Cleo

“Don’t you know ‘no’ is the new ‘yes’? If you say no to something you don’t want to do now it saves you having to go through all sorts of demoralising situations in the future. Do you seriously want to go out with someone who made you change your clothes?”

“What can I do?”

“Call him back a couple of days before the date and say your aunt died and you have to go home to the funeral.”

“Good idea. I’ll do it.”

I didn’t. For several reasons. It never feels good to lie; saying my aunt had died might tempt fate—I was very fond of Aunt Lila; Cleo approved of him and…there wasn’t really a fourth reason, apart from the memory of that extraordinary kiss.

Considering how many awkward and embarrassing things had happened on that first so-called date he was fool enough to sign up for more. He had to be mad. Or special. Or mad in a special way, or the other way around.

I often told the kids that anything’s worth trying if your chances are better than winning Lotto. Yet the possibility of there being more to the toy boy beyond his perfectly groomed surface was almost zero. On the other hand, he’d called my bluff a couple of times. Maybe I’d underestimated him.

Despite Nicole’s assurances there was no future in it, the dinner became the first of many. And I was facing a dilemma. I was beginning to enjoy the company of multifaceted Philip. If our relationship went any further, it could no longer be classified as a one-night stand, even in the loosest terms. After all, the whole point of a one-night stand is it’s impersonal, possibly unsatisfactory, and therefore not worth repeating. Sleeping with him now would be tantamount to disobeying the shrink’s instructions.

Besides which, there were other more uncomfortable matters to consider. A woman who has given birth three times is unwilling if not insane to expose her body, especially if she has avoided the rigors of the gym. “Drop a dress size in one week” diets invariably ended in “gain two sizes a week later.” After the birth of a child the female form arranges itself in mounds and folds that can charitably be described as “interesting” to artists such as Renoir and Rubens. After the birth of three, her body is more or less a Henry Moore sculpture carved in sponge rubber. A young man whose greatest physical imperfection was a subtly crooked nose (due to a rugby injury) had every reason to be warned against the dangers of unraveling acres of unruly womanly flesh. Yet, like Livingstone in search of the source of the Nile, he refused to give up.

I gradually began to understand why queen-size sheets were invented. They’re the Western woman’s equivalent of the Muslim female’s chador. With careful planning, a queen-size sheet can be arranged to cover the entire body and head with just a slit from which the eyes can peer out. “Gosh,” she says, trying to sound offhand as she peers through the slit at the impossibly toned male body, “these sheets have a mind of their own.” The other merciful invention is the light switch. Due to a condition that has afflicted her since childhood, known as Extreme Sensitivity of the Eyes to Artificial Light, it must be switched off. My body was no longer a temple. It was a garden for the blind.

It was during a lull in one of these nonvisual encounters that he invited me to spend a weekend at his family’s holiday cottage on the shores of Lake Taupo. This was starting to sound scarily on the edge of being beyond a several-night stand to something complicated.

“But I’ll have the…”

“Make it one of the weekends you don’t have the kids.”

He’d finally accepted the kids were sacred turf, part of a separate life he was banned from.

“But…there’s no one to look after the cat.”

“Cleo can come along with us, if she doesn’t get carsick.”

I told him Cleo adored riding in cars. So a couple of weeks later on a Friday night after work she jumped eagerly into the old Audi. Perched on my knee, she watched the countryside spinning past. As we headed towards the lake the hills turned gold, then crimson, before drenching themselves in deepest violet.

We arrived at the cottage after dark. The Taupo night wrapped around us like black velvet, making us blind but heighten ing our other senses. The air was heavy with piney smells. There was a spike of distant snow on the breeze. I could hear the intimate lap of waves licking the shore. The outline of the wooden house was plain and modest. Even though I couldn’t see it properly, the place had unmistakable soul. Like a child on a mystery adventure I followed the thread of Philip’s torchlight to a flyscreen door.

“Just a minute,” he said. “There’s a special hiding place for the key.”

He disappeared around the side of the house and emerged with the key soon after. “Here we go,” he said, sliding it in the lock. “Damn!”

“What’s happened?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve just broken the key.”

“Oh. Is that okay?”

“It’s stuck in the lock.”

“Can’t we break a window?”

“That would set the alarm off.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

“I can’t remember the code.”