PS Olive You - Lizzie Allen

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Fay,’ he persisted above the din. ‘God knows what damage you’ve inflicted to your skin and how that could age you in years to come. All it takes is a bit of sun cream’.

      My mum always said Andrew took an unhealthy interest in my appearance. The first weekend I stayed at his place, I was applying my make-up in the bedroom mirror when he walked past and snapped the lights off. ‘Natural light for make-up please,’ he said without irony.

      I still married him. My dad had died the year before and it seemed too much effort to say no.

      I studied him now out of the corner of my eye as we chugged up the hill towards the villa. He was not a particularly good-looking man although he was aging well. His forehead was a little too high, his eyes a bit too pale, his jaw too pronounced.

      For someone that craved perfection, the realisation when he hit puberty that he would never be more than a mediocre-looking adult must have come as a blow. He’d overcompensated in the gym ever since.

      Right now his pronounced jaw was working overtime, grinding and flaring at the point where the mandible meets the zygomatic bone. This was his stress indicant. Clearly his meetings in Brussels hadn’t gone well. I listened absently to his remonstrations about the airline, the ferry, the queues – a preamble to the herculean disburdenment of his real grievances which he’d hold back to ruin dinner with.

      Ironically it was his loquaciousness that attracted me to him in the first place. The first time I saw him he was holding court in the Foreign Office canteen surrounded by a gaggle of wide-eyed disciples lapping up every word of his diatribe on UK interference in the Middle-East. Of course, he didn’t refer to it as interference – as far as Andrew was concerned the British Empire was the greatest thing God visited upon the face of the earth and any country fortunate enough to attract UK interest in their affairs, their minerals, their cash crops, should be thanking their lucky stars. Once his oration was over he detached himself from his fan club and zoned in on me. What Andrew lacked in looks he made up for in gumption and self-confidence. As he slid into the chair opposite mine, I clocked the jealous glares of the other women and blushed with pride. I was after all only a junior advisor in the Migrations Directorate whereas Andrew had the grand title of ‘Deputy Permanent Director to the EU’. He insisted on taking me out for dinner and my fate was sealed from that moment on as he regaled me with clever stories of capricious foreign dignitaries and ambitious commonwealth aspirants. His Cambridge accent seemed so erudite, his turn of phrase so eloquent.

      Nowadays I just wished he’d shut up.

      When we got back to the villa he showered, went for a half-hour run, showered again and announced he was hungry. This was my cue to disappear into the kitchen and produce some culinary victual from the warmer.

      Bridgette encouraged Andrew to believe that women loved men through food. The more effort put into a meal – the finer the filo pastry, the smoother the hollandaise sauce – the more a wife valued her husband. This he reminded me of at every meal with a crumb-by-crumb critique of his gastronomic experience.

      Fortunately, our meal was interrupted halfway through by his mobile.

      Unfortunately, the call was from Theodora.

      He listened quietly while chewing on his sea bass en croute with grinding concentration.

      ‘I see,’ he said, pausing to take a swig of wine. ‘And where is it?’

      He eyes settled on me with a look of annoyance.

      ‘I understand. I’ll get her to see it on Monday.’

      Theodora would have prattled on for a quarter of an hour longer but Andrew didn’t suffer gasbags lightly.

      ‘Got to run. Thanks for your assistance Theodora.’

      He hung up and poured another glass of wine thoughtfully.

      ‘Fay, I hope you are taking this house-hunting thing seriously.’

      ‘Of course I am,’ I replied, pushing my lettuce around the plate.

      ‘Theodora tells me she’s found a perfect property but you’ve refused to view it.’

      ‘I drove past it. Just to have a look. You can see it quite easily from the gate.’

      ‘Did you go in?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘It seemed a bit far from the Chora.’

      He studied my face whilst cleaning out the inside of his cheeks with the tip of his tongue. I could feel myself blushing as I tried to lie my way out of the corner I was painting myself into, but how could I explain the truth to him? What was the truth anyway? That I didn’t want to pull the carpet out from under the man I’d become obsessed with? Oh my God, I was actually obsessed with him, wasn’t I?

      Ridiculous! I thought to myself.

       I hardly knew the man.

       Barely spoken to him!

      I got up and noisily started clearing away the plates.

      Some bloody feminist you are! I mentally screamed.

       Can’t seem to exist five minutes alone in the universe without switching allegiance to some other penis-wielding vassal.

      At the mention of the word penis my subconscious skipped to thoughts of Urian naked.

       I wonder if he’s well hung.

       Bet he is!

      I picked up my rolling pin and began caressing its long shaft with a suddy sponge. Seconds later I dunked it beneath the water with a loud splosh as if to silence my thoughts.

       Stop this! It’s just pure lust.

      The rolling pin emerged from the water covered in more suds than before. Suddenly, another thought occurred to me.

       Isn’t that what we accuse men of doing all day long. Lusting after women?

       Hang about! Perhaps that does make me a feminist after all.

      I squirted more washing-up liquid onto the rolling pin with alacrity and began lathering it up again.

       Hell yeah! I’m lusting after a man like an oversexed…sex…machine.

       I am empowered enough to make men the object of my lust.

       Well, Urian anyway.

      I jumped as Andrew suddenly sharpened into focus through the suds of the rolling pin. He’d come over to the sink and was staring at me as if I was a science experiment. Blushing crimson, I made a pretence of taking out the garbage mid-washing up, leaving a trail of water and suds across the floor. Andrew dumped the rest of the dishes into the sink with crash

      ‘Well I think you should see it’, he snapped. ‘Sounds perfect. Two hectares with its own borehole.’

      I hastily returned to the sink, skidding across the floor in alarm.

      ‘You can’t drink the borehole water,’ I replied desperately.

      ‘Is it hooked up to the mains?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Really! What have you been doing all week?’

      ‘The same thing I do back home in Chelsea,’ I muttered to myself as I started drying the dishes. ‘Sweet bugger all.’

      ‘What’s that?’ asked Andrew chipperly.

      ‘Nothing,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘I’ll ring Theodora tomorrow.’

      

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