Truly, Madly, Deeply. Romantic Novelist's Association

in his confidence. We met at a polo match in Windsor. I was presenting the prize and he was the captain of the winning team. His smile lit up my life in a way that nothing had before and made me weak at the knees. I gave him my number and he didn’t call me for weeks. I liked that. Not too eager. It continued like that throughout the whole time we dated. My phone was never deluged with texts and calls from Ethan. I had to ring him. That was a new experience for me. Sometimes he’d leave me sitting alone waiting in restaurants for him –how the press loved that. When I called he’d simply say that he’d forgotten about our arrangement. I thought he was playing a game with me. I guess I learned the hard way.

      Ethan was rich, even then. Not as ridiculously wealthy as some of my suitors, of course, but we were never going to be on the breadline. He was from good stock with a family pile in Hertfordshire, a solid, handsome house where we eventually lived. I had my own money too, at one time. But it was expensive being me –looking like that doesn’t come cheap, I’m sure you can imagine –and soon there was very little of it left. Plus, once we were married, Ethan didn’t like other men looking at me. Not in magazines, anyway. The shoots were getting raunchier, less and less clothing. I could have had a big contract with a line of very racy underwear but Ethan didn’t like the idea of that either. He didn’t think that it would be good for my image. On his advice, I turned down so many bookings that eventually, I slipped off the radar. As soon as I hit thirty-five, the agency stopped calling at all. The paparazzi didn’t wait outside our London apartment or chase after me when I came out of restaurants. Ethan said that he was relieved. And I was too. In a way. Plus there were always the hungry young things snapping at your heels: nineteen-year-olds with more confidence and attitude than experience. I was one of them once.

      ‘Are you ready, darling?’ Ethan asks as he swings into the dressing room. He glances impatiently at his watch and does that tapping thing with his foot. ‘We’re going to be late.’

      He’s still handsome, my husband. There’s a smattering of grey in his hair, but it only makes him look more distinguished over the years. It’s so terribly unfair that men grow more beautiful with age whereas women, inevitably, do not. He looks so smart in his hand-tailored charcoal grey suit and crisp white shirt.

      ‘Is that a new tie?’ I usually bought all his clothes and I didn’t recognise it.

      He looks down. It’s grey silk with a faint black line through it. Very stylish. ‘Yes.’

      ‘You bought it yourself?’

      Ethan rolls his eyes. ‘I am perfectly capable of buying my own ties, Lydia. I don’t see why you should be so surprised.’

      But I am surprised. That was my role: I looked after the house, I looked after Ethan, I shopped for him.

      ‘It’s nice,’ I offer.

      Even after all this time, I still love him. We’ recently celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Well, when I say ‘celebrated’ I mean that Ethan was away on business somewhere –Denmark, I think –and I opened a bottle of fizz on my own and watched re-runs of Wallander. When he was less busy we were hoping to hop off for a week somewhere warm.

      It’s a party tonight. Another one. This one at The Dorchester. A thank you for five hundred of Ethan’s staff for hitting their targets in these terrible times of recession. Some of them will be made redundant next week, but they don’t know that yet. Tonight, they’ll still be blissfully unaware of their fate and on a high.

      I take one last look in the mirror. The last time I appeared in the Daily Mail it was a shot from our beach holiday in Barbados pointing out the cellulite on the back of my thighs. I was mortified. That was the day that my unswerving attachment to the sarong started. Of course, that was years ago. I’ll be forty-five next birthday. Not a milestone birthday, as such, but one that takes me another step further away from my prime. None of the newspapers care what I look like now. But I do. My skin used to be like porcelain, white and flawless. There are wrinkles now –fine ones, thanks to Crème de la Mer and some well-aimed Botox. But they’re undeniably there. Perhaps I’ll have some of the lights taken away from around this mirror. It’s too bright, unforgiving. I might like myself better if I were perpetually in soft focus. I ease back my cheeks with my fingertips and watch my jawline tighten. That’s how I used to look. Once when I was young and desirable.

      ‘How much longer, Lydia?’ Ethan presses. ‘The car is waiting.’

      ‘I just want to make sure that I look my best.’ I clip on my diamond studs, then stand up and check myself in the full-length mirror. This dress is cut on the bias and flatters my figure, which is fuller than it used to be despite the hours I spend in the gym and the hours that I spend looking at food rather than eating it. It’s sapphire blue and emphasises the colour of my eyes.

      ‘No one will be looking at you,’ my husband says. ‘I’ll see you downstairs.’

      It’s not just the newspapers who don’t care what I look like anymore, it seems.

      It wasn’t always like that. Obviously. Ethan used to love having me on his arm at his corporate functions. Mouths used to gape when he introduced me. I knew what they were thinking. That Ethan had punched above his weight. That he had married well. My husband might not have wanted me to carry on with my career, but he liked men to look at me. He liked their mouths to water when they saw me with him. He encouraged me to dress in the skimpiest of clothes. And I was happy to oblige. He couldn’t keep his hands off me then. At the most inappropriate moments, I’d feel his thumb graze my nipples, his fingers inching up my thighs. I’ve lost count of the corporate dinners where his hand would be between my legs under the table before we’d even reached dessert.

      There was a photograph of me in the tabloids. We’re on a yacht in the Med –I can’t remember whose now –and I’m standing at the bow alone in impossibly high heels, the tiniest of gold bikinis that barely contains my breasts, a gold chain accentuating my slender waist, the scant thong exposing my tanned buttocks. My long blonde hair streamed behind me. It was my natural colour then. I look like the cat who’s got the cream. It made page four of the Sun. I remember exactly the day it was. We were with a party of businessmen who we were entertaining for lunch. I was the only woman on board and yet Ethan insisted that I wore the bikini and nothing else. He even picked it out for me. Even after we’d spotted the paparazzi on another boat, he’d come behind me and slipped a finger under the thin fabric of my swimsuit and inside me. The other men were all lounging on the deck with champagne just behind us, but he didn’t care. Then Ethan took me down below, lifted me straight onto the counter in the galley, pulled down my bikini bottoms and made love to me right there. At any moment, any one of the men, or all of them, could have walked in. I thought he’d done it because he was overwhelmed by passion, because he loved me so much.

      I’m older and wiser now.

      I slick on my lipstick, smooth down my dress and plump my cleavage. It’s all still my own but it needs help now from well-cut and ferociously expensive underwear. Picking up my diamanté purse, I make my way down the stairs.

      The Dorchester is one of my favourite venues and this is from someone who has been to the Burj al Arab on a regular basis. But that is tacky in its opulence whereas The Dorchester is all about understated elegance. Mind you, every five star hotel thinks that they’re far better than they are. We like the Terrace Suite here, which has the most marvellous view over London, and we were booked in overnight. I’m hoping to do some shopping in town tomorrow and perhaps have some lunch at Harvey Nics. Ethan, of course, is going into the office even though it’s Sunday.

      The Ballroom Suite is already thronging with Ethan’s colleagues. They’re all bright young things, university educated with degrees in such things as philosophy and politics. They have conversations where they all shout over each other about the FTSE and the Dow Jones and I have no idea what they’re talking about and have no desire to. I stand and sip my champagne and try to look interested.

      The room is beautiful, stylish, all cream and gold. We stand at the top of the sweeping staircase so that Ethan can greet his staff. We shake hands endlessly with the damp, the sweaty, the cool, the dry,