Chapter 40
The city was awash with chestnut blossom and swathes of wisteria as spring put on its finest show in the City of Lights.
Love was certainly in the air with Ashok practically living in his new Parisian hotel now that he and Gabby were most definitely an item.
It brought me joy to see both of my friends, old and new, so happy.
A recent visit home to India had confirmed that this was serious.
His mum had loved Gabby from the moment she’d met her and the feeling was mutual.
‘I think Gabby video calls her more than I do now!’ Ashok had laughed, the happiness radiating from him. I couldn’t have been more pleased that he had finally found The One he’d been waiting for and I knew Gabby felt the same.
Sasha and Benoit had also been spending more and more time together, with the apartment being entirely mine much of the time now that she had taken to staying over at his place.
I was also pleased to meet some of the true friends she had made in the past month as Simone took her under her wing, not to mention being thrilled to see Vikram, Alaria and Mira last weekend as they finally managed to tie up their busy schedules enough to visit for a few days.
Between Simone, Benoit and her apparently new friend, Tomas, Sasha had a very full social diary with pages and pages of notes for new content to create and film.
In the meantime, Tomas and I had taken the opportunity to also spend more time together which meant that I wasn’t exactly upset my daughter had practically moved in with Benoit when the same could be said of Tomas and me.
* * *
‘Was it good?’ Reine had asked the day after Tomas had returned from Bahrain.
‘What’s that?’ I asked as I’d taken a sip of the excellent wine she’d ordered for us. Crisp, not too sweet, a hint of apple-y undertones. The waiter placed her terrine in front of her and I nodded my thanks at him as the Coquilles St Jacques I’d ordered was placed before me.
‘The sex, darling. You look like you’ve been thoroughly… is the expression “rogered”?’
Considering he was currently dripping second-hand wine from his nose, eyebrows and chin, the fact that the waiter continued to look as composed as a Grecian carving was quite astonishing.
I, conversely, was now the colour of the fully dressed lobster Thermidor his colleague was serving to the neighbouring table.
‘Oh! I’m so sorry! I mean, je suis très désolée! Très, très, très! Reine, stop laughing and no, that is most definitely not the expression! Where on earth did you hear that?’
‘Ah. Shame.’
‘Reine!’
The waiter checked that I didn’t want my starter replaced. I did not. What I actually wanted to do was disappear down a large hole in the ground. Or a small one. I’d make it work. Reine, on the other hand, was unconcerned about the scene I’d caused.
‘So you didn’t have sex?’ she asked. ‘The terrine is excellent, by the way.’
‘Great. And…’ I swallowed before lowering my voice to a whisper. ‘Yes, we did, but I don’t exactly need everyone in the restaurant to know.’
‘Oh, my darling,’ she laughed, placing a bejewelled hand on mine. ‘Everyone knew that the moment you walked in.’
‘What!’
She gave me a mischievous smile, her bright eyes crinkling at the corners.
‘What?’ I asked again, feeling the smallest upwards tilt of my lips. In the face of Reine’s amusement and nonchalance, it was hard to stay quite so mortified.
‘You. You have a, a,’ she waved her one hand as she popped a point of toast slathered with the pate in her mouth, ‘a glow about you.’ She leant in. ‘From the rogering.’
‘Oh my God!’ Laughter snorted out of me. ‘You are incorrigible! And where on earth did you pick up such terms?’
She merely wobbled her head, amusement dancing in her eyes once more.
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘Was it?’
‘Was it what?’
‘Ooh la la.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Was it good? The sex? Was it as good as before? Aww, my darling friend, you are blushing. Forgive my nosiness,’ she said, not actually making an apology for it at all. It was one of the many things I liked about Reine. She was as you found her – only better.
I took another sip of wine and managed to swallow it this time.
‘It wasn’t good, no.’
‘Ah…’
I leant in. ‘It was incroyable!’ I used the French word because, somehow, that had more emphasis. And believe me, the emphasis was needed.
Reine sat back and clapped her hands in delight. ‘Champagne!’ she called. ‘Great sex always deserves champagne!’
Oh, God. Everyone was now staring once more.
I shifted in my seat. And then I began to smile.
So what? Who cared about them? I didn’t know them so what did it matter?
What mattered was that I was here with my friend, having a wonderful time.
And I’d had fantastic, multi-orgasmic sex the night before. Twice. And once this morning.
This was one of the many other things I’d noticed between my life here and my ‘old’ life in provincial England. The conversation. At least the conversations I had been having as opposed to those I was having now.
Obviously, that was a bit of a sweeping statement but, for me, the topics in Paris were far more interesting than the latest menopausal symptom, which often seemed a large proportion of the fare offered at home.
While those did seem to offer a plethora of choice from which to discuss, I wasn’t interested in doing so.
Yes, it was there and I, like so many others, was just getting on with it, as I had with the monthly joy of periods for so many years before.
Gabby and I had touched on the misery and annoyance of it but had then moved onto far more interesting subjects and for that, I was glad.
And now here, with Reine, the conversation had taken an entirely different turn indeed!
True, this particular topic was unlikely to have come up at home.
Without putting Hugh down, things had been different with him.
But also because I’d found a new level of relaxation out here – or perhaps regained one – that I’d never had at home, leaving me free to talk about whatever I wanted without embarrassment. Well, at least not too often.