Nine Perfect Strangers

chapter seventy-seven

Reader, she didn’t marry him, but he moved to Sydney for her and they lived together, and Tony was there beside her during the resurgence of her career, when Frances’s first foray into ‘romantic suspense’ turned out to be a surprise hit. (A surprise to everyone except Jo, who called her up the day after she delivered the revised manuscript and said, in a very un-grandmotherly tone, ‘You fucking nailed it.’)

Frances was also a surprise hit with Tony’s grandchildren in Holland, who called her ‘Grandma Frances’, and Tony credited Frances with the family’s decision to move back to Sydney, which was entirely unwarranted, as his son Will had got a transfer, nothing to do with her. But she was besotted with his grandkids – her grandkids – and all of her friends said that was just so typical of Frances, to skip the hard yards and go straight to the good part, where you got to love them and spoil them and hand them back.

But they forgave her.

chapter seventy-eight

Of course, not everyone gets a happy ending, or even the chance of one. Life doesn’t work like that. Case in point: Helen Ihnat, the reviewer of Frances’s novel What the Heart Wants, lost her entire life savings in a mortifying, high-profile cryptocurrency scam and lived in a state of quite profound unhappiness for the rest of her days.

But as she despised neatly tied-up happy endings, she was fine with that.

chapter seventy-nine

Oh, reader, of course she married him eventually. You’ve met her. She waited until her sixtieth birthday. She wore turquoise. She had eleven bridesmaids, none of whom was under the age of forty-five, thirteen flower girls and one page boy, a toddler just learning to walk, who clutched a Matchbox car in each of his tiny fists. His name was Zach.

Every chair at the reception was tied up with a giant white satin bow at the back.

It was the most beautiful, ridiculous wedding you’ve ever seen.