petite anglaise

The Boy and Tadpole return from their pilgrimage to McDonalds. The Boy is looking disproportionately pleased with himself, far more so than the feat of having hunted and gathered a happy meal and a couple of burgers would usually warrant.

“What have you two been up to?” I ask, suspiciously, as I unpack Tadpole’s chicken nuggets and arrange them on a proper plate - which increases the nutritional value of the food tenfold, because it is no longer takeaway - and set the Asterix toy aside for later.

“We had a very important conversation, she and I, while we were queuing up to be served,” says The Boy, unwrapping his own dinner. “N’est-ce pas biquette?”

Tadpole nods, her mouth full of nugget. We’ve both grown used to being referred to as a “small female goat”, The Boy’s favoured term of endearment.

“Go on…” I say, wondering what on earth the terrible two have been plotting behind my back.

“Well,” says The Boy, pausing to bite, chew and swallow, enjoying keeping me on tenterhooks, “I asked your daughter if it was okay for me to marry you… It’s the done thing, you know, when someone already has children, to ask their permission.” I feel rather emotional all of a sudden, tears prickling the back of my eyes. What a lovely thing to do. Even if McDonalds wasn’t the venue I would have chosen for such a conversation.

“And what did she say?” I ask, wiping some ketchup from Tadpole’s chin with a serviette. I don’t think she has even heard our exchange. She’s selectively deaf at the best of times, but especially so when focused on food.

“She said that she thought it was a very good idea for us to marry ourselves,” the Boy replies. “And then we got talking about princess dresses and flowers, as you do… But when I said ‘you’re going to look just like a princess’, she said the loveliest thing…” He takes another bite, spinning out his story for as long as possible.

“I did say that it’s not me who will be the princess on that day,” pipes up Tadpole suddenly. Apparently she has been listening in, all along. “Because it’s mummy who will be the princess, not me. I’ll just be a little princess. Or a middle-sized. But you will be the real one, that day.”

I smile, under cover of my Royal Cheese, my eyes moist. “What a double act you are, you two,” I say, when I’ve recovered my composure. Then, turning to The Boy: “And what would you have done if she had said ‘no’?”

It is New Year’s Day morning.

After a damp squib of a New Year’s Eve involving a disappointing soirée under the Pont Alexandre III, a predictable lack of taxis in the vicinity of the Champs Elysées and rather more walking in the icy early hours wearing a gauzy dress and stockings than was advisable whilst heavy with cold, The Boy and I are dozing in bed.

To say The Boy is not a morning person would be something of an understatement. Upwards of four heavily sugared espressos and two cigarettes are required before he is able to manage anything approaching speech, and displays of affection the wrong side of midday are rare. I’ve learnt not to take this behaviour personally and, indeed, have grown rather fond of his habitual morning grimace: eyes scrunched tightly closed so as not to let in the merest chink of light, brow furrowed, lips pursed.

So when he wakes for a moment, rolls over and snuggles into my shoulder, his arm creeping around me, I am surprised and pleased and touched. And suddenly the question I’d been carrying around with me for three whole days in Amsterdam - never quite managing to find the right moment - wells up and, before I can stop myself, crosses my lips.

“I think I’d like to…” I say, shyly.

I regret the “I think” afterwards, because it doesn’t sound, well, sure enough. I also regret the fact that I addressed my question to somewhere slightly northwest of his collarbone instead of gazing deeply into his brown eyes.

“Um, can you ask me again later? When I’m awake?” replies the Boy, groggily.

“Yes. Of course,” I mumble.

I’m mortified. Groaning on the inside. But there is nothing I can do now except wait. And see whether he chooses to remember our exchange when he wakes up.

Several hours later, I open my eyes to a vision of The Boy - showered, dressed and perched on the edge of the bed - looking at me intently with an odd expression on his face. Somehow he manages to remind me of the dramatic chipmunk and a lovestruck puppy, simultaneously.

“That question you asked me earlier… Did you mean it?” he says slowly as I blink and rub the sleep from my eyes. “Because if you did… then the answer is YES.”

For a moment the only sound is my sharp intake of breath. Then I hug him tightly. I don’t think I’d ever got as far as imagining beyond actually popping the question, and I have no idea what to do, or say, next.

“T’es pas dans la merde là!” says The Boy - who I realise will need a name change, now that he has been promoted to Husband-to-be - with a grin. That seals the deal: together, we have managed to make this a scene we will never be able to recount to our grandchildren.

Neither of us dares refer to the subject for the rest of the day. I think we are both in shock.

I spent most of my Christmas in the UK wishing I had it in me to behave in a more diva-ish fashion. Because if I’d stamped my foot and point blank refused to pose for photographs outdoors, minus my coat, in sub-zero temperatures the previous week, I wouldn’t have wound up in bed. Feverish. Aching. Counting the minutes until I could have my next fix of paracetamol.

As it was, Tadpole had to open the presents under grandma and grandad’s tree sans moi and I had to content myself with second hand accounts of how she stumbled blindly around the living room with an upturned Santa’s sack on her head. Let’s hope those pesky photos - due to run in forthcoming editions of Weekend Knack (Belgium - next week, I think) and Marie Claire UK (April issue) - were worth the pain. I doubt it somehow. Photogenic I am not.

It was something of a relief that I appeared to be on the road to recovery when I joined the Boy in Paris and we boarded a Thalys on Friday morning, bound for Amsterdam. Granted, I was still rather hoarse. When I attempted to speak, I sounded like a cross between a forty-a-day Gaulloise smoker and a teenage boy with a breaking voice. ‘C’est pas grave, ça me fera des vraies vacances‘ said The Boy with a teasing smile.

Suffice to say that my indignant reply lost much of its force when it came out as a strangled squawk.

There followed three days of strolling through parks and along canals hand in hand, pausing at regular intervals for a restorative hot chocolate with whipped cream, and using my convalescence as an excuse to retire early and rise late. (Do hotels make everyone feel, um, frisky, or is it just me?) The weather was perfect: mild temperatures, blue skies, low winter sun striking huge windows and bathing them in warm, golden light. We meandered in ever decreasing circles - no matter which direction we took, we seemed to end up at the same point (Hotel de l’Europe) time and time again - admiring the architecture and peering inside the houses (the Dutch don’t seem to favour net curtains). We wandered through the red light district - disappointing, I got far better underwear inspiration from watching Billie Piper play Belle de Jour - and stopped in coffee shops, bars and cafés to rest our feet.

And all the while I pondered when would be the right time to ask the Boy a question. Something that had been simmering at the back of my mind for a while. I almost blurted it out when we were sitting on a bench by a particularly picturesque stretch of canal. A little later, warm and fuzzy from a 9.5% proof Trappist beer, I had to rein myself in again. The timing never seemed quite right, and my voice simply couldn’t be trusted.

We boarded the Thalys on Sunday afternoon and as I settled into my seat and accepted my first cup of coffee from the trilingual waitress I couldn’t help feeling a pang of disappointment.

‘Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?‘ asked the Boy. I hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath. And decided to hold my peace a little longer.

Rarely a day goes by when I don’t marvel at the fact that, even though the Boy lives in my street - our respective apartment blocks separated by four hundred metres, tops - our paths would most likely never have crossed if it wasn’t for an online dating site.

The chances of our striking up a conversation, even there - where a recherche rapide just yielded over a thousand members living in Paris and aged between 30 and 45 - were extremely slim. My search criteria, back in May, included that very age range. And the Boy, back in May, was 29. He’d only signed up for a month, and we made contact days before his subscription ended. It could all so easily never have come to pass.

Neither of us has any memory of who clicked on the other’s profile. Perhaps I was doing one of my targeted searches. Looking for people with cool jobs (I had a penchant for musicians, graphic designers and writers at the time) or scrolling through the pages of mugshots of men in my arrondissement, looking for interesting faces. In which case I may have sent him a “flash” - the dating site’s equivalent of a facebook “poke”.

What I do know - because I’ve kept it - is that the Boy sent me a curt email regarding my taste in TV series (how could I possibly think ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ was on a par with ‘House’?) and his rather provocative one-line missive stood out among hundreds of others I left unanswered, peppered with cringeworthy phrases (even for a hopeless romantic like myself) such as “j’ai cru voir un ange passer en regardant ton profil” or “il y a quelque chose dans ton regard qui m’interpelle…”

We bounced a few short emails back and forth, still on the subject of TV, and I half-heartedly floated the idea of having a drink in our neighbourhood sometime, without any real conviction. Either he was playing it incredibly cool, I thought to myself, or he simply wasn’t all that keen. And as it was, at the time I was altogether too busy being infatuated with someone ridiculously unsuitable who was sending signals so mixed that deciphering them was a full-time occupation.

One fine day, after a resounding rebuttal, I went back online and set up two dates, one with a certain Fred, and one with the Boy, both of whom I had been mentally holding in reserve for a rainy day. We chatted on MSN for a few minutes, the Boy and I, and it was fun. The way the banter flowed, I was almost certain we’d get on in the flesh. It could be really cool to have a friend in the neighbourhood, I thought. I couldn’t imagine anything more than friendship: my head was still elsewhere… And frankly, the Boy was a little on the young side, at least on paper.

We met for an early evening drink Aux Folies, at the foot of the rue de Belleville, on a bank holiday Thursday. Fred (sweet guy, zero sparks) I met a few hours earlier in a pub in the Marais, after a pre-date(s) warm up lunch with a couple of good friends.

An apéro became a couple of drinks, then morphed into dinner in a nearby Thai restaurant. Dinner blurred into a couple more drinks and an invitation back to his apartment for a ‘nightcap’. It all seemed so natural, so easy - as opposed to the tortured and stressful evenings I’d been spending deluding myself about unsuitable, disinterested guy and his intentions - but there was a part of me, right up until the moment when we snuggled up on the sofa and he began to gently stroke my arm, that had decided he would make a fantastic friend, but nothing more. I was loath to jeopardize this budding friendship by having a one night stand. But when I said so, out loud, the Boy responded by planting a kiss on my lips.

Five months down the line, I still I marvel at how easy it would have been, as Tadpole would say, for us Ever Never to meet.

Of course, despite the inauspicious start to our holiday, I needn’t have worried.

We catch our flight with time to spare (Easyjet Paris/Athens), enjoy a leisurely lunch (and the first of many cafés frappés) while we wait for the catamaran I’d pre-booked (yes, there is a limit to just how much I’m willing to improvise) to take us from Piraeus to Santorini. The owner of the hotel where we are due to stay for the first three nights comes to fetch us from the port when we realise we’ve arrived in the middle of the annual firework display and taxis are somewhat few and far between.

Spiros (yes, really) shows us to our room - more of an apartment really, with a mezzanine level in the curve of its whitewashed roof - and my jaw drops as I step out onto the balcony with its panoramic view of the whole west coast of Santorini: the broken outline of the volcano’s crater visible across the water, the lights of what must be the towns of Thira and Oia perched atop the cliffs opposite.

“We’re on holiday,” I say gleefully, for the twentieth time that day, as I slip an arm around the Boy’s waist.

He gives me that look. The same look he reserves for particularly sinful looking cream cakes when we walk past pâtisseries back home in Paris.

The look that makes my spine tingle.

My hair, hanging over the edge of the bed, almost touches the floor, brushing against the overflowing ashtray, no doubt. My legs are outstretched, the soles of my feet pressed against the cool white wall above. Without my glasses, my toes are blurred and indistinct. I stretch out my arm slowly, squinting at my hand, eyes narrowed, gauging how far I can see the wrinkles around my knuckles before they, too, recede from view.

I have no desire to move, or dress. Music washes over me, and I close my eyes and let a reel of images play in a loop inside my head.

I see the one who got away, sitting on his balcony, unable to meet my eyes. “Je t’adore,” he says, his unspoken “mais…” hanging heavy in the air between us. I can’t look at him. My eyes are burning. He doesn’t want me in the way I want him too. He never will. There is no explanation for this; I must simply accept it.

He will never see me like this: languid, almost purring with contentment, clouée au lit in a pleasant torpor. He may have slipped in and out of my dreams last night, but something tells me that I’ve turned the corner now. He won’t inhabit my nights for long.

“A quoi tu penses?” asks the lovely, uncomplicated boy by my side, fingers softly grazing my thigh.

“Oh… Rien de très important. Juste à un truc que j’ai envie d’écrire…” I murmur.

In the unexpected letter the person formerly known as “Lover” sent me a couple of weeks ago, one phrase stood out, and I noted it on a green post-it and tacked it onto the wall of my “office” along with all the other incomprehensible scribblings I’ve been collecting. “A pulse of hope.” I liked his turn of phrase: it was one of the first things which drew me to him when we met, two years ago.

What Lover was hoping for will never come to pass, but this week his words lingered in my head and took on a new resonance, albeit in relation to someone else.

For the first time in months I spent a few days in the throes of the most deliciously terrifying jittery tingly melty dizzy hopefulness. I’m at a loss to describe what it was about my new friend that caused me to close my eyes in public places and try to conjure up a mental image of his face. To stop dead in my tracks and smile or blush at the memory of something he’d said. To put my index finger to my lips, which felt different somehow. The feeling came out of nowhere. Knocked me off kilter.

Hanging onto his back as his scooter tore along rue Piat, I inhaled the scent of his skin, his clothes. I sipped a Kir in Lou Pascalou, too busy looking at the laughter lines around his dark eyes, his thick eyelashes, the sprinkling of grey in his dark hair, to actually concentrate on what he was saying. Little things got to me: the way he parted my hair with his fingers when I tried to hide behind it. The way he laughed and accused me of playing the damsel in distress when I fumbled with the strap of my motorcycle helmet and mutely gestured to him to help me out.

At the end of every date I craved more. I knew - the way you just do sometimes - that I could fall for this man. Fall hard. And the knowledge left me in a constant and utterly incapacitating state of joyful-fearful panic. Was I reading the situation the way I should? Was I setting myself up for a resounding disappointment? I marvelled at my own ability to let myself be side-swiped all over again. To shrug off the cynicism I’ve been cowering behind for months on end.

To pulse with hope.

And then came the “you’re very special, and I love spending time with you, but I don’t think I have the ability to fall in love, and I’m horribly afraid of hurting you” speech. Which doesn’t sound any better in French, believe me.

Last night I lay wide awake by his side, biting my lip, listening to him talking in his sleep, wearing the t-shirt he’d so thoughtfully provided (and trying not to feel disappointed that I’d worn silk underwear for nothing). I felt the pulse of hope fading, fading, fading; I tasted metallic blood on my lips; I smarted with regret and disappointment.

And yet still I persist in believing I’d rather live through occasional periods of deliciously terrifying jittery tingly melty dizzy hopefulness than settle for less.

I think we both knew, or at least suspected, from the moment we agreed he should come to Paris and see the concert with me, that no-one would really be sleeping in the spare room.

However ill-advised it might seem, in theory, to see the person who had cast me adrift only two months previously, I knew I was ready. I still love him, granted, but in a completely different way. Whenever I think of what might have been, and wasn’t, I am, quite simply, overwhelmed with relief. Relief which is admittedly tinged with a little regret at how uncommonly compatible we were in some ways I now miss.

When the time came, I was an adrenaline-fuelled wreck, so preoccupied with other worries that I didn’t have time to get excited, or nervous, or both, at the prospect of our meeting.

All I wanted that night was to feel his familiar, strong arms around me. To be taken outside of myself, even if it was just for a few short hours. To share something precious, without incurring any guilt, any pain. To be soothed by the sound of his slow, regular breathing at my side. To be lulled into the first good night’s sleep in a week.

In the morning, before we parted, there were comforting echoes of our old routine: tea, toast and marmalade.

He told me he felt absolved in some way; as if a weight had now lifted. We acknowledged that we have both moved on, but continue to care deeply about each other. There was no awkwardness, no inequality. No sense that one of us was clinging, desperately, to the wreckage, wanting something more.

Only one thing made me feel mildly uncomfortable: at times, doubtless because I was so strung out, I was painfully conscious of a separation of mind and body.

A nagging feeling that I had succeeded in appropriating for myself the very detachment I recently observed, with regret, in someone else.

Before we had ever met, we exchanged long, revealing emails, Lover and I. He thrilled me with his words; they drew me to him. There is, to me, a pleasing symmetry in the fact that after trying, but failing, to speak on the phone through his tears and my wails, we took our leave by email. The closing bracket, concluding our parenthèse enchantée.

And now I have read his words, time and time again, I not only understand what happened here, but can no longer flee the inescapable truth that this ending, however wretched, was a necessity.

I will never regret our paths crossing back in May. Wouldn’t trade the panic-inducing intensity of that first evening, and our subsequent hotel trysts, for all the stability in the world. Searing, all-consuming passion; the awakening of those senses which had been dulled in me for the longest time. I felt reborn. Indescribably happy. The future suddenly filled with unexpected promise.

I remember listening to Gorecki on my iPod in a crowded métro carriage, barely able to contain the physical rush of joy I felt from the tips of my toes to the end of every hair follicle, happy tears streaming down my cheeks, oblivious to my fellow travellers.

We shared some perfect moments, he and I. Moments which marked my life indelibly; moments which my present anguish cannot erase.

If only real world worries, doubts and fears hadn’t come crowding into both our minds with the passage of time. If only the dynamics of a long distance relationship hadn’t made us brittle and fragile. If only that first fierce flush of love had stood the test of time, intact, instead of slowly, silently unravelling.

I was aware of a rising tide of uneasiness, gaining ground on me for the past month or so, but couldn’t put my finger on why I was feeling this way. Balked at giving headspace to those treacherous whispering voices. I was so very in love with the dreams we had elaborated together. The house in the country with a garden for Tadpole to play in. The new life away from the city lights. The fresh start. I wrote a little about my confusion, but in guarded, careful terms, for fear of causing further damage. I yearned to see him more often, seeking some sort of confirmation that we were doing what was right. I needed to be sure about July. As sure as anyone can ever be.

So preoccupied was I, trying to quell my own creeping anxieties, I was blinded to the fact that he was having doubts of his own. Quietly wrestling with his demons. Probing, measuring the depth of his feelings. Finding them wanting.

I think there will be moments in every day, for some time to come, when I will feel his absence so keenly that it will crush the very air out of my lungs. Cause me to falter. To feel utterly bereft. Tonight, a memory of him sitting at my dining table, head bent over his laptop, brow furrowed in concentration as he worked, tore holes in my insides. The sight of Tadpole knocking softly at the front door, calling “Jim, where are you?” when we returned home made me wince and grip the door handle with white knuckles. Once Tadpole was in bed, the long evening gaped ahead, the terrifying emptiness no longer to be punctuated by his calls.

But I refuse to be bitter, because love doesn’t come complete with guarantees. Because no-one is to blame here. Because neither of us deserves to settle for less than what we shared at the beginning.

Before it waned.

Lamb - Gorecki

This weekend, I will be meeting the “friends” referred to below. The very idea of this meeting has me in a turmoil.

extract from email from Lover, May 2005

“When I went back to England last month, I was moaning to my friends about Mad French Bird. As they are all nearing or indeed at 40 and in stable conventional relationships, none of them could see what on Earth my problem was with dating a mixed-up 22-year old. Eventually, I said “Look, the person that I REALLY like, the person that I feel completely compelled to, is someone I’ve never seen, who lives in Paris and has a partner and a child. I don’t know her name or what she looks like, but (…) I can’t get her out of my head.”

It is less than a year later, and by some bizarre twist of interweb fate we have been together for several months now. No twenty-two year old is any match for a petite anglaise with her glad rags on.

So, why the inner turmoil? So far, those of Lover’s friends I have met in France have all been lovely people, which bodes well. I do not doubt we will be in very good company.

What’s more, I am really looking forward to getting to know Lover better, as tongues do tend to be loosened by alcohol, and, with luck, some interesting stories about his schooldays in Sheffield will emerge over the course of the evening. And it’s always revealing to see a person in a new context. We all behave differently depending on who we are with, do we not? Among our oldest friends, we get back to the basics of who we really are.

The very Englishness of the weekend is also appealing, as curry and/or fish and chips and/or a full English breakfast are bound to be on the menu. An opportunity to worship at the altar of The Holy Grease. Not to be sniffed at.

But, despite all these positives, I appear to be rather nervous. This I know because when packing for a weekend away, I do not generally make a habit of trying on the entire contents of my wardrobe in front of a full-length mirror. It’s one thing being anxious about making a good impression (and striving to minimise the impression made by my disproportionately large rear, lest it steal all the limelight), but this level of panic (a code red alert) seems a little excessive, even to me.

I’ll admit to being slightly apprehensive that I won’t be able to take the pace (being woefully out of practice at drinking in pubs, all evening long, standing up) and a little uneasy at the prospect that, a few drinks into the evening, I might be an embarrassment, or a little too lairy.

But there are bigger issues here. Will I be a disappointment in some way? How do I compare with the ex-wife that they all knew so well, or the terrifyingly sexy girlfriend who helped him pick up the pieces, post-divorce? One of the most attractive things about an older man is that he knows who he is, and is comfortable in his own skin. The flipside of that coin is that he is bound to have some pretty weighty baggage; excess baggage, which in an airport would cost you dearly. And so I must deal with the ghosts of wives and girlfriends past.

Last, but not least, there is the small matter of the situation I was in when we met, as evidenced by the phrase: “who lives in Paris and has a partner and a child”. Our relationship was born out of the ruins of another. There was all kinds of fallout involved. I have taken my child away from her father, and plan to uproot us both next summer, in order to be with him. When I meet a friend of his for the first time, I sometimes wonder: are his friends simply happy for him, or do they feel slightly uncomfortable with how it all came about? Will they be judging me (as some of my commenters do)?

As usual, my mind is working overtime, creating problems, amplifying things out of all proportion.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I want to be cremated when that time comes, I think the phrase “petite anglaise - she thought too much” would have made a fitting epitaph.

I soon arrived at the conclusion that for a working mum, committing “adultery” would be logistically rather complicated.

A typical day consisted of getting Tadpole ready, dashing with her to the nanny’s, leaping into the metro, breezing into work five minutes late and then doing the whole thing in reverse come 6pm. From Tadpole’s bedtime onwards, I was “free”, but trapped inside the flat, unless there was a babysitter on offer. Hence my strong presence online.

But I simply had to take things further after our first meeting and its rather dramatic dénouement. I couldn’t not. I needed to know.

I had never been unfaithful before. I had very black and white ideas of what was right and wrong, and any sort of cloak and dagger behaviour or sneaking around was most definitely wrong in my book. Nor had I experienced a modern electronic courtship, punctuated by rapid fire exchange of text messages and emails. But over the next week the feeling that something momentous was happening intensified with every shred of contact. I had to see him again, and soon, whatever the consequences.

He evidently felt the same as I did, despite his huge reservations about interfering in my life and causing me to lie to my partner. After all, he’d been on the receiving end of this type of behaviour in the past, and described the experience as “wretched”.

I lost five kilos that week. I shook like an alcoholic with the DT’s, adrenalin coursing through me. I barely slept at night. It felt as though guilt was etched indelibly into my face, and I couldn’t quite believe that Mr Frog hadn’t noticed that something was amiss.

Fear and excitement were bound together in such a way that I couldn’t work out where one began and another ended. I caught myself staring at my daughter through hot tears, barely able to grasp the enormity of what I was contemplating and what it would mean for her. My only desire was to curl up in a ball under the bedclothes, shut out the real world and lose myself in the scenes which were playing out across the inside of my eyelids. Making dinner or attempting normal conversation with Mr Frog was hell; an agony of going through the motions, my mind elsewhere. I took evasive action, in the form of long baths or evenings spent cowering behind my monitor; he snoozed in front of the television in the next room, happily oblivious.

When the time came, my alibis were rehearsed and ready. I told my boss that the childminder was sick and left work abruptly. I dashed, heart racing, to a hotel in the Marais. I spent an afternoon there. And an evening. And a morning. In between, I picked up Tadpole and waited for the sitter to arrive; I crept back to our non-marital bed in the small hours.

The very next evening I told Mr Frog I would be leaving him. Because even though I couldn’t be sure what it was or would develop into, this new, very precious thing I had stumbled upon, what I did know was that me and Mr Frog were a thing of the past, and had been burying our heads in the sand for far too long.

I should, by rights, be feeling blue.

My Lover is wending his way back to Rennes, as I write, after an idyllic month spent together, pretty much joined at the hip. The sky is the disappointing grey of a favourite t-shirt which has been accidentally washed with something black. As I write, a fine rain begins to fall, covering the window in tiny droplets. The kind colleague who usually provides buttery brioche on Thursday mornings is on holiday; my tummy growls in protest.

I feel good. Regardless. Images from the last three months dance in my head, keeping the demons at bay.

In my mind’s eye, I see myself knocking at a door, leaning my hot, flushed cheek against the smooth wall of the hotel corridor, heart pounding, barely able to draw breath as I wait for him to open it.

I see us kissing in the metro, and remember my wistful feelings when once I wrote about other people doing the same.

I feel the knots in my stomach as my TGV train hurtles towards Rennes for my first visit. Is it really possible for two hours to crawl by so excruciatingly slowly?

The tappety tap of his fingers on the laptop keyboard echo in my head as I drift in and out of sleep, half dreaming, half aware of my surroundings. Opening my eyes, I spy a cup of tea steaming on the bedside table, and smile.

Reaching the end of a chapter, I raise my eyes from my book and give him a surreptitious, sideways glance as I take a sip from my wine. He looks up, sensing my stare. Why is it that the longest, darkest eyelashes are always wasted on men?

Tadpole is shrieking with excitement as he swings her high into the air and onto his shoulders. Daddy is, and will always be, irreplacable, but I am relieved and cautiously optimistic at how well she seems to be getting on with the new man in our lives.

I daydream about our future. I see myself putting down my paintbrush momentarily, in the house we are renovating, so I can grope his bottom through his overalls. Or taking his hand and pressing it firmly to my belly. I test the sound of his surname with my christian name and like what I hear.

So many tantalising possibilities.

I asked my Lover to buy a one-way ticket to Paris, so that I could pretend he was here to stay for good.

I had been cautioned, by many of the people who read petite anglaise and wish me well, that after the desolate lows of last week, I should be aware that spending time with my Lover would no doubt prove to be a palliative therapy, relieving the symptoms and reducing the suffering without curing the root causes. Problems would be forgotten, temporarily, but would not miraculously dissipate.

They were not wrong.

I spent a simply heavenly weekend in his company. The most mundane things, like shopping for food in the supermarket, or fetching a DVD, were blissful. We talked. We strolled around my neighbourhood. We went to bed at unlikely times of day. Happiness was pottering in my flat, knowing he was in the next room making a cup of tea.

Sometimes I almost had to pinch myself to see whether it was all real. I think he felt the same. A couple of months ago all he knew of me was what I had written. Now there he was in my apartment, contemplating the strangely familiar view from my balcony, known to him previously only as the header image at the top of this page.

I was however conscious of the demons lurking just on the periphery of my vision. I would catch sight of them, fleetingly, out of the corner of my eye, and knew they were waiting to pounce in a moment of vulnerability.

From time to time I would wobble dangerously: some trifling thing would bring sudden, unnecessary tears to my eyes and my spirits would plummet. A sensation of falling, similar to that which I get sometimes when hovering between sleep and wakefulness, ‘landing’ on my bed with a sudden jolt. I was torn between attempting to put on a brave face for my Lover, or baring my soul and running the risk of wounding him, making him feel powerless. Because even when he is with me, holding me in his strong arms, and not stranded at the other end of a phone line, there is only so much he can do to help.

I chose honesty. Because that is what we do best. Love might not make me invincible, but as long as I am mindful of this, and know that I do still need to exorcise my demons without his help, we can weather this storm together.

A train carries me in the direction of Paris, away from my lover, at breakneck speed.

There is a plane to be caught the next day, a long-anticipated university reunion to attend in Bath. However, the excitement I felt when I first booked that trip, my elation at the possibility of a weekend where I could slip back ten years and catch a fleeting glimpse of my twenty three year old self, has largely evaporated.

I wish I wasn’t going alone.

I know we will have a fantastic jaunt down memory lane. I also know that I will have to bite my lip so as not to tell anyone who cares to listen with the story of how I met a lovely man two short months ago. A man who fell in love with petite anglaise before he even met me. Nor will I tell them that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I intend to marry him one day.

Every single time I close my eyes, whether it be in a train, a metro, at home in bed, or even, for the briefest second, in front of my monitor at work, I see his face. I taste his skin. Flashbacks to moments of overwhelming intensity cause me to inhale sharply.

Soon after I began writing petite anglaise, the blog was mentioned in the Guardian newsblog. That day I almost skipped around the office. I was unable to share my glee with any of my colleagues, so I hugged my glowing secret to myself.

That is how I feel today. Almost by chance, I have stumbled upon something unbelievably precious, which not many of my nearest and dearest dare to believe in, at this early stage.

I smile a secret smile whenever I think of what we are, and will be.

I have a phobia about walking into bars on my own.

The painfully shy teenage girl who lurks somewhere inside, squinting anxiously out at the world through National Health glasses, takes control of my body in situations of stress.

I phoned, still a few minutes away on foot, and checked precisely where he was. That was the first time we heard each other’s voices.

At the entrance to the bar I took a deep, ragged breath and forced my reluctant legs to carry me forward, past clusters of strangers positioned at intervals along the zinc bar. His friends spotted me first, and smiled welcomingly; he was standing with his back to me, but saw the change in his friends’ expressions, and turned. I think I said his name, and mumbled something about how his hair was shorter than on the pictures I had seen. But the first few seconds are all a bit of a blur.

I know now what was going through his mind when he first saw me, but at the time I was blissfully ignorant, and thought I was probably a bit foolish to have attached such an inordinate amount of importance to this meeting.

Later that evening, the fact that there was a knee-weakeningly strong connection between us was acknowledged, but not acted upon. I will remember standing on the corner of the rue Oberkampf for the rest of my life, my whole being in turmoil, struggling desperately to come to a decision. His arms were wrapped around me and I clung on for dear life while a million conflicting thoughts swirled, slightly drunkenly, around in my head. I motioned to a taxi, which drew to a halt on the opposite side of the road, and, even then, I didn’t know whether good sense and morality would prevail, and I would clamber into it on my own, or whether I would give in to the demon perched on my shoulder, whispering in my ear that I should sieze the opportunity. Go back to his hotel, or forever rue the day.

Finally, I broke free and flung myself into the taxi, before I could change my mind. As it pulled away, I looked back in anguish. Would I allow myself to see him again? Would I ever find out how it felt to be kissed by him?

I knew that this meeting could potentially alter the entire course of my life, if only I chose to let it.

Tadpole and I went away last weekend.

I love travelling with my daughter. Her excitement about going in a “taxi car” or a “metro trenn”, let alone a “choo choo trenn” or a “plenn” is deliciously infectious. The most mundane trip is transformed into an intrepid adventure in her company. For a few hours I see the world through Tadpole eyes, noticing details - people, smells, noises - that I would otherwise miss, floating around Paris as I do in an Ipod cocoon, my head filled with daydreams.

Once we are safely ensconced in our seats and the journey begins, we draw pictures together. And read stories. I bend countless times to retrieve errant crayons from under our seats. We watch the world speed by outside the window, paying special attention to Tadpole’s current Favourite Things: sheep, lorries and tractors. Sinful snacks are gleefully consumed. Tadpole particularly likes sharing Kit Kats - one bite for mummy, one bite for Tadpole - culminating in a gloriously messy chocolate kiss. Sometimes I find that the memories of the journey itself are among those I will treasure most after a weekend away.

When we reach our destination, we are greeted by “mummy’s friend” and his children, who are also staying for the weekend. The butterflies which have been fluttering anxiously around in my tummy as I gather our bags together cease their frantic activity the moment we step down onto the platform and and see them waiting, hands linked. We say our bashful hellos, and I concentrate on suppressing an overwhelming urge to throw myself into his arms.

Not yet. Not in front of the children.

As our little party sets off, I marvel at how pushing Tadpole through the streets of the town where he lives feels like the most natural thing in the world. As if I’d already been there and done it a thousand times before.

The rest of the day is a happy blur of icy sea, scalding sand and the scent of sunscreen. I sneak covert, sidelong glances at my lover while he drives, the children napping in the back seat of the car. I love every single moment of our time en famille. But I’m also counting the seconds, yearning for the moment when the children will go to bed, so that, at long last, we can be alone.

Bliss.

It all began with words. Words in comments boxes. One day, I rather randomly replied to his comment with an email (because yes, I can see your addresses, even if they do not display on the site). The first of many, in what became rather lengthy email exchanges. For my eyes only.

Innocuous, friendly emails, given the fact that I was clearly in a relationship, with the father of my child no less, and the gentleman in question did not presume too much. But they were tantalising missives all the same, hinting as they did at colourful experiences and disreputable secrets.

I revelled in his articulacy. Actually, if I’m honest, I was rather jealous of it. Sometimes I had to look up words in the dictionary, blushing at my own ignorance. Often, his words danced around in my head for days on end, and more than once, they inspired me to write a post about something from my past that had resurfaced as a result.

I knew that one day we would meet. And that meeting him would be important. I felt as though, just by exchanging these emails, I had already been unfaithful to Mr Frog on some, albeit cerebral, level.

And yet all he had done was volunteer a little information about his life, in return for having been able to read what was there on the internet for everyone to see about my own.

All perfectly innocent.

Prior to meeting Mr Frog, one other Frenchman stole petite anglaise’s heart, a long time ago. Well, it wasn’t exactly a Frenchman, more of a Frenchboy. Or a FrenchToyBoy, to be precise.

I was twenty-one, spending a year living in Rouen while working as an assistante d’Anglais in a Lycée in a nearby town. I should add that I already had a boyfriend of two years, from university, with whom I was thoroughly smitten. Or so I had thought.

Strolling around the pedestrian centre of Rouen with a couple of girlfriends, we had paused by the famous Gros-Horloge to buy crèpes from a street vendor when I laid eyes on him for the first time. My friend Claire gave me a nudge and pointed out a tall boy striding towards us with an Alsatian on a leash, flanked by a couple of shorter friends. “That’s Mr R’s son. You know, the English teacher who invited me over for dinner with his family last week. He’s not bad looking, is he?”

I looked up, made eye contact. Then recoiled, with a sharp intake of breath. I felt as if I’d been shot, saved only by a bulletproof vest. I knew in an instant, without the palest shadow of doubt, that if he would have me, the boyfriend and I were history.

I don’t know what it is that makes a person react so physically to a complete stranger, seen but not yet spoken to. I don’t possess much in the way of spiritual beliefs, but after that violent jolt, which defied any rational explanation, notions like meeting someone known in a previous life, or having a single pre-destined soul mate suddenly seemed less far-fetched, even to a sceptic like myself.

Weeks passed and my all-consuming obsession with the boy deepened, fuelled by a few excruciating evenings in each other’s company amongst mutual friends, during which I was incapable of forming a coherent sentence whenever he looked my way. We kissed, finally, in Paris, in the dark, laid out in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor. Surrounded by other slumbering bodies.

What followed was unquestionably the most intense relationship I have ever experienced. And by far the most unhealthy, the most turbulent. Raw, jagged emotion, fated to be as damaging as it was thrilling. The boy: brooding, moody, subject to bouts of depression. Me: insanely possessive, jealous and insecure. Uncharacteristically so, in fact. The product of a vulnerability that only he seemed to awaken in me.

I was terrified that The Boy would meet a French girl of ‘his own age’ at Rouen university. Eaten alive by a corrosive jealousy when he talked (far too often) about his ex-girlfriend, or left her letters lying around his bedroom (on purpose?). Knowing all the while that I would be returning to university, in England, in a few short months’ time, and aware, on some level, that this was not the sort of relationship which would survive in long-distance mode.

We met, many years later, in a bar in Paris, and raked over the embers together. He looked different: short haired, fuller faced. No longer any trace of the pronounced cheekbones and endearing moody smudges beneath his green eyes that had once held such a power over me. That old chemistry seemed perilously intact, however, and we resolved not to meet again.

It was safer that way.

So absorbed was I in the article I was reading – a clipping from Saga magazine courtesy of my mother, in which several elderly ladies recount their experiences of being reunited with the children they had put up for adoption in the sixties - that I almost missed my metro stop. This is not unusual, as I have the ability to almost entirely block out my surroundings when I read - I say almost, because this doesn’t work when there are buskers equipped with microphones and amplifiers. If I turn up to work a little late, my boss invariably asks me which book should be held responsible.

I leapt up, and lunged towards the doors, only to find my escape route barred by an attractive young couple. She was arty-looking, probably beaux-arts, with silky dark hair piled atop her head, faux carelessly, and secured with a pencil. A lot like my mental picture of how Vit Webb must have looked in her art college days. He was clad in jeans and a blazer, olive skin and Roman nose barely discernible behind a floppy fringe. He reminded me of my own university boyfriend. Positioned squarely in front of the doors, they were kissing passionately, eyes firmly closed, oblivious to the commuters around them. It was nowhere near as unattractive a spectacle as this couple described in a previous post. On the contrary, it was quite aesthetically pleasing, in a Hollywood kind of way. It did nonetheless pose something of a dilemma.

How was I to reach the handle to open the double doors, which they were virtually leaning on? Should I prise love’s young dream apart? Or slide an arm around their waists to spring the door open, which could potentially result in their toppling out onto the platform, lips still locked together?

I chose to clear my throat loudly instead, cheeks flaming with an unnecessary, “oh so British” embarrassment. Such is my genetic heritage.

Remarkably, the couple did not flinch, nor interrupt their passionate embrace for even a second; they simply took a couple of admirably synchronised steps to the left, leaving the door unobstructed. One of them even pulled the door lever, so that it sprang open just as the buzzer began to sound. I scampered off, gratefully.

This little episode has left me feeling strangely wistful. I realise it has been an eternity since I gave in to the urge to kiss passionately in public, or indeed felt such an overwhelming need in the first place. I don’t remember the last time I felt locked in a private little bubble with my partner, seeing only him, caring not a jot about what passers by might think. I feel achingly nostalgic for a younger, more carefree me, who felt everything so intensely. I don’t know if this person has gone for good, is temporarily in hiding, or whether it is age, comfortable familiarity or motherhood which has driven her underground.

I have no answers to these awkward questions. I only know that sometimes I can’t help but feel as though I am missing out on something. As if I were only half-alive.

I also hate VD.

One girl at my school, Z, received four or five anonymous cards, year in and year out. Along with several red roses and boxes of chocolates. She somehow managed to meet and go out with mysterious older men, in addition to holding most of the boys in our school year enthralled. I was sweet sixteen and still waiting for that elusive first kiss, which wasn’t forthcoming until I was almost seventeen. How insanely jealous I was of Z at the time: what was it that she had that I didn’t? How unreasonable of her to monopolise the attentions of at least five boys at once!

All I had come to expect from Valentine’s day was a Thorntons’ chocolate heart-shaped lollypop (anonymously posted with a Dundee postmark, where, by a stroke of coincidence, my father had been working the previous week.) And a feeling of bitter disappointment that there was no hopelessly romantic (New Order fan) and potential soulmate harbouring a secret crush on me.

Going through some odds and ends that I left at my parents’ house (safe from my own tendency to ruthlessly throw things away only to regret my haste once the dustbin men have been and gone), I happened upon three diaries written by a teenage petite. I re-read a few sample entries, cringing at the melodramatic tone, but strangely nostalgic for the intensity of adolescent emotions. I was also flabbergasted at how much I had since forgotten, given how earth-shatteringly important the events seemed to me at the time.

I re-discovered, for example, that when my first ‘proper’ boyfriend asked me out, he did so on the last day of comprehensive school before we left for Sixth Form College. The end of an era. Everyone was autographing one another’s school uniform shirts with felt-tipped pens and the large-nosed, undeserving object of my unrequited affections for the entire school year signed my white shirt, adding ‘will you go out with me?’ I let him sweat a bit, before adding ‘yes!’ in the space below. He walked me home after school that day. But I was too shy to let him kiss me straight away: embarrassed and worried that I’d be no good at it.

I turned my bedroom upside down after reading that entry, eventually to emerge triumphantly brandishing the shirt. There it was, written orange on white for the whole world to see. I’m amazed that I could possibly have consigned a landmark memory like that to my personal recycle bin.

I read on and learned that my first ‘proper’ kiss ever occurred in a graveyard, at night. I do have a vague recollection of a clumsy clash of teeth, tongues and noses, and that this occurred outdoors, but I had no memory whatsoever of that graveyard.

Which is why I’m consigning it to the interwebnet today, lest I ever re-forget.

As for Valentine’s day 2005, suffice to say that I received my Thornton’s chocolate heart (York postmark). And Tadpole even got one too.

I sent one of these. Can you guess which one?

A recent post by Andre reminded me of my own brief encounter with an angel years ago.

The year was 1994. The third year of my modern language degree, which consisted of nine months employed as an assistante d’Anglais in a French lycée followed by a few months work in a posh Hotel in Lindau, as my German was a bit rusty.

Lindau was idyllic: a picture postcard town crammed onto a tiny peninsula jutting out onto Lake Constance on the German-Austrian-Swiss border. The Hotel was a 5* palace. Behind the scenes, a motley crew of former Yugoslavians and foreign students on seasonal contracts kept the place in business.

First, I worked on the ‘Band’. This was an ingenious implement of torture: wooden boxes suspended from the ceiling on a metal chain - an upside down conveyor belt - transported food from the kitchen in the next building to the restaurant. My job consisted of retrieving food orders from this fast moving production line without dropping them or burning myself too badly, while simultaneously baking bread rolls in a tiny oven. Kitchen staff barked incomprehensible orders in German at me through an intercom. I couldn’t hear them properly as the ‘Band’ made such a racket, so I never knew what was coming and missed things so that they went round and round getting cold(er). It was undoubtedly the worst job I have ever had.

After a particularly bad burn I was transferred to minibar duty. *hic* This was an improvement. It involved the use of a master key, entering people’s hotel rooms after knocking twice and often catching guests in compromising positions. When I shouted ‘minibar’ they tended to beckon me in regardless and I filled up the fridge while they clutched the bedclothes to themselves to preserve their modesty. Or not. My minibar stock was not checked very closely. It contained lots of alcohol and Ritter Sport chocolate bars. A much better job. Things were looking up.

Until one morning I awoke to a searing pain in my abdomen. It worsened, and my temperature rose. I realised that something was very wrong and called reception, begging them to send a doctor, as I couldn’t possibly move. A Dr Wurms arrived and diagnosed acute appendicitis. An ambulance was summoned. A rumour swept through the hotel: I’d been seen clutching my stomach and was in fact in labour. One of the porters was the father. They obviously didn’t teach biology in Yugoslavia as the one night stand with the porter had happened only 3 weeks previously.

As if by magic, an angel appeared, to save me from all of the above. I can’t remember his face clearly. Only that he was very beautiful, had lovely wavy, shoulder length hair and there was something indescribably ‘right’ about him. He was a student, serving his conscientious objection time working with the emergency services. I don’t remember anything else he said to me, just his soothing voice. I forgot all about the pain and wanted the ambulance journey to last as long as possible.

I was wheeled into casualty, where several other people lay on stretchers in an open-plan area. There were no cubicles or curtains, but I wasn’t really aware of anyone else - I was burning up and the pain had intensified. As I lay on my back, a nurse took my temperature. The Angel turned to walk away, and I managed to prop myself up on one elbow, catch his eye and wave goodbye. He waved back. I think he winked, but I couldn’t be sure. And that, sadly, was the last I saw of him.

As I waved, I became aware of the fact that I was naked from the waist down. And that a thermometer was protruding from my rectum.

I can’t help thinking that I must have made a lasting impression on him too.

The Frog commented the other day that I should flesh out his ‘character’ a little bit. I use the term ‘character’ very loosely indeed, as it’s all been gospel so far. I’m guessing he might now be wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.

I thought I’d start by sharing with you the romantic tale of how petite anglaise and Mr Frog first met: an epic love story involving alcohol, a nymphomaniac and a personal ad.

Many moons ago, when I was ‘working’ as a teaching assistant at the Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle university (which despite the misleading name is sadly not housed in the famous Sorbonne building), my social life consisted largely of going out drinking with the other english teachers.

Sarah* was one such teaching assistant. She liked a drink and was prone to rather promiscuous behaviour. Such as inviting a dustbin man that she found attractive into her flat for ‘coffee’ in broad daylight. And letting a young clochard in for a ’shower’. With the aim of entrapping yet more Parisian males, Sarah decided to publish a personal ad in the Fusac magazine . The exact text of the ad escapes me, but I remember the use of the word ouverte, by which I think she meant open-minded, but of the hundred or so replies she received many seem to have interpreted as “willing to participate in a threesome”.

One evening Sarah brought some of her letters over and we looked at them while over a bottle of wine. One of the letters on her reject pile struck me as rather funny. The writer had cut pictures out of magazines to illustrate his text, including a particularly hideous photo of a moustachioed man sporting white socks with plastic beach sandals whom he claimed to resemble**. This aside, we appeared to have some interests in common. I persuaded Sarah that it would be amusing to call him and arrange to meet for a drink. Maybe he could bring some friends along. So it wouldn’t be like a blind date (or so I told myself).

The three of us met in the Café Charbon and from the moment I laid eyes on his Paddington-style duffle coat, I thought there was something rather nice about him. I also thought he was gay - probably because he was wearing a jumper with a rainbow motif - but once we had established that he was not, the only problem remaining was that Sarah had taken rather a shine to him too.

Casting aside any scruples I may have possessed, I decided to go along to a club night he had mentioned where his friends were dj-ing the following week. Without telling Sarah. She wasn’t impressed and we didn’t have much contact after that, but all’s fair in love and war.

And of course I still enjoy teasing the Frog about why he was replying to a small ad in the first place.

*names have been changed to protect the promiscuous
** thankfully this was a joke