Yay! Papa is away!

It is the third day with him away and Noah and I are on a day trip to Nice. Blue seas, blue skies, and gorgeous sunshine. The car Noah hired is an open-top, green BMW, and the wind rushes into my hair as we coast along the Promenade des Anglais.

Wintering British nobles of the 19^th 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.’

‘Sure,’ Noah agrees easily, ‘but first breakfast.’

Breakfast is socca at a stall in the Cours Saleya market in the colorful old town. It is brought piping hot in the back of a scooter by a man. Turns out it is a traditional peasant snack and is basically a very large chick pea pancake with a lots of pepper. It is served on paper with no cutlery, and is surprisingly delicious served with a glass of local rosé.

Feeling pleasantly tipsy after the one and a half glasses of rosé so early in the morning, I lean into Noah’s hardness as we pass by a myriad of sounds and sights. We walk together, our bodies sometimes touching on the vehicle-free streets. The sun beats down on my head and I can taste the salty air on my lips. In the butcher’s window I see a tiny whole dead piglet tied up with string.

‘Oh my God. Look! Why would anyone keep something so gruesome in the window?’ I exclaim with surprise.

‘That’s prochetta. An Italian style specialty. It’s actually a hollowed-out pig filled with chunks of meat, fat, herbs, and lots of garlic before being roasted on a spit. They slice right through it and serve it in large thin slices as you would luncheon meat.

‘Ugh. Food with faces. Just no.’

‘It’s actually very delicious,’ he tells me.

‘Why did you buy a house here?’ I ask him nosily.

He shrugs. ‘The weather is pleasant and I like that there is a big Russian community here.’

‘Do you speak French?’

‘Nope. I get by with English and Russian. Do you?’

‘I studied it at school, but I’m rusty.’

‘Good, you can do all the speaking from now on,’ he says.

‘Tell me, what were you like as a child?’ I press. Left to his own devices, he says very little. I want to know everything there is to know about him.

He gives my question some thought as if no one had ever asked him such a question before. ‘Serious. Eager to please. Loyal, very loyal. And you?’

There it is again. Turning the conversation back to me. I look at him behind my eyelashes. Never mind, he cannot hide forever. Little by little I will teach him to trust me and reveal himself to me.

‘I was a plump, terrible, little thing. In the summer months I lay on the cool floor totally naked and refused to get dressed, and in the winter I ran around looking for places to hide so I could jump out with a great roar and frighten my mother and Baba.’

He laughs.

I smile. ‘Yup, I did that. They would pretend to scream and I thought that was hilarious, and I would fall about laughing. I mean, I would be clutching my stomach and rolling on the ground.’

‘I would have liked to have seen that,’ he says, smiling. ‘I’ll have to get you to hide in one of my cupboards.’

‘It won’t work. I lost the ability to laugh like that. Now I find it almost impossible to laugh uncontrollably.’

He stares into my eyes. ‘I never laughed like that even when I was a child.’

‘Why?’

‘Probably because my mother was always so sad. She never got over being discarded by my father.’

‘Do you ever miss Russia?’ I ask softly.

‘No.’

‘No?’

He shakes his head. ‘When I was younger I used to dream of my childhood days. I could even remember taking my first steps holding on to my mother’s finger. The memories came so close I could feel them breathing into my mouth, but there is nothing left of them now. The house, the people, the memories. They’re all gone … I don’t think of them anymore.’