French Kissing Read online

  It took me a while to put my finger on why I felt abnormally self-conscious over lunch, but as I removed Lila’s errant fingers from our self-service toaster for the tenth time, it suddenly hit me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made a new adult friend who wasn’t a parent. In Anna’s presence, I was suddenly hyper-aware of the ‘mother’ persona I adopted around Lila, using a different voice when I addressed her and beginning far too many of my sentences with the word ‘don’t’. When I confessed this to Anna, she shook her head in disbelief. ‘Whatever will you do when you meet a guy?’ she said, her lips twitching with suppressed laughter. ‘I mean, he’ll have to meet Lila sometime and you’ll have to find a way to lose that king-sized chip on your shoulder.’

  Lila looked at both of us as though we’d taken leave of our senses. ‘Mummy hasn’t got any frites on her shoulder,’ she said, provoking giggles all round. ‘Anna’s talking nonsense!’

  As far as meeting guys was concerned, to say I’d got off to a slow start on Rendez-vous would have been something of an understatement. Clicking on ‘Qui a parcouru mon profil?’, it seemed the only men who had given me the virtual once-over were either fresh-faced and barely legal, or situated so far at the other end of the spectrum they were nudging retirement. My most ardent elderly admirer, papinou, whose profile shot resembled the famous photograph of Albert Einstein with his white hair standing on end, seemed to want to be anything but a surrogate grandpa. Every day for a week he’d sent me a ‘flash’ – the Rendez-vous equivalent of a wink, or perhaps a wolf whistle. The first time the notification message popped up, I’d burst out laughing. The French often misappropriated my mother tongue – the English language was seen to confer instant ‘cool’ – and I imagined the aim had been to evoke the idea of a ‘coup de foudre’, a lightning flash, the most commonly used metaphor, in French, for love at first sight. But, to me, ‘flash’ conjured up only a deeply unattractive mental image of a lecherous old man wearing a mackintosh but little else and leaping out from behind a bush to show me his wares.

  The tide began to turn when I uploaded a new profile photo. Kate had whipped out a camera towards the end of her party and somehow she’d managed to catch me unawares, grinning at one of Ryan’s jokes, and the result, which she’d sent me by email, was the most flattering shot I’d seen of myself in a long time, and one that blew my serious-faced Tailor-Made ID shot out of the water. Once I’d added the new photo to my Rendez-vous page, my inbox began, slowly but surely, to fill up. The time had come to sift through my messages and sort the wheat from the chaff. And, perhaps, if someone inspired me enough, to take things to the next level.

  I planned to devote my energies to this task one weeknight after work, once I’d dispensed with Lila’s evening ritual of bath, tooth brushing and bedtime stories and wolfed down my own dinner. Perched on a stool at the kitchen counter, I was reflecting on how ironic it was that I went to such lengths to feed Lila balanced meals, covering all the major food groups and bribing her to finish off her vegetables, and yet, as soon as I was alone, I’d tuck into a plate of buttered pasta. It was easy to develop such bad habits with no witnesses around to catch me in the act, red-cheeked, fork suspended in mid-air. My next interaction with the talking bathroom scales wasn’t going to be much fun.

  I was chasing a piece of pasta around the slippery plate when my mobile began to jiggle about on the countertop. ‘Ryan!’ I said, swallowing the last mouthful without chewing, surprised to hear his voice. ‘To what do I owe this unexpected honour?’

  ‘I’m in your neck of the woods,’ Ryan half-yelled, a rumble of traffic and beeping horns almost drowning out his words. I’d realized in one of my lessons the previous week that the French language doesn’t have a word for ‘road rage’. The theory I’d advanced to account for this was that France’s horn-happy motorists are assumed to be impatient and short-tempered by default. ‘I thought I might pop in to see you, if you fancy some company,’ he suggested. This was a most unusual but very welcome development. Outside of working hours, Ryan seldom left his beloved Marais.

  ‘Fantastic timing! I was about to uncork a bottle of red…’ I replied, taking the corkscrew out of the cutlery drawer with my free hand and reaching towards my wine rack to make my white lie come true. ‘So, yes, by all means, come over. There’s something you may be able to help me with, actually.’

  Ryan tapped at the door ten minutes later, mindful of my instruction not to ring the bell, for fear of waking Lila. Dressed in jeans and a tweed jacket, he was brandishing a flimsy pale-blue carrier bag, the kind used by most of the city’s corner shops. Through the translucent plastic I could make out another bottle of wine, a thoughtful last-minute purchase.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said, stepping inside and surveying the room. ‘Compact and bijou, as they say, but you’ve made good use of the space.’

  ‘God bless Ikea,’ I said dryly, as I rounded the kitchen counter, a glass in each hand.

  ‘I’m very partial to all things Swedish, as well you know,’ Ryan said, his eyes twinkling. He was referring to Klaus, his sometime lover from Stockholm and the only boyfriend of Ryan’s I’d ever met. They had split up at least three years earlier and, as far as I knew, Ryan had been single ever since.

  ‘You also seemed to be rather partial to that banker at Kate’s party the other week,’ I said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Did anything come of that? Was he even gay?’

  ‘Your gaydar is terrible, isn’t it?’ said Ryan, grinning. ‘Of course Eric is gay. Otherwise I’d never have bothered…’

  ‘Is that why you were in my neighbourhood?’ I asked him, fishing for more information. ‘Does this Eric live nearby?’

  ‘Well, you’re lukewarm actually,’ Ryan admitted. ‘He doesn’t live around here, but I was seeing him off from Gare du Nord… He had some meeting in London, and we had a drink before he caught the last Eurostar.’

  ‘Good for you,’ I said forcefully, taking a seat by his side on the sofa. ‘It’s about bloody time you met someone nice.’ Ryan was blushing, I noticed. He’d got it bad. ‘I was hoping,’ I said, gesturing in the direction of my laptop, that you might be able to help me find some man candy of my own. I’ve had all these bites on Rendez-vous, and I need to decide if anyone deserves a reply… Fancy lending me a hand?’

  ‘Deal,’ Ryan replied, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. ‘But only if we can do a bit of window shopping first. I know you’ve got the straight filter on, but a man can dream…’

  Pulling the Rendez-vous page up on my browser, I navigated to ‘Who’s online now?’ This generated a huge mosaic of faces without a shred of accompanying information – online man-hunting at its most superficial. It soon became apparent, though, that our tastes didn’t overlap much. The men who caught my eye were all between thirty and forty, with a full head of hair and a five o’clock shadow. Ryan, on the other hand, seemed to prefer his men fresh-faced and clean-shaven, and appeared to have a soft spot for those men who were wearing a suit on their profile photo. We were unanimous, however, when it came to the subject of ‘chin caterpillars’. An alarmingly high proportion of the men on Rendez-vous had a single strip of facial hair running from the centre of their bottom lip down to their chin. And as Ryan said with a shudder, ‘That is soooo not a good look.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, setting down my glass and clicking decisively on the link leading to my inbox. ‘Enough frivolity. Time for the serious stuff. Tell me what you think of this lot…’

  An hour later, the first bottle of wine stood empty and Ryan reached for the corkscrew and bottle number two before I could protest. Four suitors had been disqualified on the grounds of their pseudonyms alone: exit 4Your-Pleasure, KissFactory, Anaconda and Amour_à_3. Nine others we’d consigned, without remorse, to the virtual dustbin, given they were between five and ten years outside my target range of thirty to forty. A further five we sidelined because, for one reason or another, I couldn’t stand their choice of profile photo. What on ea
rth possessed Romain_du_Marais to use a badly cropped picture in which a slice of ex-girlfriend’s cheek was distinguishable, pressed against his? And did the thirty-eight-year-old man who’d posted a holiday snap of himself in his early twenties really think he could get away with it?

  There were three emails from men whose profile bore no photograph at all. ‘The thing about not posting a photo, regardless of whatever plausible-sounding excuses they make about not wanting to be recognized by people from the office,’ said Ryan, his tone sceptical, ‘is that one assumes they’re either lying about being single or they’re singularly unattractive.’

  ‘I suppose I could request a photo,’ I ventured uncertainly. ‘There was one I quite liked the sound of – the graphic designer who lives near Père Lachaise…’

  Ryan shook his head vigorously. ‘Supposing he sends you a photo and it turns out he’s the Elephant Man’s cousin? Is it worth having to tie yourself in knots, wondering how to let him down gently?’

  Only three of my original twenty-four suitors now remained. Ryan, who had enjoyed the elimination process immensely, appeared to be channelling a favourite TV-talent-show judge known for his ruthless approach. ‘Okay,’ he pronounced, ‘here’s my verdict. This first one is lame, lame, lame… It looks to me like he’s copied and pasted the same email and sent it to twenty different women.’

  ‘Plus it’s full of spelling mistakes,’ I added. ‘And you know how much that kind of thing grates on me.’ Ryan was already opening the next email and, from the look on his face, the prognosis wasn’t good.

  ‘Now, maybe I’m being too cynical here,’ he said, cocking his head to one side, ‘but I’d say this specimen has noticed your profession and is hoping for a few free English lessons…’ I sighed. I’d entertained the same suspicion myself. And if the level of Goldorak’s written English in the email he’d sent me was anything to go by, a date conducted in my mother tongue would sap my very will to live.

  ‘Which leaves only one,’ I said gloomily, emptying the remainder of the wine into our glasses. ‘Number twenty-four. So, go on, tell me, what’s wrong with him?’ To my surprise, however, when I glanced back at Ryan, he was staring spellbound at the enlarged version of a rather attractive profile photo and didn’t seem to have anything negative to say.

  I leaned in closer for a better look. Number twenty-four – or Montreuil36, as he called himself – had piercing blue eyes, a square chin and a healthy head of thick dark hair, which was beginning to recede at his temples. Pictured sitting in a garden chair, one leg crossed over the other, a half-read book dangled from his left hand, and he gazed, not into the lens, but at something or someone else we couldn’t see. ‘Mmmm,’ I murmured appreciatively. ‘There is something likeable about him.’

  ‘Of course, his address-plus-age pseudonym isn’t very imaginative,’ Ryan said, as though it was his duty to point out the negatives, ‘but I’m all for erring on the side of boring after seeing monstrosities like Homme_pour_toi earlier.’ I was inclined to agree. Montreuil, a town on the other side of the périphérique ring road which divides those with a Paris postcode from those without, wasn’t dissimilar to Belleville. Aside from where the guy lived, however, there wasn’t a whole lot else to go on. Most of the fields in his profile had been left blank, or ‘non renseigné’, and his email merely stated that he liked the look of my profile and thought we should ‘connect’. ‘Quite the man of mystery, isn’t he?’ Ryan said thoughtfully, clicking from field to field but finding no further information. ‘Worth investigating further though, I’d say…’

  Heaving the laptop off the table and on to my knee, I clicked on ‘reply’. I’d got as far as ‘Cher Montreuil36’ when a pop-up window appeared with a loud ping that almost made me jump out of my skin, announcing that Montreuil36 wanted to invite me to chat. Whipping my fingertips off the keyboard as though I’d been burned, I looked askance at Ryan, unsure what to do. I’d have much preferred to compose an email at my leisure: chatting was so direct, and only marginally less painful than having to flirt with a complete stranger on the phone. And what Ryan didn’t know – because I’d spared him the gory details – was that the very concept of ‘instant messaging’ was forever associated in my mind with Nico’s tawdry exchanges with Mathilde.

  ‘Come on, Sally, it would be rude not to,’ Ryan said firmly, leaving me with no choice. My stomach fluttering with nerves, I took a deep breath, clicked on ‘accept invitation’ and reluctantly took the plunge.

  I realized as I began to type that I was more than a little tipsy, but my suitor – real name Florent – didn’t appear to notice anything amiss and even complimented me on my French. Once we’d made our introductions, I began to take him to task about the paucity of information available on his profile, emboldened by the wine circulating in my bloodstream.

  ‘You don’t give an awful lot away,’ I said playfully. ‘Does that mean your closets are full of skeletons?’

  Florent countered that he’d left the blanks on purpose. ‘You can tell a lot about a woman by the questions she chooses to ask,’ he explained. ‘You have three questions. What would you like to know?’

  ‘He’s a clever one,’ Ryan said approvingly, as I wrinkled my brow, wondering how best to proceed.

  ‘Question one,’ I typed, ‘is why Rendez-vous?’

  ‘Because good things don’t always come to those who passively wait,’ came his reply. I smiled, remembering having said something similar to my mother on the phone the other day. In spite of myself, I was starting to enjoy this.

  ‘What do you do for a living?’ was my next question. I argued, in brackets, that I knew this was a boring and conventional question. But there was no escaping it: how a person spends most of their waking life does tend to define them.

  ‘I work for a film production company,’ Florent replied. He didn’t specify in what capacity, but I didn’t want to use up my third question finding out. I liked the idea of meeting someone who worked in film, though.

  ‘Final question,’ I said aloud, drumming my fingers against the keys as I pondered and accidentally typing a long line of ‘f’s, which I hastily deleted.

  ‘How about “What have you learned about me from questions one and two”?’ Ryan volunteered.

  ‘Ooh yes! I like that. I like that a lot.’ I translated Ryan’s suggestion into French and pressed the ‘enter’ key with a flourish.

  ‘How about I tell you over a drink?’ came Florent’s rapid-fire reply.

  I gave Ryan a jubilant look and he winked and gave me a thumbs-up. Maybe I’d been wrong about Rendez-vous. Not only had I found an intelligent life form out there, but an intelligent life form who was attractive, worked in an interesting field and wanted to meet me.

  ‘I think, my dear, that this evening has been what I’d call an unqualified success,’ Ryan said, looking pleased with himself. ‘Do let me know if you require my filtering services in the future. It’s been most enjoyable.’

  7

  ‘Lila, honey, we really have to get a move on,’ I yelled through the open bedroom door, knocking back the remains of my coffee with a grimace. My head throbbed, as I’d known it would. I hadn’t been able to stomach any breakfast. The previous night’s wine glasses leered at me from the coffee table but there was no time for tidying up. I’d managed to hit ‘off’ instead of ‘snooze’ when the alarm clock sounded that morning, and Lila and I were now running disastrously late.

  French infant schools impose a strict drop-off window in the mornings. At Lila’s maternelle, doors opened at 8.20 a.m. and woe betide any straggler who rang the intercom to gain entry after they were closed and locked at eight-thirty. It had only happened to us once – Lila had tripped and landed in some runny green pigeon mess one morning and we’d had to dash home to change her trousers – but I still smarted at the memory of the reprimands that little episode had earned me from the headmistress, and her gatekeeper had shot me baleful looks for several days afterwards.

  Luckily for me, Lila
seemed to be in a cooperative mood. She’d already pulled on the clothes I’d hastily picked out and slung over the end of her bed and, when I hurried through into the living room, she was executing the complicated manoeuvre she’d learned at school to put on her coat unaided. Laying it on the parquet, lining side up and hood towards her toes, she crouched down low to hook her hands inside the sleeves. When she got to her feet and raised both arms in the air, the coat flipped over her head and settled on her back, as if by magic. The only thing Lila couldn’t manage without my help was the zip. Dropping to my knees and fastening it right up to her chin, I took the opportunity to plant a kiss on her porcelain cheek, as cool as mine was feverish. ‘Mummy,’ Lila said, screwing up her nose in distaste and taking a step backwards, ‘your mouth smells of not nice, today!’

  ‘Charming,’ I muttered, snatching up my satchel, praying there might be a stray pellet of chewing gum somewhere in its depths. ‘Come on, Madam. I haven’t got time to brush my teeth. We’ve got to dash…’

  My watch read 8.32 when Lila and I scuttled across the threshold of the school, but the wall clock in the entrance hall appeared to be slow, so I escaped my second scolding of the term by the skin of my teeth. Darting across the empty préau, we hurried upstairs to the first floor, where the classrooms were located. Sandrine, Lila’s teacher, a wiry fortysomething who seemed to run on inexhaustible reserves of nervous energy, was lying in wait in the classroom doorway. Something about her stance – which reminded me of a coiled spring – told me she was about to pounce. Sure enough, no sooner had I hung Lila’s coat on its labelled peg than she accosted me. I sighed. So much for making a quick getaway.