Sex with the Ex (4 page)

Even she admits that all this sex with the ex has held her back. “Thing is, it's so damn easy. You can call an ex up in the middle of the night and he'll be over like a rocket. Best of all, you can shove him out of bed afterward without looking like a tart. To tell the truth, I can't be shagged doing the whole dating thing and trying to hide the truth about my wobbly bits with someone else. Sex with the ex is like comfort sex, with a little of the thrill of the one-night stand thrown in.”

Although lately, even Elizabeth is getting tired of the setup. It's been over two months now and she swears that she's not going to be tempted again, no matter how comfortable and easy it is. She's moved her phone out of the bedroom even, to avoid making any more of her desperate late-night calls.

I was dragged back to the moment as I realized Charlie was asking me more questions about the evening.

“So, did that supermodel girl turn up?”

“Yes, but they carried her out ages ago, so you've missed your chance there. Well, she left her phone in a Picchu sour if you wanted to use that as an excuse…” I passed it over to him.

“No, I was just asking about the evening generally.” I noticed that he still pocketed the phone, though. Typical.

“Fine, no problems whatsoever. Apart from when one of the harem girls threw up on a sofa.”

“Harem girls?” he asked, raising one of his sand-colored eyebrows questioningly.

That's what I call the cosmetically enhanced entourages of skinny, madly gorgeous girls that tag along to any bash involving London's rich. “I mean, the girls, the younger pretty ones that come with the, erm, older guys.”

“Oh, you mean the girls that trail around after the pajama boys?” Charlie remarked.

“Pajama boys?”

This time it was my eyebrows that were raised in confusion.

“As in Hugh Heffner, you know how he always wears…” His sentence melted in the moment though as he finally realized what all my ex angst had been about. “Isn't that your ex-husband over there, talking to Jeremy?”

I nodded.

“Actually, you dated Jeremy once, too, didn't you?”

“Uh-huh.”

This city was getting too small for me.

Change the subject, change the subject, my sane side screamed. Change the subject and run. “Yes, and I also dated Hamish,” I added insouciantly. “So all in all, three exes all in the same room.”

“Blimey!” Charlie responded. “A royal flush.”

I was relieved that he didn't make some smart comment then about my dating history. Sometimes I love my boss and his impeccable manners. I breathed a sigh of relief as I squeezed Jean into my chest for a cuddle. “That was very naughty of you crawling along the sofa back and humping that nice lady's hairpiece,” I scolded.

Jean looked up into my eyes innocently and blinked as if she didn't know what I was talking about.

“So, let me get this straight. You dated all three of
them? Putting it about a bit around the club, aren't you, old girl?”

Sometimes I truly hate my boss.

“Yes, I dated all three of them but long before I came to work
here!
” I told him pointedly. “Well, apart from Richard. They must be having a little summit or something. Actually, if you don't mind, Charlie, I think I might shoot off. The party's all but over and, well, I have things to do.”

“Ex-orcisms?”

“What?”

“Sorry, joke. Not funny. I was referring to the exes. Are you planning on going over to speak to them?”

I blushed. “God no, I'm going to drop Jean off home and go join the girls at the Met Bar,” I replied indignantly.

“Okay, well, get going then, seems like we've got everything under control here, Agent Lola,” he said, mocking the way I was still whispering into my mouthpiece even though he was only inches away from me. Then he gave me a kiss on the head and Jean a kiss on the nose and left the drinks station.

Jean looked up at me with her big golden eyes and wriggled her nose and I gave her ears a stroke.

Then she started on my arm.

God knows I've tried my best to train her. If only there were rabbit correction schools. Once back at my windowless office I closed the door and pulled myself together, but all I could think of was Richard. And all I could feel was…actually, I didn't know what I felt but it wasn't pleasant.

I gathered up my things, tucking Jean into her large white YSL leather bag and tried to focus on the gentle strains of the grand piano wafting through the wall of my cupboard-cum-office.

I'd just locked the door and was pulling on my coat as Charlie called out to me from the top of the staircase. I waited by the marble pillar outside my office while he took the stairs two at a time in his trademark athletic way.

“I've organized a car to take you home,” he explained. See what I mean about him being a sweet boss? “It'll be about five minutes.”

I leaned in to air kiss him goodbye and that was when I saw them. Richard and the leggy blonde. I pulled Charlie farther in behind the pillar with me so I could get a better look. The blonde was crying, Richard was looking pissed off. I remembered the look well from our marriage. Richard had always looked pissed off toward the end.

“What's this, another covert op?” Charlie asked.

I dug him in the ribs and shushed him as I watched, frozen with anticipation. Leggy Blonde threw her coat at him. And then Richard did something horrible, something that twisted me up inside so much I wanted to cry out. He took the blonde in his arms and kissed her tenderly on the head the way he used to kiss me when I threw a wobbly. Then he wrapped her up in her coat and put his arms around her and I flashed back to all the times he'd wrapped me in his arms and said, “God, I love you, Lola, I can't live without you.”

But clearly he had lived without me. There he was, standing right in front of me, living, breathing and getting on with life without me…and loving someone else.

It was all so horribly wrong. And then I did something I have never done in public, I began to cry.

“I think you might need a drink, old thing,” Charlie said, interrupting my hell.

I wiped my errant tears away and pulled myself together. “No, honestly, I'm fine. Just premenstrual some
thing-or-other. It's been a long night,” I assured him in my CCC voice.

Charlie put his arm around me and pulled me in for a hug as we watched Richard and the blonde climb into a cab and disappear into the night.

“My car is probably here now, isn't it, Charlie?” I asked crisply, to show I was so over Richard.

I don't know what—if anything—Charlie said, but somehow he must have put me into the car, because the next thing I remember was driving past Selfridges thinking of all the good times Richard and I had shared. Because there were good times. You don't marry a man and agree to share your life, your body, your secrets, your finances without there being good times.

Richard and me, we'd had our good times. I was a fool to throw it away according to Kitty. Memories of the two of us cuddling up in bed on cold winter weekend mornings with the newspapers. Newspapers that were more often than not abandoned in favor of delicious sex—at least far more delicious than the sex I'd been having lately with the stream of “boyfriends” I picked up and dumped like…well, a bit like Charlie dumps his greyhound girlfriends, really.

The familiarity of Richard's body, his touch, his smell, all came flooding back to me as the taxi finally pulled up outside my flat on Grosvenor Street.

Once back in the microscopic confines of my Mayfair flat (only marginally bigger than my cupboard-cum-office affair at work) I tried to shrug off my nostalgia by reminding myself that I was a quirky single, and tried to put all thoughts of Richard from my mind. I deposited Jean in front of the television to watch the news. She's got a thing about keeping up with daily events, Sky News being her favorite.

I set about getting dressed for my evening out with the girls. First choice, Earl jeans, sling-backs and my latest Top Shop tighter-than-tight T-shirt—a girl has to make the most of her C-cups, as Clemmie is forever reminding me.

“Oh bugger!” I cursed, doing a practice Mick Jagger strut in front of the mirror. I turned to Jean for her opinion but she was engrossed in a story about an accident on the M4 motorway. I threw my wardrobe over the bed and changed and rechanged and changed again. I settled on my oldest pair of Levi jeans with the worn holes in the knee and tight T-shirt. This time I wrapped a big green Voyage belt around my hips—the one with the diamante green
V
on the buckle.
V
as in very, very, cool.

By this time I was running late for the girls, so I opted for rock-chick glam hair, which is an exotic way of saying I couldn't be shagged blow-drying it straight. So with my hair tumbling down my back in an unruly cascade of curls, I slapped on some mascara and lip gloss, slipped on my impossibly high Gina sling-backs that Charlie had given me for my last birthday (and which added four and a half inches to my height of five foot five). Finally I grabbed my latest little favorite clutch—the one I bought myself for a tenner at H & M, crammed it with my makeup, slipped my mobile down my cleavage and grabbed my keys.

“Don't worry, Jean, I won't be late tonight,” I promised, about to scoop her up for a cuddle, but she hopped away huffily, her focus firmly on the television. Apart from anything else, she knows a lie when she hears one.

Henrietta eventually agreed to marry Lord Posche when she was twenty-two after having failed to persuade her father to grant her permission to marry her lover, Lord Haversham. By this stage Lord Haversham was renowned for his gambling and drabbing in Shepherd Market, London. He had lost what money he had through gambling and the general skulduggery that was prevalent in this part of London at the time.

 

Her marriage to Lord Posche was not a loveless match, but she never completely gave up on her first love, Edward, Lord Haversham.

 

Secret Passage to the Past:
A Biography of Lady Henrietta Posche
By Michael Carpendum

W
ithin the hour I was at my usual red cozy booth at the Met Bar, a private members' bar on Park Lane. Elizabeth, Clemmie and I usually meet there after work around midnight for a cocktail as it was licensed until three.

Elizabeth and I had met when we studied English literature together at Bristol. Back when we'd both had dreams of running our own PR companies, a dream only Elizabeth had succeeded at making reality. She ran Quantum along with the irrepressible Clemmie. With Elizabeth's brains and Clemmie's connections, they
owned
the teenage-party scene, throwing everything from personal rich-kid parties to major teen balls.

I suppose the reason people become friends is always in-definable, but in our case it had a lot to do with the dusk-to-dawn lifestyles we all shared. Every so often one of us would go off on one and bemoan our shadowy vampire existence, yet none of us has ever done anything to change it.
I love the random madness of London at night and, even more, I adore the quiet stillness of the London dawn too much to miss it.

“My God, Lolly, I love your hair! What have you done to it?” asked Clemmie as she slid into the deep red half-circle booth. “It looks amazing!” she enthused, kissing both my cheeks.

“College-slob hair?” Elizabeth suggested knowingly, refer-ring to our lazy hair days in college when we used to share a blow-dryer between five of us.

“Got it in one,” I admitted, leaning over to kiss her as I called over one of our favorite gorgeous waiters. I didn't mention the sighting of exes at first (although I was completely dying to!). Instead, I listened intently as Clemmie and Elizabeth explained how they had decided to spread their teen-scene wings into Europe.

It took two watermelon daiquiris for my resolve to abandon me, and I finally told them of the scene I'd spied from behind the drinks station, taking care to conceal how seeing Richard again had churned me up. Soon we were coming up with a thousand more names for a gathering of exes and gradually I began to unwind. In fact, I must have unwound more than I planned, judging by the muddle of dark curls on the head on the pillow beside me the next morning.

His body had that sweet sweaty post-sex smell that is so delicious on a man you've been loved up with for an age, but somehow is never the same on For One Night Only Guy. It just smells…well…sweaty.

I watched his eyes as they began to flicker awake and tried to understand what force of nature or destiny had brought us together—apart from the tequila shots he was doing off my body at Soho House.

We'd both dozed off about an hour ago after what can only be described as capital-letter SEX. We'd made love in every position in every nook and cranny of his Fulham terrace, which was decked out a bit like an expensively decorated squat—you know, all those boy's toys everywhere?

Giant plasma screen television with surround sound.

Bang & Olufson sound system.

Vintage pinball machines.

Expensive black leather and chrome everything.

Mess and chaos everywhere.

All of it scrupulously dust free, though. Further evidence of the Ultimate London Bachelor Pad accessory—the daily! In his case, a gay couple. He had described them to me the night before as if they were another of his expensive boy's-own status toys.

The sex had been a bit athletic for my taste—at various points of our passion, we broke a speaker, burst a beanbag, tore down a blind and broke the leg off a coffee table. But what the hell, it was his house and I must have burned off, like, I don't know, a gazillion calories in the process. My tummy already felt miles flatter.

“That was amazing, Lisa,” he sighed afterward, looking faux lovingly into my eyes and removing a lock of hair from my face as if he truly cared whether I was capable of seeing or not.

Lisa!

Who the hell was Lisa? My name was Lola, Lolly to my mates. Still, as a girl of the world, I knew it wasn't worth correcting him at this late stage of the game. As lovely as he was, with his Caravaggio locks and his olive complexion, he was lovely in an I-don't-expect-this-to-last sort of way. I wasn't even sure, in the cool throb of sobriety, if it should even have begun.

One moment he was introducing himself to me at the bar while I was ordering drinks for the girls, and I remember thinking he was dangerously attractive. Then he had made some corny remark about my name (he had managed at least to get it correct at that stage of the proceedings) and despite not finding it that funny, I laughed and then I thought, well, sometimes a girl just needs an uncomplicated shag.

Hoping no doubt to break the spell of my run-in with the exes, the girls gave me the thumbs-up and that was that. We'd all done some shots and had a chat and a laugh and I'd replied, “What the hell,” to his offer to go back to his place.

Maybe that summed up what I hated about my life lately. The “what the hell” attitude I had adopted to love—or rather sex. Suddenly “quirky single” felt more like “irky single.”

Three years ago, I would never have slept with a guy like David. I'm pretty sure his name was David?

Three years ago, I thought one-night stands were the preserve of fools setting themselves up for STDs and disappointment. As far as I was concerned, one-night stands were like bad Broadway shows that closed after one night due to lack of interest. But then again, three years ago I was happily married to Richard, enjoying the proceeds and kudos of a play that was never meant to end.

Before that there was Jeremy and before Jeremy there was Christo. Now, he was a keeper (not), rich, polo playing, trust fund. Shame about the cheating. I don't think he could help himself, really. He said it was in his genes. I said, “You mean the fact that you can't stay in them long enough to zip them up?” He just laughed and said I was being “too English about it all.” But even Christo had lasted a year and we'd ended happily. I remember Kitty saying, “Every girl needs
to know what true love
isn't.
” Before Christo, of course, there was Hamish.

I suppose Hamish was the first man to make my heart stop. We'd met in college when Elizabeth was still dating her ex (Mike), only Mike wasn't actually her ex then, he was her boyfriend and Hamish's roommate. We were like a cozy little band of couples; the inseparable four, dating for Bristol. Hamish and I, like most college romances, had drifted apart after finals. We had promised to stay in touch but of course we hadn't. As lovely as it had been, my heart had started again and I just didn't have the enthusiasm for continuing an affair that had run its course.

The thing is though, there had always been
someone.

My someone.

“Girls called Lola
always
have someone.” That was what Clemmie was always telling me during her seemingly perpetual single stages.

I inevitably rolled my eyes whenever she said that and would say something like, “Clemmie, don't be so mad, it's just a name and a really crap one at that.”

“Yes, but it's the name of a femme fatale, isn't it?”

I would never have admitted that, of course, but deep down, deep, deep down in my darkest Freudian/Jungian self, I think I actually thought she was right. About me never being single, that is, not the femme fatale thing. I'm about as fatalish as Ben & Jerry's ice cream. At a C-cup and five foot five with hazel eyes, I'm at least six inches and two cup sizes short of being femme fatale material. Also, don't femme fatales have to have dazzling violet eyes with ink-black foot-long eyelashes, rather than hazel eyes with ordinary-length brown lashes?

Richard always said he loved my eyes. He said they changed color with my moods.

Richard.

I flashed back to last night. To the leggy blonde throwing the coat at him, and Richard hugging her, and the way the action had ripped through me like a blade.

He was
my
Richard. I had taken him to be
my
husband. We had taken one another, as in “Do you, Richard Arbiter Bisque, take this woman, Lola Morton, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

To which he had replied, “Yes, I do” as he looked lovingly into my eyes—and without the slightest bit of hesitation, I might add.

Till death do us part had also been mentioned, and not only by the lady presiding over the civil ceremony, but by Richard—repeatedly. “Don't you love those words,” he had said as we went to bed that first night in our suite at Claridges. “Till death do us part!” I'd told him not to be such a soft idiot. He was completely wankered, admittedly, but as they say,
in vino veritas.

The more I turned our past over in my head the more perfect, the more right, it seemed. And the sex was great, too. I suddenly recalled the day we had gone shopping after our honeymoon and bought our big ebony bed.

Lola loves Richard.

Richard loves Lola.

After it was installed, Richard had carved those words into our bed head. I wonder if he still had that bed? I wonder what Leggy Blonde thought of it if he did. He was the kind of guy that wouldn't have got around to buying a new bed head, so chances were our declaration of eternal love was still there, carved into the ebony wood for all to see.

More importantly, for Leggy Blonde to see.

Since Richard, I hadn't had a proper
someone.
For the past couple of years I'd been unquestionably happy about my
quirky singleton existence, but I
had
enjoyed married life. I had enjoyed spooning Richard at night. I had enjoyed staying in and watching DVDs occasionally; snuggled up in our favorite blanket. I always fantasized about having a lovely black Labrador at our feet. Not that Richard and I ever had a Labrador. He was allergic to animal hair—apart from rabbits.

I genuinely thought my marriage to Richard would be like a Broadway smash and just play on and on and on. Richard agreed. He said that the only thing he could be certain of in life was financial success and our marriage.

But as it turned out, he was wrong on both counts.

 

My Caravaggio look-alike stirred. “There's a Starbucks downstairs, babe, if you want to grab us some coffees,” he murmured as he punched a pillow and settled back down under the covers.

Quite apart from the fact that Starbucks was a few hours away from opening, I was outraged by the request. “You want
me
to go get coffee? Should I tidy up a bit while I'm at it? Flick the duster around, wash your socks and do a spot of hoovering?” I asked—well, obviously I didn't actually ask, not out loud. I just looked at him and my whole fed up–ness with him and all the others like him. All the men I'd slept with since splitting with Richard came tumbling down upon me like the bad hangover that would soon be throbbing in my head.

I was sick of the Davids, the Edwards, the Jamies, the Freddies and the dozen other forgettable men I had pulled these past couple of years. And then I started to wonder why I had ever got divorced in the first place? What could possibly have been so bad about my marriage to Richard that had made me trade it in for
this?
Richard used to bring
me
coffee in bed in the morning. Sometimes, he even cooked me breakfast on Sunday and delivered it with all the papers…although, come to think of it, that was only if he was planning on sloping off to work.

David called out. “I'll have a triple-shot latte, babe, and tell the guy to use skim milk.”

Dawn was only just struggling with the night, so the chances of finding a Starbucks open were nil. The man was clearly insane. I had just spent the night with a madman. “Sure,” I told him as I gathered up my things, pulled on my Earl jeans, slipped on my Gina sling-backs and closed the door on his bachelor squat. It was still dark at five in the morning and I had to trudge to a main road for a cab and it was while I was trudging toward Wandsworth Bridge Road in the thin light of a May dawn that I had my epiphany. I had finally reached the Tipping Point.

When I eventually climbed into a cab on Wandsworth Bridge Road, I wasn't just closing the door on David—or Fulham. I was closing the door on an entire chapter of my life. The chapter entitled The One Night Can't Stand.

 

Jean was waiting for me as I opened the door of my tiny flat. The morning light had started filtering in through the open blinds. I picked her up and kissed her little nose but she squirmed and wriggled; she wanted her walk.

I shoved her into her bag and skipped on down to Berkeley Square. The uniformed doormen of Annabel's, another of London's private members' clubs, were used to the girl with the rabbit clambering over the railings and watched sentinel-like as I set Jean free for her ritual morning run. I slumped on one of the benches dedicated to some fellow who had once spent many happy moments in this square and began to think about my life. Really think.

Tiredness was beginning to overwhelm me, but as I watched Jean running about, happily humping legs of chairs and trees and anything else she could find and nibbling at the grass, my thoughts turned to Richard. He'd given me Jean on our first-month wedding anniversary. That was when we still had a house and Jean had her own little rabbit hutch—well, more of a rabbit chalet, actually.

What is it about the past? Everything was bigger, brighter and better then…