Free Kissing Toads by Jemma Harvey Page A

lodge in Zermatt. I don’t ski much – I’m not supposed to risk injury: no TV presenter looks good on crutches – but the weather was fabulous and I sunbathed at the bottom of the piste, moisturised and UV-screened against wrinkles and skin cancer. Alex skis well, having learned when he was in nappies, and looks good in the gear. I had some great new kit too, though I didn’t intend to spoil it with overuse – tight Lycra pants and padded jacket, cream with pink ribbing. There were paparazzi around and the pictures of us both looked almost too gorgeous to be true. Snow-sports suit Alex: they add a flush to his golden skin and rumple his black hair. (I won’t let him wear those woolly hats that make everyone look like a nerd.) Skiing puts him in a good mood, though he was sulking a bit about my trip to Scotland.
    â€˜You’re jealous,’ I said, ‘because I’m going to be hanging out with the sexiest, most famous rock star of all time.’
    â€˜Of course I’m not jelly!’ Alex will use these abbreviations. In every relationship, you have to compromise with the other person’s irritating little habits. That’s one of his. ‘Anyway, they say he’s got positively bloated since he came off the drugs. Like, gross .’
    â€˜That girl in the kiss-and-tell piece didn’t mention it,’ I pointed out.
    â€˜She wouldn’t, would she? No one wants to admit they slept with a whale. Besides, that happened at least five years ago – it just took her ages to decide to sell her story. He’s probably put the pudding on since.’
    Alex always calls flab ‘pudding’. If he thinks I’ve put on a pound or two he’ll pat my thigh, or my tummy, and accuse me of ‘growing pudding’. It’s a bit irritating but it does make me avoid over-eating and try to go to the gym regularly.
    â€˜He’s married again,’ I said. ‘Some model. Spanish, I think.’
    â€˜He must be absolutely rolling in it,’ Alex said, with the unmistakable envy the mildly rich always feel for the filthy rich. ‘Honey-money. There’ll always be beautiful models queuing up to marry him, even if he’s wallowing in lard and plugged full of collagen to puff up his wrinkles.’
    Alex thinks he’ll never be fat, never be old. His problem, of course, wasn’t sexual jealousy; as Brie had said, he simply felt neglected.
    â€˜You’ll have to come for a visit,’ I said placatingly. ‘So you can see for yourself.’
    Secretly, I was feeling a bit Alexed out.
    I do love him, that goes without saying, but you can have too much of anyone, no matter how beautiful they are. It’s like doing one of those diets where you only eat one kind of food – bananas, or cabbage soup: after a week of it you never want to see another banana or liquidised cabbage leaf again. I’d had an intensive diet of Alex all through Christmas and skiing, hanging out with each other non-stop, and although of course I would want to see him again very soon I needed a break to appreciate him. I felt a bit guilty about it, so I determined to be extra nice to him first, not objecting when he wanted to watch awful stuff on TV ( Airport and reality hairdressing), or ate peanut butter and Frosties for breakfast, or sat around cuddling a giant pink fur rabbit, christened Harvey, which was his long-standing security blanket. I was nice to him in bed too, doing all his favourite things, like tickling his scrotum with an ostrich feather and letting him suck my toes. (I won’t list the rest: they’re even more embarrassing.)
    I’ve never really got the toe thing. We all walk around barefoot some of the time, and your soles get hard and dusty, and no matter how many pedicures you have feet are still – well, feet . There to be stepped on and kicked around; not major erogenous zones. Whenever Alex goes down on me, as in that far