Chapter 5

5

SEVEN DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS

1.07 a.m.

Fifty-three years old and Pearl is in the throes of a sexual reawakening. She’s already had two orgasms since Elias bowled up an hour ago, fresh from his Christmas night out with his consultancy buddies and expressing delight that they had her flat to themselves. Before she met him, it was more than she’d had – at least involving another human – across the entire previous decade.

Elias is a remarkably youthful-looking man of fifty-eight, with barely a wrinkle and an enviably toned physique. Pearl wonders if he’s had work done and fears that his peachy complexion makes her look like a withered potato in comparison. Always impeccably groomed, he has a personal trainer and guzzles probiotics for his microbiome and drinks only natural wine, and in moderation (as far as Pearl is concerned there is nothing unnatural about any wine).

Pearl had never imagined that this kind of scenario would be possible because, until a few months ago, when she’d started dabbling with a couple of dating apps, she had been celibate since Dean died. Sometimes Pearl had wondered if she’d even remember what to do. And the thought of being with anyone who wasn’t Dean seemed unthinkable and rather terrifying.

Going on a couple of dates in the summer merely confirmed that she was better off alone. There was the man in frankly hideous basketweave shoes who, after they’d agreed to meet for a coffee, proceeded to order an enormous salad and sat there cramming lettuce into his mouth in front of her. Then the cycling enthusiast with whom she re-lost her virginity, and who harangued her for not having a proper pension provision in place: ‘And you, being freelance? What are you going to live on – supermarket own-brand food?’ Pearl had wanted to cosh him with a tin of Aldi baked beans, but she couldn’t, as they were in his flat. Instead, she messaged the group chat from his dismal maroon-tiled bathroom.

Pearl

He’d barely climbed off me and he started offering me financial advice!

It was a numbers game, her friends insisted. Don’t throw in the towel after a couple of bad dates. And then she met Elias, who is currently lying naked beside her in her own bed. Opportunities such as this are rare and precious. Pearl loves her little modern flat, and feels lucky to have it. But sounds travel freely through the tissue-thin walls, and if Abi isn’t clomping about in the colossal wooden-soled platforms she bought recently on eBay, she is blowing her nose on a tea towel or bellowing on her phone outside Pearl’s bedroom.

Sex, when it happens, takes place mainly at Elias’s apartment – a warehouse conversion next to the Regent’s Canal, all stripped floorboards, exposed brickwork and squishy tan leather sofas. It’s a novelty to have him here with her, and the flat to themselves. He hasn’t even told her what the surprise is yet.

Pearl pushes back her mussed-up hair and stretches up to kiss his mouth. The post-coital Elias is extremely loving and sweet. He likes to cuddle and talk and run his fingers over her body, sending her tingling all over again. ‘So you’re not angry about your boyfriend turning up in the middle of the night?’ he ventures.

She smiles. He’s never referred to himself as her boyfriend before. ‘I’m furious,’ she teases. ‘You do know I should be asleep by now.’

Elias chuckles. ‘Not working tomorrow, are you?’

‘No. I had all those jobs last week but there’s nothing now till after New Year. I’m relieved, to be honest. Now I can just focus on Christmas.’

‘Ah, that’s good.’ Gently, Elias lifts an auburn curl away from her finely boned face. ‘You look so gorgeous like this.’

She smiles, still unsure of how to respond to his compliments. ‘You’re not so bad yourself.’

He traces his fingers over her bare shoulder. ‘It’s nice, being here together for a change.’

‘It is,’ Pearl agrees.

‘So, it’s okay for me to stay over?’

‘’Course it is,’ she says, laughing. ‘Did you think I was going to throw you out into the cold wet night?’

‘Well, you might,’ he teases.

‘Brandon’s fine with you, you know that.’ In fact, they have already met several times and he is happy about his mother seeing someone. He’d encouraged it, even; another person along with Lena and Shelley, badgering her to start dating. She doesn’t need to pretend to be a nun, and she suspects Brandon and Abi enjoy having the flat to themselves whenever she stays over at Elias’s place.

‘It won’t be awkward over breakfast?’ he asks now.

‘Of course not. They probably won’t be up anyway. But honestly, Brandon likes you.’

‘Oh, I’m glad.’ He smiles. ‘So, d’you reckon the girlfriend’s thinking of getting her own place?’

‘Abi?’ She shrugs. Elias has met her too, several times. ‘She can’t afford it. Neither of them can. They’re just doing bar work at the moment, so money’s pretty tight?—’

‘And she can’t go back to live with her own parents?’ He looks quizzical.

Pearl shakes her head. ‘She’s not speaking to her mum and her dad’s never been on the scene.’

Elias frowns in sympathy. ‘Hopefully they’re both chipping in, though?’

She blinks in surprise. ‘You mean for food and stuff?’

‘Well, yes, that of course. But also rent?’

Taken aback, Pearl allows herself a moment before replying. Having grown up in a sprawling country home just outside Brussels, Elias has never married or had children. When he’s not working from home – and his hours seem incredibly flexible – he’s out taking arty architectural photographs around London. He seems to have spent his life pretty much pleasing himself.

‘No, I don’t charge them rent,’ Pearl says, keen to change the subject.

He gazes at her, chin propped up on a hand. ‘But they’re both adults, aren’t they? Both working?—’

‘Yes, but as I said, they’re not rolling in money?—’

‘Well, neither are you.’ He raises a brow, and she feels herself recoil from him. ‘What?’ He frowns.

‘Nothing.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean?—’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she says firmly. ‘But I’d better get some sleep?—’

‘Pearl, sweetheart.’ He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. ‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’ No it bloody isn’t! she thinks irritably, extracting herself from his embrace and sitting bolt upright in bed. Mid-September, she met him. Just three months ago. Yet he feels entitled to comment on how she manages her life with her son?

‘Pearl, I really am sorry,’ he murmurs. ‘I think you’re a great mother. Everything you’ve coped with, doing it all on your own?—’

‘I wasn’t always alone,’ she snaps, aware of her eyes prickling.

He sits up and folds a hand around hers. ‘I know that, honey.’ Then he tips his head, gaze fixed on her until she looks at him. ‘I haven’t told you what your surprise is yet…’

‘Oh.’ She softens slightly. ‘No, you haven’t.’

He smiles. ‘Remember I said you’ll need to pack a bag?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hang on…’ He swivels out of bed and fishes his phone from the pocket of the trousers he’d flung over the chair. Slipping back in beside her, he types something and taps the screen. ‘I was thinking that after Christmas, when you’ve slaved away, no doubt making it a fantastic day for the three of you…’ Elias glances at her and grins. ‘Then you’ll deserve a treat.’

He hands his phone to her, and Pearl peers at it. It’s a home page for something called Moksha. Where freedom beckons , the text reads. ‘What’s this?’ she asks.

‘A club,’ Elias replies.

‘A club?’ She frowns. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Elias. I haven’t been clubbing for decades. How do people even dance any more? I’d feel like a complete idiot?—’

‘No, not that kind of club.’ His eyes glint, and he chuckles. ‘We’d stay overnight. It’s in Somerset. And Somerset’s lovely, isn’t it? All cider orchards and rolling hills…’

She bites her lip and clicks on the ‘about us’ link. ‘It says Moksha means “freedom” in Sanskrit.’ She looks at him. ‘Freedom to do what?’

‘Whatever you want!’ he announces. ‘It’s this private club, this little secret haven tucked away near the coast, for like-minded people to get together and have fun and?—’

‘These look like B&Q garden huts,’ she cuts in, studying the accommodation page now.

‘Oh, they’re really snug and cosy,’ he says quickly. ‘Very tastefully done?—’

‘So you’ve stayed here before? You’re a member of this club, are you?’

‘Uh, yeah, I am.’ Elias nods, and she navigates to the events calendar.

Fancy dress disco

Boxing day BBQ

Hot tub party

Spanking workshop

‘Elias?’ Pearl turns to him. ‘This is some kind of sex club, right?’

‘No, no, it’s a naturist club,’ he insists. ‘But the no-clothes thing is optional. No one forces you. You wouldn’t have to go naked if you didn’t want?—’

‘Oh, great!’ she exclaims. ‘That’s good to know!’

He peers at her as if she’s misunderstood the concept. ‘Honestly, Pearl. It’s not weird or anything, it’s just about being sociable and relaxed and having fun?—’

‘And spanking each other?’ Her green eyes widen.

‘That’s just a bit of fun, it’s all optional?—’

‘“Hot tub party”,’ she reads again. ‘A load of horny strangers feeling each other up in a bubbling plastic pond?’

‘You wouldn’t have to do anything you wouldn’t want to do,’ Elias says sharply, seemingly outraged that she might be suggesting otherwise. ‘You could just… relax.’

Pearl glares at him. ‘It doesn’t sound very relaxing.’

‘I think it is,’ he says sulkily.

‘So, if it’s all optional, and I opted not to take part, what would I be doing while all this spanking and shagging was going on?’

He exhales. ‘Whatever you like.’

‘Right, like knitting or reading Woman’s Weekly ?—’

‘I just thought it’d be fun, to give you a bit of a break?—’

‘And we’d go after Christmas?’

Elias nods. ‘If we go for a Twixmas deal, they’re doing three nights for the price of two…’

‘ Right .’ She hands him back his phone. It’s not that Pearl is a prude, or that she has a problem with people getting naked in a field bordered by shabby wooden huts just outside Weston-super-Mare. She just doesn’t want to join them. But that’s not the real issue either. These past three months have turned her world on its head, in a good way. Elias is handsome, attentive and kind, and Pearl has told herself that this is good for her – to allow herself to grow close to someone again. He might not be ‘the one’ but Pearl doesn’t want a one . That had been Dean and no one will ever replace him. Pearl had just wanted to feel alive – and, yes, like a sexual being – again.

‘Pearl? What d’you think?’ The mouth that caused her to orgasm just thirty minutes before is now set in a petulant pout.

‘It’s nearly two o’clock. Let’s go to sleep.’ She turns away from him and clicks off her bedside lamp.

‘If you don’t think it’d be fun,’ he mutters, ‘we could do something else.’

‘I’m really tired, Elias.’

He sighs forcefully and switches off the lamp on his side. As his breathing slows and deepens, Pearl lies with eyes wide open, still facing away from him. She doesn’t want him to see that they are now filled with tears. Was she an idiot for thinking that Elias knows her well enough to suggest something she’d genuinely love to do? She flinches as the front door opens, banging back against the wall as Brandon and Abi clatter in. ‘I’m starving!’ Abi bellows. ‘Are there any of those crumpets?’ More banging and crashing. It sounds as if burglars are smashing up the kitchen.

Elias groans. ‘Jesus Christ.’ Pearl lies very still, feigning sleep. ‘Do they really need to do that?’ he mutters.

‘Just go to sleep.’ She wishes now that she could make him disappear through the power of concentration alone.

Because there’s something Pearl wants to do right now. Elias is right, in that she does deserve a treat. She has to get away – before Abi mashes up all of her lipsticks and she goes quite mad. Not to a frothing sex pond near Weston-super-Mare, but to somewhere far, far away, with people who really love her.

Now it sounds as if Abi is battering the kitchen worktop with a mallet (she is probably only buttering a crumpet). Elias grunts and tries to tug Pearl’s share of the duvet off her.

This is it, she decides. He can find someone else to ‘relax’ with in a garden shed in Somerset, because they are over. She made a mistake, by allowing him into her life.

Elias is snoring softly now, properly asleep. Although it’s the middle of the night, and it won’t be seen until morning, Pearl is seized by an urge to fire off a message.

Taking care not to disturb Elias, she reaches for her phone and types:

Pearl

Hi Michael, hope all’s well. Am sure you’re super busy with Christmas but thought I’d drop you a note. I know it’s been years since we’ve seen each other but you’ve always said I should come up and visit. I’d really love to do that sometime. Could I bring a couple of friends, if that wouldn’t be too much of an imposition? Love Pearl xx.

She sends it and, and in a blink, her phone pings with a notification. Michael has replied.