LITMIR.BIZ

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the press were part of my everyday existence, but because of all the lovely, complimentary things Suzi had allegedly been saying about me.

      I called her straight away.

      ‘Oh my God, I’m s-s-s-so sorry, and I’m so embarrassed,’ she stuttered before I could squeeze in a hello.

      ‘Please d-d-d-don’t think I’m like that, I’m not one of those girls that does this. I don’t know where they got the story from. It’s almost as if he was there. I have to say, I did s-s-s-say those things but only to my friend. I don’t know how they found out – I know for a fact Sam wouldn’t have told them. I trust her with my life. I completely understand if you want me to leave and go and find another job somewhere else.’

      She may well have talked for a full five minutes before coming up for air and letting me get a word in.

      As she paused for breath I seized my moment and explained to Suzi that Piers had revealed in the piece that it was he himself who was behind her in the cafe, and that far from being annoyed or embarrassed about what he’d written, I was chuffed to bits by what she’d had to say about me.

      Once Suzi had calmed down there was only one way to look at it, as far as I was concerned. Piers had done us both a huge favour as I now knew how she felt about me – along with the rest of the country for that matter – and his revealing column inches had vicariously awakened me to how I felt about her. The more I thought about her, the more I realised what a catch she was and what an amazing girlfriend she’d make. I concluded that I needed to do something about this, and fast; I would ask Suzi to move in with me.

      This may seem a little drastic, but as you may have deduced by now, I’m an all-or-nothing guy. Admittedly this is not a trait that always led to the smoothest of rides, but that’s just the way I am, I can’t help it. Besides, neither Suzi nor I had time for a relaxed and measured courtship; we were both workaholics and unless we went home to the same bed every night, there was a good chance we might not see each other for weeks.

      After a lot of fun and a couple of false starts in my flat in north London, my former guest booker and I made the transition to an official grown-up couple, moving into a rather grand town house in Notting Hill in the process. Suzi and I were now an item and the various boys and girls we had both been dating of late were duly told to back off for the foreseeable future.

      The more I came to know my new girlfriend the more I liked her.

      Suzi loved food – although you would never know from the size of her. She also loved to smoke, not prolifically but poetically, drawing the maximum available pleasure from every individual drag. Most of all, though, she loved her red wine.

      Her penchant for red wine came not so much from its alcoholic content and its effect but rather from its smell, colour and – of course – its taste. She sipped wine from her glass like no one I’ve ever seen before or since, her eyes closed, waiting for what was to come, her lips curling upwards at either end almost in a wry smile at the thought of the ecstasy of a full-on sensory assault.

      Her passion for wine, food and fags often took us to France, where they seem to do these three things quite a lot and without worrying about them too much.

      Holidays – nice ones – and especially in France, were new to me. Up until this point holidays had been an unwelcome cross I had to bear. I did go away from time to time but I had never really enjoyed myself and I could never wait to get back. I loved working and I hated airports, plus I burn at even the slightest mention of the word ‘sun’, so what was there to like?

      Suzi was clever, though. She was having none of that. If I wanted to be with her, not only was I going to have to go on holiday, I was going to have to enjoy it.

      She would not be patronised by the presence of a token companion, she wanted to see and feel me having as good a time as she was or there was no deal. How she managed to successfully extract this out of me where everyone else had failed I have no idea, but extract it she did and we always ended up having a blast.

      All of our vacation destinations were pretty top notch, to be honest, but it was the Côte d’Azur that we loved to go to most of all. There is no place on earth like the South of France with its picture-perfect coastline all the way from Monaco to the Cap d’Antibes; glorious mountains crashing into the blindingly beautiful Mediterranean Sea below.

      Whether you are having lunch at a waterside restaurant in the pretty village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer or looking down over a thousand feet from one of the exclusive restaurants perched on the side of Eze mountain, there is nothing not to like – except perhaps the bill. As well as topping the league in the beauty stakes, the Côte d’Azur is also the most expensive place I have ever been to.

      That said, budget and availability permitting, Suzi and I would always try to stay at La Voile d’Or (the Golden Sail), a small but perfectly formed bijou hotel situated right on the rocks just above the sea in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, probably my favourite place on the planet.

      Like several of the hotels in the region, La Voile d’Or didn’t take credit cards until very recently. When Suzi and I were going there it was always cash only.

      I think such hotels have been forced to change policy as with a single fried egg now costing as much as £10, the size of the bags full of money required to settle residents’ accounts were becoming noticeably impractical.

      I understand this was particularly evident at the most famous hotel in the region, where a basket of bread at your breakfast table will set you back £36 and that’s before you even think about daring to order any tea, coffee or croque-monsieur. I have stayed at this place three times, most recently in 2009, and the sight of l’addition arriving never fails to bring me out in a cold sweat.

      Not to worry though, eh? What’s money for, if not to spend on the things you like with someone you love? What Suzi and I could afford we would enjoy, and what we could not we wouldn’t worry about.

      We always talked about what it must be like to have a house in Saint-Jean, the dream to end all dreams, but there is a knack to owning houses abroad. The secret is that unless you have infinite wealth, it’s imperative that you are a founder-member of a future trend as opposed to someone who ends up paying through the nose, having turned up late to the party.

      Take Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, for example, and their respective retreats in Jamaica when it was the last place on earth a European might think to live. They picked up their slices of paradise for virtually nothing. The same can be said of John Lennon and his various forays into Malta, and let’s not forget Richard Branson and the legendary bargain that was Necker Island. The story goes that he paid ten per cent of the asking price – just £300,000. Not bad for your own island; he now charges double that if you want to rent it for just one week.

      And so it was with Saint-Jean, we just didn’t realise it at the time.

      David Niven had lived there once upon a time and his house was for sale during one of our early trips. Set just off the main drag towards the shore on the path to Eze, it was a magnificent movie-star mansion, almost Gatsbyesque in its grandeur, and with its own private jetty and walled tropical garden thrown in.

      I recall the price tag being £4.7 million.

      ‘What?’ I remember thinking back then. I couldn’t believe anywhere in the world could be worth that much. I was of course entirely wrong about David Niven’s house, which has since changed hands for ten times that amount. A good house is only expensive once, they say. After that you will never be able to afford it.

      Suzi and I were destined to miss the French property boat big time, but this was not the case for Bono and his musical colleague the Edge. They had bagged themselves a relative bargain on the beach nearby just a few years before.

      No sooner had the Dublin rockers made their first few quid banging out their irresistible brand of rock and roll than they heard of a beach-front villa up for grabs for a couple of hundred thousand pounds. A fortune to them then, but they knew something Suzi and I didn’t and, without pausing for breath, they snapped it right up. They bought it between the two of them and proceeded

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