Read The French for Love for Free Online

And speaking of letting go...
    Coming back to the office after Liz’s funeral, my mind had still been in France. The sunshine and birdsong of the French countryside seemed more real than the grey English sky and the Monday morning roar of high-street traffic.
    I’d settled down at my desk, trying to focus on work. The office door banged open and Annie crashed into the room, breathless and laughing at some exchange she’d just had with the staff in the shop downstairs. She’s the buyer for New World wines and is as voluptuous, brash, loud and warm-hearted as many of the wines in her portfolio.
    ‘Hooray, Gina, you’re back! Did it all go okay?’ She hugged me warmly. ‘Got time for a drink after work tonight? I need to tell you all about the most gorgeous man I’ve just met.’
    ‘I like the hair,’ I said. Annie changes her hair colour about as often as she changes her men. Which is very often. When I’d left the previous week, she’d been a redhead. She was now a dramatically dark brunette. But with Annie Mackenzie, one always senses that blondeness is never very far away.
    I settled down to work and, on automatic pilot, I opened my emails and realised I was reading one from Ed. ‘So sorry to hear of your aunt’s death—saw her obit. Presume you must be in France. Thinking of you. Love E.’
    It was the ‘Love E’ that really got my attention.
    It’d been over three months since we split up.
    As I was mulling this over, my phone beeped, signalling an incoming text message, and I fished it out of my bag. From: Ed. ‘Call me when u get this. X’.
    Heavens, what was going on? Love Ed? A kiss? After months of radio silence. I was confused. I clicked the message shut, then sat staring at the computer screen for a few seconds before reopening the email to scan it again. Whichever way you looked at it, it was a definite invitation to reopen lines of contact. Hah, maybe he’d realised what he was missing now his ‘bit on the side’ had moved to a more central—and no doubt less exciting—position. He’d moved out of my flat and into Camilla’s in Pimlico in one smooth step, smoothness always having been one of Ed’s most obvious character traits.
    But perhaps now he’d broken it off with her, I thought, and I imagined a highly satisfactory scene where we would meet up and he’d be contrite, begging me to take him back. Naturally, being strong-minded and highly principled, I would turn him down. But then after a suitable period of begging and a campaign involving several large bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates, etc., he would convince me that he had truly seen the error of his ways and would be faithful to me forever more, I would take him back, forgiving him in a mature and dignified manner. My life back on track for marriage and motherhood. Perhaps even a diamond ring would feature at this point...
    I snapped myself out of my reverie with a shake of my head. ‘Yeah, and watch out for flying pigs, too,’ I muttered under my breath.
    I was still in a state of distraction when Harry Wainright leant out of his office and said, ‘Gina, can I ask you to come through, please?’
    And so it hardly sank in at first when he told me that the company had been bought by one of the big chains.
    And then he’d dropped the bombshell. ‘I’m sorry, Gina, and I know the timing couldn’t be worse with all you’ve been going through, but I’m going to have to let you go.’
    I turn over in bed with a sigh. My eyes feel gritty with weariness, and thoughts flutter and whirl in my head like a flock of noisy starlings that refuse to settle down for a quiet night’s roosting.
    And so, that awful day when I heard I’d lost my job, of course I’d called Ed. Drowning in grief, shock and despondency, those messages he’d sent out of the blue seemed as though he was holding out an emotional lifejacket.
    We met in the local Italian restaurant, familiar territory since we used to go there on Friday nights to