Sex with the Ex by Tyne O’Connell Read Free Book Online Page B

media dot.com company that was doing really well, and after an especially long line of coke in the loo six weeks after we met, he proposed. I didn’t tell that bit to my parents—about the line of coke, I mean. My dad would have always been making jokey references to it, like “Off to powder your nose, are we, Richard?” in a mad knowing sort of way.
    Martin and Kitty both like to think they’re hip to these things.
    Hip and liberal, that’s my parents.
    Martin really took to Richard. Kitty adored him, too, although I don’t think she would have been as chilled about his cocaine usage. “Drugs dampen the passions,” and all that. I suppose I wasn’t that chilled about it either, to tell the truth, but we were a perfect fit in every other way. Besides, I’d rather have a husband coked to the eyeballs on Colombian marching powder than boring me senseless reading the Financial Times out loud to me at breakfast—and he only did that a few times.
    No, the more I thought about it, the less reason I could find as to why Richard and I had allowed our love for one another to end up in divorce. He was really kind and generous, and who doesn’t appreciate expensive gifts—I’m joking (well, partly). No, seriously, I don’t actually go for rich guys, because their sense of entitlement irritates me. Dating a guy with Entitlement Syndrome is like going to an awards ceremony for Biggest Ego. You can hear the drumroll from the moment your date begins, while a montage of their lifetime of achievements rolls on throughout the evening.
    I go for men who are easy to talk to, make me laugh and don’t count the cost of every little kindness. I also like them to be quite fit and have a full head of hair. Richard scored top marks on all those points—especially the laughter thing. He exuded enthusiasm and had this energy for life and capacity for fun that sort of grabbed you and dragged you along. He lived every moment as if he was making history, and I loved that. “You’ve got to make it count, Lolly!” he’d always say. He loved making every moment count whether it was reading me poetry at breakfast, or turning up with cereal, a bowl, milk, sugar and spoon one night after I’d done a double shift and I was pretty certain nothing could make me laugh. Richard made me believe that things really wouldturn out okay, that tomorrow really would be better and the mundane really could be fabulous.
    Not that he was too shabby in the bedroom! He may not have been as athletic as David, but we had chemistry together that I had never experienced before or since. For a dot.com boy he was really quite passionate when it came to the ways of the Kama Sutra.
    And that’s the funny thing—or the not-so-funny thing. I told everyone—including Richard—that I wanted a divorce a year after our wedding because the passion was gone. I know that probably sounded shallow to everyone other than my parents. It definitely sounds shallow to me now, but at the time I suppose I did put a lot of store in passion.
    Kitty and Martin have a lot to answer for.
    Besides, it wasn’t just the passion that had gone. We were fighting all the time, partly because his dot.com had bombed and he’d lost everything—and I mean everything. We’d had to sell our beautiful house in Chelsea, including Jean’s rabbit chalet. And we had to trade our cars in for tube passes and I had to go back to work at Posh House and chuck the interior-design course Richard had begged me to take so that we could turn our home into a dot.com meeting place for his business colleagues. I didn’t mind about chucking the interior-design course, which was crappier than crap anyway, but I did miss the house and the cars.
    But here’s the thing, I could have put up with the arguments, the poverty, the strap-hanging journey to work on the tube and even the cocaine, if I truly believed