The Woman Who Met Her Match: The laugh out loud romantic comedy you need to read in 2018
‘The voice of modern woman.’ MARIE CLAIRE‘More than funny, it’s true.’ ELLEThe laugh-out-loud Sunday Times bestseller is back - and funnier than ever! Perfect for fans of Outnumbered and Carole Matthews, Fiona writes about life as it really is.After yet another disaster, Lorrie is calling time on online dating. She might be single in her forties, but she’s got a good job, wonderful children and she’s happy. This, Lorrie decides, is going to have to be enough.That is, until she receives a very unexpected request from France. Antoine Rousseau, who had once turned a lonely French exchange trip into a summer of romance, wants to see her – after thirty years.But Lorrie is a responsible woman. She can’t exactly run off to Nice with the man who broke her teenage heart . . . can she?A wonderfully funny novel, perfect for fans of Jill Mansell, Joanna Bolouri and Milly Johnson.
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Published by Avon an imprint of
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2017
This ebook edition 2017
Copyright © Fiona Gibson 2017
Cover design © Emma Rogers 2017
Fiona Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008157029
Ebook Edition © Feburary 2016 ISBN: 9780008157036
Version 2018-05-10
Table of Contents
The Summer of 1986
‘It’ll be good for you,’ Mum announced. ‘You’ll improve your French; see a whole different side of life. You don’t want to be stuck in boring old Yorkshire all summer, do you?’
She was applying her make-up at her dressing table mirror: two coats of spidery black mascara, frosted peach lips and a flash of apricot blusher across each cheek. She closed her small, tight mouth and swivelled round on the stool to face me. ‘You might even meet a nice French boy. Oh, I hope so, Lorrie! Just think – your first boyfriend. That’s what’s meant to happen on a French exchange!’ She turned back to her mirror, brushing on bronzer until her face took on a shimmery metallic hue.
At sixteen years old, I knew that people only said it’ll be good for you when it was something you didn’t want to do. And this was a prime example.
I didn’t want a French boyfriend. I had never been out with anyone in Yorkshire – no one had even shown any interest in kissing me – and I doubted that my arrival in a foreign country would suddenly heighten my allure. I didn’t even want to go to France, especially not to a stranger’s house. My French was pretty limited. I was fairly confident I could buy a cauliflower or report the presence of cockroaches in my hotel room but as for living in a French family’s flat for an entire month? I was fully prepared for no one to understand a single word I said. Although I had tried to convince Mum that I’d learn just as much by studying my textbooks at home, she wouldn’t listen. Once she had made up her mind, that was that; firm arrangements were made, my terrible passport picture taken in a photo booth with my hair scraped back so I looked like a potato, and travel tickets booked. Clearly, there was no point in arguing.
There were many other reasons why the thought of going to France scared me:
• I was to fly there, despite having never been on an aeroplane before. In fact, I had never been on any mode of transport where a talk on safety procedures was required.
• French girls were thin and sexy – and I was neither of those things.
• French people kissed on both cheeks just to say hello, i.e. much potential for humiliation. It was all about sex. Everything was. Even their nouns were either masculine or feminine.
In fact, I knew from occasional glimpses of French films that everyone was always snogging the face off each other. So what would I do while all that was going on? I would take photos of churches and force myself to buy things in shops. Bonjour!Un chou-fleur s’il vous plaît, Madame. Merci, au revoir! I would trot back to my penpal’s flat with my cauliflower in a basket and sit and write postcards home.
In my own bedroom, which smelt of the tinned meat pie Mum had heated up earlier, I dropped a selection of cheap biros into my suitcase, wishing I was at least travelling with someone. However, despite Mum’s insistence on using the term ‘French exchange’ – implying a load of British kids all singing excitedly on a coach – it was just me, being packed off to a stranger’s place, alone.
