Ollie would have loved it, I couldn’t help thinking, as we drove along a pretty tree-lined street of interesting-looking boutiques, cafés and galleries, in what seemed just minutes after leaving an amazing white sand beach.
I already loved it. It was supposed to be autumn, but the sky was bright blue and it was warm enough for us to sit outside for lunch, on a chic restaurant terrace looking out over the sweep of Bondi Beach, complete with surfers. It was only as I leaned back in my seat with my eyes closed, enjoying the sun on my face after months of crushing European winter, that it really hit me. I was doing something normal – and public – with Miles.
My eyes snapped open again and there he was. Even more tanned, wearing his usual rather tight old T-shirt and ancient jeans, his brown feet in Birkenstocks, still gloriously male and looking at me, not grinning for once, but quite seriously. Then he smiled at me slowly, very different from his normal cheeky smirk, and reached out across the table to put his hand over mine. He squeezed it.
‘It’s good to see you in sunlight, Emily,’ he said.
It was all very gorgeous. The food was fabulous, we had a lovely bottle of wine and all around us were people who looked like the people I knew in London, but more relaxed. And that was the problem. I couldn’t relax.
Doing something so normal with Miles was making me feel incredibly tense. Coffee at the Fiera, even driving around sightseeing had been OK, but now I felt like we had stepped way over the boundaries I had set on our liaison, into something that was way too much like my real life.
I felt myself getting more and more inhibited as we sat there and it was all I could do to force down a mouthful of my grilled monkfish. I was relieved when it was time to leave. I was silent all the way back to the hotel and when I sneaked a glance at Miles he was looking fairly stony-faced too. He pulled up in front of the hotel and stopped the engine.
‘What’s up, Em?’ he said, simply.
‘Too real,’ I almost whispered.
I couldn’t speak more loudly or say more, because I was too frightened what might come out. The thing we have is too precious. You don’t know what it means to me. I can’t risk spoiling it. All of those things I couldn’t tell him, because I could hardly admit them to myself.
He stayed looking ahead. Was it hurt or disappointment I could see on that handsome face? I wasn’t sure, but after a moment, he turned to me, sighing loudly, and patted my knee.
‘I understand, Em,’ he said. ‘I went too far. I got a bit pushy there. I was just excited about showing you my city. Well, I won’t do it again. I’ll let you take charge. As always, Emily, you’re driving. You know my number. And you know where I will be for the next four days. Your call.’ He shrugged. ‘Or not.’
He totally got it, I thought, and I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek as I got out of the car.
I didn’t call Miles. I was having too much fun. Australian Fashion Week was a blast and I felt so freed from the pressures of Paris and Milan. I had no bossy editor-in-chief, or moody fashion director to worry about and – apart from Miles – nobody knew me, so I didn’t have any expectations to live up to. There were quite a few other people there from London, but they were all buyers and total strangers. It was so liberating.
I was also blissfully unaware of any front-row politics.
I’m sure the usual jockeying for status and position was going on, but I wasn’t part of it. And I didn’t have to worry about bloody advertisers either.
Adding to my relaxed state, at the beginning of the week they had given me a pass with all my seat placements on it and, apart from one or two shows each day away from the official venue, I basically had the same front-row seat for the entire time. That made life brilliantly simple and, on top of that, the shows didn’t run late, starting just about fifteen minutes, or so, after the stated time. I was so unprepared for that I nearly missed the first one.
The final treat was having a limo and driver to myself, laid on by the sponsors. It was such a treat after years of having to fit round other people’s moods and schedules, I felt quite giddy.
When I say I didn’t ring Miles, I didn’t ignore him – in fact I saw him every day. The shows were so small compared to the ones in Europe, I’d bump into him constantly, going in and out of them and just hanging around the venue. I just didn’t ring him, or see him, in our usual way.
It did feel a little strange, to be honest, to see him in public like that – and not to see him alone as well – and my heart did give a little leap every time he strayed casually into view, so on the second day I sent him a text saying that I hadn’t forgotten him, but I just needed some space.
He replied that it was cool – but that he did want to see me again before I left. In fact, he said, he insisted on it. That was fine with me and I just assumed that he understood that it was the same deal as London. And then, with my usual talent for keeping things separate in my head, I just got on with it.
To keep me distracted, as well as all the actual fashion shows, there seemed to be another whole schedule of parties to go to. The first few evenings I’d been too jet lagged to do anything beyond cocktail events and dinners, but by the last night I was seriously ready to get on down at designer Wayne Cooper’s after-show party.
I’d made what seemed like loads of new best friends at Bar Bazaar, the VIP delegates’ bar out at the main shows venue, so I didn’t feel shy to go on my own. Adding to my self-confidence, a make-up artist I’d met there had done my face and hair and I was wearing the emerald green Dolce & Gabbana toga dress I’d bought for the Chic Christmas party, with my highest gold Prada shoes.
Combined with a swift visit to a salon for a spray-on tan and a head full of compliments from people who’d only seen my dress before in internet shots of the Milan catwalk, I was feeling pretty happy about life.
It was quite late and I seemed to have been on the dance floor all night, shaking my thing with my new friends, when I felt someone come up behind me. Strong arms wrapped round me, lips nuzzled my neck and I breathed in the warm musky smell of hot man. I knew exactly who it was and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply as Miles nibbled my ear. Then he turned me round and kissed me – really kissed me – right there on the dance floor.
Maybe it was the Möet, maybe it was the scent of him, but as I kissed him back, one hand on the back of his head, pushing it into mine, as we swayed to the music, it did cross my mind that I was a married woman, kissing a man who was not my husband – in public. I didn’t care.
After that, Miles led me off the dance floor and into a corner of the nightclub where he sat down on a banquette and pulled me on to his lap.
‘Now where were we?’ he said, his cheekiest grin back in place, and he kissed me again. We sat there snogging like a pair of teenagers, right down to the hard-on I could feel straining against my thigh through his jeans. Drunk on champagne and pheromones, I surrendered entirely to him and it was lucky it was dark in that corner, because he had his hand inside my new Collette Dinnigan knickers and was quickly bringing me to a climax.
After that he just held me on his knee, my arms around his neck, as the pounding music washed over us. I don’t know how long we sat there like that, but I loved every minute of it. I was vaguely aware of other people passing by en route to the bar, but I didn’t care. I was wrapped up in a world no bigger than the piece of Miles’s shoulder my head was resting on.
‘Em,’ he said softly, after a while, maybe a few hundred years. ‘Let’s go.’
I felt slightly odd in his tatty old panel van in my Dolce dress, but not enough to snap out of my blissful state of euphoric well-being. We seemed to drive for a long time. I’d got used to the trip from the main venue back to my hotel in my chauffeured car and had started to recognize landmarks, but now I had no bearings.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked him eventually.
‘My place,’ said Miles, firmly.
I opened my mouth to speak, although I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. I’d
just assumed we’d be going back to the hotel. Miles and I always met in hotels.
‘I’m taking charge tonight, Emily,’ he said. ‘Just go with it. Trust me.’
And against all my better instincts, I did.
I woke up the next morning to sunlight streaming on to my face, the smell of coffee and music playing. Lifting my head from the pillow, I saw Miles walking around in a batik sarong. He was cutting up fruit and putting it into two bowls.
I looked round his place. It had seemed pretty amazing at night, with just a few candles lit, enough to illuminate a whole wall of books, and another two covered in artworks. The fourth wall was mainly window and at night it had just been black with a few lights twinkling, before he closed the blinds. In daylight I could see it looked straight out over water. It seemed to be the harbour, but not any part of it I had seen before.
His place was half a floor of an old warehouse building that had miraculously escaped the hands of developers, who would have turned it into about five separate rabbit hutches. It still had its original old worn floorboards and apart from the loo and a darkroom, it was completely open plan. Even the bath and glass shower cubicle were out in the middle of the space.
Miles saw I was awake and smiled broadly at me as he brought the bowls of fruit over to the bed. He climbed in beside me.
‘That’s yours,’ he said, handing me a groaning pile topped with yogurt, honey and nuts. ‘I’ve put extra honey and yogurt on it. You’re getting a bit thin. I like enough of you to get hold of, you know.’
And he kissed me on the end of my nose.
‘This is a great place, Miles,’ I said. ‘Where are we?’
‘Glebe. That’s the old industrial harbour out there. Great, isn’t it? I’m renting this place from a friend who’s living overseas. I was really lucky.’
‘I love this track,’ I said, as The Coral came on.
He turned and looked at me.
‘I love you,’ he said.
I just looked back at him.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pretend any more. This may have started as a casual shows shag, but it has turned into something much more for me and I can’t lie about it any more.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but he put his fingers on my lips to stop me.
‘I know it’s against the rules we set ourselves,’ he said. ‘But it’s the truth. I’ve been wretched all week, Emily, watching you walk in and out of those fucking shows, the most amazing woman I’ve ever known, but out of bounds to me, like you were behind glass.’
I tried to speak, but he stopped me again. I decided to shut up and listen.
‘I know men are supposed to be sex beasts who can turn it on and off like a tap, but I can’t, Emily. Not with you. When we make love, it’s not just sex, it’s something much more and I know you know that. Like I told you in Paris, it has never been like this for me before with anyone and I’m not going to pretend any more whatever the fucking rules are’.
Finally it seemed I could speak.
‘Come here,’ I said.
I never did eat that fruit.
23
I didn’t eat the fruit and I didn’t stay another night in the hotel. I moved in with Miles for the rest of the trip, which I extended for another week even beyond the extra days I was already officially staying for the fashion shoots.
Rosie didn’t seem to care. I told her I was doing some additional shots and I’d be out and about on location, so just to call me on the mobile if she needed me. She never asked another question. Ollie didn’t seem that bothered either. He seemed more excited about the fact that Chic Interiors was shooting our ‘apartment’ the following day.
‘I hope you don’t mind not being in the pictures, Emily,’ he was saying. I was standing outside a café in a cool suburb called Surry Hills, making the calls, while Miles sat inside. ‘But Felicity thought it probably wasn’t a very good idea, as you have recently left the Chic stable.’
‘Neeeeigh,’ I said. ‘Gee up, neddy. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m just glad you got what you wanted out of her, Ollie. I hope it does wonderful things for the brand.’
If he noticed the slight edge in my voice, he didn’t react, but it was a conversation that made me feel a lot less guilty about what I was up to. If Ollie didn’t give a damn when I came home that was fine with me. I was having such a lovely time with Miles. It was so good just to surrender to how I felt about him, although I hadn’t gone quite as far as he had. I hadn’t told him I loved him, because I didn’t know if I did. But I loved being with him and for those all too brief days, I loved leading his kind of life, it was all so much more relaxed than what I was used to.
I did have to do the shoots for Surface, of course, and they went off really well, probably because I was so laid-back on them. I was using an Australian photographer who was starting to make a name for himself in New York and had come back to Sydney for Fashion Week, with a fantastic Brazilian model who happened to be his girlfriend.
Between the loved-up lot of us, it made for a very happy atmosphere on those shoots and a look in the model’s eyes that could never have been faked, as she stared down the lens at her lover.
I did tack one extra session on to the ones I had gone out there planning to do. It was an accessories still-life series in rich colour, that we shot on a deserted beach somewhere north of Sydney. The photographer was Miles.
At first he’d been really reluctant to show me his ‘real’ work, as opposed to the catwalk shots, but when he eventually did I was blown away. I knew he was an ‘art’ photographer and that his subjects were natural phenomena and formations he found on beaches, mainly to do with the shapes of waves and the effect of water on sand and pebbles, but I’d expected them to be classic – i.e. boring – ‘arty’ grainy black and white prints. Instead they were in the most amazing saturated colour, printed on superglossy paper and then worked into collages, some of it done by hand, other parts scanned in and manipulated on a computer. They were rich, sensuous and gorgeous, almost vibrating with life force.
Miles pinned them up on the walls of his loft and I just stood and drank them in. They had the same explosive sense of energy I had felt when I’d first seen Sydney Harbour in all its glory. Not dead-at-heart intellectual ‘art’ photos at all, they were alive and throbbing with energy.
‘Wow,’ was all I could say. ‘These are amazing, Miles. I love them.’
I looked at an extraordinary close-up of the curl of a wave fractured into a thousand tiny pieces and then back at Miles.
‘They’re like you,’ I said. ‘A force of nature.’
Something shifted inside me. I turned to him and took his hands in mine.
‘My dad was an artist, you know,’ I started.
‘And your mum is a really good poet,’ he replied.
I looked at him mystified.
‘I saw her book in your bag,’ he explained. ‘I read it while you were out the other day. I hope you don’t mind. I saw her picture on the back and had to have a look. She looks so like you. She’s beautiful. And I really liked the poems, especially the one about you – buddy.’
He took me in his arms and kissed me. I had been about to tell him my whole hideous family story, but instead I decided just to enjoy the moment and to leave that can of festering maggots unopened.
As the end of my stay drew nearer we both grew quiet. I knew he was feeling the same as me. It was almost unbearable to think of that special time ending, but I couldn’t just stay. And the funny thing was, that although Miles had thrown our rulebook out that night at the party, we were still observing two of them very strictly. We never talked about my life with Ollie and how I felt about him, and we never discussed any kind of future relationship between us beyond the here and now. We lived entirely in the moment.
Until the last night, that is, when Miles brought it all up in one go. I felt like a brick wall had just fallen on my head.
‘So, Emily,’ he said, leaning across t
he table towards me. I could tell by his tone of voice something was coming I didn’t want to hear. Particularly not then.
We were eating a dinner we’d cooked together. We’d gone to the fish market to get all the ingredients and it had been a wonderful day, chopping, grating, slicing and sauté-ing with the windows open, a bottle of dry Riesling on the go and everything from Outkast to Chopin blaring out of the stereo. Every now and then he’d taken me in his arms and we’d danced around the room.
Then, as we were eating our main course, he shattered it all with just a few dumb-ass questions.
‘So what’s next, Emily?’ he said. ‘You’re going home tomorrow, back to a job you hate and a husband you never talk about. Where does that leave me? Where does it leave us? When am I going to see you again? For a quick root in a hotel room in Milan in September? Is that going to be enough for you? Because I’ll tell you straight up, it’s not enough for me.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I sat there with my mouth open, feeling like a goldfish, but I couldn’t fill the air with babble just for the sake of it. It was too serious.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Well, let’s work it out. Starting with Mr Husband. I’ve seen him, you know. He looks like a complete arse. What’s with that make-up he wears?’
I put my fork down. I had to take a big gulp of wine to force down the piece of prawn I was chewing. It had turned to Play-Doh in my mouth.
‘It’s a work thing for him,’ I said, quietly.
Miles laughed.
‘Is he a clown?’
‘No,’ I said, tersely.
I felt weirdly offended on Ollie’s behalf. He did look ridiculous in that make-up, but it was just part of the whole career persona that defined him and if you knew him, it made sense somehow. And although I was the one who was gallivanting with another man, I had been with Ollie for so many years and I still loved him. Or something.
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