‘Well, now, that’s just my Day Glo bronzing powder.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘You can’t be.’
‘I am. You light up a room.’
I had to laugh out loud at this. ‘Keith, you’re hilarious!’
Then he’d give up and go back to the documentary, and while my sparkly eyes gave the impression that I was listening, I would be thinking how nice it was that someone would think you could light up a room, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.
Another thing he had going for him was that not only was he a wonderful kisser (and not just the gentle lip-brushing kind, either) he was a bloody good lover too. You would never have thought it. He never seemed all that sexual in the normal course of things. Then again, I suppose you never know. That’s the mystery of it.
I can’t remember exactly when it was that we first slept together but it was several weeks after our first lunch at the Furze Bush. He liked to take things slowly. The main thing driving my desire to sleep with him was curiosity. I couldn’t remember a time when things had been this, well… formal. I almost expected him to request an audience with my father where he would outline what he was going to do to me and where and when and was it OK? It was more of that early feeling I’d had with him that I was in a charming romantic comedy. I even began dressing in cute little outfits and taking more care with my makeup. Not to impress him, more that the role seemed to require it.
I had, of course, been thinking about it ever since that first kiss. After the lunch I knew it was inevitable so I indulged myself in bedroom fantasies. And some living-room fantasies, some kitchen fantasies, even one or two open-air fantasies, but those would have to wait for summer.
With someone new I always prefer to be on home ground. I think it might be a very, very vague remnant of my Catholic upbringing. Somehow, doing it at his place before there’s even the remotest possibility that we might get married makes me a whore. And doing it at my place doesn’t.
So, when I started to feel that he might be starting to feel he couldn’t wait much longer, I suggested we spend a quiet evening in at my flat. (When, at the age of twenty-five, with no money and a travelling debt, my father suggested I invest in property I had no idea how grateful I would eventually become.) I did a quick tidy, made sure my bedroom was willowy and fragrant and that the lights were low enough in the living room to hide what I couldn’t. I opened a robust red from the Cotes de Castillon and left it to breathe between two tall Waterfords. (I mainly prefer excellent wine drunk out of excellent glasses. But I have been known to drink any old rubbish out of any old rubbish.)
As for myself, I put on a Wonderbra, French knickers and Chanel No. 5. Over that I draped a silk wrap-around dress that clung suggestively to all my best bits.
We had very different taste in music so I went for a neutral moods compilation. It was the kind of stuff that usually made me sick, but lately my tolerance for schmaltz had been growing. He arrived a little early, something that bugged me to distraction normally but, as I said, I was mellowing.
He, also, looked nice. Essentially, Keith isn’t a handsome man. He still has too much of the boy in him but he’s too old to be boyish. His features, while perfectly fine and regular, are just a little too soft. His colouring is nondescript but leans towards a mousy brown. You wouldn’t pick him out of a crowd but you couldn’t justify throwing him out of bed either. He has a nice face. A face that gets nicer with knowing.
He came in and took off his coat. The shirt was new. Possibly the jeans also. Usually he would hang his coat carefully over a chair but tonight he simply threw it against the back of the sofa from where it promptly fell to the floor. He didn’t pick it up.
‘You look nice,’ he said.
‘Thanks, so do you.’
I thought I detected a little shortness of breath in his voice so I poured the wine straight away and suggested he sit down. He drank the wine too quickly and spilled a drop on his