To P – I have never felt so loved.
Contents
‘I know nothing about sex because I was always married.’
Zsa Zsa Gabor
‘So if you could do anything, anything at all, what would you do?’ I asked, handing round the after-dinner mints.
Across the table, Gabbie, who is one of my oldest and best friends, and who was busy helping herself to the last slice of cheesecake, said, ‘I’m assuming we’re not talking about hang-gliding here, are we?’
‘No. In bed.’
‘In bed?’ said Helen. ‘That restricts it a bit. How about out of bed?’
‘You know what I mean: if you could do anything sexually.’
‘Oh, you’re way too coy to be a pornographer,’ snorted Gabbie.
‘Do the things we’ve already done count?’ asked Joan.
We all turned to look at her. Joan is small, lovely, and looks like butter wouldn’t melt. Back in the mists of time she’d been a tour rep for Thomson’s and up until now what had happened on tour had most definitely stayed on tour.
‘Anything,’ I repeated. ‘Any time, any place, anywhere.’
‘And then you’re going to write about it?’ said Helen, topping up her wine glass.
‘Well, yes, if it’s any good I will. I won’t use any of your names, obviously, and I’ll change it enough so that no one knows it was you.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Joan, taking another mint from the box. ‘I’m sure Miguel and Antonio would be chuffed to bits to see their names up in lights.’
Everyone laughed. ‘You’re winding us up,’ said Gabbie.
Joan pulled a face and then laughed. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘We all did crazy things when we were younger.’
‘I didn’t,’ I said, and this time it was me they all looked at. ‘Well, it’s true. I didn’t. I was married by the time I was twenty.’
‘Before then,’ said Gabbie, ‘you must have played around a bit.’
‘I had a couple of boyfriends, but not that many. And Ray and I met when I’d just finished sixth form …’ I began. ‘You know that.’
Although I didn’t say anything, in all the years we’d been together Ray had always preferred his sex the same way he enjoyed his food: plain, nothing fancy and without any peculiar ingredients. For him the very thought of anything that didn’t involve fumbling around under the duvet with the lights off was a sign of moral turpitude, and if he had ever enjoyed it before, it wasn’t the kind of thing you inflicted on your wife.
‘Oh, that is classic,’ snorted Helen. ‘You’re the one who is supposed to be writing a dirty book and you’re the only one who’s stuck to the straight and narrow. Fabulous.’
‘It’s not dirty, it’s erotica, and this is exactly why I’ve got you lot over. So what would you do?’
We were having a fajita evening in the kitchen at Gabbie’s cottage near Somerleyton.
We’ve been doing it for years. We used to meet up once a month when the children were smaller, but these days we get together when we can fit it into our increasingly busy lives. Every time we do it I wish we did it more.
We met at pre-natal classes in a scout hut in a little village just outside Cambridge. We’ve supported each other through backache, heartburn, teething, sleepless nights, terrible twos, troublesome teenagers, empty nests, dodgy marriages, cheating husbands and messy divorces. We’ve wept with each other, laughed with each other, got drunk with each other, and helped each other move house and move on. Remarkably we’re all still friends.
Spread out over Gabbie’s huge farmhouse kitchen