The New Mrs D (10 page)

It occurred to me that there were only two ways to get my machine back from Evie: tell her parents – drawing attention to the fact that their little girl was singing into a pelvic toner – or play along. I went for option number two.

‘How about we sing one together, over here by the beach?’ I called out to her. ‘Then you can give it back to me.’

She nodded enthusiastically and I led her over to the wall to sit down, wondering why on earth her parents weren’t watching her wandering away with a stranger.

‘Now, what shall we sing? And don’t say Justin Bieber because that’s just not music.’

She grinned, a sweet, innocent-looking smile. This girl had a great face for undetected mischief.

‘Do you know
LMFAO
?’ she asked.

‘Excuse me?’

Putting the bulb up to her mouth once more, she wailed, ‘When I walk in the spot, YEAH this is what I see OK! Everybody stops and they starin’ at me!’

Jesus.

‘Your bill, madam?’

The waiter had been watching as we belted out our duet, sharing the vaginal cone ‘microphone’ with my joining in at, ‘I’M SEXY AND I KNOW IT!’ – the only bit that was familiar to me and something that singing into a pelvic toner didn’t epitomise. I wasn’t sure if he could tell what the machine really was, but I wasn’t offering up the question for a round of
Jeopardy
.

‘Something women use after child birth to stop them weeing their pants while doing star jumps.’

‘What is a pelvic toner?’

After paying my bill and leaving Evie to go back to annoying her parents, I walked down the steps to the beach, where I was met by a smiling Argos.

‘That was so good,’ he said, beaming a beautiful, white-toothed smile at me.

Once again, I flushed crimson. He’d been watching me!

‘Hello there,’ I said, pushing the machine back into my handbag and closing the zip. ‘I thought you’d be having an early night after today’s events.’

He smiled and peered down at my handbag which I was furtively pushing behind my back. ‘What is that thing?’ he asked.

‘Oh that? Just a little mini karaoke machine – a child’s toy really. I like to practise my . . . erm . . . breathing techniques.’

‘Ah. Well, it was lovely. How are you, lovely Binnie?’

At last, he had learned my name. Which to him wasn’t ‘Mrs David Dando’, it was ‘Lovely Binnie.’ Nice. I liked ‘Lovely Binnie.’

‘Oh, fine,’ I said. ‘I had a lovely dinner and I think I’m just going to head back now.’

He frowned. ‘That is a shame, because a few of the local people go to a cove for swimming at night. I thought you might like to come too?’

‘Oh, I’d love to, but I didn’t bring my costume and as I said, I have to make a phone call.’

And I’m not swimming in my poo-brown Spanx.

‘That’s alright. You don’t need a costume and it’s just for a leetle while. Come on.’

He took my arm and, ignoring my protests, walked me uphill towards his moped which was parked at the quayside.

Chapter Thirteen

A romantic meal for two under the stars. And oooh, Italy just scored!

I
stood in the small clearing and updated my Facebook status while Argos went over to chat to some friends as they were leaving. There were sounds of music, whooping and laughter from somewhere below us. Finally, he waved the group off and beckoned me to follow him.

I grabbed my bag from the moped’s basket and ran behind him as he led me to a rocky ledge. There we found a single rope to climb down to the tiny, hidden cove below.

As we scrambled down to the dimly lit beach, I could make out glistening, wet, naked bodies everywhere, diving in and out of the water. My stomach turned over. Despite the fact that in a few days’ time I was due to meet my toughest challenge yet – a nudist beach – I couldn’t rip off my dress in front of Argos! Before I was able to think about it a moment longer, he was running past me in all his naked glory and diving headlong into the moonlit sea, only to be surrounded by a group of giggling girls. Ignoring all of them, he beckoned to me, ‘Are you going to come in?’

I could feel my support underwear almost creaking from the strain of redistributing my belly fat to my back and boobs and waved him away with a ‘Hah, what me? Nooo!’ and planted my backside firmly in the sand to watch him. Behind us, a guitarist sat beside a small bonfire, fingerpicking the most alluring music. Despite all the splashing and flashing of young bodies under the light of a new moon, it was quite romantic. I wasn’t going to spoil the atmosphere by producing my own, extremely full moon, spilling out of a way-too-tight pair of beige support knickers. One thing was certain, if I took the thing off my body would show every stitch and seam like I was still wearing it.

As I watched all the splashing and commotion, without being able to make out anybody’s faces, I heard a familiar voice shout out.

‘Hughie, are ye coming in tae swim or are you just going to stand there ogling everything?’

I didn’t turn around. Naked Hughie was not something I needed to see.

‘Binnie! Please come for a swim!’ Argos was standing waist-deep in the sea now and walking back in to the shore towards me.

‘I’m okay,’ I told him quietly, with a shake of my head. I wasn’t sure how close I was to Hughie but I didn’t want to attract his attention.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘You are so lovely for me.’

Bless him. He’s lost his contacts in the water.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Binnie,’ he continued. ‘If you won’t come in the water then let me sing to you.’

‘Sing?’ I said. ‘What on earth would make you want to do that?’

‘Because I want to,’ he said, gesturing towards the nearby guitarist, who was just starting to play a new song. ‘Do you know this tune?’

I listened to the gentle plinkety-plink of the first few finger-picked bars. ‘I don’t, no,’ I confessed.

‘We were born before the wind,’ Argos sang, whereby I recognised a much loved Van Morrison tune. ‘Also younger than the sun. And the bonnie boat was won, as we sailed into the mystic!’

Bless him. I was born before the wind. He probably turned up around about when Bryan Adams was at No. 1 for a hundred weeks with ‘
Everything I Do.
’ Turning to look back at the musician, I spotted Greta and Hughie’s bare backsides walking away in the other direction. So they hadn’t seen me.
We bring you another exciting episode of Naked Old People You Know in 3D next month.

‘Come on, Binnie,’ Argos called. ‘Come in the water!’

I hunched up, bowing my head towards my lap, trying to make myself smaller; invisible.

‘What’s wrong with me? Why aren’t you turned on?’

David rolled back onto his side of the bed and sighed. ‘It’s not you, Binnie,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

‘Well, just tell me what to do to help and I’ll do it. What turns you on?’

He paused, before turning his face to the bedside table.

‘You know what turns me on,’ he said. ‘It never fails.’

His words stung and my heart ached, but I knew what he wanted. And, I knew he was right.

‘We don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ he added quickly. ‘It’s horrible. I won’t say it again.’

‘No,’ I said, sitting up to face him. ‘If it’s what you need, let’s do it. I don’t mind.’

I lay back down on my back, waiting as he picked up his mobile phone.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he said. ‘Just got to find the right thing. Are you sure you don’t mind?’

I shook my head, swallowed hard and stared up at the ceiling. And there I remained, with my eyes closed tightly shut, as he finally found what he wanted, placed the phone on the pillow above my head and climbed on top of me. I heard a dog barking outside; a distant ice-cream van playing the theme from The Archers. I heard the squeals and moans of lithe, young women, the bed rocking and his breath now coming thick and fast. And when finally he collapsed on to my body, whispering his thanks into my ear, I was glad to be invisible.

‘Let me use your microphone.’

Argos’s shout brought me back to the present. I blinked back tears and stood up.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I really should go . . .’

‘No, wait!’ he cried, making his way out of the water. I turned my face away, realising I was about to get a full frontal. ‘Just one song for you, Binnie. Please.’

‘B . . .b . . . but it’s broken,’ I stammered, covering my eyes with my handbag. ‘And I really have to get back now, I promised to phone my sister tonight.’

As I peeped out from behind my bag, I saw his pubic area began to appear above the water. Lowering my bag now, my mouth fell open and I fiddled furiously with the zip. ‘Alright, alright! Just stay there and you can have it!’

Laughing, he sank his lower body back down into the sea, keeping his manhood covered. He held out his hand for the probe.

‘Take it! Take it!’ I said, thrusting it at him.

He grasped the bulb to his mouth and, seeing me still holding the unit asked, ‘are you recording me?’

‘Argos, I told you, it’s broken,’ I said, pretending to press the buttons to demonstrate the machines inefficiency. At least – I thought I was pretending. Until he opened his mouth to sing, swung his head and yanked the unit out of my hands – knocking it into the water – where it fizzled in front of his pelvic region.

‘Arghyaggghhhyaaaaggghhh!’

He did a quick, violent judder at the waist which astonished me. He was a way better dancer the other night. ‘Waaarrrrggggghhhh hah hahaaa haaaaaa!’ he cried out. He was a way better singer a second ago too.

‘Okay, it’s not quite
The Lady in Red
-style serenade I was expecting,’ I said, trying my best to be tactful. All at once, he dropped the bulb into the water. It sank like a stone.

‘Oh, no!’ I yelped. ‘My Kegel . . . er . . . Karaoke thingy!’ It was only then that I realised he had fallen to his knees, looking like he was about to pass out.

‘Oh, Argos, are you alright?’

As he began to flop forward, I waded in just in time to stop him dropping face first into the sea.

‘Oh, help!’ I cried.

I tried to heave him up out of the water, made easier as he began to find his legs again.

‘Upsadaisy, there you go,’ I said, guiding him to the beach and forgetting he was naked. Which was just as well, because I sounded like I was his mum and about to put a plaster on his ickle knee. Then it hit me. Well, not
hit
me exactly. Just boinged off my leg.

‘Argos! Oh my . . .’ I started, peering down at what was a very impressive erection.

Still dazed, Argos scratched his head in wonderment, and with a weird, stupefied smile on his face. I grabbed his towel from a rock to cloak him in, just as a very drunk young guy appeared from nowhere, wearing nothing but a pair of shoes and a cap.

‘Hey, man,’ he said, staggering and hiccupping all the way. ‘Which way to the rope ladder? I need to get out of here.’

Argos turned towards him, still stunned and fully erect, and opened his mouth to speak. But no words would come. Before I could offer a response myself, the man donned his cap, said ‘Thanks man!’ and staggered off in the direction Argos’s very prominent member was pointing to.

Chapter Fourteen

Late night – wine and skinny-dipping. Sun’s down, bottoms up!

A
s I posted a photo of a sun-kissed, pert bottom that everyone would know wasn’t mine to Facebook, my face flushed pink at the memory of Argos’s electric-shock induced erection, which had poked me in the back as I had driven him home on his moped the night before. My wet clothes lay strewn on the floor somewhere, after I’d dived onto the bed, shattered from my calamitous day. Still, it wasn’t
all
bad. It was ages since anyone had poked me in the back with their erection.

‘I love you today, Mr Dando.’

‘I love you
every
day, Mrs Dando.’

‘I’m going to love you every day, I just haven’t had them all yet.’

It was the morning after our wedding and we were lying, arms and legs entwined, under a thin, cotton sheet on the hotel room floor. My idea that we should try a very quiet quickie on the private balcony for a bit of ‘al fresco’ variety that morning had only served to make David more anxious and unable to perform. I’d reassured him everything was fine, the euphoria of waking up as his wife filling and comforting me like warm, mulled wine. We had the rest of our lives to get it right.

‘Hey, honey,’ he’d said, touching me under my chin, which I immediately dipped to stop him brushing the early morning she-beardiness. ‘Why don’t you go get us a paper while I jump in the shower?’

‘Sure,’ I said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘It’s the least a wife can do for her husband.’

Oh the memories.
That morning after marriage romance. That morning after marriage euphoria. That morning after marriage stroll to the newsagents while he has a wank in the shower . . .

With some satisfaction, I wondered if David was reading my updates, perhaps wondering who I was skinny-dipping with. He might know there was no other man I could love right now, but he couldn’t know I was being faithful and I wasn’t going to help him to this conclusion.

I remembered an email counselling session I’d taken two years earlier without telling David. I’d written:
‘It isn’t just when I’m out with David that I feel so bad. I’ve been avoiding going out with friends too. My last night out was a couple of weeks ago with two colleagues and all I did was spend the entire time staring at the pretty, slim young things on the dance floor, feeling like a fat, old hag. I couldn’t wait to get back home and hide. The truth is, I’ve begun to wonder where I’ve gone.’

My head had been swimming in David’s problems; I knew that now. That was where I had gone. The therapist had advised me to do one thing a day that made me feel better about myself – something I’d only begun to try now – on my honeymoon, with the five steps to a new me. Sure, I’d strayed from this new path of righteousness a couple of times, but I badly wanted to feel as free as a woman should feel of all these doubts and, for heaven’s sake, have some fun. I knew my battered heart wasn’t ready to stop loving David yet. Even knowing that at least
some
of the bad thoughts and feelings I had about myself had been fostered from memories of how he – and Michael – had treated me. When would I ever feel good enough?

‘Michael, are you planning on bringing
that
girl to your cousin’s wedding?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh. Wonderful.’

Michael seemed not to notice the sarcasm in his mother’s tone as he pushed his bedroom door closed and bounced gleefully back into bed beside me, laughing.

‘At least we know she doesn’t realise you stayed last night,’ he said.

‘That girl?’ I said, aghast and hurt. ‘What does she mean,
“that girl”
?’

‘Oh, you know Mother,’ he replied. ‘She’s just a terrible snob.’

I wondered why he hadn’t defended me. Why he hadn’t said, ‘Actually, that girl is here and I love her and we’re going to have a baby.’ I wondered why, two months into my pregnancy and as delighted as a child with a new toy that he seemed to be, he hadn’t told either of his parents yet.

‘I’ll tell them when the time is right,’ he’d said coyly. ‘Just not now. We’ve only been going out a couple of months so it’s going to be a shock. Besides, it’s their silver wedding anniversary this month and I don’t want to spoil it for them by giving them something to worry about.’

‘Worry about?’ I roared. ‘I’m nineteen and you’re twenty one next month. We’re grown-ups for heaven’s sake! Why are we hiding our relationship? Our sleeping together?
Our baby
?’

I thought I was ready to tackle the world at nineteen, that my unanticipated new family would be much better than my old one. That Michael was going to be the loving, supportive parent I never had. That my child would never have to feel like he or she was a perpetual disappointment to him.

‘You’re WHAT?’

‘Pregnant, Dad. I’m going to have a baby.’

My father stared back at me, open-mouthed. Smother had rushed to put an arm around his shoulder to soothe him.

‘What did I tell you about using contraception?’ she scolded. My father visibly shrank at the mention of the word ‘contraception’. He always looked as though he needed to leave the room whenever any references to sex were made in his company.

‘It wasn’t planned, of course, but Michael and I couldn’t be happier,’ I’d said, unable to comprehend why everyone wasn’t as over the moon as Michael was.

As
Michael
was.

Only as an older, wiser woman had I acknowledged that the proud, smiling teenager telling everyone, including Michael, that this was the beginning of the rest of her life and that she couldn’t be happier, had been cloaking her fear and bewilderment in false joy. All the while my tummy had felt weird. Like there was something there, questioning the reason for the new life inside it.

‘Hey, you up there! How the hell did this happen? Do you even love this guy?’

My father had died from a stroke just two months before Sal was born. I felt sure the disappointment had killed him, a belief my mother helped exacerbate in a series of heavily cloaked digs. As I’d walked down the aisle with her giving me away later that year, I looked to the heavens and silently asked him if he was proud of me now. I was to have a new husband, rich in-laws and already had a beautiful baby girl.

‘How do I look, Mum?’

‘You’ll do. Don’t be getting too attached to that dress though, you’ll want to sell it on afterwards. What do you think of my hat?’

‘You are a very pretty lady, Binnie.’

Argos had said this last night, before the electrocution by pelvic toner thing. Sinking further into my bed, I allowed the words of this gorgeous, young twenty-whatever-he-was to marinate. Somebody desired me! How long had I had to wait for that wonderful feeling? But then, all he saw was the covered up, Spanx wearing version of me. What if, heaven forbid, he actually saw my body? Would we need to try pelvic toner intervention again?

‘Wait, wait, wait . . .’

ZAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

‘Okay, GO!’

As the memory of his enormous erection boinging off my leg came back to mind, all at once it occurred to me that every single intimate encounter I’d ever had with David had been lukewarm rather than sizzling hot. I’d accepted his faults and his awkwardness in bed. I’d listened to the counsellor, doing everything she advised to make things better for him. But in the process, I’d lost what was important to me. I needed to feel desired. I needed intimacy. And David had given me neither of those things.

I started to let myself imagine what sex with Argos would be like. He was a gorgeous distraction from all my problems right now, and of course I wanted him. But the truth was it was an attraction based entirely on lust. There was no connection, like that first moment I’d met my husband. And it was hardly surprising, given that I hadn’t had sex in such a long time, that I was pretty much desperate for some. But I wasn’t ready to put a ‘finished’ stamp on my marriage by sleeping with someone else. I couldn’t do that, even knowing how easy it would be to ensure David never found out.

The clock on the bedside table buzzed a wake up alarm.
Come on Bernice, don’t you have enough complications to worry about? So you fancy this guy a little, fine! But you’re not going to mourn the loss of your youth by getting yourself another one.

A text alert flashed up on my phone.

Weren’t you going to call me? Is everything okay?

Suzy. I still hadn’t phoned her, because I was dreading the conversation. I really needed to confide in her, but I still felt so,
so
embarrassed.

Today was scuba day.
Cancelled
scuba day, which was why the alarm had been set. Putting aside my mobile I resolved to call her later (again) and turned over to flick the button on the clock off, when my hands touched something cold, wet and slimy.

‘Ew!’

I looked to see what it was. And if God had needed an alarm call too, he was getting one today.

‘YARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’

A black, slimy monster of a giant spider was covering the clock on the bedside table. In seconds, Chris was hammering at my door.

‘Binnie! Are you okay? Let me in!’

I jumped up and fiddled with the key in the door which sprung open, almost knocking me backwards as Chris burst in wielding a small trowel.

‘Oh, thank God,’ I said. ‘It’s Supergardener!’

‘What is it? Where?’ he gasped, puffing from what must have been an effortful burst of running from one of the oleander patches.

As the day’s light filled the room through the open door, I turned and pointed to the monster alarm-clock-eating spi . . .

Bunch of seaweed.

‘What? What is it?’ Chris stabbed the air with his trowel, poised to weed the monster to death.

Awakening is a wonderful thing. No sooner had I realised my assassin was more ‘kelp’ than ‘help!’ I realised I was standing in nothing but my knickers and made a quick grab for the sheet to cover my modesty. Chris, thank God, turned from the ‘monster’ to looking back at my face.

‘Sorry, it was the . . . er . . .’ I pointed. ‘Seaweed,’ I said, feeling like a prat and not for the third time this week.

A moment ago, Chris had been a dashing hero racing to help a damsel in distress. Now, he was alone in a bedroom with a crazy half-naked woman. There was a horrible, gaping, great awkward silence. And we all know what I do whenever there’s one of those.

‘Did you see my tits?’

BLURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT.

Chris began backing out of the room. ‘Have you, erm . . . lost them?’ he asked.

At last, I’d found my blurting twin.

I half-laughed and another, momentary awkward silence fell before Chris bumbled on for me.

Ignoring the ‘did you see my tits’ thing, he said, ‘You can’t beat the old
phikeia
in the dark monster trick. Fallen for that myself a few times. I’ve . . . er . . . left coffee on upstairs. Got to go.’

As my ears heard ‘
phikea
’ and my brain processed it as ‘thick,’ (
had he just called me thick?
) he bolted out of the door faster than a sheet-stealing goat; before I even had chance to ask him where he stood on the big, natural boobs are best/not-best debate.

‘Oh Godddddd!’ I fell back onto the bed with an almighty moan and clasped my hands to my head. My boobs hid under my armpits – I would say in embarrassment, but the truth is they always do this when I’m horizontal.