by Shari Low
With one last tug, she somehow managed to extricate the robe, giving herself whiplash in the process. Weren’t massages supposed to be relaxing?
Finally, FINALLY, Mona climbed on to the bed, the act giving Sarah a gynaecological view that would live with her forever.
What the hell was she doing here? Lying in the scud next to her ex-husband’s other two naked wives? The combination of the bizarre scenario and the alcohol that was still swirling around in her system gave her the giggles.
‘What’s so funny?’ Tess asked, grinning.
It took Sarah a few moments to compose herself long enough to speak. ‘Don’t you just think this is the oddest situation? The three of us, all lying here, some more naked than others…’ she looked pointedly at Mona, ‘all brought together by the fact that we were married to the same man. It’s like some weird wives club.’
The contagious giggles had now reached Tess and she nodded. ‘We could be in a reality show – The Real Housewives of Drew Gold.’
‘Just as well there are only three of us. They’d never fit four beds in this room.’ Sarah added, setting them off again.
As she wiped a tear from her eye, she realized that the hilarity was coming in stereo from her and Tess, but there was a Mona-shaped void in the middle.
‘Sarah, I’ve never seen you like this,’ Mona said. ‘You seem… I don’t know, just different.’
Mona’s tone was the same one Sarah had heard her use to describe things that utterly disgusted her. What had it been at Christmas? Oh that’s right – harem pants. Apparently they were the biggest fashion crime since those eighties hairstyles that required so much hairspray they permanently damaged the ozone layer.
‘I’m sorry, Mona, but the last few days have just been a bit overwhelming. I decided that I was going to take everything in my stride and open myself up to new experiences, but this all just seems a little surreal.” She could see Mona was already losing interest in what she was saying so, against her better judgement she attempted to mollify her. “Anyway, it’s been great so far. Piers was so much fun yesterday – he totally led us astray. You’re a lucky woman.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Mona agreed.
But even while dealing with whiplash and the suffocating heat of a hot flush, Sarah got the sense that Mona wasn’t being entirely sincere. Her haughty demeanour made the atmosphere in the room bristle, so it was a relief when the door opened again and this time Sven was accompanied by two women, one a petite, picture-perfect Japanese girl, confirmed by a badge that said ‘Aoki, Japan’, and a tall, catwalk-slender ‘Valeria, Russia’.
Valeria headed for Tess, Sven moved to Mona’s bed and, to Sarah’s relief, little Aoki stayed with her. Thank goodness. She’d never been one for massages because on the one and only occasion she’d tried it before, a chunky female who – if she worked on this ship would have a badge that said ‘Dinah, Dudley’ – had just about put her in traction.
A few minutes later, she’d revised her opinion. Little Aoki might look like she’d have trouble peeling a banana, but she had all the gentleness of a shot putter on steroids.
Sarah wanted to swear. She wanted to stop this. She was actually close to wanting to cry.
Turning her head to the side, she noticed that Sven was caressing Mona with long, luxurious strokes along her spine. How did Mona get the equivalent of a good feel-up, while Sarah was at the hands of a masochist with Olympic-strength fingers?
It was almost as if Mona had planned this.
It was almost as if Mona had planned this.
It was almost… the thought was stuck in her head and even the physical torture didn’t block it out. For the first time it crossed her mind to wonder why they were doing this. Why was Mona being so nice? Why did she want them all to be together today?
Let’s face it, Mona had never been her bosom buddy. They tolerated each other. Played nice. Made civil conversation. But they had never – and she suspected would never – actually be friends. In fact, the only time Mona had truly been nice to her was when she was a young reporter and she used to pop around to the house to discuss work with Drew, and call him up at all times of the day and night with leads and queries. He was the deputy editor then, but Mona had looked up to him and always seemed to hang on his every word. At the same time, Mona would bring her cakes, offer to babysit the kids, act like Sarah was a true friend. Little did Sarah know that she was already sleeping with her husband.
She gasped as Aoki removed her spine without an anaesthetic. At least that’s what it felt like. When her nerve endings eventually stopped screaming, Sarah found herself struck with a jumble of weird thoughts: Mona was only ever friendly when there was something in it for her. Mona had befriended her decades ago when she wanted to get closer to Drew. Now she was being extremely friendly to her and Tess. So what, exactly, did she want to get her hands on now?
9.
Alghero
Tess
‘Fully recovered?’ Drew asked Tess, as he handed her a plate with a pain au chocolat and a selection of beautifully arranged fresh fruit. The strawberries were the deepest red she had ever seen and the melon and kiwi fruit looked irresistible.
‘Much better, thanks. The massage yesterday was lovely and so was the facial, the seaweed treatment, the manicure, the pedicure and the deep conditioning hair treatment. Mona is a serious spa bunny – she must spend a fortune on that kind of stuff.’
Drew grunted and pressed a couple of keys on his laptop. That thing was never bloody off. Tess was becoming more and more convinced that it was time for it to have an accident that ended with it dying on the seabed.
When she’d woken that morning they had already dropped anchor in the Bay of Alghero, on the north-west coat of Sardinia. According to the Daily Vista, Alghero was a beautiful medieval town with strong Catalan origins, leading to its nickname ‘Little Barcelona’. It sounded like something worth seeing and Mona’s smug assertions from yesterday about Drew enjoying work more than his wife’s company had hit home. Time to shake things up and make him realise what he was missing.
‘So what would you like to do today? The tenders to the shore are running every half hour. Shall we get dressed and go explore?’
He looked up, pondering the question. ‘Do you particularly want to go ashore today? I’m happy to chill out here, if you are.’
She could feel the anxiety starting to build. ‘Drew, this is supposed to be our holiday. We’re supposed to be doing things together. Enjoying ourselves. Experiencing new things. Together. I’d have been just as bloody well coming on my own.’ She didn’t add, “Or with Sarah,” but it was on the tip of her tongue. Actually, now that she’d got to know Sarah a bit better, she realised that she actually liked her a lot. Mona, not so much. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she always felt that Mona was like a viper, just waiting to pounce. ‘I’m trying to be understanding as bloody always but you’re pushing me too far’.
Wow, where did that come from? She cringed as she realized just how needy that sounded. God, he was going to think she was pathetic. But hang on, she had a right to her feelings and she had a right to damn well tell him. Didn’t she? Oh, crap, she hated confrontation.
She braced herself for a furious objection, but to her surprise it didn’t come.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.
What? That was weird. No indignant reply. No defensive attitude. Just silence now. This couldn’t go on. She knew that she needed to face this, to get the air cleared and sort out what was going wrong in their marriage.
‘Drew, I’m beginning to think we’re not OK. At home I didn’t really notice, to be honest. We were always so busy and you work such long hours. If you add up all the time we’ve spent together in the last year, it’s probably less than most people spend together on a summer holiday. But here it seems that everything is magnified, including the fact that we don’t seem to be connected anymore.’
Argue with me, she silently implored. Argue. Tell me I
’m wrong. Tell me you love me.
‘You’re right.’ He sat back with a loud, sad exhalation. For the first time, she noticed how tired he looked. Not just ‘not enough sleep’ tired, but the kind of sallow complexion, dog-tired appearance that comes with real stress. ‘You’re right,’ he repeated wearily. ‘I’m sorry Tess, but I don’t know where we are any more.’
Her stomach felt like it was being ripped out through her windpipe. No. How could this be happening to her? And why bring her thousands of miles to the middle of the ocean to tell her?
‘Do you still love me?’
‘Yes!’ he insisted. ‘Of course I do. And I want this to work. I guess I just…’ he paused to get his thoughts in order. ‘I guess I just forget that you should be a priority too. Work is all about deadlines, and graft, and urgency and it’s easy to get lost in that. Might be why I’ve been married three times.’ He added a self-deprecating smile and a wave of love for him enveloped her. He leaned over and kissed her. ‘I’m sorry. Running a newspaper is a young man’s game and I’m fifty – takes a bit more energy to stay on top. But I’ll try harder not to neglect you. I do love you.’
‘I love you too,’ she whispered as he leant over to kiss her, properly kiss her, the way he used to. Reluctant to break away, she curled her hands through his hair as he swept her up and took her inside to bed. Finally, he was saying what she wanted to hear.
Their lovemaking was tender at first, then, as their heartbeats quickened, erupted into a frenzy of grabs and thrusts that was over all too quickly.
He didn’t seem to notice.
As they lay together afterwards, her head nestling in the space between his arm and his torso, Tess reassured herself that this was fixable. At least they’d started being honest with each other. All they needed was the time and effort to rediscover what had brought them together in the first place. Just the two of them, alone, without any…
The knock at the door disrupted her train of thought.
‘Ignore it. It’s probably housekeeping,’ Drew told her. ‘The Do Not Disturb Sign has probably fallen off.’
She would have complied if it wasn’t for the niggling worry. Colita wouldn’t bring any notes to the door, but what if she was off today? Or busy? What if someone else had got a message and decided to deliver it? What if they slipped it under the door? What if Drew picked it up and read it and…?
‘It’s OK, I’ll just see who it is,’ she announced chirpily, shooting out of bed like a rocket. She hastily threw on a robe and was still tying it when she swung the door open.
In hindsight, checking the spyhole first would have been a smarter move.
‘Morning, darling,’ Mona chirped, as she waltzed past her, not even bothering to wait for an invitation to enter. Tess’s first reaction was relief that it wasn’t a concierge bearing another communication from Cameron, her second was acute irritation that Mona was here again. Forget the viper comparison, she was like a bloody leech. Her third reaction was to feel bad for her second reaction. Hadn’t Mona treated them to a blissful day of relaxation yesterday? The woman was going out of her way to be friendly and she shouldn’t criticize her for that.
Mona stopped, a little stunned, when she saw Tess’s bedhead hair, and then her vision swung up to the raised mezzanine to see Drew lying in bed with just a sheet covering him.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ It was the first time Tess had ever seen her flustered. ‘I didn’t realize…’
‘It’s OK. Is something wrong?’ Tess asked kindly – as opposed to what she really wanted to say, which was ‘please bugger off, I’ve seen enough of you already these last few days’. Cue another pang of guilt for the thought.
‘No, no!’ Mona took a visible breath, then her smile immediately switched back to full beam. ‘I just wanted to invite you to lunch. We thought we’d all go ashore on the one o’clock tender and have a long, luxurious pranzo.’ She said the last word in a heavy Italian accent. ‘That means lunch,’ she added for Tess’s benefit.
‘I know that,’ she replied cheerily. Actually, she did know that. But only because she had a thing for Gino D’Acampo and watched all his cookery shows.
This time Mona didn’t falter. ‘Great! The excursion team have recommended a fabulous little restaurant in the marina. John and Penny are even going to bring the twins, Drew.’
In other words, everyone is going and there is no way we could refuse, Tess thought. Oh well, at least it would get Drew off the ship and away from that bloody laptop.
‘Sounds great,’ Drew replied, without even a searching look to Tess to check it was OK with her. Bloody cheek. When she’d suggested a similar plan he’d told her he was happy to stay on the boat. Her irritation was interrupted as he continued to address Mona. ‘We’ll see you down there around twelve forty-five. Oh, and Mona…’
Tess braced herself. Drew was obviously going to dole out a gentle rebuke along the lines of ‘Please don’t barge in again.’ Or ‘Could you just call us in future.’ Or even ‘We won’t be up for this every day because Tess and I want to spend some quality time together.’
‘Yes?’ Mona answered.
‘Thanks for organizing this,’ Drew said. ‘Sometimes I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Furious, Tess realised she desperately wanted to find out the answer to that question.
Mona
‘Grazie.’ The waiter made a slight bowing motion as he thanked Mona for holding up her glass so he could refill it. She might be in an emotional flux, but she’d have to be blind, too, not to notice how gorgeous he was. And at least three of the other waiters must be related to him, because this was like going to sleep and having a dream featuring four insanely hot, beautifully built, Italian versions of David Gandy. Group sex wasn’t normally her thing, but for this lot she’d make an exception.
‘What are you thinking about? You’re smiling away there,’ Drew asked her.
Mona shook her head. ‘Nothing special. Just how lovely this is, being here with everyone. It couldn’t be a more perfect day.’
Of course that wasn’t true. If this was a perfect day then she and Drew would be here alone, and she wouldn’t have walked in this morning and caught Tess and Drew practically humping in front of her. Sweet little Tess, all tousled hair and pouty lips, not a shred of effort put into her appearance and yet she was utterly gorgeous. Urgh, that drove her nuts. It had also made her go change into something striking. White pencil skirt, (young, but incredibly chic), teamed with a white, off the shoulder, scoop-neck T-shirt that showed just a hint of cleavage. She looked like Audrey Hepburn on heat.
She might not have Tess’s youth, but she had far more style. And anyway, that wasn’t what really mattered. Drew was all about the cerebral stimulation. He’s not fulfilled by her. He’s not fulfilled by her. She repeated her new mantra. Tess might look all sweetness and fun, but Mona knew, just absolutely knew, that Drew was bored by her.
Who would he have talked to at this lunch if she hadn’t been there? A bit of deft manoeuvring as they approached the table had ensured that she was in her favourite spot right next to him. Once again, Sarah and Piers were down at the other end of the table and spent the whole time chatting to John and Penny and entertaining the twins. Boredom central. Tess was on the other side of Drew, but she’d settled for speaking mostly to Max because as soon as they’d sat down Mona had engaged Drew in a conversation about the ramifications of the Brexit vote, a subject that he could talk about for hours. And they did, just the two of them, sitting in a beautiful marina, overlooking turquoise blue seas. If it wasn’t for Pier’s snorting, Sarah’s incessant chat and the twins chuckling, she could almost believe it was just her and Drew there.
Down at the other end of the table, John and Penny stood up and announced that they were going to take the twins back to the ship for a nap. Thank God. The couple were almost unrecognizable as the two bedraggled, exhausted parents who had come aboard. The combination of sun, sea, and unlimited childcare had worked won
ders. Further evidence that Mona had been absolutely right in her decision to avoid procreation at all cost.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Eliza announced, blushing as she said it.
‘Ooooooh,’ her brother teased her, ‘do I detect an ulterior motive? Could there be a boy involved in this?’
Both Drew and Sarah’s heads snapped up at that one.
‘You’ve met someone?’ Sarah asked.
The teenager rolled her eyes. ‘Would you all stop looking at me? You’re all, like, soooo embarrassing.’
That invoked a chorus of ‘ooooooh’s from the whole table.
Eliza rolled her eyes again and made to leave. Great. One more unwanted lunch companion gone. And if Eliza had a boy in her sights it would keep her out of her Dad’s way. Another bonus.
‘Erm, just one minute, young lady. What’s his name and who’s he here with? And you’re not leaving until you tell me, so you may as well cough up.’
Eliza looked fit to explode, but she knew her mother well enough to comply.
‘Kai Latham. He’s nineteen. From London. Here with his mum and dad. Cabin 12890.’
Drew smiled and said warmly, ‘Same deck as us, but opposite end. Well, if I find out that you’ve ever seen the inside of cabin 12890, Kai Latham will be in trouble. Did you tell him I have a gun in the garage?’
‘OMG, you do not have a gun in the garage, Dad.’ Eliza groaned.
‘Yeah, well, he doesn’t need to know that.’
Eliza tutted and tottered off on her six-inch platform wedges, muttering something about, ‘lame’ and ‘well messed up’ as she went.
‘That went well,’ Piers said, making everyone, including Drew, laugh again. Mona reflected that while her husband might now hold the attraction of a wet weekend in a tent to her, she couldn’t deny that he was always good for an amusing quip.
