Free Greatest Love Story of All Time by Lucy Robinson

Gin Thursday – he’s only just got here.’
    ‘I love you too,’ I said fiercely, into her fur coat. It smelt of Chanel No. 19 and digestive biscuits. We picked up the glasses and moved Gin Thursday back inside the pub until further notice.
    Two hours later, Dave and I were arm-wrestling for the last crisp in the packet while Leonie whupped Michael’s arse on the fruit machine. Stefania was on her fifth tomato juice, talking animatedly to Freya, Michael’s sister Jenny and his friend Alex. Jenny’s husband Dmitri was outside yelling into his BlackBerry, as he had been doing most of the night.
    Stefania was on excellent form. Since arriving she had called the barman an ‘ignorant rectum’, she hadforced Alex to spend a week being vegan, and she had told Michael that even though I’d moved into my flat three years ago I still hadn’t remembered to buy a washing line so I hung my knickers from the tree in our yard every summer. ‘She’s amazing,’ Jenny breathed as Stefania barked at Alex about the mortal dangers of meat. I liked Jenny already. She was so easy and straightforward and, better still, she looked just like Michael in a girly sort of way. She was six months pregnant and radiated happiness. I imagined us meeting for lunch once we were sisters-in-law: she’d tell me how ugly and stupid Michael’s previous girlfriends had been and how I was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
    I was less sure about Alex. He was of the fashionable Oxbridge brigade, the type who lived in large flats in East London decorated with dark mahogany furniture and portraits of Victorian industrialists. He had a sharp, pointy head and a rather unsettling way of looking at you for a few seconds before answering your question. Worse still, it turned out that he also worked for ITN. Only he worked in the Special Building for Clever People in Millbank and he had my dream job: politics producer. It was exactly as Michael had warned me: I felt extremely stupid in his vicinity.
    Much to my amusement, Alex seemed to be rather smitten with Leonie who, perhaps sensing my discomfort around him, was ignoring him. (‘Michael’s friend is a bit of a cockhead,’ she’d muttered whenwe’d been at the bar earlier. ‘He quoted T. S. Eliot at me just now and told me he only smoked cigars.’)
    Dave smashed my forearm down on the table, laughing at my furious face. ‘Fine, have the bloody crisp, you monstrous human being,’ I said darkly, watching Leonie and Michael out of the corner of my eye. I’d never seen Leonie not flirt with a man before and felt weak with relief at the complete lack of chemistry between them.
    ‘Do you not trust them?’ said Dave, catching my eye.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘C’mon, Fran, I can see what you’re thinking. Do you not trust them?’ he repeated.
    ‘No, I do, I just … Well, you know how men go mad for Leonie. You can’t blame me for being a bit scared. Doesn’t Freya ever get suspicious about you and her?’
    Dave laughed briefly. ‘Nope. I can honestly say Leonie doesn’t trouble her at all.’
    That was what I wanted. A relationship free of fear, just like Dave and Freya’s. I looked at Michael and Leonie again and started to grin, knowing deep down that that was exactly what I had. Michael had wanted to be with me all the time: in the two and a half weeks since he’d returned he had put me before his friends, his family and even his new colleagues. I felt like a princess for the first time in my life.
No fear!
    But Fear gave me a little kick in the gonads when, afew seconds later, a perfectly manicured hand was placed limply over mine and I heard Mum’s voice say, ‘Good evening, Frances,’ with suspicious precision. Precision in Mum’s voice normally meant she was drunk.
    I looked up: she was drunk. Even though her hands were reasonably still her eyes betrayed her: they had the bleary film I’d come to recognise as trouble at an early age. She was wearing one of her power suits in