Chapter 26 Honor
Honor
Iask Ally to stop by the house on her way to Good Vibes. It’s been a week since we got back from France, and I could use some serious advice—advice that’s way too sensitive to be overheard in a coffee shop.
Ally and I have tag-teamed at the hospice on alternate days and we haven’t actually overlapped.
I’d rather be there the whole time, for reasons that have nothing to do with poor old Mum, but unfortunately I have an empire to run, children to parent, and relentless press-related shit to manage.
I also have a lover to see, and he’s doing an admirable job of taking priority at every single moment I can manage.
I give Carmen the morning off and ask the cleaning staff to stay upstairs.
I’ll grind away with work at home until Ally shows up.
Di’s taken the kids to multi-sports camp and will be back at some point, but that’s fine.
Di knows everything there is to know. She’s completely assumed the role of enabler of this affair. Di is Team Noah all the way.
Di’s case is helped by the constant tabloid coverage of Jackson and Leila’s two-week-long press junket for Vet in Europe.
He left a couple of days after we got back from France, thank God, and the tabloids are loving them.
They’re currently in Italy, and footage of them in Rome last night has had the Daily Mail in overdrive this morning.
Ally arrives with a copy of said paper under her arm.
‘Nice. Your husband’s a classy guy.’ She chucks it on the table. The front page boasts a grainy long-lens shot of Jackson and Leila grinning at each other across the table at an intimate little pizza place. All that’s missing is a strand of spaghetti between them.
I glance at it disinterestedly. ‘Mara’s thrilled, but Erika’s shitting bricks over this tour.’ Erika is our manager and orchestrator of the fragrance talks with Burberry.
‘And you? Are you okay?’
‘I’m totally fine, because… I have news. And I’ve been dying to tell you. Shit, Al, I need some serious advice. Or maybe not advice, just a bit of reassurance that I’m not a complete bitch.’
Ally stares at me. ‘What the hell is going on with you? Look at that smile! Spill.’
‘Okay. Let me get some coffees sorted.’ I take a deep breath and approach our huge industrial coffee machine. I locate a bag of coffee beans in the fridge and pull out the appropriate drawer in the machine.
‘I’m amazed you know how to operate anything in this kitchen.’
‘Fuck off. I’m good at coffees. Everything else is outside my zone of genius.’
‘Quit stalling, Duck Face. Spill it.’
‘Right.’ The heat is rising to my face. This shouldn’t be hard. This is my sister; I can count on non-judgement from Ally. I put a mug in place and press a button on the machine. As the whirring and grinding kicks in, I turn to Ally, and it comes out in a rush.
‘I don’t really care what Jackson’s up to in Rome, because I’m sleeping with Noah. Whew.’
I exhale. I would give anything to pick up my phone and capture Ally’s face at this moment. Not much fazes my sister, but right now she’s frozen and wordless. It’s wonderful.
‘Noah. Dr Noah? You’re shagging Mum’s doctor?’
‘He’s not Mum’s doctor! That’s Elena—he’s not that unprofessional. But yeah.’
‘How—when? Oh my God. How? I mean, I know he fancies the pants off you, but’—she gasps. ‘Oh, Jesus. It was in France, wasn’t it? You lucky, lucky bitch.’
‘That’s what Di said.’ I allow herself a moment of smugness. Ally’s been incredibly supportive over the years, but I don’t think she’s ever actually envied me the weird, twisted successes in my life. But this is different.
‘Sit.’ Ally points to the bar stools at the kitchen island.
‘I’ll finish this. I want you to sit right there and tell me everything.
Oh, Lord. You are having sex with that god!
Has he let you strip his Homer Simpson t-shirt off?
How good must his abs look under that t-shirt?
And why do I find it so sexy? Does he have a big dick?
’ She whips the full mug off the machine and plonks it next to me. ‘Oh, God! This is so much to process!’
I sit calmly and wait for my sister’s little fit to pass.
‘Yes, it happened in France, and I’ve seen him almost every day since. I’ve cancelled so many internal meetings this week, I can’t tell you.’
‘Okay, okay. So what happened? Was it you or him? I can’t get my head around my goody-two-shoes, Little Miss Perfect sister embroiling herself in a torrid affair! You’ve rolled over every time your fucking husband fucks about, and now you decide to dabble yourself? It’s too much!’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Do you want the details or not?’
‘Yes, yes. Sorry. Please, for the love of God, details.’
‘Right. He started it. In France. It was the day that server from Chateau Marmont came out and said Jackson and Leila had been sharing a bed. I didn’t realise it at the time, but Noah saw it on the news, and he was seriously pissed off.
He was in a foul mood at dinner, and later, I went down to the pool and there he was.
We ended up lying on one of the beds together and he asked me about how my and Jackson’s marriage worked.
‘He told me it wasn’t fair Jackson got to have all the fun, and that I should have an affair.
With him. That he’d make it worth my while.
So I told him to show me. And he did—he stripped me, basically.
And that was that. Until Jackson showed up the next day as a surprise-slash-press opportunity.
But I’ve been seeing Noah since we got back. I can’t stay away from him.’
Ally looks as though she may have a heart attack.
‘Oh my God oh my God. He stripped you? I can’t even…’
‘Yeah. And he may have gone down on me, too. By the pool.’ I take a sip of my coffee.
‘Al, it was one of the hottest moments of my life. He was so intense. And pissed off. And sexy. He just totally took charge. I was so turned on it was ridiculous. And then we had sex properly the next morning—we snuck off to his room after having breakfast with everyone.’
Ally carries her mug to the island and plops down on a bar stool. Puts her head in her hands.
‘I never thought I could be this jealous of someone and this happy for them at the same time.’
I pat her on the top of the head. ‘Aw, thank you, sweetie.’
‘God. So this guy who’s all smiley and doctor-ish and compassionate and life-savey is also, like, a hot, wanton sex god who smoulders after dark and goes around stripping you and being a cunning linguist?’ She looks up. ‘Is he? A cunning linguist?’
‘He’s very cunning.’ I smile like a cat and stretch at the vivid mental image of Noah between my legs yesterday.
The things he did to me with that tongue.
The dark, silky hair falling over his eyes.
And the relentless string of presumably filthy compliments he paid me.
In French. ‘You should see what he can do with a stethoscope.’
‘Noooo!’ Ally beats her fists on the marble island top. ‘It’s too much! I can’t bear it! I’m not going to be able to look at him next time I go in. Have you had sex at the hospice?’
‘Ugh. No. That’s revolting.’
‘I agree. Good. Right then. So what’s the plan? Have you guys, like, discussed it? I don’t know… have you put any boundaries in place? Because, knowing you, you probably need them. Right?’
My sister knows me too well, but the problem is that I don’t know myself right now.
The woman I am currently, who’s blithely gone down the same route as my husband, is not the person I’ve been for the past thirty-nine years.
And the Noah-junkie I am today, who spends far too much time staring at my calendar and trying to work out what I can blow off to see him, is not the woman who spontaneously agreed to test the waters with this guy a week ago in France.
And worse, I’m pretty sure this thing we’ve created together is not the casual fling he proposed by that pool. He said he wanted to make my life better. But he’s consuming me.
I nod slowly. ‘Boundaries would be good. Boundaries would be great, actually. But I’m not sure we have any.
We’re kind of making it up as we go along.
We haven’t really talked about it openly—about plans, I mean, or how we’re feeling.
The main problem is that the more we see each other, the more desperate we both seem to be for the next time.
I didn’t really think it through in France, but we saw each other every day last week, except over the weekend. ’
‘And by saw each other, you mean you had sex?’
‘Yeah. He has a place in Westbourne Grove.’
‘And the sex is amazing, I take it, from what you’ve said?’
‘It’s—incredible. I mean, he’s so attentive and generous, but he’s also very sexy and bossy, you know? He makes me feel amazing, but he doesn’t fawn. He’s just… perfect.’
Ally lets out a slow exhale. ‘Wow. He’s playing it well. Clever guy. This sounds pretty full-on, Duck Face. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ I pinch the bridge of my nose. ‘Keep… going? I suppose? See what happens? It’ll either run its course, or…’
‘Or bye-bye, Jackson.’
‘No! God, no. We’re looking at signing a five-year contract with Burberry as the faces of its new, timeless fragrance. That’s a big, fat incentive to behave myself.’
Ally makes a face. ‘How romantic. You know it sounds more like a business partnership than a marriage, right?’
‘Tell me about it.’ My voice sounds flat, even to me.
‘Okay, okay. Sorry. Not a helpful comment.’ Ally takes my hand. ‘What about Jackson? How are you juggling your relationships with him and Noah? Because that would be enough to put me off ever cheating on Ted.’
‘You’ll never cheat on Ted. Come on. But no, it’s tough.
It’s icky. Jackson’s definitely sleeping with Leila.
He admitted it. And he left right after we got back from France, so I’ve managed to avoid having sex with him so far, but he’s back next week and I’m not sure what I’m going to do.
How on earth do guys do it—sleep with two people at once? ’
‘Well, I suspect your lovely husband just adores sex, and he’ll happily take it from you, or Leila, or whoever else is offering. I think he can probably compartmentalise quite easily. But it’s less easy for us. A lot less easy. Are you saying you don’t want to sleep with Jackson anymore?’
I consider her question. ‘Honestly, no. I don’t. I’d feel like I was betraying Noah. Is that weird?’
Ally snorts. ‘You realise how ridiculous this is? You’re married to literally one of the sexiest men on the planet—by popular opinion—and you also have this gorgeous, adoring doctor at your beck and call.’ She leans forward. ‘Some people would call that a high-quality problem.’
‘I know, I know.’ I groan. ‘But I’m not like Jackson.
More is not more when it comes to sex for me.
I don’t want to be having it with more than one person.
I know our marriage is far from perfect.
I just don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with two relationships with two different people. It’s exhausting!
‘I don’t have time for an affair—my calendar already gives me panic attacks—but I also don’t have the emotional headspace for it.
I mean, where am I supposed to put Noah?
And what I feel for him is so… all-consuming.
I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t stop thinking about being with him.
Not just the sex part, but him. And he’s crowding out everything and everyone else. I think I’m falling for him.’