Free Love in a Warm Climate by Helena Frith-Powell Page A

(obligatory for any Chelsea fan moving abroad). Classical music blares out from it. A familiar figure is in the middle of the screen, wearing black trousers and a white shirt. His hair is back-lit, making it lookeven more wild and curly than it normally is. He is staring intently at me with sparkling blue eyes. It is Johnny Fray, someone I met at work and who has since become a huge film star.
    Emily is wrong: he was never my boyfriend. But he might as well have been, I never forgot him. I knew him for almost two years and lusted after him for even longer.
    The first day I met him was the day he came for a job interview at Drake’s, the hotel I was working at. He looked me in the eyes and smiled. Two thoughts came into my head almost at the same time. The first one was “Oh my god, his eyes are the most incredible blue I have ever seen”. The second was “Why did I pick today to wear these trousers that make me look like a maiden aunt and forget my lip gloss?”
    He started telling me about drama school where he was studying at the time.
    â€œWhat sorts of things do you study at drama school?” I asked him.
    â€œToday we learnt all about how to kiss without really kissing,” he said. “What they call ‘on-screen kissing’.”
    â€œOh? Any tips?”
    â€œI wouldn’t have thought as a hotel manager you would ever need to fake a kiss,” he laughed. “But I’d be happy to show you if you like.”
    â€œThat’s not part of the job description,” I replied, ignoring his flirtatious tone, trying my best to sound professional and not give away that what I was really thinking was how I wanted to run my fingers through his thick black hair and try any kind of kiss with him at all.
    He started work the following night and fitted in right away. The clients loved him, especially the women: he was attractive, efficient and good-natured . Even Lady Butterdish, the hotel’s notoriously difficult and grumpy owner, was mesmerised. She was actually called Lady de Buerre, but Johnny Fray nicknamed her Butterdish because he knew it would annoy her if she ever found out and also because it made everyone else laugh.
    One time I overheard Lady Butterdish invite him to spend a weekend on her yacht in St Tropez. I was so relieved when I heard he had said no.
    I started to look forward to his shifts and hated it when he wasn’t there. Every time I saw him I liked him more. I think one of the major things that attracted me to him was his drive and ambition. I had never seen anyone work so hard, even if this was just his way of making some extra cash. And of course his looks: he reminded me of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights – dark and swarthy, with a mass of black curly hair.
    Johnny was tall, about six foot two, and well-built. But he had the most delicate hands, like a pianist’s – small with long elegant fingers. Sometimes Ihad to stop myself looking at them and wondering what they would feel like over my body.
    But it wasn’t just his looks that I liked. He was also an amazingly kind person. I remember once when I gave up smoking we went into a newsagent’s together so I could buy a packet of chewing-gum to take my mind off the cigarettes. Johnny took the whole box from its stand and bought it for me in a typically generous and flamboyant gesture. And he was more mature than other men of his age. His parents had both died when he was just six years old and that was probably partly why he was so determined to do well in life, he had no one to look after him.
    Looking back on it now it seems insane that nothing really happened between us. There was so much obvious attraction there and yet it was almost like every time we got close, something got in the way. One week we were out for a drink after work, alone for the first time in several weeks. We had just settled down for a drink when my phone rang. It was my mother, frantic because husband