My Secret Lover
Waiting until the weekend when you’ve got a bit of
time to catch up with the week’s viewing just doesn’t do it. Anyway, who has
that much time at the weekend? Once you’ve had a lie-in and caught up with your
washing, it’s Sunday night and then there’s usually something decent on ITV. No
point in videoing that while you watch your videos from the previous week.
You’d never catch up.
‘New Forest pony!’ shouts Andy.
‘Where?’
‘There! No, there!’
‘Oh right!’
‘You can’t see it now.’
Andy’s plusses:
1. He is sexy. Maybe not objectively,
but there’s definitely a spark between us. Not the amazing electric current
that makes me shift position on my sofa during Match of the Day, obviously, but more than I have with, say, Richard Batty. Which is why it was
useful to see them side by side on quiz night. When a woman says to a man that
she wouldn’t want to spoil a friendship, she actually means that she doesn’t
fancy him. Not that Richard was necessarily asking for sex the other evening
when he dropped me off. I think he was genuinely interested in my stencilling.
‘I’m sorry I think it would spoil it,’ was probably quite an odd thing to say,
but he should have known better on a week night.
2. I am myself with Andy. I don’t
mean that he knows everything about me, thankfully, but I’m not always trying
to second guess what he wants me to be. We are quite happy to stand on a pier
in a freezing-cold seaside resort watching the wintry sun turn the western sky
pale gold, and saying nothing at all. With Andy, I’m not always feeling that an
appropriate remark is called for and I don’t know what it is.
3. Occasionally, he does something
spontaneous.
‘If we didn’t have to drive back, we
could have a bottle of wine,’ says Andy.
We are in one of those Italian
restaurants you don’t really get any more in London, with whitebait for
starters, and a dozen ways with a veal cutlet. On the walls are signed
black-and-white pictures of yesteryear’s celebrities like Max Bygraves and
Kenny Ball. '
I’m picking bits of wax off the
candle in a Chianti bottle and debating in my mind if it would be too mean on
Andy, who always drives when it’s dark (or any other time if I can help it.
He’s much keener on the lime-green Beetle than me, not because of the colour,
because of the engine which is apparently very good), to have a glass of red
with Spaghetti alia Carbonara.
Is Andy trying to test my resolution?
Enough of the resolution! We are
having a fresh start, blowing away the cobwebs, and total honesty is called
for.
‘I am having the occasional drink
now,’ I confess. ‘Until Lent.’
In case he thinks that I’ve found it
impossible to give up.
‘I know,’ he says.
‘Oh?’
‘Richard Batty bought you three pints
of Stella,’ he explains.
I’m flattered that he counted. Must
have been watching me very carefully. I was sure I swapped the first empty when
he was in the loo.
‘In that case, I’ll have a glass of
red,’ I say.
‘Now that Honey’s gone, there’s no
reason to go home tonight,’ says Andy.
Oh God, he’s not going to cry again.
During our separation, Honey has
finally kicked the bucket, or the dog bowl, or whatever dogs kick.
I know I should be upset.
‘So sad,’ I say.
‘If we weren’t driving we could have
a bottle,’ says Andy.
Is he saying he doesn’t want to
drive? Too late, I’m halfway down my glass.
Unless he... surely not! Well, well.
I thought it was a long way down the M3 just for the afternoon.
OK, so it’s not spontaneous, but it’s
flattering that he’s planned it anyway.
‘What do you say to that?’ Andy asks.
‘What I say is, Waiter, can you bring
us the wine list! ’
‘Oh, House’ll do me fine,’ says Andy.
Here we are, on a Dirty Weekend! Our
room has a sea view, which they let us have without the supplement since it’s
February, and too cold for many clubbers. (Apparently, as well as being
Retirement Capital of the South, Bournemouth is now the First Choice for the
Youth of the South, on Saturday night. We’ve seen a few of them on the road
from the restaurant only the most reckless out with a bare midriff in this
wind.)
We have tea- and coffee-making
facilities, miniature soap and a sewing kit. Everything we could possibly need
except clean knickers. I even dug a travel toothbrush out of my handbag which
came from one of my mother’s Luxury Christmas Crackers. (We had
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