Wintering British nobles of the 19th century who came here to escape the dreary English weather set the snooty tone by paving a marble walkway to run alongside the beach. It goes all the way from the airport right into the city. We pass people rollerblading on it as we drive along. The sight fills me with a happy, carefree buzz. Nowhere else in the world can you rollerblade from the beach all the way to the airport if you so desire.
I hold my hair plastered to the sides of my face and direct a face-splitting grin at Noah. The wind has pushed his hair away from his, making his cheekbones look cut and chiseled. I stare at him. He looks like a movie star, a god, an angel, or something impossibly gorgeous.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, still grinning uncontrollably. I’ve never been this happy in my life before.
He smiles back.
I turn away and gaze contentedly at the blue-green ocean. I have never been to the French Riviera before, and this one-day break with Noah is just pure magic.
Actually, it has been pretty magical ever since Papa left.
I’ve spent every wonderful, lust-filled night with Noah. I also bought a pay-as-you-go cellphone, and the sensation of having him at the other end of my phone at any time of the day is simply exhilarating. It is like we are truly boyfriend and girlfriend. On the second day I even took Sergei out to the park to meet him. Yeah, Sergei completely adored Noah.
‘Meet my son, Sergei.’
Noah smiled. ‘He’s as gorgeous as his mother.’
‘Shake hands, Sergei,’ I told my boy, and beamed proudly when he lifted his paw to be shaken by Noah.
‘He’s well trained,’ Noah noted, impressed.
Proudly, I told him that I never trained Sergei. In fact, when he was a small puppy he was the naughtiest, wildest devil you ever saw. He was just terrible. I would come into my bathroom to find that he had shredded the toilet paper to bits. The whole bathroom floor was covered in it, and he’d be sitting there with an expression that said, so what are you going to do about it? Nothing was safe from him. He would come to me with something he shouldn’t have in his mouth and challenge me to chase him for it.
Everybody told me I was spoiling him. I shouldn’t let him sleep with me. I should cage him. I should send him to obedience classes. I was ruining him, but I refused, because I didn’t want him to feel that he was my little slave. Sit, stand, or roll over when I told him to. To me he was my baby. Besides, every time I went to scold him, he would look at me with his great big puppy dog eyes and I would melt.
He was my heart and I loved him.
When he broke Baba’s glasses, Papa was furious, but I had no concern other than he might end up swallowing a fragment of glass. He remained a thorn in all the servants’ sides until he was about a year old. Then he slowly started to change. He grew up. He became so good I didn’t even need a lead to take him out. He knew what made me happy and he immediately did that. We were so bonded, words were not necessary. He instinctively knew if a man coming towards me had bad intentions, and he’d growl and bare his teeth until the man backed off.
Noah laughed. ‘A dog after my own heart.’
Afterwards, we bought hotdogs. Sergei had his with no mustard, I had mine with just one line, and Noah very bravely had two.
‘That’s where the kick comes from,’ he said wolfing it all down easily.
In the evenings we went to restaurants outside London and we behaved as if we were just another ordinary couple having a night out. No bodyguards, drivers, or fear of anything. We fed each other little bits of food, we laughed, and we hired rooms in little-known countryside hotels. We spent all night having wild sex then, wrapped up in each other’s arms, we talked the rest of the night away. Well, I did most of the talking. He’s not much of a talker.
And now here we are in Nice.
The lazy October sunshine is deliciously yellow and warm. The architecture and buildings are so Mediterranean and baroque you could be forgiven for thinking you are in Italy. Nice is also the place some of the best Russians families came to so they needed a house of worship that was worthy of their status. Hence, Nice boasts one of the finest Russian orthodox churches outside of Russia. Baba has asked me to pay a visit to it and light a candle for Papa.
‘Can we go to the church? I promised my grandmother that I would light a candle.’