“You don’t sound like a small town girl from Hampshire,” I said, smiling.
She rolled her eyes, “Yes, I know. You can blame private schooling for that. It… rubbed off.”
“Ooh, you’re posh.”
“I am not!” she exclaimed, flushing.
“You sure look posh,” I retorted with a wide grin; she made a face.
“Yes… well… posh by having posh rubbed on me, whether I would or not, I suppose.”
“Where did you go to Uni?”
“Swansea, the first time.”
“Studying…”
“Biomedical sciences,” she said softly, after a pause.
“Posh and smart,” I murmured.
She shifted on her chair and sipped her wine.
“Sam?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
She sighed.
“I was stupid. I met Mark on a night out, fell head over heels for him. He was in town for a cousin’s birthday. He was good looking, polite, athletic… we hit it off and had a whirlwind romance, the whole toot. We got married very quickly; I was pregnant with Beth by the next spring. And that was it for my aspirations. I was young, and in love, and thought that was enough for me.”
“And now?”
“I live in a large house that isn’t a home, married to a man who last had sex with me more than two years ago, and only then because I physically got down on my knees and begged him to.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, shocked to my core by her bitter and brutal words.
“So yeah. It’s worked out well for me,” she muttered. “Beth is the only good thing to come from it, and even with her it’s… complicated.”
I reached out, took her hand. She clutched it.
I felt the tremor that ran through her.
“So… so getting to spend time away from it, with you, is… is kind of the best thing I have in my life right now,” she whispered. “You’re my escape from… all of it.”
“Oh, Sam…” I breathed, wishing there were something helpful or comforting that I could say.
But I knew there wasn’t any cure for this sort of pain.
She brushed at her eyes. “Didn’t mean to make this about me. Sorry. Anyway… that’s me. The not very much of me that I am.”
“But… Sam., you’re so much more than that. And you finished your degree, didn’t you?”
“Eventually. But… I was never able to make a career work. Mark’s never around; I had to do everything for Beth when she was young. Money’s not a problem, at least – his parents are extremely wealthy and Mark earns a ton and a half. But… these days I feel like an employee. Not a wife. Or a mum, even. Beth’s in boarding school now, see? She needed the structure and the exposure to other children. She’s only home some weekends and even during holidays I try to make sure she’s in camps so she doesn’t… regress. So it’s just me in a big, empty house. Getting slowly older as I watch the seasons turn.”
She sighted once more, then picked up her wine and took a long slow draught of it.
“So, enough moping. Tell me – are you seeing anyone?” she asked, when she could.
“No. Pickings are kind of thin on the ground around here.”
I started to sip my own drink.
“Oh. No lovely, sweet and available girls…”
I coughed as I got a bit of cider up my nose.
“… around who meet your no-doubt sky-high criteria?”
She radiated innocence as I wiped my lips dry with my napkin.
Of course she’d worked me out. I should have known she would.
“How did you guess?” I muttered. I coughed again to clear my throat. “About me? I never… mentioned that. I was… very careful.”
“I… just knew, somehow,” she said, shrugging. “I know it’s a horrible generalisation and I should be strung up for saying it… but… you’re far too interesting and fun and different to be anything as boring or prosaic as purely straight. So I guessed at first that you were… flexible, but the longer I knew you the more I realised you only ever looked at girls. Mostly at very specific, very pretty girls.”
“I’ll pretend to be offended for a bit, if you like.”
“No. I like… I like how honest you are about who you are. I wish I could do the same.”
“What do you mean?”
She frowned down at her wine.
“My marriage is over. I go through the motions. I wish he’d just man up and divorce me,” she added, bitterly. “I’m inconvenient these days. I really am just… a housekeeper. A caretaker for his furniture and his clothes and his toys. He could pay someone to do that. He could pay me off, put me out to pasture in a cottage somewhere; and actually bring whoever he’s dallying with on the side home with him instead of having to make up his frankly boring stories. If I had anywhere to go I’d do that to… to make things easier for both of us. I’m not angry at him, see. Just… tired. Tired of this dreary day-to-day where nothing changes and nothing ever will.”
“Oh, Sam. Do… do you think that’s what it is? Do you think he’s… unfaithful?”
“I know he is. I found the messages. And the photos. Lots and lots of photos. And some rather… educational videos. There are multiple other women. Over many years.”
“Oh. God, the absolute rotter…”
“It’s okay. I can’t really blame him; I know I’m not his type any more. If I ever really was.”
I stared at her.
“How can you possibly not be everybody on Earth’s type?” I said, before I could properly engage my brain.
“What?”
I bit my tongue.
“That was… a stupid thing to say. And it came out all wrong. Sorry…”
“What did you mean to say, then?”
She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand as she watched me with those dark, haunting eyes.
I shrugged, helpless.
“You’re beautiful,” I sighed. “Not just pretty. Really, honestly beautiful. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re incredibly hot, you’re classy, you’re smart, you walk like you invented it and, frankly, your smile is amazing. I wish I looked half as good as you do. I wish I could be half as… as delicious as you are.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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