‘Lie back,’ he breathed, sliding his warm hand along my thigh. I did what I was told, and lay back on the sunlounger, the sun beating down under a foreign sky. His fingers were now expertly smoothing fragrant oil onto my warm skin, creating an electric sizzle on contact. I pulled down my shoulder straps provocatively and adjusted myself on the lounger so he could enjoy me in my best possible light. I looked at him from under luxurious eyelashes, my bronzed skin glowing in the sun, now high in the sky, the air laced with Hawaiian Tropic. I closed my eyes and relaxed as the gorgeous man applied factor 20 with the enthusiasm of a sex-starved Swedish masseur.
This is how I like to see it anyway, and the above description is pretty close, except for the bit about my skin being bronzed and my eyelashes being luxurious. My skin was more of a faded orange over mottled pink and my eyelashes were spiky and itchy and didn’t belong to me. They’d been glued on by Mandy the beauty therapist, who used me like a bloody guinea pig at the salon where I worked. As soon as a new treatment appeared on the horizon, she’d whisk me into her Heavenly Spa above the salon and ‘inflict’ it on me. She’d once vajazzled a cougar onto my private parts (not, I must add, at my request) and I was shocked to discover two very lifelike cougar eyes staring back at me when I’d looked down. Not, it has to be said, as shocked as Dan, my boyfriend who’d come face-to-face with the spectacle in the dark during a passionate encounter. He took it like a man but joked about being traumatised by it for some time after. Mandy had assured me these innovative new lashes I was now batting were all the rage in Hollywood and I’d look like a ‘hot film star’, but by the time I’d left the salon I looked more like a surprised drag queen.
So there I was in a small hotel in the Spanish hills, lying by a pool, with Dan, the love of my life. We’d been together for three years (with only a small gap in the first year when we’d hit a problem) and I’d never met anyone quite like this rather wonderful Australian Adonis who’d turned up in my local deli when I’d thought my life story was over. Free-spirited, with the spontaneity of a teenager, Dan climbed the highest mountains, dived into the deepest oceans and jumped on planes like other people jumped on buses. He’d seduced me with his tales of new worlds, hot sunshine, different flavours, and amazing people, and now we were sharing that journey together.
When I’d first met Dan, I’d been unhappily married to Craig, a career plumber who loved toilet pipes and flange fittings more than he loved me. Plumbing was his passion and nothing and no one could compete with a dripping valve or a faulty ballcock where Craig was concerned.
‘Shall we sit in the shade?’ Dan was asking me now, his eyes twinkling, not a murmur of faulty ballcocks, just sunshine and white wine.
I nodded, wordlessly, as he took my hand, his own still warm and slippery from the sun oil, and we lay under a huge palm and gazed into each other’s eyes. I still couldn’t believe this was my life, that Dan and I were together. I was a grandma now, as well as a university student – how crazy is that? Dan and I lived apart but close by, which is why these lovely snatched weekends were so special. After selling the marital home following my divorce, I was lodging with Emma, my daughter, a single mum. I say, ‘lodging’, but really I had moved in to help Emma look after Rosie, my gorgeous granddaughter. I was happy, and felt like I was almost having it all, but only too aware of how easy it might be to slip back into a life of domesticity, with no goals, and no dreams, just an endless loop of waking, sleeping and working. I’d been there and done that before, having to abandon my own degree as a teenager when I fell pregnant with Emma. So, the first thing I did after Rosie was born was to enrol on a degree course in English Literature again, some twenty-odd years after the first time.
I loved this new life and now, at the age of forty-five, was enjoying all the challenges thrown at me, and was excited about my future. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with my degree, but I had more options than with my previous job as a hairdresser, which I still did part-time to supplement the student loan.
So here I was, a grandmother with a student loan, a lover and a full and busy life. I had my family, my dream course and my dream man. Freshly divorced, I had no plans to jump into marriage again any time soon, but if and when I did, it would only be with Dan. Neither of us had talked of marriage – I think perhaps for both of us it was way into the future, if at all – but I had that comfortable feeling that even if a ring wasn’t involved, we’d always be together. We were just meant to be. Despite being crazy in love (as Beyoncé would say), I didn’t want another relationship made up of arguments over the washing-up and heated debates involving which colour bin to put out that week. I wanted to preserve me and Dan, keep us special and our time together precious, so we lived apart, but minutes away – which was lovely. We also went away together whenever we could. From a night in Devon to a weekend in Rome, we were doing it all and enjoying our mutual passions: travel, food – and each other.
This weekend we were sampling the delights of Spain, from the weather to the food to the flamenco, and as I gazed at Dan over a glass of red, I felt like my heart was going to burst. His blue eyes were sparkly in the early evening sun, the dimples in his cheeks appeared as his eyes landed on mine and caught like fire. We didn’t speak, we didn’t need to; we just sat in silence, happy in each other’s company, we had the rest of our lives to talk. For now, we just enjoyed being together.
‘Is drinking red wine as the sun sets with a brilliant and handsome Australian on your living list?’ Dan asked now, the twinkle never leaving his eyes.
When I’d been unhappily married to Craig, I’d kept a list of things I wanted to do, but I couldn’t bear to think of it as my bucket list because it reminded me of dying, and this was a list about living. So that’s what I’d called it – my living list.
I giggled. ‘Not exactly. The specific wording on my list is drinking spicy Rioja while the sun sets behind a mountain in Spain… followed by amazing sex with a brilliant and handsome Australian.’
‘Oh… but we’ve ordered tapas. Where does that figure in your list?’
‘Between the Rioja and the sex, I’m just waiting for the brilliant and handsome Aussie to turn up,’ I joked.
He laughed, and before he could retaliate the waitress appeared with our tapas – spicy sausage, salty squid, warm pastries with melt-in-the-mouth cheese filling and sun-dried tomatoes, sweet as caramel, with a savoury tang.
Our first trip together had been early on in our relationship, three years before when we’d spent a summer in Santorini together. While there, Dan had introduced me to all kinds of new dishes – white aubergines in olive oil, with garlic and lemon juice; lamb with herbs; a fresh Greek salad, crunchy and light with the saltiness of feta. He made my mouth water in so many ways. But it hadn’t all been plain sailing, and when Emma discovered she was pregnant and abandoned I had to leave Dan on our paradise island and head home to be with her.
We split up, then reunited a year later on a rooftop in New York City, where we ate pastrami on rye and salty pretzels, washed down with bright cocktails. Later, as we lay in my hotel suite, we’d watched the flames of the sun reflecting on glass skyscrapers and Dan had told me he still wanted to see the world, but not without me.
‘Let’s add to your living list and tick places off, one by one,’ he’d said, handing me a plane ticket to Rome. Before Dan I’d only dreamed of foreign cities, faraway beaches and foreign suns – my ex Craig was happy with a fortnight in a caravan in Bognor. And so it began. Dan and I started on our quest to tick off my living list and conquer the world. Our trips were short, but always packed with lovely places, magnificent meals and cake. There was always cake.
We’d eaten gateau in a chateau, chocolate torte in a moonlit port, and stöllen kisses in a sparkling Christmas market… and don’t get me started on gelato in Milano. And now, here we were enjoying tapas sitting at a table under a palm tree, the sun slicing through the long, structured leaves, the nearby pool as blue as the sky.
‘I love this,’ I said, lifting my sunglasses onto my head so I could look into his eyes.
‘The tapas?’
‘No… us.’
He reached his hand across the table and, squeezing mine, he smiled that wicked smile. ‘Me too.’
Then he looked intently at my face like he was scrutinising it. ‘You okay, babe?’
‘Yes… Why?’
‘You look… I don’t know, surprised?’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes… You look permanently surprised.’
‘That’ll be the Botox.’
‘Oh yeah, performed by Dr Mandy Frankenstein,’ he laughed.
I nodded, and rolled my eyes… which to my relief I was able to do again, despite the two huge spider-like weights attached to my upper eyelids.
‘Do you know what one of my fellow students said the other day?’ I asked, trying to move my face while biting into a juicy shrimp covered in spicy tomato. Mandy’s ‘salon doctor’ had given me quite a dose of Botox, I wondered if I’d ever be able to express myself facially again.
Dan was concentrating on spiking a huge queen green olive from the earthenware bowl, and missing so that it slid away in its oily garlic bath.
‘No, what did she say?’
‘She said, “Faye’s having a series of one-night stands throughout Europe with a toyboy.” When you’re nineteen, that’s quite the compliment, not a judgement, and the response was a clutch of high fives and murmurings of “You go, girl!”’
Dan laughed. ‘When you put it like that, I feel like quite the stud.’
‘Yeah, and I feel like quite the cougar.’
‘Girl, you got it goin’ on,’ he laughed, offering me a high five.
‘Hell, yeah,’ I said, slapping his palm and sipping my wine.
Despite me being ‘the older woman’ in this relationship, I was like a teenager with Dan. He was the worldly one who’d seen more of life and had a wisdom beyond his years. I would drink him in, listening to his stories of a wasted youth on the beaches of Sydney – a life of girls, surfboards and beer as the sun went down. I longed to chase the waves with him, drink cold beers in his backyard and watch fireworks over Sydney Harbour. When you love someone, you just want to know everything about them, live their lives, and one day I would go with him to Sydney. Until then we’d talk about it and I’d imagine a Christmas filled with sunshine, a place where everything was upside down and inside out and an adventure I was yet to experience. The more he told me about his country, the more I wanted to go. It was now number one on my living list, but the time wasn’t right to visit yet. A holiday on the other side of the world would involve longer than a couple of weeks, and I couldn’t leave little Rosie.
Too soon our Spanish weekend was over and we were heading for the airport in a beat-up taxi, stealing last-minute kisses on the back seat as the car trundled over the bumpy road.
‘Where to next time?’ I said, snuggling into his arms as he kissed the top of my head. We always climbed into our little bubble on these weekends away and as much as I wanted to get back to Rosie and Emma and ‘real’ life, it wasn’t easy to leave these wonderful locations. Dan would go back to working his job at the deli and my life would overwhelm me and despite living close to each other, the passion and intensity faded once back. One of the ways we coped with this was by looking forward and planning our next getaway.
‘I was thinking…’ he started. ‘I reckon sometime in April is the anniversary of our first kiss, and I was thinking… it’s only fitting to celebrate in the City of Love.’
‘Paris?’ I asked, excitedly.
‘No… Ormskirk,’ he teased.
‘Oh my God, Paris!’ I squealed, sounding like an excited child. We’d been to many capital cities in Europe, but Paris was special, somewhere neither of us had been. We’d always said we’d go there when the time was right, so I was beyond excited. Finally, everything was coming together and life was almost too good to be true. I should have known then that’s exactly what it was – too good to be true.
Two months after our trip to Spain, Dan and I booked into a lovely chateau on the outskirts of Paris. I know this sounds terrible, but I didn’t even feel guilty about using the money from the house sale to pay my half. All those hours I’d slaved at work and all those nights I’d sat alone with Craig waiting for something – anything – to happen. If I hadn’t had the courage to cut myself free from my marriage, I would still be there, paying the mortgage, worrying about a pension while waiting for life to happen. Instead I was with Dan, two lovers in Paris. This was true independence, and I loved it.
Paris with Dan was magical and we had the most wonderful weekend. It was spring, and blossom covered the parks and pavements like confetti; the weather was warm with a tingle of freshness. On the first night, we ate alfresco at a restaurant by the Seine, watching the early evening sun fill the sky with blood orange and melt into the water, turning it into a million shades of red. We ate salty, garlicky mussels, drank very cold white wine and never took our eyes from each other… except to gaze longingly at the dessert menu.
That evening we clung to each other in the big, ornate double bed, entangled in crisp white sheets, overlooked by a glittering chandelier. Once again, I had to pinch myself: life had changed so dramatically since the end of my marriage. I’d never in a million years imagined myself at forty-five in a Parisian hotel room with my boyfriend. Funny where life can take you, especially if you give things a little push.
Later, I took a shower, and lost myself under hot, steaming needles of water, imagining what it would be like to live here, in Paris, together. I loved the idea of sleeping in the same bed as Dan every night, waking up together each morning; it just felt so free holding hands and heading out into the city for croissants and culture. One day we would live together permanently, side by side, reading to each other in bed, sharing crosswords over breakfast and making love in the afternoons…
I was suddenly shocked out of my daydream at the feel of his strong arms around me, his face in the back of my neck, kissing me under the steaming water. I turned, and within seconds, my legs were wrapped around him, as he gently pushed my back against the tiles. He lifted me higher, his hands on my naked buttocks as he thrust himself inside me, making me cry out in ecstasy, hot water pulsing down, the urgency increasing until we both reached a crescendo. I tried to hold on but almost slipped on the tiles, which made us giggle as I screamed ‘Don’t drop me,’ the water still cascading, my heart still beating.
We finally left the shower, my legs weak, my body exhausted and my heart full. He took the white hotel robes from their hangers and wrapped me in mine, tying the knot around my waist and kissing me again on the lips. He slipped into his robe and we lay on the bed, looking up at the huge ceilinged room, the rosette architrave, the crystal chandelier with its million lights.
‘I never imagined I’d stay in a real French chateau,’ I whispered into the darkness. ‘I didn’t even have it on my living list – it hadn’t even entered my head to put it on. I feel like I’m in new territory, unbelievable things keep happening to me. I blame you,’ I laughed.
‘Amazing what life will bring you, if you let it,’ he said, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
I was awoken suddenly the next morning by the alarm on my phone and wondered for a moment where I was. Then I saw Dan and realised my phone was reminding me about something important.
‘Rosie!’ I said. And he opened his eyes, knowing immediately what I was talking about.
‘Wait there,’ he said, ‘I’ll get the laptop. We can’t keep her waiting, you know what she’s like,’ he laughed, as he reached into his bag.
‘Hang on, you need to put a T-shirt on; Madam would not approve of you Skyping naked,’ I laughed. Rosie would have definitely had something to say and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. She was three going on thirty and happy to share her thoughts with everyone and anyone.
Wherever we were and however long the stay was, my granddaughter insisted we Skype her while we were there. I’d like to say it was because she missed me, but I think it was more about her being a mini control freak – she just liked to check up on me. Regardless, we loved talking to her, and Dan always brought his laptop along, and was a dab hand at Skyping. For a man in his thirties he wasn’t perturbed by playing the role of granddad; he did it brilliantly, enjoying time with Rosie as much as I did.
Five minutes later, we were virtually in the living room at Emma’s, with Rosie regaling us about her new boyfriend she’d met at nursery. ‘It’s Josh,’ she announced, while nodding agreeably.
‘I thought your boyfriend was called Noah?’ Dan said, referring to the last conversation we’d had only the day before regarding her busy love life. Today she was wearing a feather boa around her neck and a tiara, her usual headwear of choice for a Sunday.
‘No, it’s not Noah, you silly boy,’ she shook her head so vigorously she made herself dizzy and almost fell off her chair. Emma was smiling in the background ready to catch her, or the laptop if it fell off her knee as she often became extremely animated during these Skype chats.
‘Oh sorry, it’s just that when we left the day before yesterday I’m sure you told me your boyfriend was Noah?’
‘Dam,’ she said, reprimanding him for his questioning, her eyes opening wide – she wasn’t cursing, she always called him ‘Dam’.
‘So, Rosie, what’s going on?’ he asked, seriously. ‘You breaking hearts at the nursery again?’
‘Dam… you’re streshing me out,’ she lisped, raising her still-baby hands in the air.
I could see Dan was trying not to laugh, the dimples in his cheeks were straining to appear, but he continued to speak to her like she was in her mid-thirties. Which she thought she was.
‘Sorry, Rosie, I just get a bit confused. You’re so popular and…’
‘Yes, I am,’ she nodded, ‘it’s ridicluss,’ she added, folding her arms awkwardly over her tummy. I had no idea where this little diva came from, Emma and I were far quieter than her and I couldn’t imagine it was from Craig’s side, but her confidence was amazing. I was a very proud grandma and just took her in, aware I had a beaming smile on my face whenever she was around. Then she changed the subject: ‘Dam, where are you, where’s Nana?’
‘We’re in Paris, darling,’ I said, leaning into the screen.
‘Pawis?’ she said, like I’d just suggested we were in a running sewer.
We both nodded eagerly at the same time; this three-year-old princess had us in her thrall and she knew it. But then she turned to Emma and asked for her phone, apparently the thrall wasn’t mutual.
‘You’re talking to Nana and Dan, you can’t speak to someone on your phone too, that would be rude,’ Emma was saying.
This caused a major eye-roll: ‘Mum, you’re being very silly, I want my phone so I can make a selfie!’ She looked back at the webcam and shook her head in despair at her audience.
Emma told her to finish her conversation on Skype first.
‘Nana, hugs,’ she said, reaching out her chubby little arms and pouting her lips into a kiss. I was being dismissed, which didn’t stop my heart from melting over the keyboard, but before I could enjoy this moment she’d moved swiftly on.
‘Dam… when are you coming home to play Dowa the Explowa?’ she lisped, referring to her Dora the Explorer video game.
‘We’ll be back tomorrow, get the iPad ready,’ he said.
‘Can we play for ages and ages and ages, and AGES?’ her little arms expanding wider and wider. It seemed Dan was in for a marathon session.
‘Yeah… stop swiping swiper!’ he said, alluding to the sneaky orange fox in the story.
‘Oh man,’ she giggled, they had their own language.
‘Have you been to Millie’s party today?’ I asked, but she was suddenly distracted by Katy Perry… the cat. ‘Katy Pewwy wants her tea now,’ she announced, unable to hide her boredom with us.
‘What’s she having for her tea?’ I asked.
‘Chips and chocolate,’ she answered, ‘bye,’ and with that, shut down the computer before Emma could stop her or speak to us.
‘Rosie, hang on…’ I started, but too late, she was gone.
‘We have been dismissed,’ Dan said, closing the laptop.
‘Classic Rosie,’ I smiled.
‘She cracks me up,’ he laughed and we giggled about how Dan had recently decorated the living room at Emma’s and Rosie had basically become his boss.
‘Every five minutes it was “when’s Dam coming to help me with the walls?”’ I laughed.
‘Yeah, and when she was stood next to me “scraping”,’ he used his fingers to indicate the speech marks, ‘she said, “Thanks, Dam, for helping me with the decowating.’
Age three, my granddaughter had more sass and confidence than I’d ever had and basically ruled the house. She adored Dan – I suppose he was the only father figure in her life as her real dad had dumped Emma when she was pregnant and Craig didn’t see much of her. He just carried on with his life after I left – nothing changed, he just stayed in the same routine. It suited him, and didn’t affect me anymore, but it meant he saw less of Emma and Rosie – he popped round sometimes when he knew I’d be out, but they weren’t close. I met Dan while I was married to Craig, but I was never actually unfaithful, our relationship started once I’d left. But I think Craig still felt betrayed; I don’t blame him, he just never expected me to walk away, he thought we could go on living side by side like grumpy siblings for the rest of our lives. I wasn’t prepared to do that. And now, with Dan in this lovely, easy relationship where things happened because we made them happen, I knew I’d done the right thing. I looked over at Dan, who was still laughing about Rosie’s commandeering of the wallpapering.
‘There was paint and paste everywhere. Katy Perry was licking wallpaper paste off her bum for days,’ he said, smiling at the memory.
‘I bet that’s a sentence you never thought you’d say.’
‘That’s kids for you,’ he laughed. ‘You find yourself doing and saying the craziest things… At the park the other day, she made me chase her up the slide as she . . .
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