Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [50]
One evening she’d asked him out, and after dinner they had walked along the beach, and she had said that she liked him very much and invited him to go back to her room with her. So he had, and she had made love the same way she dived – excitedly and heartily. And was quiet and reflective in his arms afterwards. They had done this every night until the end of the holiday. On the last night, as she lay beside him, she told him that she would always remember him, and how wonderful he had made her holiday. Her husband had left her, she said, the year before, and Tom had shown her that there was something else for her in the rest of her life. It was the first time she had mentioned anything about a life away from the Red Sea, and Tom had been so glad for her.
They hadn’t exchanged numbers, or even surnames, and on the morning she left, she had kissed him lightly on the lips and said goodbye. There had been nobody since. And – presumably – Natalie had only slept with Simon in the last few years.
She had to be kidding. But it didn’t stop Tom feeling nervous. He wasn’t sure if it was Natalie’s driving or the thought of having his – admittedly slightly rusty – technique evaluated so academically.
Perhaps he needn’t have worried: twenty minutes later, Natalie turned triumphantly into the long country-house driveway of a famous health farm. The kind where has-been footballers went to dry out, and pop stars went to do photo-shoots when they’d divorced their cheating husbands or lost the half-pound they had put on in pregnancy.
‘You said it was a hotel!’
‘And so it is.’
‘It’s a health farm.’
‘Which is pretty much a hotel with… extra stuff.’
‘Yeah, extra stuff for girls!’
‘Rubbish. There’ll be tons of blokes there.’
‘There might be men, Natalie, but they won’t be blokes.’
‘Don’t be so narrow-minded. You might like it.’
‘I might not. I might rather stay home and push sticks under my fingernails.’
‘They probably have a treatment like that here.’
‘Treatment? It sounds like a madhouse. Frontal lobotomy, Miss Jones?’
‘Treatment. And I got three each thrown in, so get ready.’
‘And what about the sex? I’ve been promised sex. You can’t just lead a boy on, Natalie.’
‘Play your cards right. You never know. It’s still a hotel.’
‘Health farm,’ Tom muttered, under his breath, while Natalie reversed the car into a parking space between an Audi TT and a soft-top Beetle. ‘Health farm full of wankers.’
It was delicious to see him so uncomfortable. The dressing-gowns they were handed at the front desk were clearly one-size-fits-all, which meant that for Tom, and half the women there, it was a shortie.
‘The English rugby team have stayed here, you know.’
‘They’re not here now, though, are they?’
‘But there are men.’
There were three men, to be precise. Two halves of a couple, so clearly and delightedly gay that they practically sashayed down the corridors between ‘treatments’, and one middle-aged, paunched man in flip-flops who followed his vast wife around like a temple eunuch.
Natalie was studying their schedule like Indiana Jones on a mission. ‘You’ve got a facial in half an hour, then an Indian head massage, and while you’re doing that I’ve got a full-body blitz. Then we’re meeting up in the thalasso-therapy pool.’
‘A few problems there, Nat. First, a facial? Then, what the hell is a thalasso-whatever?’
She consulted the brochure. ‘It’s a relaxing and stimulating vigorous massage by water jets in a pool rich with salt and minerals.’
‘Thanks for clearing that up.’
‘You’re welcome. You’ve to wait here until someone comes to get you, and I’ll see you down there in an hour.’ Natalie winked at him and disappeared.
How could she do this to him after Gone With the Wind? Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
An hour and a half later, he was waiting for her outside what looked like a giant Jacuzzi.
Natalie came in, and beamed at him happily. ‘Nice hair!’
Tom smoothed his curls, self-consciously. They felt greasy. How could women love this shit?
‘That was wonderful.’ Natalie was practically