Eliot and I were a couple (he officially asked me to be his girlfriend when we were out at a bar; in my day, that was a given after a couple of drunken nights), but we weren’t ready to go on vacation together. I had my three kids; he had his friends.
That summer, he and his friends booked a holiday to Malaga, leaving early from Stansted. As we still didn’t have a place to “spend some time alone”, between his flatmates and my children, Eliot asked me if I would like to spend the night with him at the Premier Inn at the airport, an hour and a half away.
It wasn’t exactly the Ritz in Paris, but I said yes straight away. I would have said yes to a wardrobe in Caithness, because I was really crazy about it.
The closest we’d come to a holiday so far had been an ill-fated camping trip. But two weeks earlier, we’d both taken an hour out of our afternoons and taken the Thames Clipper. I looked at Canary Wharf rising above the glittering water and then kissed it. I love London for all its variety, and that afternoon felt like a new one.
In Greenwich we walked along the river hand in hand. At the bottom of some seaweed-covered steps I took off my sandals and started rowing. We kissed again.
“I said the words that were forming behind my lips: ‘I love having sex with you.’ What I really meant was: ‘I love you,'” writes Annabel Bond
But as we sat down for a drink, I realized I only had fifteen minutes before I had to pick up Hector and Maude from their swimming class. So instead, we rested our foreheads together and my knees between his. I pressed my palm over his heart, over the warmth of his chest.
Eliot said, “I think about you every minute of every day. You make me feel special.”
“I feel the same way,” I said.
But our separation was always imminent. I had to get back to my children. He had to get to work. More than that, the 20-year age difference meant that Eliot had barely begun his life, while I was more than halfway through mine. I knew he wanted children one day, and a wife.
In the meantime, we had the Stansted Hotel.
My ex-husband was at home taking care of the kids and I had chosen my outfit carefully: high-waisted jeans and a vintage floral shirt. I wanted to look effortlessly chic, but now I regretted it: I was too hot.
Eliot was wearing a black T-shirt that showed off his pecs and shorts that showed off his legs. As I stroked his arms on the train, a woman my age smiled at me from across the car.
When we got off, I insisted on walking to the hotel, but it turned out that there were several highways.
I felt embarrassed and tried to cover it up by talking pretentiously about the theory that airports are “non-places.”
Before I could get far, Eliot kissed me on the shoulder and pulled me close, probably because he wanted me to stop talking about cultural theories. But the “non-place” of the airport hotel was perfect for Eliot and me. We weren’t “forever.”
The stories of our lives dissolved when we were together; there was no past and no future. I wanted there to be a future, but I couldn’t give him children: I was too old and had three children of my own.
I would have to settle for the Premier Inn at the end of the runway. The hotel was blandly tasteful, but everyone at the check-in desk, including Eliot, had huge suitcases. I had a clean pair of trousers and some make-up in my bag. Ironically, of the two of us, I had the most luggage.
Annabel and Eliot stayed at a Premier Inn just outside Stansted Airport.
Once in the room, I went to wash up. I looked at myself in the mirror, wishing my sense of identity would return. I didn’t know who I was in this new reality.
When I returned to the bedroom, Eliot was lying face down, his eyes closed. I knew he had seen me looking at myself in the mirror, but he didn’t say anything.
Once in bed, my sense of disorientation made everything more intense. Eliot did everything he promised he would do in the wildest of our sexual encounters; it was incredible. Afterwards I turned my head away to keep from crying.
The next morning, before he left, we had sex again while it was still dark. It was even more intimate. We changed positions: him on top, me on top, my hands pressing on his chest, his hands on my breasts.
He asked me to try a position that I never wanted to do in my marriage, but with him I loved it. His body was so big and strong that everything was an erogenous zone for me.
I expected to tire of him with all this sex, but the opposite was happening. I said the words that were forming behind my lips: “I love having sex with you.” What I really wanted to say was: “I love you.”
He didn’t say anything, he just kissed my face for a long time. Then he got up, got dressed and left.
Annabel Bond is a pseudonym. Names have been changed.
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