A Minor Indiscretion by Carole Matthews Page B

he has any hair on his chest and blush.
    I sit up and hug my knees, turning away from him. It’s impossible to buy clothes once you are over thirty-five. You fall into a big hole somewhere between Top Shop and Debenhams. I never want to look like mutton dressed as lamb and spurn crop-tops and Capri pants, which look good on no one over sixteen anyway. But I’m twenty years away from A-line skirts and flatties. My dresssense is all at sea, and I buy safe middle-of-the-road clothing that will last from Marks & Spencer to anchor myself and, consequently, spend my life feeling beige. Jemma has a wonderful dress sense and combines Karen Millen with drapey bits and pieces from the 1930s that she borrows from her shop and would make me look like a bag lady.
    â€œDo you watch Big Brother, Christian?”
    He sits up and shuffles forward so that he is right behind me at my shoulder. “Big Brother?”
    â€œMmmm.”
    â€œSometimes. Why?”
    â€œI just wondered.” We’ve had tea and cake just the once, and I’m taking this as a good sign. In fact, the day has been brilliant. Christian is very attentive and good company. And if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m married and do in the odd moment feel like his mother, then I’d probably be in seventh heaven.
    We haven’t touched. Not really. Just the occasional lingering of fingers on fabric. The hint of a hand in the small of my back. We are self-conscious in our needs. But it’s there between us all the time. The desire to is palpable. I want him to touch me and am scared that he might. I want to touch him and daren’t. I want to caress his cheek, his skin which looks soft and strong and has no wrinkles. Not one. I want to trace the outline of his pouting lips. I want to know what he feels like and dread what that knowledge will mean.
    â€œI’ll say it before you do.” Christian smiles sadly at me. “You should be going home.”
    I look at my watch. “Oh, my good God,” I say. “I should. I have to collect Elliott.” He knows all about my children now, and their trials and tribulations. I tried not to go on and on about them and Christian tried to look interested. But it’s clear that we’re about a million miles apart in our respective lifestyles.
    He stands up and holds out his hands. I take them and he pulls me to my feet. “Let’s walk through the Temperate House,” he says. “It’ll warm us up.”
    As if I need it! Christian takes my hand and leads the way and this time he doesn’t let go.
    The Temperate House is a huge building, a light, airy framework of white filigree ironwork banding a spider’s web of delicate glass panes. Inside it is dense, crowded, a jungle of rampantgreenery all crowding, living, thrusting and vying for space. The overwhelming smell in the Temperate House is damp, musky and earthy. It’s too heavy to inhale, its weight envelops you and seeps into you, hot teasing fingers of humid air easing inside your clothes. D. H. Lawrence would call it “fecund,” if I remember any of my A-level coursework correctly. How can foliage feel so sexual? Perhaps it’s all that sap rising. Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps it’s that Alan Titchmarsh thing again.
    â€œThere’s a platform at the top,” Christian informs me. “We can walk all the way round.” And he leads me up a narrow winding wrought-iron staircase until we are high above the plants, in among the tops of the trees on a vertiginous ledge. If you look down, you can see patterns and whorls in the fronds of the ferns and you can reach out and touch the bark of trees that really would be more at home in a rain forest. There is no one else here as intrepid as us and, as a consequence, we are totally alone suspended high above the greenery.
    We are leaning over the rail, and Christian has his arm around my shoulders, pointing out flowers and