Greatest Love Story of All Time Read Free

our correspondent, then Dave, then the entirety of Kosovo, then you. OK?
    ‘OK,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically. I’d wipe Stella’s bottom if I needed to.
    After two days’ training in hostile-environment filming I began to read about Kosovo. A few moments later, I gave up and called Dave. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? ITN’s promising new talent learning her stuff from the cameraman.’ He chortled.
    I could hear Freya’s pots and pans in the background.‘You’re not a cameraman, you’re a legend,’ I said, feeling a bit silly. ‘Of course I’m trying to learn from you.’
    After a pause, Dave started talking. I listened intently. By the end I was feeling pretty scared.
    ‘You’ll be fine, kid, I’ll keep an eye on you,’ he said at the end, stopping to puff on his fag.
    I sighed. ‘Dave, I
wish
you wouldn’t smoke.’
    ‘Cut the wee princess act, Fran.’ He snorted. ‘I’m off for my tea now anyway. Pork chops. What are you having?’
    I looked in my empty fridge. ‘Um, probably some dry Weetabix.’
    ‘You’re the fuckin’ pits, Fannybaws.’ He laughed, hanging up.
    I made my nightly call to Mum, who was drunk and complaining about something to do with the gardeners, then packed my bag, wondering how she would cope over the weekend without me coming over to do her shopping and clean her house. Well, she’d have to. If this foreign-affairs thing took off, I’d be going away a lot more. I filed my prickly sense of guilt into a remote drawer in my head and wrote a Post-it note for when I got back:
sort out Mum
.
    In spite of having spent his life either attacking me or pretending to hate me, Duke Ellington always got into a panic when I went away. Tonight was no exception. Every time I turned round to put something inmy bag he was sitting in it, refusing to meet my eye. ‘Duke Ellington, if I ever love a man the way I love you, he will be very lucky,’ I told him. He ignored me and moved over to sit down on my clean pants, purring loudly to indicate that he knew this was a bad thing to do. Cursing him, I braved a hand underneath him to fish them out but was unable to escape without toothmarks. ‘Why are you such a little bastard?’ I yelled, as I washed my hand. I kept a box of plasters by the sink for Duke Ellington attacks.
    ‘You’d better behave yourself when Stefania comes round to feed you,’ I told him, just as she arrived at my back door. His purring got louder. For the purpose of driving me mad, he
always
behaved himself with Stefania. I watched in frustration as he trotted flirtily over to her and sat, purring, while she stroked his head and crooned to him in an unidentifiable language.
    After talking to him for a good thirty seconds, she glanced up. ‘Oh, Frances. Greetings. Have you been drinking ze barley grass like I said?’
    ‘No. It tasted of shit,’ I replied.
    My neighbour Stefania was simultaneously the best and most ridiculous human being I’d ever met. Since she had barged into my kitchen the day I moved in, bearing a ‘dish for health’ in an earthenware pot – ‘It vill grow ze hairs on your chest’ she hissed – she had become my friend, cat-feeder and source of inspiration.
    The converted garage in which I rented my flat had retained the inspection shed that was used to assess cars on their arrival, and this shed, just inside the lopsided wooden gates, was where Stefania lived. By anyone’s standards it looked from the outside like a shack in a Comic Relief appeal, but inside it was delightful – a childhood fantasy den full of exotic silks and mad plants and just about enough floor space for her to contort herself into strange yogic shapes.
    Stefania’s country of origin was nebulous: when I’d first met her she’d told me she was a Yugoslavian princess; another time she’d claimed to be related to the Polish prime minister, and recently I’d heard her introducing herself to another neighbour as a descendant of the oldest family in St