Love in a Warm Climate (11 page)

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.”

“What was it like?”

Sarah leans back in the beanbag and sighs. “It was like honey gently melting in my mouth. He was so bloody good. I kept remembering something that lesbian we knew years ago said. You remember Lizzy the lessie – you know the one I mean?”

“Yes, or lessie the Lizzy as we used to call her.”

“Right, that’s the one. Well, she once told me women make much better
kissers. That they are so much better at snogging because they don’t pile in like a ferret down a rabbit-hole. I reckon Miles kisses like a woman: sensitively, gently, expertly and sexily. There’s none of that ‘shove your tongue in as far and as fast as you can’ nonsense. Oh it was HEAVEN. I could have gone on kissing for hours.”

“And now what?”

Sarah sighs. “Now of course I want the main course. We’ll just have to see I guess. I don’t know whether he does this sort of thing a lot or what he wants or even what he thinks. He really doesn’t give anything away. And I am totally gone on him.”

“Power is the great aphrodisiac,” says Lucy.

“What?” we both exclaim.

“Henry Kissinger. He said that power is the great aphrodisiac,” she explains. “It’s not just his honey-coated tongue you’re turned on by, it’s his position.”

“But the rest sounds pretty good too,” I add.

Sarah grins. “It is so good, I had no idea hanging out with an older man could be so…gratifying. And he makes me feel so young; it’s so much cheaper and more practical than anti-ageing serums.”

“So what’s next?” I repeat.

“More of the same I hope,” smiles Sarah. “I have no desire to marry him and I don’t even want a promotion, I’m just using him for sex.”

“He’s probably delighted,” says Lucy. “A no-strings-attached snogger ready for action whenever he wants it.”

“It kind of suits us both.” Sarah looks rather irritated. “Why does there always have to be more? Can’t that be enough?”

“I think it can, for a while,” I answer. “But it’s human, and especially female, nature to want to progress, to develop and move forward.” My head is starting to spin with the wine and suddenly I feel very tired. I’m not sure I’m up for a philosophical discussion.

“I’ve never felt anything close to the lust you’re going on about in bed with anyone,” says Lucy. “Where did my life go so wrong?”

“What?” screeches Sarah. “Then you definitely need to find a way to shag Josh. Maybe he’s the first man you’ve met with the right chemistry for you. You know Perfect Patrick is the man for you long-term, we all know that. But as long as he doesn’t find out, would a small sexual experiment really be that awful? I mean the French are at it all the time, and their divorce rate is lower than ours.”

Lucy sighs. “I think I’m just too English to jump Josh. And right now, too tired. I’m off to bed. We must continue this discussion tomorrow.”

We all traipse upstairs. Sarah is sharing my bed and Lucy is in the spare room. Sarah and I lie and whisper about the evening’s revelations like a couple of schoolgirls.

I wake up in the middle of the night and smile. I’m so glad my friends are here with me. I’m feeling about a million times happier than I have the last two nights. They have been such a tonic, a thousand times better than
antidepressants
.

That said, I do fall back to sleep wondering if it is strictly fair that Sarah has her older man and Lucy has her younger man, when I have no man at all.

“Mummy’s doing yogo, mummy’s doing yogo,” chants Edward, climbing on me as I attempt Sarah’s yoga routine. It took fifteen minutes when she was here bossing me through it, but things have taken a turn for the worse. So far it’s taken me about twenty and I haven’t even finished the sun salutations. I guess we didn’t have the added distraction of a five-year-old who thinks I am a horse.

“What animal don’t we done yet?” he asks as I pant beneath him, trying to work out how best to do a sun salutation without injuring my passenger.

“We didn’t do the cat,” I reply.

“Miaow,” says Edward.

Cécile’s call was a month ago. I didn’t tell the children about Nick being hospitalised. And as I suspected, there was no need to. Once the Viagra was out of his system he was fine. He called to tell me so, and to talk to the kids, he was extremely sheepish and I would like to say that I was very mature and didn’t take advantage of his rather humiliating situation but frankly when the man you trusted and thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with runs off with a French woman and then starts popping Viagra, he’s fair game. I felt stronger than after any previous conversation with him since the split. Not that we’ve had THE conversation about the future, I still feel too raw for that.

I can’t think what I feel about it all. I don’t even know if I still love him. His deceit has deadened my feelings for him in a way. I don’t feel great, of course. I still cry at times, but at least I don’t cry every other minute and I feel less pain.

I am also busy organising our future and working on my body, not necessarily in that order. It’s amazing how quickly your body starts to feel better when you start exercising, I can’t believe I waited so long to get on
with it. I lived for years with an annoying voice going round in my head that said ‘I must do some exercise’. Now that voice has gone and thanks to my inability to muster up an appetite for food and Sarah’s yoga routine, which she drummed into me over the four days she was here, I can actually detect muscles in my thighs. And Sarah says that not only does yoga tone your muscles, it actually helps you to lose weight because it balances your metabolism through the breathing and reducing your stress levels. Apparently when you’re stressed your body seizes up and holds on to food. As if things aren’t bad enough. It’s amazing really because I was always under the impression that to lose weight you had to run around getting horribly out of breath, which I suppose is why I never did it before. There is still a long way to go, but at least I have made a start.

Today I have a potential buyer coming to see the house. I haven’t mentioned that to the children either. They have settled well into school and life here; they like it. They like the weather, the freedom to roam around outside, their friends. I really like it. In fact I love it.

I have made friends too – well, I have Calypso, but it’s a start. And even Wolfie the dog is starting to acknowledge me. The other day Audrey, the snooty pretty French woman with ringlets, said hello, but I doubt we will become bosom buddies. French women don’t really do friendship, according to the book Sarah gave me. They are too busy trying to shag each other’s husbands.

But even with the snooty French women I am happy here. It is now early February. In the mornings for the past few days the ground has been covered with a light frost, making the ripples of earth in the vineyards look like someone has sprinkled glitter all over them. The air is so fresh, cold and clean it makes you feel good just to breathe it. I am mortified at the thought of taking the children back to polluted London.

I just can’t see how I can possibly make wine. I hardly know one end of a vine from another. It’s all very well Sarah saying I should look on the Internet, but I don’t think becoming a
vigneronne
is really what I need right now, along with losing my husband. I have some help in the form of Colette, who Calypso suggested could come and do some work while Nick is still in London.

I can see her now, my
vigneronne
, stomping off towards the winery on her mobile phone. She looks angry. But it occurs to me that Colette never really looks anything but angry. She now works for me one day a week, pruning, preparing the vines for the summer, cleaning the
cave
, doing all the jobs I do but twice as fast. She is also teaching me my new trade.

Colette has an incredible electric pruning gadget that peeps like a trapped
mouse every time it cuts a branch. I had thought that maybe next year I would invest in some for me. Although I guess even without that machine Colette would be twice as fast as me.

“You need to decide what bits you are going to prune on the next vine as you are pruning the current one,” she told me in one of our rare conversations.

As a mother of three, multitasking is one thing I can do. I could practically make toast with my feet as I carried the twins on either hip. But when it comes to vines, I’m a one-trick woman.

Colette is one of those women you just don’t mess with, so I have asked her to ask next door’s foreman to stop trying to kill me. She said she would take care of it; he used to be her father-in-law. I’m not sure how old she is; she could be anywhere between thirty and fifty. I would never dare to ask her, but she is not like the French women I have been reading about, apart from the fact that she is thin and she smokes. She is about my height, five foot nine, with straggly brown hair that she bunches up in a brown clip that looks like it has flowers painted on it with TipEx. She ties a red and white squared scarf over her head when she works. She wears denim dungarees every day and when her arms are exposed I can see a tattoo or two lurking. I have yet to decipher what they depict. But I am guessing there’s not a tweetie-bird or a big red heart; Colette seems like a bit of a rock chick to me.

She wears a lot of silver jewellery – necklaces and rings – and seems to be able to work in the vines without them bothering her. She has an attractive face, with bright hazel eyes and big lips, but has obviously exposed herself to a lot of sun and has a few of those wrinkles around her mouth that smokers often have. I have never seen her wear make-up but Nick would say she would “scrub up well”, which I think makes women sound like a muddy beetroot but he would insist is not meant to.

But even with Colette to help, I am not in a position to run a vineyard. What I need is security and a reliable way to support the children and myself. So I asked my mother if we can stay with her for a few weeks before I find somewhere to live and a job in London. London is the only place I can think about living, I want to be close to my friends. But where to work? Where is my CV? It won’t so much be a question of dusting it off as starting again. Or maybe I should just call Lady Butterdish and go back to Drake’s. It won’t be the same without Johnny, though.

Living with my mother is not my idea of fun. Heaven knows what man she has lurking around at the moment; they’re normally dreadful. The last one had a toupee, and that was the best thing about him. I will put the children into school in her village in Devon for the moment, but when I get
a job in London we’ll have to move again. It’s all so unsettling.

I move onto my back to do the yoga ‘sit-ups’ Sarah has told me will totally flatten my baby-ravaged stomach. I’m meant to lift my legs up off the floor, holding them straight, and then slowly let them down again, controlling them. I’m meant to do one for every one of my years, so that’s thirty-six. I can barely manage four. Not for the first time in my thirties, I wish I were twenty again.

From the kitchen I can hear the advertisement for
Jane Eyre
come on again. Emily and Charlotte yell at me to come and see my “boyfriend”, but I will not be distracted from my sit-ups, in case I ever see him or anyone like him in the flesh. Sarah has made me promise to do the routine every day for at least forty days. After that, she tells me, it becomes a habit. I can’t imagine this ever becoming a habit that I’d want, but I keep going.

Edward runs into the kitchen to join the girls and leaves me to my agonising leg lifts, which are at least easier without him on top of me. Happily my phone rings, so I am now able to focus on Lucy, who is calling, instead of the pain in my lower abs.

“I just had to tell someone,” she breathes into the phone. “Patrick is going to Frankfurt for a job interview, thank God – I mean in more ways than one. I am sooooo angry – last week I had to sell my car, can you imagine? My precious black Range Rover with cream leather seats. I mean there is only so much a woman can stand.”

“I understand Lucy, but you also need to slightly think about your family and… Well, I mean look what happened to Nick and me because of lust.”

“Oh bugger it. Soph, can’t you just agree with me? I’ve never done anything reckless in my life. You and Sarah are always telling me how boring I am. Here’s my chance to catch you up. Talking of which I saw our very own femme fatale last night. She seems very happy.”

“Why wouldn’t she? He’s got lots of dosh, and he’s amazing,” I say, struggling not to let the sound of my efforts on the abs come through in my voice. “What’s not to like?”

“Well, he’s married, but she seems so Zen about it, I mean she really genuinely doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe the fact that he’s married adds to his air of mystery. She says her seduction plan is progressing well and she hopes to report full consummation of the relationship before the month is out.”

I groan and release my legs to the floor with a crash.

“And,” she goes on, “she says she loves her privacy and time to do what she wants when he’s not around. She seems really content for the first time in years. Maybe an affair isn’t always a bad thing?”

“As any self-respecting French woman will tell you,” I say. “Or
Frenchman come to that.”

Lucy is on a roll. “I mean, if I actually release some of my anger at Patrick as well as my pent-up lust for Josh, then maybe it will be the saving of our marriage and not the other way round? Maybe this is what our marriage needs?”

Trust Lucy to try to intellectualise a quick shag.

“But what if you really like it, and have to come back for more? I mean, where does it all end, Luce? What if he falls madly in love with you once you’ve had your fun and starts threatening to tell Patrick and ruin your life?”

“I have considered that, but I just don’t think he’s the type. He is so laidback and in control of himself, I can’t imagine him ever doing anything stupid.”

“Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out. When does Patrick go to Frankfurt?”

“On Sunday. And he’ll be back Monday evening. I have arranged to have a reading day at home on Monday when the kids are at school, and made sure Josh knows that. We’ll just have to see if he decides to stay at home too. Oh God, please let him stay at home. Oh help Soph, am I really evil?”

I laugh. “Lucy, no one could ever call you evil”

Lucy sighs. “Sarah says that what Patrick doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I guess that’s the key eh? That’s how a French woman would do it. She would just get on with it and then pretend it never happened. Is that possible do you think?”

“I suppose it depends on how much fun it was,” I say. “Keep me posted, I want to hear everything. I’ll be thinking of you.”

I drive the children to school because of the rain. This is not rain in that normal drizzly English way but the kind of rain that you could use as a power shower. Just getting to the car we are all soaked through. I hope Wolfie has found somewhere to shelter; he seems to prefer our
terroir
to next door’s, even if he won’t come into the house. Daisy is under the kitchen table looking horrified.

I actually look forward to taking the kids to school, even when we have to drive. It is such a stress-free experience compared to London. We drive down the lane that leads to the smarter avenue, which goes past the Château de Boujan.

“They’ve got a big house,” says Emily every time we drive past.

Then we get to the road that goes through the village of Boujan and turn right and the school is just there. There are never any problems with a parking place, the teachers are all at the gate to greet us, the forty or so
well-behaved
children file in well before the bell rings at 9am. Most days I get
them home for lunch. They leave at midday and are due back between 1.20 and 1.30, leaving just enough time to enjoy them before getting fed up with them again as they start bickering.

“Kiss, Mummy,” says Emily at the gate. She veers between love and hate with me; either she wants to kiss me or she stomps off in a furious strop. Charlotte is more consistent – it’s always a quick “Bye Mummy” with her as she runs in. She has a gang of three friends waiting for her every day. It reminds me of myself with Sarah, Carla and Lucy. Instead she has Cloud, Calypso’s daughter, a girl called Maud, who is the daughter of the attractive ringleted lady Audrey, and a rather plump, friendly dark-haired girl called Clémence.

Clémence always seems so happy to see me and says “
Bonjour
Sophie” in a sweet little sing-song voice. I love hearing my name in French; it sounds so sexy and sophisticated. Now all I need to do is get the body, the matching underwear and the French accent to match. Along with the lover. At least now I have
le droit
, as the French would say. Actually they always have the right to a lover, according to whatever law it is they abide by. But I would need to get my legs industrially waxed first.

Once the children have gone, I get back in the car. I turn the radio to my favourite radio station,
Nostalgie
, which plays songs I used to dance to and now only sing along to.

Today that Bonnie Tyler song comes on, ‘Lost in France’. I listen to the words: ‘I was lost in France. In the fields the birds were singing. I was lost in France and the day was just beginning’.

Suddenly I am weeping. I feel so lonely, not alone. I feel vulnerable and scared. I have no one to turn to. Of course I have Sarah and Lucy, but they’re in London and busy either having passionate sex or planning to.