Page 21 of So, I Met This Guy . . .

Though to be honest, these days Maggie felt middle-aged and miserable without any help from keyboard trolls.

It was then that Flick had proceeded to tell her the whereabouts of her ex. She’d been both surprised and not surprised, if that made sense. Of course he’d left the country. Of course he was in Europe, on the French Riviera, living it up while she was in a mouldy caravan in the corner of a muddy field in northern England, trying to make ends meet dog-walking and living off her credit cards.

And yet, while she felt angry and outraged at the unfairness of it all, there’d also been a sense of relief. That he was far away, somewhere else, out of the picture. Part of her hoped she’d never see him again. A big part of her. And yet, something inside of her – a flicker of her old self before everything fell apart – had reappeared in that caravan, like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

And before she quite knew what was happening, she was offering to go with the reporter. Packing an overnight bag. Catching the bus to the airport. It felt good to be finally doing something. Since losing everything, she’d gone from a woman who lived her life, to a woman who just reacted to events. She had things happen to her, instead of making things happen. Leaving to go somewhere, armed with her passport, felt like flexing an old muscle. She didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know what she was doing. But doing something felt better than doing nothing.

Having agency. Isn’t that what they called it now?

The bus rounded another corner, revealing another flash of the Mediterranean, and she took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. The doubts were creeping back in again. She felt exposed and uncertain. Back in the caravan, life felt constrictive and suffocating, but it also felt safe. Nothing bad could happen as everything bad had already happened. She was at rock bottom; there was nowhere further to fall. Forget Great Expectations, she had no expectations.

Still, it was only for twenty-four hours. Just one night and she’d be back home in the caravan. Though, with the enforcement notice fresh in her mind and tucked in her handbag, who knows how long she’d have a home.

Finally, after pausing at various bus stops in lots of different villages – Villefranche-sur-Mer, Èze, Cap d’Ail; Maggie read all the names in her best French accent – and passing lots of swanky hotels, the bus came to a halt.

‘OK, I think this is us,’ said Flick, eyes snapping open as if she had an in-built timer and motioning for Maggie to get up.

‘Great.’ Maggie gratefully lifted her suitcase off her knees.

God knows why it felt so heavy, she hadn’t brought much. To be honest, she didn’t have a clue what to bring. After all, she was only there for one night. Plus, most of her stuff was in storage. The caravan had so little space, she’d packed all her nice clothes away, along with the rest of her belongings. Boxed them up. Wrapped them in masking tape. Stacked them up on top of each other in a tiny little unit in a vast yellow building on an industrial site somewhere off the ring road. She often wished there was somewhere like that you could put feelings. Pack them all away with the rest of your furniture. Turn off the light. Forget about them.

So she’d just thrown in a summer dress and some sandals, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt. She was hopeless at packing at the best of times. She was always a sucker for those articles that appeared every summer in magazines and newspapers, telling you how to pack ‘a capsule wardrobe’ with a few rolled-up items. However, she couldn’t ever remember reading, ‘What To Pack To Confront The Man Whose Name You Refuse To Mention Because He Stole Your Entire Life’. No one ever seemed to write those articles. So she’d just had to wing it.

They clambered off the bus with their wheelie suitcases.

‘Where are we staying?’ She looked over at Flick who was glued to her phone. The whole time they’d been passing all that lovely scenery, her travelling companion had been either asleep or nose-to-screen, continuously scrolling. Missing everything.

‘Is this the hotel?’

Maggie gestured across at the hotel opposite. It looked nice. Quite swanky, actually. With flags flying outside and a uniformed doorman. She felt a beat of something that, dare she even think it, was suspiciously like excitement. After months of living in the caravan, just the thought of a nice bed, hot shower and lovely ensuite bathroom for one night made all of this worth it.

She couldn’t remember the last time she stayed in a nice hotel. Well, actually, she could. It had been with Him. Last year. For her birthday. He’d taken her away for the weekend – to one of those trendy boutique hotels in the country, with velvet sofas and quirky picture walls and a Michelin restaurant offering small sharing plates and overpriced cocktails – then accidentally forgotten his credit card. Of course. At the memory, Maggie felt a painful stab.

‘Actually, no.’

Maggie snapped back. ‘No?’

Flick finally looked up from her phone, squinted in the sunshine, and shook her head. ‘All the hotels were full, what with it being peak season, but I managed to find an Airbnb.’

‘Oh, OK.’

Which was fine. Totally fine. But she must have looked disappointed as Flick continued.

‘Ideally I would have had more time to sort out accommodation, but this trip was spur-of-the-moment,’ she explained, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a pair of large tortoiseshell sunglasses, which she pushed up her nose until they almost covered her whole face.

‘Being a journalist, it’s almost impossible to plan as you never know where the story is going to take you. It’s unpredictable and you’ve got to be able to move quickly at short notice. To be flexible and spontaneous as you never know where you’re going to end up. News is of the moment. Hence the term, breaking news.’

Flick said this so seriously, and with such a sense of knowing it all, that Maggie had to almost stifle a smile. She’d googled Flick after she’d paid her a visit and left her business card, mostly just to double check she was who she said she was. Having gone through what she’d just gone through, Maggie found it almost impossible to trust anyone.

Fortunately Flick checked out. She was indeed a community reporter for The Local Echo. In fact, she’d now read quite a few of her articles, not just the one about the cat’s whiskers. However, as enjoyable as they were, she wouldn’t have classified them exactly as ‘breaking news’. Unless, of course, Boy Scout brownie-eating competitions were making the headlines these days.

‘Before you called I was actually booked into a hostel in Nice, so it’s lucky I was able to find something here in Monaco.’

‘Oh, I would have been fine with a hostel,’ protested Maggie, looking at Flick and wondering why she wasn’t sweating. She could feel it trickling down her cleavage, yet her companion looked as cool as a cucumber. But then Maggie had that typical British freckly skin, a throwback from her Scottish ancestors; it came with the red hair, which had faded to a pale yellow as she’d grown older. One sign of sunshine and her nose went pink. And not in a cute way.

‘You shouldn’t have worried about me. I could have slept in a bunk for a night. I remember my interrailing days roughing it around Europe with a backpack,’ she smiled, with a rush of nostalgia.

She was lying, of course. Nostalgia or not, the last thing she felt like doing was sharing a dormitory with a load of strangers. But she didn’t want this twenty-something thinking she was an old fart.