his kitchen. Instead, he’s on his sofa at home, the leather one. He’s on the couch, with his red wine and the macadamia nuts that he likes and he’s hanging up the phone on me.
He’s wearing his suit trousers and I look down and he’s hard through the fabric. He puts down his drink and he’s sliding down his zipper and, there he is - the Luke I’ve never seen, is stroking himself as he thinks of me. ‘Come here,’ his voice is as I’ve never heard it, this low sensual tone that makes me shiver. I stand there in his study and I watch him. I'm not using the vibrator any more, I mean, I can hear it, but it’s Luke that’s filling me. I can hear his breath in my ear and his back beneath my fingers.
‘We can’t,’ I tell him, resisting him still, but his mouth is on my breasts, tasting them as if he’s longed for them.
‘We’re not,’ he assures me. ‘It's just a fantasy.’
But whose fantasy am I in though?
It’s all different again.
Despite the night, the air is hot and I can hear the lap, lap of the water as Luke moves inside me. My legs are wrapped around him and my back scratches a bit on the wall of the pool but I don’t care, because it’s something to lean on as he takes my sunburnt breast in his mouth. I’m pissed and we don’t have to worry about who’s driving, because soon we’re going back to the hotel room. He lifts his head from my breast and he pushes me down harder onto him. We’re locked in eye contact, I’m about to come and so is he. He’s pushing me down harder and then I hear a moan, a feminine moan, but it’s not from me… I look beyond Luke and I’m watching my husband screwing Jess. Yes, I get that we’re in Portugal; I just don’t want to be here. This, I don’t want to see.
Is that the price I’d have paid for a pony?
‘Fuck off!’ I say and scramble back on stage to belt out Les Miserables but that's not working. I try Robbie. I’m the girl he chose from the audience and he’s taking me behind the curtains but nothing’s working. Where’s David Beckham when you need him?
‘It’s okay…’ Luke hauls me back to his kitchen. It’s the words I need to hear. ‘Lucy, it’s okay.’
I feel my terror leave.
I’m scared that this is wrong but he kisses me till I know it’s right.
Till my silver grey knickers are down on the floor and I honestly don’t have the mental capacity to work out who took them off, I just know that finally he’s inside of me.
Finally.
But then we’re back to his couch.
‘You’re a bitch.’ Luke says, as if to remind himself, his hips lifting from the couch.
‘I’m not.’ I plead. ‘We’re not doing anything - it’s just a fantasy. I let myself go with it, I just give in to it - it’s Luke that’s on top of me it’s Luke that inside of me, it's to Luke that I come.
So does he.
I hear him groan.
I feel his relief and then I swear I feel his guilt, his regret, and his disgust in himself and in me as he returns to his sofa.
Because I feel it too.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
‘We’re not disturbing you?’
Jess must have seen the startle of panic on my face when they drop around the next morning.
I’ve been up since five, just mortified by what happened and this is the last thing I need, but I don’t say that of course. ‘Not at all.’ I let them in. ‘I just picked Charlotte up from her sleepover,’ I say as we walk through to the kitchen. ‘I got some nice bread in the village, do you want…’
‘No thanks,’ Luke interrupts. ‘We’re not staying long.’
I flick the button on the coffee machine.
‘Can I have a bacon sandwich?’ Charlotte calls.
‘In a bit,’ I answer, because I just want to make a quick coffee to be polite and to get Luke gone. I can hardly stand to be in the same room as him but, of course, Jess hears the word bacon and tells me to put some on for her and then Luke gives a tight shrug, and, oh shit, it looks like they’re staying.
‘How was last night?’ I ask Jess.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘You know, you really ought to come along, Lucy.’