101 Erotic Nights: The Sheherazade Diaries. The Diarists Secret
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was so awful. My cheeks burned red. He looked amused.
“Sexy writing though. Sounds like you enjoyed it!”
I was mortified. This is not going the way I planned. Miles didn’t seem too bothered; he patted me on the tummy like I was one of his patients, turned over and went to sleep.
So I’m sitting here again writing this in my diary. We are meant to be having exciting sex and I’m turning him off by my stupid stories. I feel so frustrated and foolish. It is pointless. His job is so stressful, I just can’t reach him anymore.
Day Three – Wednesday 25th September
7.38 am
The sun is shining, casting a soft light over the bedclothes. I am smiling. Miles woke me with a cup of tea as usual, pulled down the strap of my nightie, lowered his head, hair still wet from the shower and sucked my nipples softly.
“We’ll go away for the weekend,” he whispered.
I know I did not dream this. Today was going to be better. I pulled off my nightie and lay naked on the bed watching the sun trace across my skin and thought of Miles, and the poem I read last night.
‘Your scent is still on the pillow and I gather the softness into my arms and smell you and the sun comes once more to welcome me through the mottled panes, dancing with lace and comes to rest just for a moment to gather breath, before travelling on a languid journey, taking time, slowly, glancing the tips of my toes and sparkling the hairs on my legs’.
Oh dear, John Donne will be turning in his grave! But the promise of a weekend away … I wonder what he has in mind?
Back to reality and work. And I need to check my emails and get Imo’s stories.
Quick look on the iPad. Yup, Imo’s email is there with an attachment. Good! No time to read now. Later. Facebook can wait until lunchtime – I am seriously behind.
10.30 am
Coffee time. Lingered a bit with the office girls listening to the gossip. The new technician is causing a stir. Oh these twenty-somethings – they make me feel so old. By the time I was their age, I had run away with Laurent, got married and was living in the south of France. Seems like a lifetime ago now.
Got an hour to fill before the Rubens lecture. Know this off pat, done it a hundred times – it does make me feel sexy and slim looking at his paintings! If the students knew what was going through my head, haha!
Damn! Damn! Fucking Damn! God I am so angry! Just read Imo’s email, quote: … ‘By the way Beth, I was in London yesterday to pick up some props and ran into Lucinda, did you know Laurent is staging a retrospective at White Cube gallery next month … Uzes 2003 … Thought you should know …’ did she just throw that in for fun? I’m being unkind, she’s giving me advance warning, knowing full well how I’ll react… but what the hell … he wouldn’t dare would he?
12.53 pm
Can’t concentrate. Did the lecture on autopilot. Have walked to the park and got a sandwich from Pret. Sitting looking at the ducks splooshing about in the green water. Ripples scattering like my thoughts. He’s bound to show the portraits. It’s his best work, he always said that. It must be twelve years at least since he had an exhibition in the UK. The press will be all over it. But why Uzes, and why now? I need to phone Lucinda, she’ll know more.
“Luce?”
“Beth! Darling, how are you?”
She was just as reassuringly OTT as ever.
“I was expecting you to call. Have you spoken to Imo?”
“What’s all this about Laurent?”
“It’s true sweetie, I heard it from the horse’s mouth myself!”
“What? You’ve seen Laurent?”
“In Paris, at the weekend. Rob flew me over for a dirty weekend!”
Luce and her lifestyle was one of the reasons I wanted away from London. I couldn’t keep up with her. And then there was her penchant for threesomes, which I could not and did not share … So Laurent was still in Paris. Did he still have the studio on Rue St. Jacques where I first met him?
“Oh don’t worry babes! At least the exhibition’s not coming to Edinburgh until next January!”
Oh God! I don’t have that many friends here, and my students are pretty broad-minded but it could be very embarrassing for Miles. Edinburgh was about as far away as we could get. It was an obvious choice for Miles, he did his medic training here and knew the system well. I was a bit reluctant but Imo was here, having moved up with Cameron’s job and she convinced me to move to the frozen north. I was really lucky to land the Art History lecturing job at the FE college; it helped that I could name-drop about Laurent Fournier – he did come in useful eventually. And, I have to admit, that in the autumn light, Edinburgh looks stunning today. The artist in me quivers at the beauty of it sometimes…
“There’s no need to tell Miles, darling. Why don’t you come and stay next month and we can go and see it together … moral support and all that … and you can let your hair down after all those months in that dreary place!”
She had no idea. She thought they all wore kilts, ate haggis and played the bagpipes. When I first told her we were moving, she said ‘Oh my God, what will you eat, how will you manage without Waitrose and M&S?’
Well what now? Do I keep it from Miles? Risk upsetting him when he is so fragile?
This calls for serious action. When I’m stressed, I eat. Real food. Miles says I’m only slim these days because I’m happy. I was more Rubenesque, when I was with Laurent, as it will show in the portraits. OMG! Well it could all be about to change – after work I’m going to cycle round to Valvona and Crolla’s, see if Giuseppe has truffles, and prosciutto tortellini … Cream … Parmesan…a nice Orvieto Classico … Need to get back to work … And I need another story for tonight … seriously stressed !!!!
5 pm
Managed to get through the afternoon somehow and I’ve got all the goodies for dinner. Easy to rustle up in a few minutes. Time to download Imo’s PDF and see what she’s come up with. I’m in need of some TLC tonight. I hope Miles doesn’t sense there’s something up. I’m almost hyperventilating at the thought of Laurent and the exhibition.
6.15 pm
Well, there’s some very juicy stuff in Imo’s folder! And much more to come by the sounds of it – quite made me blush and I thought I was a woman of the world. But I’ll go easy tonight – don’t want to scare him off, haha! There’s a lovely one set in Sri Lanka … we went there for our honeymoon so it’s quite apt, though we didn’t go for the massage option – wish we had! Come to think of it, there’s a box of aromatherapy oils in the bathroom that I got from Lucinda last Xmas …
Writing this quickly before dinner … smells great … Miles is in the shower … He came home with a bunch of pink, sweetheart roses … beautiful…But he was ashen-faced!
“Roses! How lovely, Miles!”
“I’ve been neglecting you, Beth.” He gave me a hug then sat down heavily on the sofa.
“Bad day?”
“The worst.”
“What happened?”
“The baby died.”
“What baby?”
“The one I told you about. The one with the cigarette burns. I was suspicious about his eye movements and requested a scan. Turned out he’d multiple skull fractures with intracranial bleeding. He started having fits … there was nothing they could do.”
“That’s