One Perfect Summer

open in disbelief and then we fall about with hilarity.
    ‘You knew what I was going to say!’ I scream with laughter.
    ‘You knew what I was going to say!’ he laughs back.
    He pulls me down on the rugged grass, both of us still in fits of giggles. He puts his hands on my hair and pushes it back off my face, and then suddenly we’re not laughing anymore. His eyes are serious as he gazes at me, and then his lips are on mine and this time I have no willpower to stop.
    I kiss him like there’s no tomorrow, only today, the here and the now.
    Somehow we make it back to the cottage and undress each other slowly in my bedroom, our lips barely parting. He’s so careful with me – almost as though he thinks I’m going to break – or flee . . . But I’m going nowhere. Every part of me – my heart, my soul, my body – is here with him in this moment.
    I love him like I’ve never loved anyone.
    We’re both overcome with emotion when it’s over, and he stays on top of me for a long time as we both breathe heavily. Finally he lifts his head and gazes at me.
    ‘This could be our place. Where we’d come to get away from it all.’
    I close my eyes and gently push him away. My heart hurts, and it’s not because his chest is pressing so hard into mine.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks me worriedly as he rolls off me.
    My bottom lip wobbles and my eyes fill up with tears. ‘This isn’t real. It’s not real.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ He looks pale.
    ‘What do you think is going to happen? Do you think I’m going to leave my husband? Break the vow that I made to him?’
    He looks uncomfortable. ‘I hoped so.’
    I sit up. ‘You’re living in la-la land! This isn’t a Hollywood film!’
    He climbs out of bed and starts dragging on his clothes. ‘I know you’re smarter than me, but do you have to be quite so patronising?’
    ‘There is no future for us! How could there possibly be? You don’t have a normal life. You will never have a normal life. Even if you chucked in fame and never made another movie, you’d still be recognised for years. And it would be wrong of me to even want you to give up your acting career when you’re so damn good at it!’
    ‘I would give up everything for you,’ he says simply, giving me a poignant look before walking out of the room.
    I fall back onto the bed and sigh loudly. And then I get up and get dressed. I go downstairs to find him on the sofa, staring at the wall. I climb onto the sofa and snuggle into him. He’s tense and then he relaxes, putting his arms around me and pulling me in. I nuzzle into his neck, wanting to be close to him, not wanting to spoil the time we have together. We don’t have much of it left.
    ‘I love you,’ he whispers.
    ‘I love you too.’
    ‘I want to be with you forever.’
    I don’t reply.

 
    The more time I spend with him, the more my sense of reality changes. Soon it’s my other life that feels unreal, my other life with Lukas and my parents and Lizzy. I still haven’t listened to my phone messages. I was supposed to fly to Germany yesterday and I know that I’m evil and that there’s something wrong with me for sending a vague text about being delayed instead of calling to let Lukas know what’s actually going on.
    We’re living in a bubble. A bubble that is all too soon going to pop. We spend half of our days and most of our nights making love, and it’s so much more passionate than it used to be. Neither of us acknowledges how we got this extra confidence, this extra experience between the sheets, but we connect like we were meant to be together, like there could never be anyone else. I can’t get enough of him. I don’t want to ever leave his side. I’m in that other lifetime.
    Finally we can’t go any longer without food, so on New Year’s Day I borrow Joe’s car and take it to a nearby shop, stocking up on the bare basics: bread, milk, cheese, pasta, tinned food. My heart swells as I imagine him sitting on the countertop, watching me prepare dinner. I have no idea that my dream is about to become a nightmare.
    I see the glint of silver up ahead, but I don’t click until I’m further down the track. Then I realise with horror that Lukas’s Porsche is parked outside the cottage.
    I pull up behind his car and hurriedly undo my seatbelt, stumbling out of the car and running towards the cottage. Through the kitchen window I can see Lukas and Joe squaring up to each other.
    ‘You don’t want to fight me,’ I