Chapter Forty-Four

Tanya hadn’t slept all night. She and Marinos had been too busy having phone sex.

‘Now your legs are wide apart, and I’m pushing myself hard and deep inside you. I’m so hard and so deep it’s tricky not to come, but I lick your nipples and you’ve got your hands on my bum, pushing me further inside you.’

‘And then you flip me over on top, and you tickle me down there with your fingers while I ride you, and I play with my breasts to turn you on.’

‘Oh, God, it does turn me on, oh God, oh God, oh, hang on - ‘ There was a thud as Marinos dropped his phone.

Tanya stroked herself harder, arching her back, until suddenly, with a whoosh, she reached her climax.

‘Are you still there?’ he asked sheepishly.

‘That was fantastic,’ she sighed.

‘I wish we’d done it for real,’ he panted.

‘Me too. I can’t believe you’re there and I’m here at the end of the day. What are we gonna do?’

‘Maybe it’s practise. You know, in the future I’ll have to travel a lot. Champions’ League. Newcastle, Manchester.’

‘I know,’ Tanya said breathlessly.

‘Your boss, was he really angry, like?’

‘He was a bit.’

‘After everything you’ve done for that company’n’all?’

‘I know, they’re an ungrateful lot.’ Just say the word, Tanya thought. She’d be on the next flight if she thought he wanted her.

‘It’s Sunday morning now, innit?’

‘Yeah? What about it?’

‘Well, you don’t have to work today, do you? And then tomorrow you could pull a sickie. Just get on a flight, any flight, it don’t matter what it costs, I’ll pay.’

‘You’re not serious,’ Tanya gasped, her pulse beginning to race. She didn’t like to admit that she no longer thought she actually had a job.

‘I am an’all. Go on. Get on a flight. I don’t care how much it costs.’

Tanya didn’t need persuading. Nothing else mattered any more. ‘You’re on.’

She leapt out of bed, threw a couple more things into her still unpacked bag, grabbed her car keys and flew out of her flat. At the complex entrance, she saw Audrey, her suitcase by her feet, waiting for a taxi or bus that would probably never appear. ‘Wanna lift?’ she asked, without questioning what Anna’s mother was doing there.

‘Thank you,’ Audrey said primly, reaching for her case.

***

‘How are you this morning?’ Demetrius whispered as Ginnie snuggled up to him.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ she said with a contented sigh.

They had spent, in the words Ginnie was to use frequently in the future, a magical night. They’d barely slept, and she’d practically lost count of the number of times they’d made love.

‘I haven’t had a night like that, well, ever,’ she admitted, breathing in the scent of his neck.

‘It was Aphrodite,’ he told her. ‘When you fall under Aphrodite’s spell, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. She brought us together. She wanted us to make love.’

So that was it, of course. Ginnie was under Aphrodite’s spell, she told herself importantly. Aphrodite had watched her from above and recognised the need in her for someone special. She’d seen all that love that Ginnie had to offer, and she’d sought out a deserving beneficiary. And so she had brought her Demetrius, the most marvellous, sensitive and adorable man she’d ever met. With Demetrius life would never be the same again. Oh, she’d still do all the usual things, like running up curtains and delivering them all over the place, only this time, there’d be someone who cared if she got home late, or who’d suggest they had dinner out after a particularly hard day. She’d be one half of a couple, at last. It was all she’d ever wanted.

‘I have something to tell you,’ he started as Ginnie’s heart plummeted faster than a rollercoaster. ‘I have a daughter. She’s just turned six. Her mother and I are no longer together, but we’re friends. I need to see her today, we’ll go to the beach and have ice-cream.’ He got up on one arm and looked deep into Ginnie’s eyes. ‘But you understand if it’s too soon now, for you to meet her? You do understand, ne?’

‘Of course I understand,’ Ginnie told him, her eyes watering. So he had a child. It would have been foolish not to expect him to bring any baggage into their relationship, even if she didn’t have any to speak of. But it didn’t matter, she told herself - in fact, Ginnie liked the idea of befriending his child. She could picture herself hand-in-hand with a little one on the beach, giggling about some secret only they could share. In fact, she decided, this could present her with the best of both worlds: all the affection and joys of having a child, but none of the responsibility. Caring for his daughter might even deliver Ginnie of her guilt.

She watched as Demetrius climbed out of bed. What a fantastic body he had, so masculine and strong. Ginnie never did like weedy men.

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘You never had children?’

She paused. ‘I was pregnant once,’ she admitted. ‘But I was very young, and my parents were very strict. They made me - ‘

He sank to his knees to embrace her. ‘Don’t say the word, I understand.’

‘I’ve always regretted it. I always wonder what he would have been like. I don’t know if it was a boy, but I always think it was.’

He pressed his forehead against hers, and it felt like a kind of absolution.

‘And since then,’ she went on, ‘I never found the right man to have them with.’

‘Unbelievable.’ He pulled away, slipping into his boxer shorts and shaking his head. ‘They’re crazy, the English men.’

‘That’s why I came here,’ Ginnie said with a smile. ‘To find myself a real man.’

He leant over and kissed her.

‘Coffee?’ Ginnie remembered, leaping out of bed.

‘A quick one. I mustn’t be late, her mother will give me hell.’

For a second Ginnie cringed at the thought that somebody else had such a hold over him, but she told herself to get over it. She wasn’t going to let a silly thing like jealousy ruin a beautiful relationship. She pulled on her dressing gown and nipped downstairs, automatically switching on Sky News on her way to the kitchen. There’d been a bus crash in Spain, a woman gunned down in Birmingham and a minor earthquake in Indonesia. Ginnie listened but the stories didn’t grip her like before. She was too full of her own news to care about the rest of the world. She wanted to shout it from the highest mountain, to share it with every cat in Tiggles and to tell every loser she’d ever met through Lonely Hearts. Ginnie was in-love! Ginnie had had five orgasms without the use of her vibrator! At the age of fifty-four, Ginnie had met the man of her dreams.

Suddenly he was behind her, his hands around her waist and his mouth kissing her neck. She giggled, still fussing over the coffee and sugar.

‘Why?’ She turned and looked at him directly. ‘What do you see in an old thing like me?’

He looked puzzled. ‘Old?’ He swept a hair tenderly out of her eyes. ‘For many years I have dated girls. Silly, selfish girls. They’re insecure, they don’t like to eat, they worry about how they look, what people will think of them. These things are not important to me. In you, I see a woman with love and passion and life inside of you. A woman who’s old enough to accept her own faults.’

It wasn’t quite the answer Ginnie was expecting, but she didn’t care. She handed him a mug and watched as he slurped, checking the time.

‘I must go. I’ll call you tonight, ne?’

‘Ne,’ Ginnie said emphatically.

‘It’s so hard to leave,’ he said, kissing her and opening up the front of her dressing gown, revealing her breasts. He leant down and kissed each one, before planting a final kiss on Ginnie’s mouth. She saw him to the door, not bothering to do up her gown, suddenly proud of her body. As she waved him goodbye she spotted Douglas at the far end of the pool, lost in his own thoughts. She didn’t care if he saw her or not. But what was he doing over there anyway, she wondered, before forgetting about him; too full of her own experiences to consider someone else’s.

Ginnie returned inside, humming to herself.

***

Nathalie woke up on the mattress she’d laid down on the terrace. It had been such a beautiful night that she’d decided to sleep outside, under the stars. She was alone now, but his smell still lingered on her sheets and body. Strangely, she didn’t at all feel the revulsion she’d been expecting. If anything, she felt relief. It was over now, out of her system. That strangely persuasive hunger had been satiated. She got up, laughing quietly to, or possibly at, herself. What madness had taken her over yet again?

But she felt no shame. It was more like the acceptance of her fate. There’d been no point resisting it; Aphrodite’s will was stronger than her own.

***

‘She’s gone!’ Anna gasped, surveying her mother’s empty bedroom. A note lay on the bed, though Anna wasn’t sure she could face it. Gingerly she picked it up and took it to her own bedroom, where Richard lay.

‘What does it say?’ Richard asked. Anna handed it to him.

‘Dear Anna,’ he read out loud. ‘Have decided to catch an earlier flight. Will be in touch soon. Mother.’

‘Oh God.’

‘How would she have got to the airport?’

‘Who knows? She can be very resourceful.’

‘You’d better go after her.’

‘What?’

‘You can’t just leave things like this. You’ve got to go and talk to her.’

‘Come with me?’ Anna pleaded.

Richard hesitated. ‘Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my hands around here as it is?’

She slumped. ‘Of course you have.’ Silently, she congratulated herself. The old Anna would have made a fuss. ‘Oh God.’

‘There are things you need to talk about, and now’s the time to do it. We’ve both been guilty of burying our heads in the sand in the past and pretending something isn’t wrong, and now it’s time for both of us to set the record straight.’

She smiled tearfully. He was right. She leant into him. ‘I do love you, you know.’

He kissed the top of her head. ‘And I love you more than you’ll ever imagine. So let’s just get all this unpleasantness over with and move on. To Singapore. Together.’

‘Singapore?’

‘It’s confirmed. I was going to tell you yesterday over a quiet dinner, but then events rather took over, didn’t they?’

‘Richard, I’m so happy!’ She hugged him.

‘I’m glad. We’ll have a fantastic life. Get a beautiful home, have those children, and we’ll always be happy.’

‘You make everything seem so easy now.’

‘I wasn’t buggered. I wasn’t raped, nobody came inside me, my arse is still a virgin. I can’t tell you what a relief that is.’

‘What are you going to say to them?’

‘That they’re a bunch of cunts.’

‘You’ve said that already.’

‘OK. They’re a bunch of cunts, but they’re still my friends. How’s that?’

‘Good,’ she said, kissing him tenderly. Then she groaned. ‘Oh God, I’d better get a move on.’

Quickly, Anna pulled on some clothes and left for the airport.