The Woman Who Met Her Match: The laugh out loud romantic comedy you need to read in 2018. Fiona Gibson
no, it’s not training. Well, not exactly.’
‘Come on, Nuala. Don’t leave us all hanging like this.’
She smiles tersely and her neck flushes pink. ‘Sorry, I can’t say anything else. It’s an early start, I’m afraid – 8 a.m. – and breakfast will be served. You’ll be back here by noon.’
I glance at Helena, and then back at Nuala. ‘You mean we’ll all be there? But what about the counter?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says briskly. ‘I’m bringing in a team to cover things here. It’s only a few hours …’
‘A team? What d’you mean?’
‘Trainees. They’ll manage,’ she adds with uncharacteristic sharpness.
‘The counter will be manned by trainees?’
‘It’ll be fine, Lorrie. Trust me, please – oh, and you should all be in uniform for the meeting, that goes without saying …’
‘Yes, of course,’ I murmur, glancing down at my black La Beauté tunic with its white logo on the breast pocket. As if we’d turn up in T-shirts and jeans.
Nuala swipes her trilling phone from her shoulder bag and purses her lips at it. ‘Sorry, got to take this.’ She steps away, hair half-covering her face, already murmuring into her phone.
I look at Andi, an eager school-leaver and our newest recruit. She pulls a ‘what the hell?’ face, but there’s no chance to speculate, not with Nuala loitering nearby. Anyway, if something’s afoot, we won’t help matters by standing about gossiping.
I approach a customer, inviting her to try our new, ultra-light foundation, and fall into easy chit-chat as normal. ‘You’ll find it’s as light as a BB cream, while smoothing out imperfections …’
‘Oh, I’d like to try that …’
‘Could you hop on the stool for me and we’ll see which colour gives the best match?’
‘Great,’ the woman says. ‘The thing is, foundation always looks orange on me …’
Antoine flickers into my mind as I dab at her face with a cosmetic sponge. Antoine, with his orange-for-a-face profile picture, who reckons he ‘came alive’ in the summer of ’86.
‘Oh, that does look good,’ she exclaims, examining her reflection. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘Great, would you like me to cleanse it off for you?’
‘What, and look like my knackered old self?’ She laughs, oblivious to Nuala who’s still lurking close by, barking into her mobile now: ‘Yes, they’ll all be there. Of course I’ve said it’s compulsory …’
My customer trots away with her purchase, and I busy myself with tidying up my counter area, while trying to ignore a niggle of unease about all of us attending this meeting. The company is strict about holiday leave; many of our customers are fiercely loyal and expect to see a familiar face at the counter. In fact, I can’t remember a time when we have all been off at once.
Looking severely rattled now, Nuala finishes her call and turns to address us again. ‘I meant to say, one or two counter staff might be asked to stand up and do a little talk at this, er, thing. It’s nothing to panic about—’
‘Really? What kind of talk?’ I try to keep my voice level.
‘Oh, you know, just a quick, spontaneous thing. The essence of what La Beauté is all about …’
I study her face. Her pale blue eyes look tired, and her lipstick has worn away.
‘Any idea who’ll have to do this?’ Helena asks.
‘Honestly, I have no idea. But I think we should all be prepared, okay?’
‘So we should prepare, even though it’s meant to be spontaneous?’ I smile to show I’m fine with this, but Nuala’s mouth remains set in a tight line.
‘Really, it’s nothing to worry about. All they want to see is a real passion for the brand …’
‘Who’s they?’ I ask.
‘Oh, just the head honchos, you know …’
I frown, confused by her vagueness; I know most of senior management by name. Her phone trills again, and she waves quickly, her glossy heels clacking as she marches away from our counter, past clusters of perplexed-looking assistants from the other counters, towards the revolving front door.
Andi widens her eyes at me. ‘That sounds scary. I hate public speaking. I always feel like I might actually throw up.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ I say, affecting a breeziness I don’t feel, ‘and it’ll probably be good for us, whatever it is. Just a little team get-together to keep us all on our toes.’
*
The upstairs room in the pub that Helena reserved for her birthday gathering has been double-booked. So we’ve been bundled in with a crowd of incredibly loud twenty- somethings who seem surprisingly inebriated, considering it’s only 7.30 p.m. Crammed around a too-small table, we all ooh and ahh as Helena opens her presents, enthusing over each one in turn. However, the larger group dominates, their choice of music pumping relentlessly from a speaker above my head.
‘He says it was all moving too fast,’ shouts a girl from the other party, inches from my ear. ‘And now I hear he’s moved in with that woman. You know the fat one who’s, like, thirty?’
I glance around, and she casts me a look of disdain as if I have no business being here at all.
‘Oh my God,’ gasps her friend, flicking her tussled blonde hair. ‘The one with skirt up her arse, cellulite on display?’
Helena’s sister Sophie catches my eye across the table and grimaces.
‘Yeah, don’t know how he can stand seeing her naked.’
Our nondescript meals are brought by a glum waitress, and bear all the hallmarks of having hopped straight from freezer to microwave. I poke at my bland Thai curry, wondering when thirty was deemed ancient and whether I can get away with slipping off home pretty soon.
The two girls are still positioned right beside our table where they are continuing their annihilation of this unnamed woman. ‘She must be at least a size fourteen,’ the blonde one remarks.
‘Yeah! God, it’s disgusting. It always amazes me how some women allow themselves to get to that size.’ I look down at my bowl, my appetite having waned, my curry watery and tepid. After our initial sterling efforts, our group seems to have given up on making ourselves heard above the din. Even Helena looks as if her spirits are sagging.
As our plates are cleared, I reflect that, at some point, Mum stopped mentioning my ‘puppy fat’, declaring instead, ‘You’re lucky, you can carry off your size because of your height.’ Which made me feel like some vast ocean liner: strong, sturdy, reliable in high seas.
More people are crowding into the room now, jostling our table and shouting over our heads. The waitress seems to have forgotten that we’ve ordered another round of drinks, and I find myself yearning to be spirited home to Stu and the kids.
‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ Helena says in frustration.
‘Good idea,’ remarks Sophie as the bill is plonked on our table, without the extra round of drinks. As we divvy it up, I make my excuses for a quick exit and hug Helena and Andi goodbye. That’s one bonus of growing older; there’s no shame to be had in ducking out early.
Liberated into the humid July night, I make my way towards the tube, finally getting a moment to consider Antoine’s ‘the summer I came alive’ declaration. How am I supposed to respond to that, and why is he telling me now? Perhaps he was just hit by a wave of nostalgia, as I am occasionally.