What Holly's Husband Did

by Debbie Viggiano

  ‘Stop trying to change the subject and spill the beans,’ said Caro cosily, leaning forward. ‘What’s it like having a bonk once a month but knowing it’s going to be – as you so succinctly put it – quality?

  ‘Why are you so interested?’ I protested.

  ‘Because it’s fun discussing our sex lives,’ said Jeanie. ‘We used to discuss sex all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I spluttered, ‘before our kids came along.’

  ‘Just because we’re all now a bit older and more matronly looking, doesn’t mean we have to avoid the subject. Come on, Holly. Caro has just told you that David is too quick, and I’ve confided that Ray takes too long. So tell us about Alex’s performance.’

  ‘Oh, for …’ I huffed with exasperation. They weren’t going to shut up, were they? A pair of bored housewives with nothing better to gossip about. ‘Right, well, if you must know, it’s … it’s … well, exactly that.’ I nodded. ‘It’s the superior bonk. You should try it. Do you know, I think I might have some of that carrot cake after all, Caro.’

  In one smooth move, my friend had cut me a slice and handed me the plate. ‘And?’

  I took an enormous bite, making speech impossible. As Caro waited for me to finish chewing, she turned to Jeanie. ‘Have you ever had a superior bonk?’

  Jeanie considered. ‘Mm, yes, but not recently.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  Jeanie’s brow furrowed as she thought about it. ‘About… let me see… before Charlotte and Harry were born?’

  ‘But that’s years ago!’ Caro gasped.

  ‘I know,’ Jeanie pulled a face. ‘And you?’

  Caro wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s always a bit hit and miss to be honest. I still fancy the boxer shorts off David, don’t get me wrong, but we’re very aware of Joe and Lizzie being savvy teenagers, and the walls of our house being paper thin. It does rather put a dampener on things, especially if you’re partial to gloriously noisy sex.’

  ‘Hold it right there,’ said Jeanie, slapping the cake away from my mouth and stopping me taking a second massive bite, ‘I’m still waiting to hear the details about this superior bonk with Alex.’

  ‘Honestly, Jeanie,’ I protested, ‘it’s like being back at secondary school with you all over again, like when you wanted every last detail about the French kiss.’

  ‘Yep,’ she said cheerfully, ‘you’re absolutely right.’

  ‘A sex life should be private,’ I said primly. ‘Alex would have a fit if he knew the pair of you were asking about his performance.’

  ‘But Alex isn’t here,’ said Caro, ‘so come on, indulge your besties with some details. If we’re impressed, we might ration our own husbands in the hope of upping their game.’

  It was obvious that my friends weren’t going to drop the subject until they had some juicy details. But what could I tell them about Alex? And I’d still not confessed that it was really once every eight weeks. They’d be appalled. I’d have to do some serious embellishing – or even downright lying.

  ‘Well,’ I said, looking at a spot on the wall over Jeanie’s head and allowing my mind to wander back to a time where I’d been infatuated, besotted, and totally in lust with my very first boyfriend, Johnny. He’d been the one to show me the ropes. How to please a man, and how to receive pleasure in return. Unfortunately, he’d traded me in for a cougar who had an extra twenty years’ experience under her garter belt. I’d been bereft, until Hugo James had come along with his sexily slicked-back hair, cool shades, and the sort of leather jacket that emphasised the broadness of his shoulders. My loins twanged at a memory, and I cleared my throat. ‘Okay, if you really must know, Alex starts off by giving one of his special smouldering looks.’

  ‘Oooh, lovely,’ Jeanie sighed, twiddling a strand of her long black hair.

  ‘And the chemistry is so instant,’ I murmured, gazing into space as I recalled returning Hugo’s smoulders with my own come-hither looks, ‘it’s so spine-tinglingly perfect, there is no need for words.’

  ‘Keep going,’ said Caro, hooked.

  ‘He strides over, sweeps me into his arms, and begins kissing his way down my neck…’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘…to my shoulders…’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘…trailing his hot lips over my breasts…’

  ‘Yes, yes…’

  ‘…taking the time to suck both nipples until I’m begging him to resume his tantalising trail of kisses down … down … down a bit more …’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Jeanie, fanning herself. ‘Does he actually do that, Holly?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I purred. And Hugo had been very good at it too.

  ‘Ray won’t. He says it doesn’t turn him on.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Caro bossily, ‘and let Holly continue.’

  ‘Alex loves doing it,’ I lied. ‘It’s his speciality.’

  ‘How? Tell me, tell me!’ begged Jeanie.

  I smirked. ‘He does the alphabet with his tongue.’

  ‘No!’ said Caro. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Mind blowing. Every little bit of you zings with pleasure. And he doesn’t rush it. We’re talking … ooh … a good ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes of foreplay?’ Jeanie’s eyes rounded.

  ‘No, foreplay is about half an hour – we do other things beside the alphabet. It’s probably about, ooh, forty-five minutes before we actually consummate our lust for each other.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Caro croaked. ‘No wonder the pair of you only do it once a month. You must be chuffing knackered afterwards.’

  I gave them both a smug look. ‘Quality, not quantity. And that, girls, is the superior bonk.’

  ‘Oh, Holly, you’re so lucky,’ said Jeanie, eyes shining as if she’d just caught a glimpse of the Holy Grail. ‘What I’d give for one hour with your hubby.’

  ‘Hands off, Jeanie,’ I said, giving her a playful warning, ‘because he’s all mine.’

  Wasn’t he?

  5

  Having made out to Jeanie and Caro that my sex life was the next best thing since the carrot cake we’d all indulged in, I felt an urgent need to prove it. Okay, so Alex and I did it very infrequently, but that didn’t mean to say our rare couplings couldn’t benefit from a bit of imagination which, in turn, might pick up the pace of things too. My eyeballs fairly gleamed with fresh hope, and my belly let out an alarming gurgle. Oh yes, there was a definite second wind going on here. I was positively raring to get things back on track. Which was why I found myself, once home after the school run, nipping into the study and furtively logging on to the internet to check out how to seduce a man through the art of burlesque.

  Apparently, I needed to think about musical accompaniment – preferably a big band or 1940s show music – and then a fun costume teamed with skyscraper heels. Hmm. I didn’t have a froufrou petticoat or any elbow-length opera gloves. Perhaps I could find some on eBay? I read on. It was important to peel off the gloves seductively, one finger at a time, and then languidly toss them aside whilst remembering to give a tantalising shimmy, bosom quiver and booty shake. I boggled at the diagram. I was just reading how to strut before stripping, when a pair of hands went over my eyes, making me jump.

  ‘Guess who!’ said a camp voice.

  ‘Simon!’ I spluttered, hastily shutting the laptop and hoping my nosy brother hadn’t seen what I’d been reading.’

  ‘Before you even think about undressing, dearest, I’d get yourself off to the gym.’

  I gnashed my teeth. This was one of the reasons why my brother always wound me up. Mother Nature had imbued my sibling with the sort of willowy frame that I’d never achieve at the gym in a million years. Likewise, I spent a fortune at the hairdressers every few weeks, adding platinum highlights at vast expense – something Simon had never had to splash his cash on.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked rudely.

  Simon tossed his head, ‘and it’s lovely to see you too.’

  ‘You k
now what I mean. I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘Evidently. Sophie let me in. We’re going shopping as soon as she’s changed out of her school uniform.’

  This was another thing that annoyed me about my brother. These days he seemed closer to my daughter than me. I couldn’t remember the last time Sophie and I had hit the High Street together, linking arms as we checked out Top Shop, or gossiped in Costa over hot chocolates piled high with whipped cream. My daughter had no interest in hanging out with her mother, but if Uncle Simon appeared in a wiggle of hips, waving his wallet, she was off like our dog Rupert after a rabbit. I’d asked her on one occasion, why she liked spending time with my brother –

  ‘Because Uncle Simon is so cool and funny, and all my friends are jealous that I have a gay Uncle who drives me around in his flashy sports car.’

  Whereas presumably I was uncool, not remotely funny, and she was ashamed of my battered unflashy four by four.

  ‘Make sure you bring Sophie back in time to do homework.’

  ‘Honestly, Holly, chill. The poor kid has had a day of slaving at that posh school you and Alex insist on sending her to. I don’t know why you waste your money when there’s a perfectly good Comprehensive down the road.’

  ‘Thank you, Simon, but I think Sophie’s education is the decision of her parents who have her best interests at heart, not her uncle who scraped his A levels and dropped out of uni.’

  ‘Didn’t do me any harm though, did it?’ he said, flicking his hair back.

  This was true. Simon had gone on to launch a very successful online fashion business and liked nothing more than blowing his spare cash on his niece, indulging her questionable taste to the envy of her peers. No amount of explaining would make me understand the importance of wearing a four-hundred-quid pair of jeans that looked like they’d been mutilated by Edward Scissorhands.

  Simon nodded at my laptop. ‘So what was that all about? Trying to spice things up between the sheets?’

  ‘I am not having this conversation with you.’

  ‘Bet you’ve told those two mates of yours, eh? Caro and Jeanie. The three of you are like the Witches of Eastwick. No doubt you were round at one of their houses earlier, stuffing cake, complaining about your men, and trying to convince yourselves that size doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Simon—’

  ‘Because size most definitely does matter. I should know.’

  ‘You are bang out of order.’

  ‘Bang is the right word, sis. Why don’t you tell me all about it? I might be able to give you some advice. We’re not so different you know,’ he said, fluttering his eyelashes.

  ‘If I needed advice, you would be the last person I’d ask.’

  I could imagine it now: confiding in Simon, then listening to him guffaw as I told him about my burlesque outfit, no doubt sending me up and making comments about taking a hedge trimmer to my bush before I wore anything high-cut over the leg. Oh no. My self-esteem wasn’t brilliant at best. The last thing I needed was my brother ridiculing me.

  Simon theatrically placed a hand upon his chest. ‘Too cruel. Your words are like daggers that have pierced my heart. You can be such a bitch, Holly.’

  ‘You too,’ I snapped, heading to the kitchen. ‘Do you want a cup of tea while you’re waiting for Sophie?’

  My daughter chose that moment to walk into the kitchen. She was now out of her school uniform but clutching a huge French textbook.

  ‘Uncle Simon, please could you give me twenty minutes to quickly get this bit of homework out the way?’

  ‘Of course, sweets.’

  I stared at my daughter, gobsmacked. For a moment there I’d seen my darling girl how she’d used to be, charming and compliant. What was my brother’s trick in accessing this side of her personality?

  ‘That’s very diligent of you, darling,’ I said, smiling with approval.

  Whereupon Sophie’s head rotated one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and her upper lip peeled back in a sneer.

  ‘Despite you thinking I’m lazy and prefer playing truant rather than reading de Troyes,’ she spat, ‘I can assure you that I have every intention of passing my French exam next week.’ And with that she stalked off, giving the kitchen door its loudest slam to date, and sending Rupert running for cover under the kitchen table.

  ‘Don’t worry, sis. Another four years and she’ll be pleasant to you again, and yes I will now have a cup of tea.’

  I reached for the kettle. Great. So now I was stuck with Simon. I just hoped he didn’t ask me any more probing questions about my burlesque research.

  ‘You still haven’t told me about –’ Simon jerked his head meaningfully in the direction of the study.

  I tossed a teabag into a mug and poured on the boiling water. ‘Can you watch what you’re saying when Sophie’s around?’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Everybody seems to want to know about my private life. I had Jeanie in my kitchen recently, thinking it her right to interrogate me, and then Sophie walked in. It was embarrassing.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Simon crowed, ‘it is about sex. What’s up? Presumably not Alex.’

  I shook my head in exasperation. ‘Why do you have to reduce everything to smut level?’

  ‘Because that’s the way I am, dearest. But if you don’t mind me making an impartial observation,’ Simon hesitated, as I slid into a chair opposite him, ‘I’m not sure Alex is the sort of man who will appreciate your efforts in that department.’

  I blinked. ‘Why ever not?’

  Simon leaned back in his chair, crossing one long leg over the other. ‘Because he’s a stuffed shirt, darling.’

  ‘No he’s not!’

  ‘Oh, but he is. I just don’t know what you ever saw in the guy, Holly. You could have had the pick of them all. Young men were flocking around, but instead you chose a man who surely invented the word staid. There’s more to marriage than plodding along in an oh-so-respectable fashion. You should have married what’s-his-name.

  ‘What’s-his-name?’

  ‘Wanted to be a doctor.’

  ‘I have no idea who you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ Simon waved a limp hand, ‘Aunty Shirley’s boy.’

  ‘You mean our Godmother’s son?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Why do you keep replying to me with questions? Yes, Jack.’

  My mind flipped back through pages of memory. Shirley was my mother’s best friend. Mum was from the generation where it was polite to prefix the name of anyone much older with ‘aunty’ or ‘uncle’. Aunty Shirley was therefore no blood relation, although I loved her like one. She was a social butterfly who never stopped talking, but I couldn’t say the same for her son. I remembered Jack as a little boy in short trousers and spectacles, dark hair sticking up in all directions. He’d looked a typical nerdy kid, emphasised by his love of science books. Whereas Simon and I had grown up on a television diet of Danger Mouse, Jack had preferred Bellamy’s Backyard Safari. By the time I’d reached the age of fifteen, I’d treated him much the same way as my own daughter now treated me. Yes, Jack had been sweet, and yes, in hindsight he might well have had a crush on me, but at that point in my life I’d been forced into wearing teeth braces which, back then, were thick metal and most unattractive. I hadn’t smiled at anyone for two years, least of all Jack – who had still looked like a nerd.

  ‘If ever there was somebody who defined the word “staid”, then it surely has to be Jack,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ said Simon, uncrossing his legs and sitting up straight. ‘He’s a doctor now. He’s spent the last two years living in some remote part of Africa doing worthy stuff, but he’s back in England for the time being planning his next career move and, in the interim, writing a book about medicine in the third world.’

  ‘Which means he’s still a nerd.’

  ‘Au contraire. Doctor Jack is Action Man in human form. He did a charity cycle from Namibia to Cape T
own raising a stack of money towards the cost of clean water and toilets, he’s been on overseas television raising awareness about rhinos being slaughtered, and even been sponsored by businesses to go kayaking with crocodiles.’

  ‘Who in their right mind would kayak with crocodiles?’

  ‘Someone hell bent on raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for good causes. He’s quite well known in Africa. A bit of a hero. But he’s never married, despite a bevvy of beauties regularly appearing on his arm.’

  ‘And how do you know all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we’re Facebook friends.’

  ‘Ah, that means you fancy him,’ I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Everybody fancies him,’ said Simon, spreading his hands wide. ‘If you got yourself on Facebook too, you’d see for yourself. Honestly, Holly, for one still the right side of forty, you just don’t keep up with the times. Even Aunty Shirley is on Facebook. Oh, and your boring fart of a husband.’

  ‘Alex is on Facebook?’ I was genuinely surprised.

  ‘Ah, that’s got your attention, hasn’t it!’

  It had indeed got my attention. If my husband was on Facebook, presumably he had a number of friends and acquaintances that he regularly spoke to. I wondered if bloody ‘Queenie’ was one of them.

  ‘I think, in Alex’s case, it’s a business page though?’ Simon added.

  ‘Right,’ I nodded, ‘that probably explains why he’s never talked about it. Perhaps I might investigate Facebook myself, seeing that everybody else is doing it.’

  ‘Don’t expect me to friend you. I’m not having you snooping through my Timeline ogling all my friends and wondering which ones I’ve slept with.’

  I tutted. ‘I’m not remotely interested in your sex life.’

  ‘Which neatly brings us back to yours. You still haven’t told me why you want to swing an opera glove around your head and step out of a giant cocktail glass.’