Читать книгу Freya North 3-Book Collection: Love Rules, Home Truths, Pillow Talk - Freya North - Страница 30

La Grande Motte

The group flew into Montpellier airport. All of Alice’s colleagues had packed rucksacks, two or three even opting for a size small enough to pass as hand luggage. Because it had been traumatic enough for Alice to pack a cagoule, there was no way she was going to forsake her Mulberry grosgrain holdall for a backpack. Her bad mood blackened when her luggage arrived on the baggage reclaim damaged. Off she flounced to the baggage-handlers’ office to complain.

‘Come on, Alice,’ Steven Hunter from the music division called over to her on behalf of the group, ‘the coach is waiting.’

With her hands still stroppily on her hips she spun on her heels and glowered to all asunder. ‘Coach? Coach? Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

However, she was happy to concede that with its air conditioning, the lounge-style seating, various refreshments and superb suspension, the coach was a far cry from that which she was expecting: the juddery, slurching vehicles upholstered in the colours of vomit she recalled from school trips. Her appeasement was short-lived and her lifted spirits dove again on arriving at the hotel.

‘It’s not a hotel,’ she hissed to Jeanette Baker from the lifestyle division. ‘It makes Center Parcs look like Gleneagles.’

‘You’re such a snob!’ Jeanette teased her. ‘Who cares if it’s Butlins de la Camargue – the plonk’ll be plentiful and we’ll be happy campers.’

Alice raised her eyebrows at herself and smiled. ‘Do you reckon we’ll have mini-bars in our rooms?’

‘Rooms?’ Jeanette exclaimed. ‘You do know we’re having to bunk up?’

‘Bunk up?’ Alice asked.

‘Share,’ Jeanette elaborated, ‘in groups of three.’

Alice laughed heartily and gave Jeanette a jocular nudge. While the lady with the clipboard who’d accompanied them from the airport bustled through to the hotel reception, Alice coolly took stock of the situation. The group consisted of twenty respected managers each on a high and esteemed rung of their company, all justly honoured by PPA, BSME or ACE awards, soaring circulation figures and massive advertising revenue to their credit. In addition, most were married, all were in their thirties or beyond, on top salaries with share options and positions on the board. Of course they were going to have their own rooms, with mini-bars and satellite television.

Oh no, they weren’t.

‘I thought you were joking,’ Alice almost wept to Jeanette, an expression of pleading panic furrowing her face.

‘Well, I have my iPod and speakers and Jacquie Duckworth bought duty-free gin and two hundred Marlboro Lights – so our dorm will be rocking,’ Jeanette tried to enthuse.

‘You bet,’ said Jacquie, her duty-free carrier bag clanking in proof. ‘Who needs a mini-bar?’

‘You’re on!’ said Alice, hoping her enviable collection of Bobbi Brown cosmetics would be seen as a valid contribution.

‘No, you’re not,’ Ben Starkey butted in darkly, ‘they’ve already designated who’s in which room.’

‘You are joking!’ Alice exclaimed hoarsely, while Jacquie almost dropped her fags and lost her bottle.

‘He’s not,’ Jeanette said glumly, trudging off with the publisher of the crafts titles and the director of circulation.

The accommodation was set in the grounds, in rows of gaily painted breeze-blocked cabins, optimistically called chalets. As Alice trudged towards hers, she was suddenly aware of the natural beauty of the landscape and that it was quite at odds with the ugliness of the hotel complex. The sea could be heard but not seen and the big sky of the Petite Camargue, by then streaked with a colour close to apricot, seemed somehow higher and lighter than that above London. Beyond the hotel grounds, inky pine forests fringed the dunes that led to the coast and a distinctive salty tang from the lagoons and marshes permeated the air. However, Alice’s appreciation of her new surroundings was negated on arriving at Chalet B27. Pea-green on the outside, the breeze-blocks inside had been painted the colour of lemon curd, jumping to a hue close to tomato ketchup in the bathroom. It was by no means cramped, in fact it was spacious, with an additional toilet and a large hallway doubling as a lounge with peculiar seating modules made from foam blocks covered with bright fleece fabric. However, in the bedroom Alice felt irritated by the organization of space. Why insinuate that the three beds were afforded privacy by placing them at acute angles, partially screened by ugly furniture? Why not just build stud walls and be done with it? Alice rarely smoked and gin was not her tipple, but as she attempted to unpack how she craved a swig from Jacquie’s bottle, a lungful of Marlboro Lights.

‘Gosh, three coat-hangers between us,’ Anita Farrell remarked as if it were a scandal. ‘Luckily for you two, I only brought casual clothing so you can share my hanger.’

Alice smiled fleetingly at Anita, who was placing well-worn slippers by the side of her bed. Then she glanced at Rochelle who was arranging framed photos of her horse on the chest of drawers.

Christ and Double Christ.

Alice was in a sulk.

Why wasn’t she sharing with Jeanette and Jacquie? How on earth would sharing rickety wardrobe space with a fifty-year-old equestrienne and a slipper-wearing spinster editorial director of the business periodicals augment her career? In what way was any of this going to affirm her affection and fidelity for the company? And how were Adam and Lush and the rest of her titles to benefit from their publisher spending a week in a ghastly hut with two of the dullest women in the company?

‘My church is holding a forum on how the media corrupt our youth,’ Anita was saying as she stacked a pile of increasingly khaki clothing on a plastic chair, ‘teen mags, lads’ mags and the like. Would you be interested in speaking, Alice? Defend Lush and the like?’

Christ, Christ and Triple Christ.

‘You see,’ Rochelle sighed, loading an excessive amount of thick socks into a drawer, ‘that’s where ponies come in. Did either of you read the research conducted for our Christmas issue of 100% Horse? It established that youngsters who ride are far less likely to play truant or misbehave. To love a sport at an impressionable age, to embrace the responsibility of caring for an animal – is proven to keep them out of trouble. The readership of Pony World is now over 75,000 – so encouraging, don’t you think?’

Good God Almighty.

‘Rochelle,’ Anita fizzed, ‘you could be on the panel too! You and Alice could go head to head!’

Sweetest Jesus H Christ.

‘When I was a kid,’ Alice said to the middle of the room while she attempted to load two Whistles skirts, a Nicole Farhi shirt and a Brora cardigan onto a single hanger, ‘I used to ride regularly. I was madly in love with a pony called Percy but for me the main point of it all was snogging Nathan Jones behind the tack room and smoking John Player fags on the muck heap with my best mate Thea.’

Supper, eaten at long refectory tables, preceded something called ‘Orientation’, according to the printed itinerary handed out with the hors d’oeuvres. Alice sat at one end with Jeanette and Jacquie in a conspiratorial huddle, planning the best time to convene for gin and cigarettes. Their spirits rose with the arrival and constant replenishing of ceramic pitchers of quite palatable rosé table wine throughout the meal.

‘What’s Orientation, do we think?’ Jacquie asked.

‘Probably some character-building mountain hike,’ groaned Alice.

‘In the dark,’ Jeanette added.

‘But it’s in Conference Room B,’ Jacquie pointed out.

‘Perhaps it’s an emotional workshop to scale the metaphorical mountains we’ve encountered in our working lives,’ Alice said.

‘Well, we’d better prepare our mind-set then,’ said Jeanette, sloshing more rosé into their glasses. They drank to each other, they drank to workshops and mind-sets, they drank to orienteering and orientation. By the time they headed for Conference Room B, they were incapable of walking a straight line, unable to follow arrows and thus couldn’t find Conference Room B at all.

It must be here somewhere.

If only they’d taught us orientationeering before supper.

We could always just nip back to mine and have a tiny sip of duty free.

Yes, that is a good idea.

After all, when they realize we are lost, that’s where the search party will first look.

Exactly – so we probably won’t miss too much orientaling anyway.

Exactly.

Good plan.

Cool.

As the three of them staggered off in the vague direction of Jacquie’s cabin, Alice thought how this wasn’t too far off a school trip after all. St Trinian’s for big girls. Mallory Towers with booze. Just then, she had to concede it might just be a bit of a giggle.

Paul Brusseque

Alice was the last one on the coach the next morning. She didn’t dare take off her sunglasses though the day was quite dull. She mumbled an apology to a pair of male feet clad in high-performance hiking boots. She noted Jacquie curled almost foetally in one seat, a decidedly pale Jeanette staring vacantly ahead in another. She saw Anita and Rochelle sitting together, lowering their eyes to their laps as she passed. She found an empty row towards the back, slumped down, closed her eyes and prayed for the Nurofen to kick in. A twangy Australian voice disrupted her need for absolute silence. She assumed it belonged to the hiking-boot man but there was no way she was going to open her eyes to verify this.

‘Right guys, we’re off to Mont Saint Victoire this morning – immortalized in the paintings of Cézanne. But we’re not going to sit there with our watercolours, we’re going to climb the fucker.’

‘Just you try and make me,’ Alice muttered under her breath.

Alice was the last one off the coach. A surreptitious glance around revealed that most of her colleagues – in fact everyone but her, Jeanette and Jacquie, were dressed appropriately for a walk up Cézanne’s mountain. Alice, though, was wearing a denim skirt, a velour hooded top the colour of bubblegum and a pair of beige Hogan trainers with no socks.

‘OK guys, let’s go!’ enthused the bloody Australian.

‘I’m not a guy,’ Alice said to herself, pinching the bridge of her nose to see if that alleviated the throb in her skull, ‘so I’m not going.’ She turned to face the coach and saw the driver tucking into a hunk of baguette, with slices of ham the size and texture of chamois leather draped over his knees. Her stomach lurched.

‘Excuse me?’

Christ. The jolly Antipodean.

Alice turned. ‘I’m not going to walk up your mountain,’ she said politely to his feet, ‘I’m feeling a little fragile. And anyway, none of my mags have anything to do with hiking.’ The hiking boots gave one irritated tap. She travelled her eyes up over the laces to ribbed socks rolled down. Above those, tanned shapely lower legs with a masculine smattering of coarse hairs.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Alice balked, looking up a little further and seeing a pair of knees, one of which was grazed.

‘Well, Ibegyourpardon, I always find that a stroll in the fresh air clears a hangover far more thoroughly than sunglasses and a sulk.’

Alice’s eyes travelled over a pair of thighs so shapely they’d be termed ‘thighs to die for’ in Lush magazine. She stopped for a moment at the jagged fringe of frayed denim shorts. Then looked upwards; over a lean torso clad in a faded T-shirt lauding some obscure rock band, skimmed over tanned forearms, on up to broad shoulders and a strong neck.

‘Come on,’ he urged quietly, ‘it’s more of a stroll up an easy incline. And if it is too much for you, we’ll do some team bonding and make a stretcher from twigs for you, hey? Deal?’

‘Oh fucking hell, deal deal deal,’ she muttered. Finally, she established eye contact and found herself ensnared by a pair of eyes the colour of cypress trees. She flashed a lascivious smile in automatic response. Miraculously, her hangover was lifting already.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m Paul Brusseque,’ he said, extending his hand, ‘I’m your group’s guide.’

Alice was very tempted to remark to Anita, whom she overtook as she strode on to contrive a position closer to Paul for the hike, that there is a God after all.

‘Teacher’s pet,’ Jacquie hisses at Alice with a wink.

‘Thought you were married!’ Jeanette remarks with an arched eyebrow.

‘Fuck off!’ Alice retorts, blushing a little.

The afternoon’s session, back at the hotel, was a crashing disappointment. Alice had turned up early with a careful slick of mascara and a subtle change of clothes only to discover that the workshop was being taken by a large Belgian psychologist with a peculiar moustache-less beard and an annoying habit of interspersing ‘non?’ throughout his sentences. She skimmed through the itinerary and wondered if Paul would be umpiring the pre-supper rounders match.

He was.

Alice had always been good at rounders at school. She and her team were delighted to discover that almost fifteen years later she could still bat magnificently and field like a dream. She was the centre of attention, a place she knew she thrived in. It seemed to her a while since she’d been there and, as she sat at the refectory table talking left, right and centre, she thought how much she loved it. It suited her: she became wittier and more energized. Her words were hung upon, her anecdotes were laughed at, she had something to say about everything and everyone wanted to hear it. She felt popular and attractive and she simply didn’t have time to listen all the way through Mark’s chatty message on her phone. Everyone was meeting at the bar for the evening. Including the Bearded Belgian and including that Paul bloke.

It was as if cogs of concupiscence, recently dormant, started slowly to turn again in Alice; oiled by bottles of Kronenbourg beer and lubricated by frequent eye contact from Paul Brusseque. She’d absorbed the information that her colleagues’ polite chat revealed about him. He worked there each spring and summer and then did the ski season. This was his third year. No, he hadn’t been to England but he’d like to. His mum was Australian, his father was French. Originally he was from Cairns and this year would be his first trip home since he left for Europe at the age of twenty-six, three years ago. He was the ‘outward-bound bloke’ – Fritz the Belgian shrink conducted the formal workshops. And yes, he had a heap of physical activities in store for them. Pont du Gard the next day. A cathedral at Les Baux the following day. Yeah, he lived on site – in a chalet just like the ones guests had, but painted just white. The pay was pretty cool. The region was pretty cool. Hiking the petticoats of Mont Saint Victoire on a weekly basis was pretty cool. Arles and Nîmes were pretty cool towns. Carcassonne was awesome, Montpellier a bit of a dump. The French in general were a pretty cool nation. France on the whole was awesome. French food was fantastic. And French beer was just the best.

‘And how about the French ladies?’ Alice asked casually but with slyly lingering eye contact.

Paul regarded her levelly. ‘Some are pretty cool,’ he said, ‘some, however, are hot – so liberated.’ A bolt of desire struck Alice but she quickly swept all evidence behind a coquettish smile. ‘You married?’ he was asking. Alice wanted to say no. She ought to say yes. But nothing came out. ‘That’s some fuck-off ring,’ Paul commented.

Alice looked down and wished she wasn’t wearing it. ‘It’s fake,’ she lied.

‘So you’re not married?’ Paul asked.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Alice said haughtily and saw how it made his pupils darken, ‘I said my ring was a fake.’ She took a consciously lingering sip at her bottle of beer. ‘The real one is in the safe at home.’

Paul held out his hand and raised an eyebrow. Without batting an eyelid, Alice took off the ring and dropped it nonchalantly into his hand. He assessed its weight and held it up to the light. He placed it back on her finger, his thumb travelling suggestively to the centre of her palm as he did so. ‘Your husband must earn a fair whack,’ Paul commented, chinking his bottle against hers.

‘I’m very lucky,’ Alice acquiesced.

‘He’s the lucky one,’ Paul said, regarding her squarely and with no ambivalence.

In his terms of engagement, there’s probably a rule of involvement.

Alice walks back to her room.

Some code – both contractual and moral. Like teachers and pupils. Liaisons with clients is probably forbidden. It’ll be a sackable offence, no doubt. However, there’s probably a fine line drawn and delineated in his job description – and his nature – when it comes to flirting. Flirt all you can and thereby boost morale. He’s probably being paid to flirt. He’s probably been told to pamper my self-esteem.

Somewhat unsteadily, she slips her key into the lock.

Well, I can’t remember the last time I was flirted at. And it’s certainly one big, long-overdue ego boost. And I liked flirting back. It’s fun. I feel bright and sparky and attractive.

Momentarily, she considers going to find Jacquie or Jeanette for a gin and a gossip. But she knows this would be inappropriate, unwise even. It is late anyway. And though she gets on well with them, they aren’t exactly close friends, just the closest she has out here, far from home. She looks at the key in the lock. She takes her mobile phone from her pocket. Perhaps she’ll just give Thea a quick call.

And say what? Was there actually anything to say?

I haven’t done anything and I have no intention of doing anything. So why do I feel precariously close to the edge of my comfort zone? I’m married after all – and that’s life’s greatest anchor, isn’t it? I’m hardly going to lose my head to some bloody outward bounder. An outward bounder and a cad, no doubt. And I’m out of bounds.

She brought up the blank screen on her phone and wondered what to text Thea. She tapped in H. Hullo? Help? How are you? Having a great time? Having a harmless flirt? Horny bloke – what’ll I do? She deleted the H and switched off her phone.

Harmless flirting can’t hurt.

It depends how secure is the base you’ve come from, Alice. You’re a married woman, not 100 per cent happy. Flirting may well be unwise.

Pont du Gard

Paul surreptitiously and adeptly fondled Alice’s backside the next morning as she disembarked the coach on arrival in Nîmes. She was so surprised, all she could do was gawp.

‘Ever wondered where your jeans come from?’ he asked her.

‘Whistles,’ Alice informed him, appalled that her blush had yet to subside.

‘In the nineteenth century, they started producing a hard-wearing cloth right here in Nîmes,’ Paul said casually, ‘then Levi Strauss started importing it to California, this Serge de Nîmes.’

‘De Nîmes!’ Alice exclaimed as the penny dropped and Paul helped himself to another furtive feel. ‘Denim!’ At once, Alice justified Paul’s precocious assault on her bottom. He was just trying to make a point. Quite well, actually.

Paul addressed the group, informing them to meet back at the coach in two hours to head on to the Pont du Gard. ‘You want to get a coffee?’ he asked Alice.

‘No, thanks,’ Alice said, practising what Lush preached about playing hard to get. She flounced off with Jeanette and Jacquie; an obvious wiggle to her denimed derrière for Paul’s benefit.

Alice’s stomach had flipped with an excited butterfly or two at Paul’s lip-licking smile when she boarded the coach later; however it lurched and her spirits plummeted when she caught sight of the Pont du Gard. Was her knowledge of world-famous architectural landmarks really that poor? Had her History A level meant so little? How could she forget Agrippa’s monumental aqueduct? And now, apparently in the name of character building and team bonding, they were going to have to walk its length.

‘OK, guys,’ Paul held the coach’s microphone like a rock singer, ‘here she is! 275 metres long, almost 50 metres high and built to transport 20,000 cubic metres of water daily into Nîmes – the Pont du Gard! Watch your step – we’re walking right on the top – there are slabs over the channel where the water once flowed, but there are no railings. My advice? Don’t look down!’

‘I don’t do heights!’ Alice hissed at Jeanette and Jacquie. ‘I’m not walking across that – I can’t. Seriously. I feel sick just looking at it.’

The previous day, Alice hadn’t felt like traipsing up the lower slopes of Mont Saint Victoire because she’d had a cracking hangover and had yet to spy the aesthetic merits of Paul Brusseque. Today, she had been actively looking forward to the day’s activities, to banter and eye contact with Paul. However, she was now genuinely alarmed. She didn’t want to walk this bridge at all. She did not have a head or the guts for heights.

She had presumed the day would be spent doing things that made her happy, that she could do well at, that would enable her to show off. Like rounders, or being the life and soul. However, now she was faced with a dilemma. If she admitted to her terror and therefore saved herself the trauma of walking across the bridge, she’d thereby deny herself the company of Paul Brusseque. And possibly jeopardize her standing in his affection. But, if she opted for his company and walked the sodding bridge, she’d be a gibbering wreck – which was not a feeling she wanted to feel, nor an image she wanted to project.

‘I’m not doing it,’ Anita announced, happily decisive, ‘no way, José! I had an operation on my knee a couple of months ago.’

‘I’ll keep you company, I don’t mind,’ said Alice with hastily deployed altruism. ‘I’m staying with Anita,’ she told Paul, mouthing that her colleague was scared.

‘Anita, do you need Alice to stay with you?’ Paul asked because he’d already sensed Alice’s anxiety.

‘Crumbs, no,’ Anita said, ‘I’ll be fine!’

‘Are you sure?’ Paul asked.

‘Absolutely,’ said Anita, ‘I have my book to read.’

‘Come on, Alice,’ Paul said nonchalantly.

With her mind working overtime yet unable to hatch an escape route, Alice followed Paul, feeling sick but desperate to hide the fact.

‘See up there?’ Paul stopped and came close behind her, pointing ahead so that his inner forearm lightly brushed her cheek. ‘Can you see the phallus? Look between those two arches. See it?’ Alice looked but her nerves were such that she couldn’t make out anything other than the horrible height of it all. ‘The Romans carved it as a symbol against bad luck,’ Paul told her. Alice made a strange noise in her throat and turned it into a laugh she intended to sound breezy and not too fake.

Alice is 50 metres above the river. And there are no railings. And there are regular, large gaps in the stone. And everyone else apart from Anita is walking across – albeit some more gingerly than others. But they’re all making that journey. Alice can’t. She simply can’t. And now Paul is coming back with an outstretched hand and a sympathetic but strong voice urging her to make that first step. Come on, lady, you can do it, you can.

Alice takes a step and freezes. She’s going to faint. No, she’s not. First, she’s going to throw up. No, she’s not. She’s not going to hold his hand. She doesn’t want to hold his hand and she doesn’t want to be on this bridge no matter how famous and iconic it is. She’s scared, really terrified.

‘Face your fear,’ Paul implores her, ‘come on, hon. Face your fear – and trust me. I’ll take you there. You’ll feel so fucking great. Let’s do it. Go!’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Oh, you can – you’re a strong woman. You can do it.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘I want you to.’

‘I don’t care what you want!’ Alice declares, suddenly absolutely sure of what she wants. ‘I can’t and I don’t want to and I’m not going to do it. All right?’

Cautiously, she turns away, tears of fear, humiliation and relief catching in her throat. She’s shuffling away gingerly; hating herself, hating Paul and his stupid motivational speak, hating herself for wanting to impress him, hating herself for being too weak to. Face her fears? Why the hell should she do that? Just so she can impress some brawny Australian tour guide? Perhaps owning up to one’s fears, admitting to one’s limitations, is a strength, not a weakness anyway. She’s afraid of heights, everybody. Compris? She’s happy to be afraid of heights. She loves her vertigo, OK?

‘Don’t give up, Alice,’ Paul has come after her again, ‘you’re made of stronger stuff than that.’

Alice turns and regards his beautiful, tanned face. ‘Will you just fuck off!’ she growls. ‘Just leave me alone.’

She takes refuge by a crop of pine trees nowhere near Anita. It is quiet and the air is warm and fragrant. Her back is turned towards the aqueduct. If she’s so relieved not to be walking the Pont du Gard, why does she feel so wretched?

Flamingos look peculiar when they fly; crooked and too rigid to be aerodynamic, surely. In fact, until Alice had seen them fly, she had assumed the birds to be flightless. Like emus and boobies and dodos. She’d always thought of flamingos as comedy birds with their clonking great beaks, one-legged stance and synthetic colouring. Actually, she hadn’t thought about them much at all, until just then, sitting on her own by a Camargue lagoon just outside the hotel’s perimeter; the glasswort and tamarisk of the whispering marshland providing a protective screen behind which she could indulge in her bruised mood. Flamingos flew purposefully overhead, animating a dusk sky streaked with a colour identical to their plumage.

‘Artemia.’

It was Paul’s voice and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. He sat down behind her. She hugged her knees close to her chest while he stretched his tanned, shapely legs either side of her.

‘Artemia,’ he said again, ‘they’re flamingos’ favourite snack – a mollusc that gives them their awesome colour. Do those birds look like crazy fuckers or what!’

I think I’m on the verge of being a crazy fucker quite literally, Alice remarked to herself, though the balance just then tipped a little more towards foreboding than excitement. But her gaze was drawn magnetically to the athletic splendour of Paul’s legs and her stomach somersaulted as she recalled the sensation of his grope through her jeans to her bottom and beyond. In an instant, she theorized that she was miles from home, no one need know, and it wouldn’t mean anything anyway. The notion of sex with this man shot her adrenal glands into overdrive and her scales of morality and reason tipped suddenly again. Caution and misgivings were now outweighed by pure and reckless desire. Rapidly, she justified that a rampant one-night stand with this stereotypical sex god might even be a rather good thing, a necessary elixir. Mightn’t it restore the self-confidence she’d lost over recent months? Couldn’t it redress the sexual imbalance that had gone untended at home? Wouldn’t it put the spring back in her step? She’d be a nicer person for it. Absolutely everyone would benefit.

So Alice turned a blind eye to Mark smiling sweetly in her mind’s eye and replaced it instead with an image of him in Marbella, with his sunburnt forehead and his legs paler and half the size of Paul’s. She glanced down again at Paul’s legs, regarded his hands with their shapely fingers, his bangle of Mexican silver, the provenance of which most probably involved some daring adventure or other.

Alice turned deaf ears to the clangorous warning bells. Her memory failed her when it came to her marriage vows. Instead, she leant back against Paul and while he gabbled on about molluscs and tamarisk or whatever, she wondered just when they would fuck.

Not that night, it transpired, though their verbal foreplay had been such that if Paul had suggested a shag in the corner of the bar Alice would have complied. Instead, people and particulars provided obstacles. Alice was sure if she’d told Jeanette and Jacquie that she wanted to bed Paul and could they please leave, they’d have done so. But there was absolutely no way she was going to tell a soul. And so Jeanette and Jacquie flirted with Paul themselves, apparently oblivious to the frisson reverberating between him and Alice. Furthermore, the bar was full of her colleagues and his; the pair of them could hardly leave without being noticed. And where would they go anyway? Back to Alice’s chalet where no doubt Anita was saying her prayers and Rochelle was text-messaging her bloody horse? Or back to his which he shared with the weirdy-beardy Belgian psychologist who’d have a field day analysing their ravenous coupling? Instead, they had to settle for eye contact of burning intensity, sign language of moistened parted lips, secret signs of fingers touching fleetingly as beer bottles were reached for. Their gaze lingered for dangerous but thrilling seconds. They synchronized their trips to the toilet so that they could brush past each other. Alice stared at herself in the mirror after one such rendezvous, looked hard at her reflection. She glowed. The proximity, the inevitability, of sex with Paul was intoxicating, made all the more so by the hassles and logistics blocking their way.

Alice strolls back to her cabin, alternately whistling and humming, a comely but conscious wiggle to her walk. She looks over her shoulder once or twice to see if Paul is following. He isn’t. It’s simultaneously frustrating yet thrilling. She is drunk on this cocktail of anticipation and desire. She closes the door to her cabin after a long loiter and a last look down the path for Paul. The bedroom lights are off and she tiptoes around, giggling to herself. She tries to locate her mobile phone, fumbling around her possessions in the dark. She finds it and gets into bed, switching it on under the pillow so as not to waken Anita or Rochelle. Two text messages flash up. She replies to Mark’s with a brief goodnight. She opens Thea’s.

omigod! acceptd offer on my flat!!!! u ok???? Txxxxxx

Alice sends one back replete with congratulations and kisses. Then she lies in the dark and tunes into how high she feels. She and Thea were often at their happiest at the same times. Thank God, though, that their crises never collided.

Good for Thea. Moving on. It’s the right time. She’s found her Mr Perfect – someone she can both be madly in love with and deeply lust for and Saul feels the same.

Alice’s phone vibrates through another text. It’s Thea.

thanx! am taping ER 4 u … !! xxxx

Shall I creep out and phone her? How can I text across all that’s happening? But God I’d love to share the thrill of it all with her.

Another text message buzzes its arrival. Thea again.

howz u? bored of brie & team-bonding bollox? don’t despair – home v soon!!

It struck Alice like a bolt of lead. The next day was the last.

And we’re off to some bloody cathedral. It’s now not only a case of when I’ll screw Paul, but where?

Les Baux

‘I can think of better ways of spending my last day than traipsing around some stuffy old cathedral,’ Alice murmured to Paul, consciously perking out her breasts and licking her lips lasciviously as she brushed against him on leaving breakfast.

‘Get on the coach, wench,’ he all but growled, hooking his finger in the back of her skirt as she passed, affording himself a tantalizing glimpse of her underwear.

The coach trundled the party into the heart of the Alpilles, to the Val d’Enfer and the eerily beautiful village of Les Baux. As the group set off on foot, Paul discoursed on how this area, this Hell’s Valley, was the inspiration for Dante’s Divine Comedy. Alice looked around her, captivated by the stunning natural forms, some eroded into strange tortured shapes by the wind, others carved and hacked into stark angularity by the quarrying of dark red bauxite rock and creamy limestone.

Paul stopped. ‘No doubt many of you guys reckoned there were better ways of spending your last day than traipsing around some dull old cathedral.’ He looked around the group, skipped over an offended Anita to linger his gaze on Alice. ‘Well, I’m telling you this is like no cathedral you’ll ever have seen but it’s a religious experience you won’t forget. Welcome, guys, to the Cathédrale d’Images.’

It had been a quarry. But now it was more than a quarry. It had been used as a filmset by Jean Cocteau but it was so much more than a stage. The Val d’Enfer had inspired Dante but it was so much more than a backdrop. Cathédrale d’Images was like a vast gallery, a huge exhibition space, yet the pictures were transitory and did not actually exist at all. The group walked through and down, deep under the mountain, into a gigantic hall sectioned by megalithic columns left by the quarrying as structural support. Every surface had now become a natural screen for the projection of constantly changing images up to 20 metres in size, above, below, side to side, over there, over here, over everyone – 3,000 images. This wasn’t an exhibition, this wasn’t son et lumière, this made IMAX seem singularly unimpressive.

Underfoot, the limestone had been long since ground into a silt-soft powder as fine as flour, as light as goose down, as deep as a beach. Instinctively, many of the group took off their shoes and shrugged off preconceptions and inhibitions. Alice included. All around, images of Africa burst out against the bare rock face, whilst African music both melodic and intensely rhythmic drowned any other sound or the need to talk. The effect was mesmeric, hallucinatory almost. If the purpose of a cathedral is to suck a visitor deep into its very message, then this disused, recycled quarry was a cathedral indeed. Where was Alice? In Africa? In France? Was she hearing with her eyes and seeing with her ears? Why hadn’t she been anywhere like this in her thirty-three years? Her body began to sway to the hypnotic drum-heavy soundtrack and she sashayed her way, trancelike, through the halls. Sometimes, she was completely alone, images drenching her. Sometimes, she found herself amongst people – her colleagues, strangers, all sharing the space and the experience and moving to the rhythms instinctively. Savannah and fabric and faces and dried river beds and wildlife and blood-red skies enveloped her. She caught sight of Rochelle, dancing quite bizarrely all by herself, but Alice had no inclination to laugh or cringe. Paul was right. This was a cathedral in so much as it was an awe-inspiring space where all who entered experienced an intense and spiritual headiness. Paul was right. Where was he?

He’s behind me, he’s to my side, he’s in front of me. An image of a huge tribal chief swathed in robes the colour of sunburst is superimposed over him. Paul’s face is red and yellow. Now there’s a flame tree all over him. And now he’s up close against me. His lips are hovering near mine. Touch down. Tongue. I’m kissing Paul. And his hands are all over my body, they’re squeezing my boobs and fondling my bum and travelling up and down my back. And mine are grappling and groping him. God, his biceps, his six-pack, his tight bum. We’re swaying and pulsing to the music, which is deafening and divine. Christ, I’m turned on, not just by his lip–tongue talent, nor the tantalizing bulge of his hard-on or the fact that he’s pinching my nipples and nuzzling my neck. It’s more. It’s the energy of this place. It’s the strange contradiction of stone that is soft, powdering its way between my toes. It’s the thrumming tribal beat. It’s the sultry, rich, ever-changing colours. It’s like being stoned. I suppose, in this derelict quarry, we are stoned in a sense. Actually, it’s better than being stoned. It’s more real. My senses are in overdrive. I’m gorging on Paul’s mouth like I’ve been half starved. I have no idea if people can see us. I don’t care if they can. I want to stay in this moment. I want to be in this place.

The wink wink nudge nudging started on the coach. It was as if the unbridled unity the group attained inside the Cathédrale was decimated by the startling sunlight and sudden heat which confronted them on leaving. As if, by shielding their eyes from the sun, they hid from the unexpected spirituality they’d just encountered. As if it was suddenly unseemly for publishing and editorial directors to be seen barefoot and blissed out when they were normally known for their professional poise and thrust. No matter how at ease they had felt within the Cathédrale d’Images, it was a comfort zone they could no longer access once the reality of the day outside had hit them. And so the whispers started. Alice was dismayed. How could something that had tasted so good and felt so right have negative ramifications so quickly? Even Anita seemed to be having a good old gossip with Rochelle as they stood in line to board the coach.

‘And what do you have to say on the matter?’ Jeanette whispered, slithering into the seat next to Alice, raising an eyebrow while elbowing her in the ribs.

‘Yes,’ Jacquie said, popping up from the seat in front, ‘what’s your take, Alice?’

Fuck. Is that it then? Is that where a trance-like snog in some spaced-out quarry gets me? Does my perceived crime really warrant my reputation being compromised? Christ, it was only necking and a bit of a grope – it’s not as if we got down and shagged. God, if only we’d’ve fucked at least it would have made this bit slightly more worthwhile. Hell’s Valley indeed.

‘Consenting adults,’ Alice declared in an uninterested voice. ‘People shouldn’t judge so sweepingly nor condemn so quickly. Perhaps the behind-the-scenes situation justifies the visual dramatics – you know?’

‘Blimey, Alice!’ Jacquie said. ‘You do surprise me.’

‘Me too,’ Jeanette agreed. ‘After all, she’s your main rival at work – and you need him on your side. We all do.’

‘God knows I do,’ Jacquie sighed, ‘but not enough to perform that on!’

Alice stared from one woman to the other and as the pennies began to drop like a one-armed bandit spewing the jackpot, she wondered how best to backtrack.

‘Isn’t she married?’ Alice hedged her bets, trying to come across as knowing exactly who – never mind what – they were on about.

‘Clare?’ Jacquie exclaimed in a whisper. ‘Didn’t you hear Clare called off her engagement? Even though the Vera Wang was already on order.’

Clare! They’re talking about Clare Cabot. Christ alive!

‘He’s married too, isn’t he?’ Alice went for broke, now keen to know just who it was that Clare had done what with in the depths of the quarry.

‘Geoff is more than married, Alice – Christ, his baby can be only a few months old. A few weeks even.’

Geoff – they’re talking about Geoff. Bloody hell, Clare and Geoff. Who could’ve seen that coming?

‘I like Geoff,’ Alice mused, gazing out of the window as the coach ambled off. She wondered whether she’d ever return to Les Baux. Perhaps the experience should be left as a one-off so as not to dilute the impact.

‘Everyone likes Geoff,’ Jeanette whispered.

‘That’s the point,’ Jacquie agreed.

‘What on earth possessed him to go for her?’ Alice joined in, for safety’s sake.

Yet I do know what possessed them. I empathize. La Cathédrale d’Images possessed them. As it did me. But Clare was caught and I wasn’t.

Now that it transpired Alice hadn’t been seen, but so easily might have been, her desire for Paul increased tenfold and the danger of being caught made the notion of sex with this man all the more irresistible. It was all she could think about. However, the afternoon was timetabled relentlessly with the Belgian’s motivational workshops and role-playing exercises; the evening was centred around the team dinner; their plane was leaving first thing the next morning.

Well, no doubt Beard Man from Bruges will be harping on about believing in the Power of Me. So why don’t I just practise what he’ll be preaching – I ought to account for my actions and Access the Impact I have on others. Right then. If the point of this trip is to inspire me, I can think of something far more motivational than one of Fritz’s daft exercises. I’ll be role-playing all right, just not in Conference Room B. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to make me feel good about myself, that will make me think this trip has been worthwhile, that it’s given me something positive and memorable to take home, it’ll be rampant sex with Paul Brusseque. Surely all managers of my calibre should be encouraged to take matters into their own hands as we see fit? And what matters to me is getting hold of Paul’s throbbing cock. See how we fit.

Alice told Anita and Rochelle that the experience of Les Baux had given her a migraine for which the only cure was to lie down, undisturbed, in a darkened room. She told Jeanette and Jacquie she was faking a headache to skive off the afternoon’s sessions and she’d meet them in the bar at six. She told Paul she was playing hooky from the afternoon’s workshops and to meet her in her room in ten. She told herself that all of this was a very good idea. So she set about tweezering renegade hairs from her bikini line, applying a little perfume in strategic places and putting on fresh underwear, a swipe of mascara and a dirty, dirty smile.

Paul takes off his watch and puts it in his bedside drawer. He washes his hair, showering the limestone from his legs and feet. He must have made over fifty visits to Les Baux over the past three seasons, but still the place captivates him, simultaneously charging and challenging him physically and emotionally. This year’s theme of Africa is the best yet, he feels. Last year it was the Seven Wonders of the World. The year before, Ancient Greece. But there is something about this year’s display, the entrancing clash of the primitive and the opulent in sound and vision alike. Just as there is something so compelling about Alice – last year he’d had a couple of clients who’d done all the pursuing. Sex had been easy and both women had automatically tipped him handsomely which alone was an unexpected and rather welcome bonus. Getting paid to come when the women were gagging for it anyway – it was as close to being a porn star as he’d ever get. The year before that, his first over here, he’d bedded that older woman – and had then had those pointless few months supposedly dating Nathalie from the tennis club.

Paul dresses. He wonders what state of undress he’ll find Alice in. He grins at the thought of her, spread-eagled on a bed, perhaps. He considers how she has everything he rates – looks, intellect, success and spirit. But she’s off back to England tomorrow. Paul is horny as hell, as he has been for the last four days. He puts on new boxer shorts and a fresh T-shirt. Hand relief has provided him temporary respite the last few nights but the sight of Alice each morning has tipped him into a dither of desire all over again. And now he’s been summonsed. The imminence of sex, after a couple of celibate months, is stirring his cock already. He checks his reflection and he’s looking good.

He knocks and waits for an answer, as if unsure whether anyone is home.

‘You’re polite,’ Alice teases, because she was half looking forward to him bursting in and ravishing her without so much as a greeting. She is in a white T-shirt and jeans. Barefoot and braless. Her nipples are precociously erect and her arse is tantalizingly pert. She smells good and looks great. And his cock is hardening by the minute. Yes, they have all afternoon, but what he actually wants is to fuck her right now and empty the throbbing sack-load of expectant sperm amassed since that morning.

‘You’re happy to see me,’ Alice remarks, eyeing the bulge in his shorts.

‘Nah, it’s a gun in my pocket,’ he quips back.

‘Well, take off your holster, cowboy,’ says Alice, ‘and let’s fuck.’

If Alice was to document it all, she’d reprimand herself for a glut of clichés. But actually how else can she describe being wetter than she’s ever been? That her sex is throbbing for him? That her lips are engorged with the anticipation of being kissed and her heart is racing from the fire of his intense gaze? Similarly, the simple fact is that his straining cock is rock hard, his butt is firm and his abs are rippling. Her breasts are indisputably heaving and her sex is oozing with the honey he can’t lap enough of. They are devouring each other as if their hunger is insatiable.

God, this is kinky. Mark stays a decorous and hygienic distance from my bum on the occasions he does go down on me. It’s fantastic that my breasts are tits again, to be manhandled greedily. I can’t even recall Mark’s term for my genitalia but Paul has just said ‘Christ, you have a cute cunt.’ I need this – I’ve missed this. How refreshing to be fucked senseless rather than being made love to conscientiously.

‘God, you’re a horny bitch,’ Paul pants, tonguing her ear lobe and sucking his way down her neck, up her chin and deep into her mouth.

‘You’re a pretty good fuck yourself,’ Alice reciprocates, licking the salty dampness from his torso as she slithers downwards to feast on his cock. His balls are shaven. She is surprised. She likes it. She wants to writhe, she wants to show off and she contorts herself this way and that, taking charge and initiating positions and the pace. Now she wants to be supine and subservient, revelling in this man driven wild with his desire for her. He flips her onto her side and he plunges into her from behind. He hauls her top leg over his waist, her body stretched out to his touch. Craning her neck around, they suck at each other’s mouths while he fondles her tits and slips his fingers between the lips of her sex, finding her clitoris and rubbing gently until she’s on the brink of orgasm.

‘Don’t come,’ he commands. He pulls out and his lips are feathering over her nipples infuriatingly lightly. Now he’s not touching her at all – he’s between her legs staring intently at her sex. Alice gives a playful buck of her hips and he takes his face down to her, dabbing his tongue tip gently over the outer lips of her sex. She writhes and spreads her legs, thrusting to glue his mouth to where she wants, but he resists.

‘Fuck me, you bastard,’ she hisses.

Suddenly, he’s sucking her clitoris and plunging a finger deep inside her sex, another up her anus, and the mind-blowing orgasm she’s been craving racks her body. While she continues to shudder with spasms of pleasure, he squats over her and she takes his cock in her mouth before he pulls out and pumps his come all over her stomach. Alice takes her fingers down to the sticky lake of his spunk and massages it over her belly. Then she sucks at each finger while remaining eye locked with him. She feels as though she’s just starred in her own private porn performance. And she’s loved every minute of it. What a great idea this trip was. Look what she has to take home with her!

It wasn’t possible for Paul to grab any time with Alice the following morning. When she boarded the coach, he could only shake her hand and say ‘Well done.’ Just as he shook everyone’s hand and congratulated them. He waved them off. He couldn’t tell who waved back behind the tinted glass.

He reckoned he’d go down to the beach for the day, unwind and prepare for the arrival of the next group the following day. The group had presented him with a cool pair of O’Neill shorts – he wanted to try them on. April was warming up by the hour and the delicate fragrance of spring was being usurped daily by the denser scent of summer. Waiting for him at reception was a note from Alice. He took it with him, unopened, to the beach.

Dear Paul,

No doubt you’re already poncing around in your snazzy new shorts – for the record, I did not contribute to the whip-round for you. I wouldn’t want you to think that I was paying you for services rendered – I wouldn’t want you to feel like a whore … So, here’s my mobile phone number – be sure to phone if ever you find yourself in London. I’ll be only too pleased to play hooky from work and entertain you in my own inimitable way …

Alice Heggarty

The note made him laugh, made him long for Alice. He’d look up ‘inimitable’ later. First, he’d work on his tan and ponder the logistics of a trip to London some time soon.