Pear Shaped (14 page)

‘It’s near France; you could fly to Perpignan couldn’t you?’ asks James, taking the computer from me. ‘Bonder Junior has a little place there, we could go down to the Languedoc for a few days, drink good wine, eat cheese….’ he says, patting his belly.

‘Good plan,’ I say, standing up and leaning over to kiss him upside down.

‘Mmmm, where are you going?’ he says, trying to pull me back.

‘Water, you want?’ He nods. While I’m in the kitchen, the doorbell rings.

My neighbour, Amber.

What’s she doing here? She must have heard us come in – probably wants to see if she can get in there with James and date one of his friends.

She is wearing tiny shorts rolled down from the waist to an inch above the top of her bikini line, and a fuchsia sports bra – not bra top – BRA. Her long, wavy blond hair is artfully scooped up to give the impression that she is just about to jump off a yacht in to the Aegean, and she seems to have lightly spritzed herself with oil that smells like a Primrose Hill boutique.

I can hear James knocking around in the bathroom and I pray he won’t come out and see her, because although she is inane, and I have meanly christened her Zoolamber due to the fact that she thinks Pakistan is the capital of India, she has a terrific body, and James might fancy her.

‘Babe, my kitchen tap’s not working, is yours?’ she says.

‘I just used it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Call the caretaker.’

‘He’s not answering. Have you got a friend here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could I fill my Evian bottle? I can’t drink sparkling water when I’m doing Pilates, too bloating … oh, hi there …’ Too late.

‘Hi, I’m James. You must be the famous Zoolamber.’

I turn round and give him a look of pure horror.

‘It’s Amber,’ she says, looking confused. ‘Who’s Zoolamber?’

‘Oh, Zolanda, no, that’s my friend, er, from work … James, Amber is my neighbour. Her water’s broken, tap’s not working, would you mind filling this in the kitchen?’

‘I’ll come too,’ she says, bouncing along behind him in true gym bunny style. ‘I’ve been doing the Bolshoi Pilates DVD, God, it’s amay-zing. Works your core soo hard, my core is soo tight now …’

I can tell he’s trying not to react but his eyebrows raise, and as he turns to give her the full bottle he can’t help but check out her body. I feel it like a short hard punch, but then realise I’m being over-sensitive – any man would stare.

‘Sophie, shall I show you the basics? It would really help your shape.’

What would help my shape is showing your shape my front door. ‘No, thanks.’

‘It won’t take a sec, I’ll just do some simple floor work.’ Before I can shoo her out she has lain down on my hall carpet, knees bent, groin thrust into the air, her skinny arms pulsing at her sides. ‘You count to 100, it’s all about the breath.’ She exhales hard little puffs while James stares at her clenching, thrusting small buttocks. She has the body of a young boy – a young boy with Harley Street breast implants.

‘James, can you put on the water for the pasta, please?’ I push him with both hands back into the kitchen and shut the door. ‘Amber, another time.’ I stand over her with my arm outstretched. She pouts and very slowly rolls on to her side. She pauses there and I can almost see the machinations in her head.
Can I get back into the kitchen? How can I get in with this guy’s friends? How come she’s got a boyfriend with a nicer car than mine when I’m thinner than her?
She lifts herself delicately off the floor as if she’s made of blown sugar.

‘You guys should come round for food,’ she calls out. ‘I’ve got this wicked recipe for Mystical Braised Tofu from my facial analyst. She’s put me on a strictly no wheat, no dairy regime. My energy is amazing.’

‘Presumably you have to cut booze and drugs too?’

Amber looks confused. ‘Those are natural toxins, I’m just not allowed manmade chemicals. Do you even
know
what they put in milk?’

‘Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to speak to James about our trip so we’d best get on.’ I hold open the front door.

Instead she opens the kitchen door, sticks her head round it and says ‘Great to finally meet you James, Soph talks about you all the time. You guys are coming for food at mine soon. Next weekend?’

He murmurs some response, and she turns, gives me a sharp smile and finally leaves.

‘Nice one, calling her Zoolamber to her face,’ I say, grabbing a stick of celery and whacking him on the arm.

‘I didn’t realise till after I’d said it. Anyway, you covered up alright. She seems sweet.’

Sweet. He means toned.

‘She’s not sweet. Did I not tell you about the birthday present?’

He takes the celery and starts chopping it.

‘She gave me some stupidly expensive Diptyque candle, then the next day came round and said it was actually meant for her masseuse and took it back, gave me one from Superdrug instead.’

He laughs.

‘Oh, you like that, do you? Well, when my plumbing broke she wouldn’t let me use her bath – said she couldn’t risk someone who uses non-organic skincare “infiltrating her biosystem”. She makes Geri Halliwell look like Einstein.’

‘Ah, my little Green Eyed Monster …’

‘I am not jealous! I don’t like her, that’s all. She accused
me of being tight after I refused to lend her £50 for her dealer, after she’d already borrowed £100 and never paid me back. She’s an idiot.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have people like that in your life who take advantage of you. Why do you put up with it?’

Because I’m a masochist? ‘She’s my neighbour, what am I meant to do?’

‘Cut her off.’

On the Ryanair flight over to France, James and I are separated, having mucked about too long choosing our in-flight snacks at Prêt. There is one seat at the back of the plane, next to the loo and two middle-aged women wearing
High School Musical
jackets, or a seat with a couple and their screaming five-year-old boy.

I choose the back seat and watch as James, seven rows in front, not only manages to stop this child’s tantrum, but plays games with him the entire journey. The pair of them giggle and plot like twins.

At the Hertz desk, we rent an ironically named Sprint and head towards Narbonne. We are so busy warbling along to Supertramp on Nostalgie FM that we miss the exit for the toll road and end up driving the scenic route.

‘Fitou,’ James says. ‘Let’s stop there,’ he says, pointing to a building under a tree at the side of the road.

In the wine shop, a man who looks as old as the stones
offers us samples of amazing rosés and reds and Muscats de Rivesaltes.

‘Four of each,’ says James.

‘We’re here for two nights … we won’t get through 12 bottles.’

‘They’re so cheap it’d be wrong not to,’ he says.

We load the car up with booze and head north, then west to a tiny village by the river Aude.

It is perfect. No tourists, two bakeries, beautiful buildings surrounded by fields, flat and green and yellow. I have never been to France on holiday. I go to Paris for work often, but I had no conception of how unbelievably awesome the south is.

James has told me nothing about where we are staying, other than that it belongs to Lucien Bonder, who uses it as an occasional weekend pad with his wife and daughter, and that it used to be a warehouse of some sort. I fear it will be dank and smell of cat’s piss.

In a narrow backstreet we come to a high iron gate behind which is a courtyard with a fountain and a large two-storey stone building, part covered in ivy.

‘It must have been a stable,’ I say, looking up at a small terracotta horse’s head pinned high above the large wooden front door.

James opens the door and starts to laugh.

‘What? Is there a horse still in there?’ I say.

He grabs my hand and we step in to a World of Interiors dream.

It is a vast, bright space – concrete floors, exposed white stone walls, high ceilings with wooden beams. A floating staircase on the right leads up to a mezzanine kitchen with a pale blue Smeg fridge, and then out onto the pool area. Our own pool!

In the main living space on the ground floor is a blue table tennis table, and its colour is echoed by an illuminated square of aquamarine at the far end of the room, a cut-through window looking into the swimming pool. I stare through the window and up to the surface of the water and watch pine needles floating on the ceiling. It is so calm and still, I want to lie down on the bottom on the smooth white tiles.

When I look back into the main room my eyes are still mesmerised by the pale blue – everything looks peachy.

We race up the stairs from the mezzanine to find four bedrooms and four bathrooms, each more beautiful than the last. Floor tiles in pale grey and sage patterns, white wooden cupboards, blue linen sheets, freestanding baths, skylights … everything is simple and elegant and understated. Even the little girl’s room is stylish,
Tintin
posters on the walls and Barbie dolls arranged in a white wicker basket covered in tiny lavender hearts.

We finish in the master bedroom that looks down onto
the pool and has an en suite rain shower with four extra taps on the wall that spray sideways and tickle you ever so gently.

It is the nicest place I have ever seen, and for this brief, glorious moment it is our home.

We have 48 hours till we need to drive to El Bulli and James insists on spending around 44 of them butt naked.

‘If you must,’ I say, ‘but I haven’t even met the Bonders, I don’t feel right sitting at their dining table nude.’ I wear a bikini and shorts that cover my cellulite. I should have bought a new bikini. Swimsuit shopping used to be such an arduous experience. I’ve brought old ones, and with my reduced bust, I feel mildly unsupported.

Day one is spent eating bread and cheese and cheese and bread, and drinking four bottles of wine. At 2am we play table tennis and James thrashes me 21-0.

‘Play nice,’ I say. ‘Can’t we rally?’

In the next game, he sits on his competitiveness for all of three points, but by point four he is adding slice so that the ball bounces and swerves irritatingly out of reach. I think I have it and then it’s gone the other way completely.

‘Oi, no spin!’ I say.

‘Drunkard, the ball was straight.’

I serve hard and the ball thwacks him in the stomach and he looks impressed and mildly aroused.

‘Hustler!’ he says.

‘Wanna bet?’

‘If you lose, you have to run round the courtyard naked,’ he says.

‘No. I’ll do the washing up and if you lose, you can run to the recycling bins with those bottles.’

‘Boring. You lose, once round the courtyard or I won’t play with you anymore.’

‘Are you five years old?’

He pretends to have a tantrum and then we argue for seventeen minutes about the terms of the bet; because it’s so dark outside that I don’t mind running naked round the courtyard, and because James’s favourite thing in the world is winning, I agree to his terms, and he promptly thrashes me 21-2, then nods and smiles while I dance in as dignified a manner as possible round the fountain.

‘Good woman,’ he says, as I put my bikini back on and grab the wine.

It is so hot in the night we sleep on the sheets, and when James climbs on top of me in the morning I think about how rough I must look, how red my face, how frizzy my hair.

I feel ropey and dehydrated and by the time I’ve showered and made tea, James is splashing about in the pool. Where does he get his energy from?

I wave and go down to the window onto the pool. He swims towards me and presses his arse against the glass. I shake my head and laugh as he performs a pirouette, then jumps up and down, pointing at his willy.

‘You are five,’ I mouth, and he sticks his thumbs up and nods.

I study his long, strong legs, as the hairs all drift up, drift down. He pushes himself off the glass and I watch as he moves quickly to the other side of the pool. He is a strong swimmer and within seconds he is just a shape and then he has disappeared entirely. Come back, I think. I want to look at you. And then he’s there, ploughing towards me, face forward, eyes open, like a shark.

He vanishes again and I hear him clattering around upstairs. ‘James?’

A few minutes later, I’m staring back through the glass into the now calm pool and a green bean comes into view, top right, and bounces along the top of the screen like it’s going for a stroll. From the top left, a courgette comes into view and rushes towards the bean, and the two do a dance.

The bean disappears and a bottle of Sauza tequila replaces it. Seeing the liquor, the courgette takes fright and disappears upwards, to be replaced by a pair of long, slim, unnaturally perfect legs.

Plastic ones.

Barbie has arrived. James makes Barbie drink the
tequila, then whips away the bottle and Ken drops into the game, taking Barbie roughly from behind, then rubbing his smooth crotch in her face. Ken is then ejected from the pool and James brings Barbie down to his own crotch.

I race up the stairs. ‘Stop it,’ I say, laughing. ‘You’d better buy that poor little girl a new Barbie.’

He chuckles. ‘Get in and I’ll dump Barbie for you. She’s hot but boring as hell …’ he says.

‘Go to the window and watch me, it’s so cool,’ I say.

He climbs out of the pool and hugs me and I think how much I love his size. He is so broad and big, he feels so strong.

‘Come on then,’ he says and pads through the kitchen and down the stairs.

I jump in the pool, swim to the window and do a somersault. By the time I resurface, he is shouting something at me.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Top off!’ he says.

Fine. I take my bikini top off and go back under the surface.

He bounds back up the stairs. ‘My God, I love the way your tits move in the water.’

‘Wow, finally, the “L” word,’ I say. ‘What a romantic …’

He runs away into the kitchen.

I climb out of the pool, grab a towel and join him.

‘Coffee?’ he says, eyeing up a shiny black and silver machine on the counter.

‘I tried earlier, I couldn’t find the manual. It’s very hi-tech, I wouldn’t …’