landing. ‘Managed not to fry myself on all those terrifying wires …’

‘Glad to hear it,’ I say with a smile. There’s some pottering about, then music starts up in his room – low volume and pretty mellow, nothing to complain about really – and I detect a whiff of smoke, which Cam might have brought home with him, although of course, venues have been non-smoking for years. He’s probably having a shifty roll-up out of his bedroom window. I know he does this – I’ve found the odd Rizla lying around, and those tiny cylindrical filter things. Although I don’t love the fact that he smokes, he’s assured me that it’s only occasional. When you think of the kind of stuff he could be getting up to, is it really worth falling out over something like three roll-ups a week? Anyway, at his age – post-Antoine, having just started my first job – I was smoking proper ciggies, sneaking them out of Mum’s packets.

Christ, I must have dozed off. I come to, groggily, with the main light still on and my laptop balanced perilously close to the edge of my bed. It’s 3.47 a.m. ‘Get a grip,’ I mutter, placing it on my bedside table.

Just one more check … a message! Whoop!

Hi Lorrie, here’s a recent pic from not so sunny Melbourne. Hope all’s good with you and the kids, love Dad xxx

My father, grinning in a wetsuit, the wet black rubber with banana yellow flashing doing a sterling job of holding in his small paunch. His arm is thrust around Jill, his wife, who’s bare-faced and grinning in a pink T-shirt, baggy shorts and a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Both looking great, I reply.

Hey, you’re up late! Been out at a party?

Who comes home from parties at this hour on a Monday night? Oh God, plenty of people do. How old and sour I have become.

No, just having trouble sleeping for some reason. Night, Dad. Love you. L xxx

*

I manage to get through the whole morning at work without checking Facebook on my phone. But at lunchtime, on my way out to buy a sandwich, I crack and message him.

Hi Antoine, I type, my heart rattling only slightly, what a surprise to receive a friend request from you. How are you?

There. Pretty neutral, I’d say.

I glide through the afternoon, reminding myself that this is nothing – just an innocent little friend request – and the very fact that I’m all het up about someone I haven’t seen since 1986 suggests that I really should get out more. Not on dates – definitely not dates – but out in the world generally. Take this summer, for instance. It’s not just my shaky finances to blame for the fact that I have no holiday planned. It’s the issue of who to go with. Naturally, Cameron doesn’t want to come away with me anymore; he and Mo have a vague notion of going to a couple of festivals. Pearl, who works as a nanny to extremely well-heeled families these days, is due back soon from working in Dubai, but the last thing she’ll want is to go away again. Other friends are happily ensconced with their families – two -parent families – and I can’t imagine Stu would want to come away and abandon Parsley Force for a week. Anyway, we’ve never been on holiday together. I think he’d be a bit taken aback if I asked.