Читать книгу The Woman Who Met Her Match: The laugh out loud romantic comedy you need to read in 2018 - Fiona Gibson, Fiona Gibson - Страница 10

Of course, it’s not always like that, by which I mean not every customer walks away delighted. But usually, they feel a little better. It might simply be due to being tended by someone, or it could be the restorative power of make-up. I can honestly say that, once the storm had calmed, lipstick helped to pull me through the toughest period of my life.

After David died, I was allowed as much time off work as I needed. Stu and Pearl both turned up with home-cooked quiches and Tupperware cartons of curry and chilli to tide us over. My freezer was jam-packed with labelled plastic tubs, and Stu, a better-than-average baker, festooned us with more cakes than we could actually manage to eat. While my own mother didn’t seem to know what to do with me, he and Pearl were there, almost constantly, sitting and listening as I went over and over that terrible night, and when there really wasn’t anything left to say, they washed up and tidied and helped Cam and Amy with homework. To me, it seemed ridiculous that homework was still happening – that the world was still happening outside our house. Without children of her own – she and her husband had been unable to conceive – Pearl became far more than our childminder. She’d show up to take Cam and Amy to the zoo or the theatre, and became an auntie figure, woven into the fabric of my family. Whenever I suggested that she was doing too much for us, she insisted she’d rather be with us than stuck with Iain at home – ‘the boring farter in the corner’, as she termed him. At the mention of ‘farting Iain’, Cam and Amy convulsed with laughter. It seemed they were familiar with his gaseous emissions. As they had ricocheted through phases of being withdrawn and exploding with anger over tiny upsets, I was just terribly grateful that my children could still laugh.

My work colleagues visited too. Helena babysat, even though she’d only just started at our store, and area manager Nuala treated me to her cleaner for an entire day. I sat on the couch, feeling grateful but strangely redundant as Rosa cheerfully dusted and hoovered and our house emerged from its layer of grime and neglect.

At first, I didn’t notice the La Beauté goodie bag Nuala had brought me. When I did, I just dumped it on a bookshelf. What was the point of taking care of myself or trying to look pretty? The very concept seemed ridiculous when David was no longer there. I wasn’t even sure if I could ever return to work and enthuse over the plumping qualities of our latest serum. Perhaps I should retrain as a firefighter or a police officer, something that would make a real difference? But then, those jobs involved no small element of personal risk, and now Cam and Amy had only me to take care of them, I became terrified of something equally dreadful happening to me, leaving them all alone. Even making a will, and citing Pearl as Cameron and Amy’s guardian, did little to ease my fears.

One drizzly afternoon, Amy plucked the rope-handled La Beauté bag from the shelf and peered into it. Considering its contents useless, she tossed it aside on the sofa and a moisturiser, a night cream and a lipstick tumbled out. I only applied the lipstick because my lips were dry and sore. A couple of hours later, I happened to glimpse my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I looked better, I realised. More like the functioning human being I was pretending to be. I started wearing the lipstick daily and then I added a little base, some blush, a touch of eyeliner, as I had every day before the accident. I’d started to use the moisturiser and night cream too, soothed by the feeling of gently massaging them in. Taking a few minutes to apply my make-up each morning felt frivolous at first, considering what had happened. But it also meant I could face the day.

And slowly, I started to heal. Much to Mum’s consternation, I returned to work: ‘But what about the children?’ she asked, suggesting that they would be better served if I stayed at home full-time. Yet how could I, when I needed to support us? They were at school, we had Pearl to look after them until I came home from work, and it was good for me to have some structure back in my life. I started to take pride again in being able to help customers to feel better about themselves, if only for the few minutes they spent perched on our stools. My world might have crumbled but small pleasures could be had in introducing a customer to our new, especially silken mascara. Now my job seemed to be less about meeting daily and monthly targets – although, for some reason my sales soared – and more a matter of sharing my love of beauty.

While life at home was hectic, stepping into our store brought an immediate sense of calm. Deliciously scented, and soothing even on the busiest days, it felt like the kind of place where nothing bad could ever happen. Now I understood why Mum had been so drawn to the lavish displays of frosted lipsticks and pearlised nail polishes in Goldings back in Bradford.

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.

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.