Her expression darkens. ‘Awful.’
Part of me wonders why I asked. Kayla is twenty-seven years old. When I first met her, she’d had a steady boyfriend since her schooldays, but they split up eighteen months ago and since then she’s been on a never-ending Tinder treadmill which has seen her dating men from every walk of life. There have been plumbers, finance directors, landscape gardeners, and once, in a particularly low point, an amateur magician who kept pulling pound coins out of her ear.
‘How disappointing,’ I say, sympathetically. ‘He looked nice on his profile, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, and his messages were lovely,’ she agrees. ‘But having now met him in person, I suspect his mum was sending them on his behalf. He couldn’t stop firing questions at me. I’m convinced he had a pre-prepared list he’d got from Chat GPT.’
‘Maybe he was just nervous,’ I wince, trying to be positive.
But she’s clearly not in the mood. ‘Well, it was exhausting. By the time I’d answered, “What hobbies do you have and why?”and“If you could have one superpower what would it be?”I was considering climbing out of the bathroom window. Then he brought out the pièce de résistance: “What’s your favourite word?”’
‘What?’
‘His was “specific”, in case you’re wondering.’
‘Why?’ I ask, bewildered.
‘Who knows?’ she shrugs.
‘What did you tell him yours was?’
‘“Clusterfuck”. For some reason it was the first thing that sprang to mind.’
I can’t help but laugh.
‘Honestly, Jules. I don’t even expect anything as unrealistic asloveanymore. Just stumbling across someone vaguely fanciable would be something.’
‘You’ll find someone soon enough,’ I reassure her. But it’s with more confidence than I feel.
Because all this proves to me is that when I met Ed every star in the universe must have been aligned. It was a once-in-a-century occurrence, as rare as a supernova, never to be repeated.
Chapter 13
Given that Frankie’s trip was supposed to be the catalyst for my regime of pre-preparing salads, I find shamefully little in my fridge after work, beyond a few limp vegetables, a bit of cheese and a SlimFast milkshake I optimistically put in six weeks ago, ready for the diet I haven’t yet started. I consider going to the supermarket, but can’t muster up the energy, so throw together a cheese toastie and tell myself that tomorrow’s a new day. I’m about to slump in front of the TV when I get a call. Only it’s from Milly’s phone, not Frankie’s.
I answer it with a stab of dread, followed by relief when I hear my daughter’s voice.
‘Absolutely nothing to worry aboutbut. . .’
I have come to think of this as the least reassuring prelude to a sentence in the English language.
‘Could you just do that thing on Find My iPhone where you play a sound on my device?’
‘Does that mean you’ve lost your phone?’ I ask.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say lost itas such.’
‘Frankie. You’ve lost it,’ Milly interjects from somewhere in the background.
‘I prefer the word “mislaid”. I know it’s here somewhere.’
‘Where are you?’ I ask.
‘Venice. We’ve been on a gondola. I just need to work out which one. I’m standing next to a canal currently looking at about thirty identical boats with men wearing matching stripy T-shirts. I feel like I’m in aWhere’s Wally?book.’
I spend the next twenty-five minutes reuniting my daughter with her phone and although it all ends well – for now – the whole thing leaves me with a renewed sense of angst about the myriad of disasters that might befall her during this trip.
It’s been eight years since Frankie was diagnosed with ADHD and, although her symptoms have become more manageable since then, they definitely haven’t gone away.
