Greatest Love Story of All Time

by Lucy Robinson

  Three hours later, when we eventually finished in a striking worker’s house, with a patchy but adequate report, I began to panic. I couldn’t possibly leave this man: hearing Michael talking on camera about all of the Clever Shit he knew had made me quite weak with admiration and horn. And there was definite flirtation going on. Only three minutes earlier he had whispered right into my ear that I was doing a great job, and I’d known full well he was smelling my hair. As I packed up Dave’s kit, Michael saved the day. ‘Um, do you two fancy coming round to my digs for dinner? It’s in the south of the city. Safer. My landlady is a legendary human being and she does a famous omelette and chips for me on Thursday nights. I can’t lie, it’ll be a slightly unorthodox omelette …’ ‘YES!’ I interrupted, at the top of my voice, terrified that Dave might say no. Then I felt guilty: he seemed so old and tired and pissed off today. But there was no way I was leaving Michael. I was intoxicated. ‘She even manages to find morel mushrooms!’ Michael enthused. I widened my eyes with excitement and shouted, ‘WOW! I LOVE morel mushrooms,’ never having eaten one in my life. I texted Leonie as we drove to Michael’s house: I broke fit man’s nose and am about to eat morel mushrooms with him. He is giving me fanny gallop. Am slightly out of control. It was true. I didn’t just like this man, I really liked him. My stomach turned somersaults as we drove through the city in the gathering dusk. Please let me not make a fool of myself. The landlady, Ejona, welcomed us as if we were old friends who’d just dropped by for a cup of tea. She hugged me shyly, then looked me up and down, delivering a stream of rapid Albanian to Michael. It seemed that, in spite of my shabby appearance, I was good news. She invited some neighbours round in our honour, and soon there were eight of us sitting in a large, warm room full of worn Albanian rugs, drinking Pejes beer and not having the first clue what each other was saying. Michael and I were jammed together by the two people next to us and I felt as if someone had set fire to my right leg. ‘For God’s sake, make sure you say that this is the most delicious beer you’ve ever tasted,’ he whispered, brushing my ear with his nose and setting off an eruption of activity in my stomach. He smelt of washing powder and fire smoke. I wanted to cook his dinner and wash his socks for him. I wanted to rub his back when he was tired and rub his privates when he wasn’t. ‘Are you married?’ Ejona asked me, using Michael as an interpreter. I said no, very loudly and firmly, and felt Michael relax. Ejona smirked, her dark eyes creasing as she drew hard on a cigarette. She made a comment in Albanian and everyone fell about laughing. ‘What?’ I asked Michael. ‘I think it’s best I don’t translate,’ he said, smiling. ‘They are, erm, speculating.’ I looked at Dave, who was smoking and watching the whole embarrassing spectacle with a raised eyebrow. I narrowed my eyes briefly – stop it! – but he just shook his head. I was going to have to pull my finger out when we got back to London. Dave was a friend but he was also a pillar of the news team and I could ill-afford to let him down. Outside it was getting darker and soft lights were beginning to illuminate windows in houses across the river. Ejona served up the omelette extravaganza and Michael handed me my fifth Pejes beer. ‘You’re an impressive drinker, Fran. I like what I see.’ My face, already red from having been out in the cold all afternoon, turned an even deeper shade. Munching my omelette – which was more of a cake with eggs and mushrooms but delicious none the less – I wondered if I had perhaps gone mad. I had known this man for less than twenty-four hours and already I wanted to raise his children. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, even. He wasn’t like anyone I’d fancied before. He was bewilderingly laid-back, completely at ease with himself and just … just really nice. And funny. And he seemed to like me. Leonie texted: Has he got a decent package? Surely you must know by now. I replied: Bear with me. She wasn’t having any of it: Fran, you’re not leaving Kosovo till this Michael has popped his truncheon up your luncheon. I shoved my phone back into my jeans pocket. When I looked up again, Michael was watching me. ‘Boyfriend?’ he asked awkwardly, flushing as soon as the word was out of his mouth. Before I had a chance to answer, Dave butted in with ‘Och, don’t be stupid, Franny’s always single, aren’t you, Fannybaws?’ That was it. Dave and I were over, for ever. The betrayal! Seemingly oblivious, he leaned over the table and ruffled my hair, chuckling quietly. I hated him silently for a few minutes but had to give up. You just couldn’t hate Dave. He was like your lovely bumbling dad and your infuriating little brother all in one big hairy Glaswegian bundle. An hour later, by which time I was comprehensively drunk but pretending otherwise to impress Michael, Dave started making moves to leave. Shit. I needed to do something, fast. Haxhi was now dropping extensive hints about returning to Pristina, and although I had seen Dave hand him a substantial tip, he was clearly going without us if we didn’t come soon. I panicked, letting out a little beer belch, which fortunately only Dave heard. Shit. We were shaking hands with a beaming Ejona, who was full of knowing winks and raised eyebrows, and now we were out in the street. I was walking in slow motion, feeling Michael slipping through my fingers, while Dave thanked Ejona. Shit. How could I leave this man behind? A voice in my head yelled that I’d regret it for the rest of my life. COME ON, FRAN, it screeched. DO SOMETHING, YOU USELESS COCK! Stiffly, I turned to Michael and offered him my hand, which he shook. I looked beseechingly at him and muttered how nice it had been to meet him. And then, as he opened his mouth to reply, the quiet night was rent with the sound of yelling, banging, crashing and, to my horror, a gunshot. Michael pulled me fast back into Ejona’s house, Dave following, and double-locked the door. ‘The bridge,’ he said briefly. ‘There’s been trouble down there every night for a while.’ Dave started pulling his camera out of the bag. ‘Good. Let’s go,’ he said as Michael put a winter hat on. ‘Er, guys, are you joking?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘Fran, it’s fine,’ Dave replied. ‘This is small fry – a scuffle. I’m not about to go and stand in the middle of the street with an Albanian flag.’ ‘Yep. This happens every night. It’s more a venting of frustration than anything else,’ Michael said. ‘They shoot into the air with Kalashnikovs – they’re not shooting each other. Most of the guys involved are friends. I’ll talk to them and make sure we’re safe. But you should definitely stay here.’ They looked at me, presumably waiting for me to insist on coming with them. No bloody chance! I was a pastel Easter egg with a Manilow haircut. If I was an angry, restless local I’d definitely take me out. More to the point, I was afraid. ‘I think you’re mad. Please don’t go out there,’ I said. Michael smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Fran. I live here. This is no worse to me than rush hour on the tube,’ he said, pulling on a stab vest. I struggled hard with my impulse to jump on him. He went off into the noisy street with Dave and the two men who’d come round for dinner, all of them seeming bizarrely relaxed. Men. The three women who were left turned off the lights and watched the street through a gap in Ejona’s curtains. They talked softly and sadly to each other in Albanian, and I reflected on how much better this scene in the sitting room would be in a report than a load of dark, confused shots from behind a wall by the danger zone. So, when Michael and Dave returned less than five minutes later, telling me it had been impossible to get close enough to the action, I was rather pleased. ‘Look,’ I said, gesturing at Ejona and her two friends. ‘That’s the real story, isn’t it? The people whose lives are being torn apart by all of this, not the angry men throwing grenades at the bridge.’ ‘Right again, Fran,’ Michael said, smiling at me. ‘You’re bang on. I’ll ask them.’ I nearly passed out with pride. Ejona and her friends agreed to let us film them and twenty minutes later we had a piece that brought out the emotional tumult of the situation beautifully. I grinned broadly. Perhaps I could do this, after all. ‘Way to go, Franny,’ said Dave later, as the disturbance died down. ‘I agree. You’ve got a lovely human touch. You’re the bollocks!’ Michael grinned. If you’re not careful I’ll touch your bollocks, I thought. This extraordinarily brainy
foreign-affairs man was actually complimenting my work. I resolved to buy a library’s worth of books on clever stuff when I got home. I wanted to be like him. But back to the matter in hand. We were walking outside once more, stopping in almost the same position that we’d been in an hour ago, when things kicked off. Michael was shaking my hand again. It was warm and I wanted his children. But when I looked up at him, I saw in his face something completely unmistakable. He was panicking! ‘It’s been great to meet you too,’ he said woodenly. ‘Do keep in touch and … Oh, fuck it,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Please don’t get in the car. Please don’t go. Please.’ I nodded rapidly, my heart hammering in my chest. I watched Michael walk over to Dave. ‘Um, Dave, I thought I’d … Well, I’d like to show Fran a few more sights, if that’s OK, and then I’ll drive her home.’ It was lame as arse. Who shows their guest the ‘sights’ of Kosovo’s most dangerous city in the pitch black in February? If I hadn’t been so nervous I’d have laughed. I walked over to the car where Dave was looking rather stony-faced. ‘Sure thing, matey.’ He smiled thinly at me. ‘Are you OK with that, Fran?’ I nodded my assent. Then the car pulled away and I was standing in the road with Michael, our breath forming small clouds of vapour above our heads. Chapter Four

  ‘That didn’t go so well,’ Michael said, with a broad grin. ‘Well, we have to sign a risk assessment saying we won’t leave each other under any circumstances,’ I said. ‘Dave made me promise not to go off on my own. I’ll have to do a lot of grovelling tomorrow.’ Michael moved closer and stood right in front of me. My stomach jumped wildly round my abdomen. ‘Well, tell him you’re not in any danger here. I asked you to stay because I like you, not because I want to kill you. Come on. Let’s go for a drive,’ he said. I made a strange noise that was somewhere between ‘oh’ and ‘yes’ and followed him to his jeep. He turned it round and started driving, revving up a hill out of the city. I wondered how much he had had to drink, and decided I didn’t care. Probably due to my sudden inability to talk, he’d put on a Kosovan radio station, which, rather surprisingly, was blasting out Duke Ellington in tinny surround sound. We were heading up what seemed like an interminable hill and the road had become narrow and rather treacherous. Had I been with anyone else I would have been terrified, but with Michael, in his stinky old jeep, Duke Ellington parping away, I felt completely safe. And thrillingly alive. ‘I have a cat called Duke Ellington,’ I said. The thought of my fierce grey tiger made me smile. I imagined Michael and him together and knew they’d get on. ‘That’s a good name for a cat,’ he said. ‘My mum has a dog called Alan. I think that anyone who calls their dog Buster should be punched. It’s human names all the way. Although we did have a dog called Trumpet when I was a kid and he was pretty cool.’ ‘Eyes on the bloody road!’ I yelled, as we approached a hairpin bend, Mitrovica glittering malevolently below us. ‘Jesus!’ We cleared the bend – just – and then the road petered out and ended with a Kosovo trademark: a half-built house. Michael pulled over. ‘Get out of my car! You’re distracting me. Go on, out.’ He was laughing. ‘Fine. Whatever. It’s a shit car anyway,’ I said, flouncing out theatrically. He had a dog called Trumpet! And another called Alan! He was actually perfect! I slammed the door behind me and walked away from the car towards the precipice, my heart pounding now like a nineties warehouse rave. Keep it together, I begged myself. I stood looking down at the city, shaking violently although, in spite of the sub-zero temperatures, I wasn’t cold. Eventually I turned round. Michael was walking towards me. He didn’t say a thing. When he reached me, a small smile crossed his lips. I had never wanted to kiss anyone as badly as I wanted to kiss Michael Slater right at that moment. I was gone. Powerless. Had it been a beautiful sunset over the Tuscan hills, me in a flimsy sundress and him in a linen suit, it might have felt like a film. But we were standing by an abandoned building site overlooking a dangerous city in Kosovo on a ball-crunchingly freezing night and it felt more like a scene from a very low-budget Eastern European soap. I didn’t know Michael’s age or how he liked his tea, I was wearing a terrible coat and I was drunk as a stoat – but this moment felt like it. The one I’d been waiting patiently for since I was a girl. I’d worked so hard, for so long, at being OK with being single, but all of the things I’d told myself about independence were disappearing rapidly into the cold night. Right now, Michael felt like the only person who mattered in the whole world. ‘Now, look here, Fran. I think we have a bit of a situation on our hands. Am I right?’ he said. ‘Ah. Erm, well, maybe. In fact probably. Yes. A situation,’ I said, through chattering teeth. I shivered hard. Michael took off his hat and put it on me. He left his hands round the side of my head, over my ears, and looked at me, smiling. ‘You’re a bit mad, Fran. But you’re so … You make me feel alive again,’ he said, looking suddenly helpless. ‘I’ve been so confused out here, so out of sorts and you just – made me remember who I was. I have to see you again. Please tell me you feel the same.’ I should have lunged in and snogged him. Or at least said something. But for once I found myself out of words. I didn’t really believe this was happening: men like Michael simply did not say such things to me. I gazed up at him and wrinkled my nose, unable even to smile. Was this really happening? Was I having a romantic moment with this perfect man? Michael laughed softly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I thought so.’ Then he slid his hands under my hair and kissed me. Softly, tentatively, at first, but then he pulled me close to him and kissed me deeply. This lovely, exciting, beautiful man. As his warm breath moved down my neck and he kissed me just above the top of my terrible ski jacket I was pretty sure that this was the best moment of my life. I put my arms round his waist and swayed slightly with lust and excitement and Pejes beer. A few minutes later, we stopped kissing and pulled apart, giggling shyly. ‘Damn you!’ I said, through an uncontrollable smile. ‘How could you make me wait all day?’ ‘Damn you too,’ he said. ‘How dare you just explode into my life and break my chair and ruin my job here? You with your alternative hairstyles and questionable coats.’ I punched his arm, like a stupid teenager, and he grabbed me again, hugging me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. We stood there for ages, Michael stroking my Barry Manilow hair and me smiling manically into the armpit of his coat. I don’t think I’d ever felt so excited and happy and … well, relieved. Here he was! Here he was! Cue violins! Cue chubby cherubs with bows and arrows! This was it! We got back into the car. Michael turned the jeep’s ancient heater to full blast and Radio Blue Sky back on, telling me how he’d been strip-searched for drugs when he’d driven over the border from Albania. ‘Did they even look in your bum?’ I asked, wide-eyed. Michael got a blanket out of the back and pulled me on to his lap. ‘Yes. Right up it. Lights and everything. No, you weird woman, they did not look in my bum.’ He kissed me again. We talked all night. Strangely, having spent much of the day imagining him naked and texting Leonie predictions about the size of his truncheon, I didn’t think once about sex. There was too much to say; too much to think about; too much to laugh about. We must have dozed off at some point because I woke up to the sound of a blasting horn. Michael, too, was awake, his hair sticking up in tufts, his arms round me and his eyes smiling. ‘Fran, your arse is pressing the horn.’ He yawned, pulling me close to him. We kissed again, falling asleep soon after. When it became light we woke up properly and neither of us moved. I was freezing cold, aching all over, starving – and definitely the happiest I’d ever felt in my life. ‘Michael,’ I began, ‘I’m flying home this afternoon. I have to get back. I …’ I trailed off, having no idea what to do. ‘I kind of feel it would be futile for me to suggest that you come and live in Mitrovica with me and Ejona,’ he asked, watching my face nervously. His nose was slightly bent after my assault on it yesterday. I was quite sure I was in love with him. ‘Oh. I … probably not … Duke Ellington isn’t very keen on flying,’ I said. He kissed me again. ‘Damn that cat. I hate him already. Look, Fran, I’m contracted to stay out here un
til June. Will you wait for me? Please? I have to know what will happen between us. I feel like you’re … I dunno … like you’re the answer to everything. I know it’s a lot to ask for you to wait, but to hell with it, I’m asking.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I heard myself reply. And then I laughed, because I’d have waited ten years if I had to. I liked the sound of being the answer to everything. I liked it very much. As the plane banked down into Gatwick, I felt as if I’d just returned from five years on the moon, not five days in Kosovo. Dave had given me a fierce bollocking about health and safety, then followed it up with a big hairy bear hug because it was quite clear that I was in a state of total barminess. ‘I’m sorry, Dave, but I had to do it,’ I said lamely. He smiled, his brilliant blue eyes creasing up. ‘Aye, Franny, I know. It’s no bother. Just don’t ever tell anyone I let you go, OK?’ I kissed his cheek and gave him my British Airways cheese and onion sandwich. He passed it back. ‘The missus’ll be waiting. I can’t eat that stinky shite,’ he said. ‘And you’ll have to learn not to do things like that if you’re going to get together with Mr Fancy Pants.’ I felt quite insane with excitement at this thought and was relieved when the fasten-seatbelt sign lit up. I was so high that I was liable to jump out of the emergency exit at any moment. Freya was waiting for Dave at the arrivals barrier, even more disgustingly beautiful than normal. She was breathtaking and exotic in a fiery orange smock top with a long silk scarf, red tights and beautiful leather boots. As always, when I saw Freya, I looked down at myself and made an instant appraisal: munter. But this time, I didn’t feel inferior and jealous. Michael wanted me! Freya could be as beautiful as she liked! Dave had been carrying my bag but as soon as he saw Freya he dropped it and forgot about me, running over to her with surprise and pleasure written all over his face. It was clear that he hadn’t been expecting her. I watched Freya’s face as Dave approached her: it was full of love and worry and almost … well, almost fear. Why the fear? I picked up my bags as Dave fell on her like a ravenous child. I supposed that after his time in Iraq she must have grown to hate him going away. They hugged tightly. Soon after, they left with barely a glance in my direction. Slumped in a taxi, slightly deflated, I considered calling ITN to talk about the week ahead. Instead I called Leonie. ‘Fran. You total bastard. WHAT HAPPENED TO MY UPDATE? You are a terrible friend,’ she yelled. I could hear a harp in the background. ‘Where the hell are you?’ I asked, as Westminster slid past the windows of my cab. ‘Oh, I’m at Claridges with a charity client.’ Her voice sounded fruity, which meant that a new rich man was trying to have sex with her. ‘It’s lovely. Anyway, what the hell is going on? Did you have sex with him? Are you bullet-ridden? Are you about to become ITN’s Kosovo correspondent?’ ‘Actually, I think I’m in love,’ I said, hugging myself. As we swung into the Mall, I held the phone away from my face as her screams poured out of it. Chapter Five