Love in a Warm Climate (18 page)

My jaw is starting to drop. Is this woman for real? Where is her fairy godmother’s wand?

“And I don’t have to pay for the clothes?”

“Correct.”

“And I get to keep them?”

Chantal laughs. “Yes, of course. May I continue?”

“Please. don’t let me stop you.”

“After your shopping you will be brought back here to the beauty centre. There you will have any treatments you feel like – for example, a pedicure and manicure, some waxing and a haircut, colour or whatever. You can spend a total of four hours there but then at 6pm you have a Balinese massage booked in your room. After that, I don’t know any more!”

“It sounds too good to be true,” I say. “And you really have no idea…?”

“None,” she interrupts me. “Come on, you need to get going, you have a lot to do.”

Chantal takes me to my room. I say room – it is more like a plush apartment, and I worry I might never find the loo. My little bag is sitting on the luggage rack in the bedroom, looking totally out of place. In my sitting room, which has a view onto the swimming pool outside from a huge window that takes up the whole wall, my lunch is waiting.

I walk over to the window. “You could actually jump from here into the pool,” I say to Chantal. “Has anyone ever done that?”

“Yes, but we don’t encourage it,” she tells me in a rather stern voice. Do I look like the sort of madwoman who would jump into a swimming pool from a window before lunch? Maybe she thinks anyone with a bag as ugly as mine is a potential suicide.

“The personal shopper will be here in forty-five minutes,” she says looking at her clipboard. “Please enjoy your lunch and your afternoon. With your permission I will book you a waxing, eyebrow threading, pedicure and manicure, some highlights and a cut and blow-dry in our salon?”

She’s obviously clocked my unkempt state. I have no idea what eyebrow threading is, but at this point, who am I to argue?

“Yes please, sounds perfect, thank you so much,” I say.

She leaves and I sit down to my light lunch of pumpkin and goat’s cheese 
salad and warm brown bread rolls, and a glass of white wine. Am I dreaming? This morning I was a normal mother with nothing in particular to differentiate me from every other mother apart from the fact that I have three children and am about to get divorced, and now I am eating lunch in Mick Jagger’s favourite room in St Tropez.

The personal shopper who arrives after half an hour is around sixty and fiercely smart in just about every way. The phrase perfectly turned out doesn’t even begin to describe her. I look like I have just come from a church jumble sale by comparison. She speaks very good, very clipped English. She has a classic little brown bob and perfect skin. She is so thin I could fit her into one leg of my jeans. She is wearing what I can see from the buttons is a Chanel jacket and, I assume, designer jeans. She is a classic example of the 16/60 – a woman who looks 16 years old from the back but 60 from the front. I suppose at that age looking 16 from any angle at all is a good thing, but I find her a little disconcerting.

We leave my room and she leads me through a little passageway, out of the hotel and across a road. I spot the boutique before we even go in. It is one of those shops I would never dare enter because a pair of socks would cost more than my annual clothing budget. But in we go. There are two sales assistants who welcome me smiling. On the background music I recognise Carla Bruni’s soft voice.

“We’ve been so looking forward to this,” says the shorter of the two, a young blonde girl with rosy cheeks and blue eyes. “We love to do makeovers.”

“Let’s start with your underwear,” adds the other one, who is older and darker but probably still only about twenty-five years old. Has she got x-ray vision or can she guess the state of my smalls from my general look?

I feel like Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
, but with less hair. So who is my Richard Gere?

Isabelle, as the younger one is called, looks me up and down, has a brief discussion with the Chanel-clad personal shopper and scuttles off. Héloise, her sidekick, suggests we look around the store to see what they have and I can tell her what I like the look of.

What don’t I like the look of? Where do I begin? Everything is gorgeous. This is where Madame Chanel comes in handy. She holds up a few items next to me, tells me what colours will suit me and what cut of clothes I should go for. Apparently the cut in the bias dress is a good look for me and the colour green works well with my complexion, for example. She does this brilliant trick of holding a piece of material in front of me and lifting it slowly up my legs to determine what length of skirt or dress will suit me
best. My calves are quite chunky, so we settle on just below them.

Meanwhile Isabelle is back with some underwear. I am shown into a changing room and told to try on a bra and matching knickers (of course) made out of lace and satin. The colour is a gloriously rich deep purple, like something out of the film
Moulin Rouge
. I go into the changing room and undress. My own underwear seems like an extremely poor relation next to this ensemble even though I picked my least-faded set.

I put on the bra and knickers then look at myself in the mirror. Suddenly I understand why women spend fortunes on underwear. I am a different woman. The bra makes my mummy breasts look like sex-goddess breasts and the knickers have an amazing flattening effect on my stomach. I look at myself. For the first time in several years I feel really sexy.

“This light is for your husband,” says Isabelle popping her head into the changing room. “And this,” she says switching on another light that changes the ambiance into a diffused, rather more muted one, “is for your lover”. These Frenchies; they think of everything.

“So this size is good for you,” says Madame Chanel. “Try another three sets, you will need them.”

“Need them for what?” I ask. Am I being sold into white-trade slavery? Aren’t I a little old for that?

“Life,” says Madame Chanel with a Gallic shrug.

Next come the clothes; two pairs of slim-fit cotton trousers, one in black, the other white, that make my legs look longer than I’ve ever seen, with cashmere jumpers to go with them, again black and white – all very Audrey Hepburn. These outfits are completed with a pair of black ballet pumps and a small black handbag. Then Madame Chanel gets me to try on a dress that I would never have picked out for myself but that looks incredible. It is made of thick white crinkle-effect cotton with silver lace stitching around the neck in a large V, joining more silver stitching that goes all the way to the stomach, creating a very sexy look. The dress is ankle-length and wide. The sleeves are wide too; the whole effect resembles a snow-angel. The edges are all lined with the thick silver stitching.

It’s quite see-through and yet extremely classy. Madame Chanel suggests some flesh-coloured underwear to go underneath it and some white ballet pumps, which will of course also go with my other outfits. She then insists I try on a couple of skirts and shirts, as well as the most incredible pink cashmere cardigan that is almost the length of a coat but as light as a scarf.

I thank the girls and Madame Chanel escorts me back to the hotel. My clothes, she tells me, will be delivered to my room. Meanwhile she has been told to take me to the beauty spa, where again I am treated like a film star. I
don’t think I have spent four hours in a beauty spa in my entire life, but the time whizzes by. I can see now what all those ‘ladies who lunch’ are on. Why would you ever want to do anything but go shopping and get your nails done? Especially if someone else is paying for it.

The threading is extraordinary. I didn’t even know my eyebrows were unruly until the beautician did one for me and showed me the difference. Now of course I am going to have find a ‘threader’ in Boujan – how likely is that? Or maybe I can just pounce on the new hairs and pluck them out as they grow back and keep this shape forever.

After the spa, the newly coiffed, manicured, waxed and threaded me is taken up to my room, where there a massage bed and a masseuse await me.

“Undress, please, and lie on your front,” says the masseuse, an extremely delicate-looking Asian lady.

She puts a towel on top of me and then presses down firmly all over my body. After that she lifts the towel off my left leg and starts rubbing oil over my right foot and leg. It is an incredible feeling, being pampered like this. She pushes on pressure points on the sole of my foot and along the back of my leg. I feel my whole body relaxing beneath her touch, melting into the thick towel on the massage bed. Before I know it, I’m dozing off.

I wake up and realise I must have missed the other leg being massaged. She is now working on my back and neck; her hands feel incredibly strong. She runs her hands all the way down my spine, then up the sides of my body to my armpits and out along my arms. To my horror I gasp with pleasure. She repeats this several times, and each time I feel my body melting deeper into her oily hands. Then she moves her hands up along my spine, pushing gently as she goes. She massages my neck firmly and I feel all the tension of the past few weeks and months vanishing into them.

She moves down my spine again. I feel her reach the top of my buttocks. I am totally ashamed to admit that I start thinking how nice it would be if she went further down. She starts to gently rotate my buttocks so they move in time with her hands in a circular motion. For the first time in years I feel really turned on. This is ridiculous; I’m not a lesbian. I don’t even much like sex with men, or at least I didn’t when I was married. I need to snap out of this.

Maybe if I open my eyes and actually look at her I will come back to reality. This is a massage, not a porn film. All that pampering this morning has obviously sent me over the edge.

I lift my head out of the hole it has been jammed into throughout the massage and move it to one side, slowly opening my eyes and adjusting to the soft afternoon light.

And there, wearing nothing but a towelling robe and a big smile, is Johnny Fray.

I leap up from the massage table in shock. Then I remember that apart from some jasmine oil I am wearing nothing at all. Thank God for the waxing session earlier.

“Hey Cunningham, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes off,” grins Johnny.

“Johnny! What. On. Earth? Why are you here? What’s going on?” I say grabbing a towel and wrapping it around me.

“Calm down, calm down,” says England’s answer to George Clooney. “Your mother called me.”

“My mother? How?”

“We’ve been in touch on and off since that time we met in the pub. She told me what had happened with Nick. I would have come sooner but I was filming in Prague. Anyway, she said you needed a break to have your mind taken off things so I arranged all this.” He motions around the room. “Have you had a good time?”

He smiles at me so sweetly and with such expectation, I want to fling my arms around him. But then my towel might fall off.

I smile back. “Johnny it’s been amazing, every girl’s dream, thank you. It really means a lot to me.”

He puts his hands on my shoulders and looks at me intensely.

“You mean a lot to me, Cunningham, you’re like family.”

I blush, partly with shame when I remember how badly I treated him and partly because I am so touched.

“Now come on gal, we need to get dressed, we’re going out on the town,” he adds.

He really does look great; this film-star life obviously suits him. His hair is as wild and tousled as ever, his dark-blue eyes are fiery, as he takes his bathrobe off and puts his trousers and shirt on, I see that he has clearly been working out. I pretend I am not checking him out from where I’m sitting,
although I am of course.

I go into my bathroom to get dressed. I opt for the white dress with
flesh-coloured
underwear and the white ballet pumps. Happily I remembered to pack my make-up and my hair still looks good from its pampering this afternoon. It’s amazing what a difference a few highlights can make to a girl’s confidence.

I look at myself in the mirror before I go to join Johnny. I look better than I have done for years, I conclude. I am not being bigheaded – after all, the bar wasn’t set very high – but I do feel good.

Johnny is waiting with a bottle of champagne when I come out. “You look great, Cunningham,” he says pouring me a glass. “Cheers. Here’s to old friends.”

“Cheers,” I say. The first sip of a glass of cold champagne is one of life’s luxuries. It is lively and smooth, and makes me feel instantly relaxed. So far, on a scale of perfect days in my life, this really has to be up there.

“That was some massage,” I say. “And I mean the part after the masseuse left.”

Johnny laughs. “I had to play a gigolo in a film once and massaging was part of the package. Actually it was one of my favourite roles – not a bad one to do a bit of method acting for.”

“I could tell,” I smile.

“How are your lovely children?” he asks. Johnny was always such a traditional family man. It seems film stardom hasn’t changed him. He has put us in separate bedrooms too. In fact this suite is big enough for at least three families.

“Great, thanks. We haven’t told them yet, about us splitting up; I have that to look forward to when I get back tomorrow.”

Suddenly the thought of tomorrow and going home seems utterly depressing. An ex-husband-to-be and a vineyard that needs running, wine that needs making, children who need telling Mummy and Daddy are no more and a cleaning lady who hates me.

“So you’re definitely going to get divorced?”

I bite my lip and take another sip of champagne. Divorced; it’s such a big word, a word I never thought would be associated with Nick and me.

“Yes, it looks that way. He showed up last night and told me,” I sigh. “He’s got this woman, Cécile. I think he must be in love with her.”

“What a fool,” says Johnny. “I would never have let you go. How do you think the kids will take it?”

“Badly I guess, who knows? I just don’t know what to say to them, it’s too awful.”

Johnny moves onto the sofa next to me and puts his arm around me. “Don’t worry Cunningham, it’ll be all right. I’ll look after you.”

I almost start crying, but remember that I have just put some mascara on and do not want to spend the rest of the evening resembling a panda. But looking after is just what I need right now.

We finish off the champagne and then head down to Johnny’s car and driver. As we walk through reception people look at us and whisper. I wonder if I have accidentally put my underwear on my head, until I remember that Johnny is now a huge film star and it’s him they are all noticing. I strut along proudly next to him, imagining the headline in tomorrow’s
Daily Mail
: ‘Johnny Fray spotted with mystery blonde in St Tropez’. I hope that girl I hated at school, Claire Booth, reads it.

We get into the Mercedes and are whisked off towards the port. Johnny tells me we are going to a restaurant called Leï Mouscardins in the Tour du Portalet because it has the best views of the sea and also its own fishing boat, so the fish is always excellent.

“Seems you hang out in St Tropez a lot these days,” I tease him.

Johnny laughs. “It’s a long way from Leeds. But yes, one of the upsides to film stardom is that you get to come to the best places.”

We are greeted like film stars, which of course one of us is, and shown to a table tucked away from the main room, with a magnificent view of the bobbing boats down below. After dinner Johnny suggests we skip pudding and instead grab an ice cream down by the port so we can go and ogle the yachts moored there.

It is chilly down by the water and Johnny lends me his jumper; it smells lovely, of some unidentified aftershave and also of him – a smell that still makes me go weak even if it has a hint of nicotine in it. He puts his arm around me and we wander along the port looking at the massive boats. Most of the owners are out and the crew members run around polishing and cleaning. The water splashes gently up against the boats.

We cross the road to an Italian-sounding ice-cream parlour. Johnny goes for vanilla, I am determined to try something exotic and opt for tiramisu, a creamy chocolatey and coffee mix.

“We can walk back to the hotel,” he says. “There’s just one more place I want to show you and it’s in the hotel grounds. It’s a nightclub called Les Caves du Roy. I have no idea who Roy was, but it’s a place where you will often find George Clooney dancing on the tables.”

“And what about Johnny Fray?”

“Only if you’re an
extremely
lucky gal,” he laughs.

I love the sound of his laugh. if Daisy Buchanan’s laugh in
The Great 
Gatsby
sounds ‘full of money’, Johnny Fray’s is full of mischief.

He takes my hand and leads me towards the nightclub. “Let’s see if George is in.”

We walk into Les Caves du Roy and the doorman greets Johnny like a long-lost brother. My eyes adjust slowly to the dim light; I can’t remember when I was last in a nightclub.

“No sign of George,” I shout to Johnny over the loud music, “I’ll have to make do with you.”

“Cheeky bugger,” he mouths back and leads me to the bar, where he orders a bottle of champagne.

“Cheers, Cunningham. Whatever happens, we’ll always have St Tropez,” he says, smiling.

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” I smile back, looking into those blue eyes.

The memory of that kiss comes flooding back. “It’s lovely to see you,” I say moving closer to him. Somewhere in the vague recesses of my brain there is a voice saying ‘Hussy, last night you were sidling up to a French aristo and now look at you’. But I ignore it, and instead breathe in the scent of Johnny Fray, which makes my head spin even more than the champagne.

George Clooney may not be dancing on the tables, but by 2am I am. It is something I always wanted to do, and when better to do it than after several bottles of champagne in St Tropez with a film star? Johnny laughs and stops me from falling off several times.

“Thank God they don’t allow the press in here, Cunningham, you’d be famous by the morning,” he laughs as I fall into his arms after a spectacular twirl. “Come on gal, let’s get you home.”

We walk through the grounds of the hotel to our suite.

“Did you know,” I say, as we pass the swimming pool, which is beautifully lit up, “that you can jump from the window of our room into the pool? Mick Jagger does it all the time.”

“Maybe we’ll try that one next time,” says Johnny, “after we’ve invested in some life insurance.”

He opens the door to our suite and takes me by the hand into his bedroom. We stand opposite each other. He puts his hands around my face and draws me closer to him. “Are you glad you came?” he asks.

I nod. My heart is racing, this is the first time I have been in a bedroom with any man except Nick for more years than I care to remember. What should I do? Etiquette dictates that I should say thank you for dinner and trot off to my bedroom, but I don’t want to.

Slowly Johnny draws me into his arms and starts caressing my back,
reminding me of the massage earlier. I put my arms around his neck and long for him to kiss me so that I can see if it is still as magical as it was all those years ago. He pulls himself away and looks at me smiling.

“After all these years,” he says, “I’ve finally got you into bed.”

“Not yet,” I grin, not entirely soberly. I am taken over by a sudden rush of confidence and whisk my dress off before leaping under the covers. Johnny takes his shirt and trousers off and gets in next to me. I try to check out his body without being too unsubtle. I can see two of them, but they both look good to me.

I lie back in a haze of contentment. I am where millions of women across the world want to be: in bed with Johnny Fray.