Love in a Warm Climate

by Helena Frith-Powell

  “It’s much better here,” says Charlotte. “We can even cycle to school.”

  “Except Daddy’s not here,” adds Emily.

  “That’s true,” says Charlotte. “But he’ll come back.”

  Thankfully neither of my friends, the girls’ godmothers, thinks this is the right time to set the record straight.

  I feel ashamed as I nod and agree with the girls that Daddy will be back then change the subject as quickly as possible.

  “And you’ve made lots of friends, haven’t you?” I prompt.

  All three are desperate to tell Sarah and Lucy about Sky and Cloud. As usual, Charlotte gets there first and it all ends in tears, but Sarah asks Emily to show her around the house, and Edward tells me about his friend Sky, uninterrupted for once as his sisters are otherwise engaged, as we walk around the garden in the late-afternoon sunlight.

  *

  “So, what does she sound like?” Sarah asks, curling up on Emily’s Barbie beanbag. The kids are in bed and we are sitting in front of the fire in the sitting room. I’ve just told them about the Viagra incident. Lucy is shocked and absolutely horrified – in fact she seems more stunned by Nick’s Viagra binge than his affair with Cécile.

  “Well, I’ve never spoken to a French husband-stealing small-breasted scheming…”

  “Don’t hold back,” interrupts Sarah. “Give it to us straight, gal.”

  I take a breath. “She sounds like Emmanuelle Béart,” I say.

  “I hope she doesn’t look like Emmanuelle Béart,” says Lucy.

  “I don’t know what she looks like, but I’m guessing she is not unattractive.”

  “The bastard,” says Sarah reaching over to hug me. “Are you OK?”

  “Terrible. In shock really. I mean I know things weren’t perfect, but to go off and HAVE AN AFFAIR… I mean, it’s quite a radical thing to do.”

  “Why do you think he did it?” asks Lucy.

  I sigh. “Well, according to Nick he was seduced, and happy to be seduced. Apparently I don’t show much interest in him.”

  The other two are silent.

  “Well,” I continue. “I guess he has a point.” I wait for them to deny it. “Do you think he has a point?”

  “Of course he doesn’t, the Irish swine,” Sarah leaps to my defence. “But it’s probably fair to say that you weren’t jumping on him every two minutes.”

  “But who does?” I ask. “I hate to break it to you all but after a few years of marriage and kids, that kind of passion is no longer there. It just goes. I still love Nick, I just don’t lust after him any more, and because of that he’s gone off with someone who does. It hardly seems fair. What are we supposed to do? Pretend that we want to pounce on our husbands even when we would so much rather go to sleep?”

  “That would be one way to deal with it,” says Sarah. “You know there are very few times when I don’t envy you both, being married with kids. Okay, well, until two days ago,” she shoots me a compassionate glance. “But when I hear that passion disappears I wonder whether I’m not better off single.”

  Lucy sighs.

  “I don’t know what you’ve got to sigh about,” I say. “You’ve got Perfect Patrick. He’s not likely to go off and have an affair, is he?”

  Lucy shakes her head. “No, but mainly because he can’t afford it.”

  “Oh Lucy I’m so sorry. Has he still not got a job? How is he handling it?”

  “Not great. Patrick has always been a winner. He’s just not used to being rejected. It’s almost like he’s in denial. He isn’t really getting on with anything. It’s been two months now. I feel like I’m spying on him, but every time I walk past his computer to see what he’s up to, he’s on some stupid website called amIhot.com? I want to strangle him.”

  “AmIhot.com? What the hell is that?” Sarah has almost fallen off her beanbag laughing. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh,” she adds when she sees Lucy’s face. I’m trying hard not to giggle too.

  Lucy smiles. “Okay, okay, I know, and I would be laughing too, if it wasn’t my husband. It’s a website where you put your picture up and people vote as to whether you’re hot or not.”

  “We so HAVE to try that,” says Sarah.

  “We’re too old,” I say. “I’m sure it’s geared to hot sixteen-year-olds, not thirty-somethings.”

  “So is he hot?”

  “Who?”

  “Perfect Patrick. Surely he put himself up there?” Sarah asks.

  Lucy giggles. “I didn’t check. I feel so bad about him. I mean it wasn’t anything he did, it was just a last-in first-out kind of thing, and the credit crunch has affected everyone. But I was never cut out for this sole-provider role and it’s making me really bitter.”

  “It’s not your fault he lost his job,” I interrupt.

  Lucy blushes.

  “What is it, Lucy?”

  Silence.

  “There’s more isn’t there?”

  She nods slowly. We wait.

  “Well, really not much more. I mean it’s totally and utterly so ridiculous, I don’t even know why I’m telling you.” She crosses her arms and gets that stubborn look she used to get when she didn’t want to lend us her clothes at university.

  “Telling us WHAT?” shrieks Sarah. “Lucy, have you been having an affair?”

  Lucy blushes again and looks indignant. “No, I have most certainly not been having an affair,” she protests.

  “So what is going on?” I ask.

  Lucy takes a deep breath and then a sip of wine. In fact she takes three sips of wine, all very quickly.

  “I’m in lust. I mean lust I have never, ever felt before, lust that overwhelms me every day like a gale-force wind. It’s terrible. And totally exhilarating. Not to mention anti-ageing, I feel like a sixteen-year-old again.”

  Sarah and I are amazed. Lucy never talks about lust. We weren’t even sure she knew what it was. For her sex was always something practical, not hot – just something that was a rather irritating part of her otherwise perfect life.

  “So who or what is this gale-force wind?” asks Sarah.

  Lucy sighs and shivers pleasurably. “He’s called Josh.” She blushes as she says the name out loud and then adds, “Joshua.”

  “Where does he come from? How did you meet him?” we bombard her.

  “This needs another bottle of wine,” I say. “Don’t start until I get back. Promise not a word…” I race into the kitchen and grab a bottle of red and the corkscrew. I get back to silence. Very suspicious.

  “What did she say?” I demand.

  “Nothing. We didn’t even breathe,” says Sarah. “Now open the frigging bottle and let’s hear about hot Josh.”

  I pour Lucy a glass of wine. She curls her long legs underneath her on the sofa and shakes her head. Her long blonde hair dances around her shoulders.

  “This is the first time I have ever talked about him, and I’m getting butterflies. You’re going to think I’m so stupid.”

  “Did you meet him on amIhot.com?” I ask.

  Lucy laughs. “No. It’s worse. Actually, I met him in my bathroom.”

  “God, I hope you were wearing something!” says Sarah.

  “I was, luckily, wearing my silk cream dressing gown and not looking too bad. I was getting ready to go out to dinner so had my make-up on. Josh had just arrived from a transatlantic flight and Patrick was showing him to the guest room. He stopped off to wash his hands in the children’s bathroom and that’s where we met. I walked in to get my tweezers that I’d left there after removing a splinter from Antonia’s foot earlier and he was standing by the sink. He looked up at me and that was it. It was like a lightning bolt went right through me, I know that is a total cliché and if I read that line in a book I would cut it, but oh my God!”

  She shrieks, and I have never heard Lucy shriek before, apart from when she found out she’d got a First in her finals. “I finally know what all that lust at first sight nonsense is all about. It was literally like some
thing clicked inside me, it was like I had a physical reaction to him.”

  “Wow, how amazing,” says Sarah. “It sounds like me and Christian Louboutins.”

  “What did he say?” I ask. “Did he have the same reaction to you?”

  Lucy blushes. “When we touched it was like an electric shock passed between us. There is no way he didn’t feel it, I could see it in his face, I don’t think that strong a physical response is actually possible unless the other person feels it too.”

  “I agree. So then what happened? When was this? Have you progressed from hand shaking?” I say, pouring us all some more wine.

  Lucy gets up and starts pacing around the room. “This was a week ago and I am being driven MAD,” she says. “I literally lie there at night next to Patrick and think about Joshua in the spare room and I can’t sleep for excitement. I am LONGING to sneak out of our bed, tiptoe down the hall and go in there. It’s absurd. I mean I’m a happily married woman with two children, I work in publishing, I read law, I’m level headed. What’s happening to me?”

  She stops and looks at us as if we have the answer.

  “Look Lucy, it’s just one of those things, probably brought on by Patrick’s behaviour at the moment. It will pass,” Sarah begins. “We all have crushes.”

  “Not on twenty-three-year-olds,” says Lucy, flopping onto the sofa again.

  “He’s twenty-three?” Now it’s Sarah’s turn to leap up. “Bloody hell Luce, good effort!”

  “What is a twenty-three-year-old doing in your house?” I ask.

  “Can you believe he’s the younger brother of Patrick’s best friend from college in the US? He’s renting our spare room, which we have had to let to get some cash in. We’ve been entrusted with this young, preppy, gorgeous Californian. Apparently we first met when he was sixteen. He was just a boy, I didn’t even register him. But now, oh help… I can’t stop thinking about…ripping all his clothes off and fucking him until I collapse.”

  “God, Lucy, I’ve never heard you talk like this before,” I gasp.

  “I’ve never heard myself talk like this before either! Half of me hates it, but the other half feels so ALIVE.”

  “Has anything happened? Have you actually pounced on him?”

  “No, of course not. There’s been lots of chat – well, flirting, I suppose.”

  “Details, please,” Sarah interrupts.

  Lucy smiles broadly. “The first time I knew he liked me was about two days after he arrived. We were having breakfast, leafing through the Sunday papers. Patrick and the kids were in the garden. I was pretending to read an article but I was so acutely aware of his presence that I could hardly see the paper, let alone breathe. He is so gorgeous. You remember Brad Pitt before the beard and the right-on attitude, when he still looked like a young Robert Redford? Well, that’s Josh, and his body, oh my God, what is it about Americans and all that working out? Why were we born in England where all the men think it’s okay to go through life pigeon-chested? He has the MOST amazing body, well from what I can imagine through the shirt…”

  She pauses for breath. “Anyway there we were reading the papers and there was some story about an amazing necklace that once belonged to Wallis Simpson being sold at auction and he commented on it and said how lovely I would look wearing it and I said ‘where on earth would I wear a necklace like that?’ and joked that I might wear it while I was gardening. And he looked me right in the eyes and said: ‘Would you wear just that?’, and I was too stunned to speak and he kept my gaze and went on ‘because if you ever did, I’d very much like to be there’.”

  Both Sarah and I shriek. “I can’t believe he said that,” says Sarah. “It’s like a film.”

  “What I couldn’t get over was his confidence, how he just kept looking at me. It was incredible. I’m having palpitations just remembering it,” she says, fanning herself with her hand.

  “So then what happened?”

  “Nothing. Antonia or Tom, I can’t remember which, came running in after a drink or something and the spell was broken. But I swear I couldn’t eat a thing for the rest of the day. I was almost floating, I had butterflies inside and wings on the outside. All night I replayed the scene in my mind and wondered what would have happened if the others had been out and I had leant over the table and grabbed him.”

  “Why not try it?” suggests Sarah.

  “Well, mainly because I’m married with two children, but also because there is still a small chance that all this is in my fevered imagination and that he might call the police, followed by his parents, and have me arrested.”

  We both scoff at this idea; the young man is clearly very taken with Lucy, and who can blame him? She is a classic English rose, reminiscent of a young Julie Christie.

  “How long is he renting your spare room for?”

  “Until he finds a flat, which I’m hoping will take a very long time indeed.”

  “It’s such a shame that I’m going to leave this place,” I say. “We could have got him over for the harvest. It would have been a perfect excuse.”

  “You’re not leaving this heavenly place are you?” says Lucy, putting her hand on mine. “Why?”

  “I can’t see how I can manage all alone,” I say. “But please, let’s not go there tonight, I’m having such fun losing myself in your lives, I really don’t want to think about my dreary situation. Give me more gossip.”

  “That’s all from me I’m afraid,” says Lucy. “I’m just a bundle of lust, and I have no idea how I’m going to get over it, or…”

  “Under him,” Sarah interrupts.

  “Well, something’s got to happen or I might just EXPLODE.”

  “Poor Perfect Patrick,” I say. “Do you think he suspects anything?”

  Lucy takes a sip of wine and nods. “Yes, he most definitely does. The other evening when we went to bed he told me that when he had come home from the shops he had had this strange vision of me and Josh up against the kitchen door, kissing passionately.”

  “Did you say, ‘Oh, that’s odd, the thought had never struck me?’” I ask.

  Lucy laughs. “Luckily it was dark in the bedroom and I said, ‘How bizarre, what on earth made you think that?’. And he said it just popped into his head and that he asked himself whether or not he would have minded if he had seen us kissing.”

  “And what was the answer?”

  “The answer was yes, he would mind.”

  “Seems a tad unsporting,” says Sarah.

  “I agree,” chuckles Lucy. “You’d think he might just let it slide, for once.” Then she sighs. “But he is pretty perfect really, and I don’t want to hurt him. I guess Josh will leave and that will be the end of it. It will probably be for the best.”

  “Poor Lucy,” I say. “Always the sensible one, and now, for the first time, you’re in the kind of hairy-bottomed scrape Sarah normally gets into. And she’s sitting there looking saintly.”

  There is a sudden glint in Sarah’s eye that I recognise. “Oh no,” I groan. “I should have known better. Okay, out with it.”

  Sarah stands up, relishing her moment in the spotlight. “Well, while Lucy has been longing for the arms of a younger man, I have been lusting for the arms of an older one.”

  “Is he married?” I ask, rather bitterly.

  Sarah sighs. “Yes, he is, of course, and I KNOW you don’t approve but…”

  “Well, having been on the receiving end of an affair, I know how miserable it is,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” says Sarah. “It was insensitive of me.” She pauses. “Shall I stop?”

  “No,” we both yell.

  “As long as it’s not our husbands we don’t really mind,” I say. “Actually, you’re a bit late for mine anyway, and if you could take Lucy’s off for an afternoon she would probably thank you.”

  “Whose husband is he?”

  “I’ve never met her, I don’t really know anything about her, but he, well, I met him at work.”

  “Name
? Age? Rank?” I demand.

  “His name is Miles, he’s around 55, I guess, I haven’t really asked, and he’s the CEO.”

  “Bloody hell, go straight to the top, why don’t you?” I splutter.

  “Your very own Mr Big,” adds Lucy.

  “I prefer the name Mr Enormous,” sighs Sarah happily.

  “Is he?”

  “Well I don’t know. Yet. But I intend to find out.”

  Sarah tops up our wine glasses. It’s amazing how quickly wine evaporates when you’re talking about men.

  “Tell us more,” I say.

  “It started as a kind of joke really. I mean, I knew he is the CEO, of course, so I knew who he was but hadn’t had much to do with him. Then one day he emailed me asking for my advice on the re-launch of one of the magazines, you remember? And I thought ‘why not try to have a bit of a flirt, it can’t do your career any harm’. So I sent a vaguely cheeky reply and ‘ping’, within seconds he’d come back with an equally cheeky reply and the email exchange ended with us going out to lunch to discuss things the following week.”

  “How long ago was this and where did you go?”

  “This was about a month ago and we went to the Oxo Tower, in his chauffeur-driven car.”

  “Like you do,” I interrupt.

  “Exactly, and we had the most amazing time, everyone treated him like he was the Prime Minister, and he is kind of regal and elegant, tall and slim and well spoken, and he was so interesting, he’s done so much, he started off as a war correspondent and has been all over the place. He was so interested in me as well, asking me all sorts of questions. I don’t’ know if it’s his age but he just makes me feel so special, like a princess. Now of course I am totally and utterly hooked.”

  “What happened after the lunch?”

  “We have seen each other four times since then. The night before last we went for a drink in a wine bar near his house. Our knees touched under the table and I thought I was going to faint; my whole body shuddered with lust. We talked about work and we agree about just about everything. ‘A true meeting of the mind,’ I said. ‘But not of the body?’ he asked. I went bright red because I have been thinking of nothing else since that first lunch. When we left we snogged under a tree on a street corner, like a couple of school kids. Ridiculous.”