Hello readers. A few things before we get started. First up, this is a fantasy set in a world with no accidental pregnancies and no nasty STDs, so the characters aren't as careful as you might otherwise expect them to be.
Secondly, I think that there's probably scope for further stories in this setting. Accordingly, the lead-in to the story is perhaps longer than I might otherwise have chosen, in order to set the scene properly. If you just want the dirty stuff, you can probably skip to about halfway through.
If you think that you might want to hear more in this setting, please do let me know. Helpful feedback is always welcome.
I hope you enjoy it.
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It's fair to say I was sick of London. I'd been sitting behind a desk for the best part of a decade and in truth had been sleepwalking through my job for the last few of those years. Money was short, my rented flat was a dump which was hardly worth half of the fortune I was paying for it each month, and my love-life had gone the way of the dodo. Things needed to change.
I started to peruse the job listings without much hope; the only decently-paying jobs I seemed to be qualified for were so similar to the one I already had that there would be absolutely no point switching. I soon gave up on the usual recruitment websites and cast the net further afield; newspapers, magazines, social media. Hell, I even took to looking at the postcards in the window of my local newsagents. Then one Monday morning, slumped in my seat on the tube train on the way in to the office, I spotted the remains of a Sunday newspaper and its supplements on the seat opposite me. Flicking through a travel supplement showing holidays that I couldn't afford even if I sold every single item I owned, I saw a miniscule advert:
'Efficient people-person wanted to manage overseas estate.'
That was it. No details; just those words and an email address. I certainly considered myself to be efficient, when suitably motivated, and I could get along with anyone when I really put my mind to it. But working overseas? I thought about it -- what was holding me here in the UK? My parents had long-since taken early retirement to the south of France (blasting through my inheritance as they did so, thanks very much for that) and I was an only child. I had a few mates in the city and kept in occasional contact with friends from school and university, but there really wasn't anyone that I felt I couldn't live without. I pasted my CV into an email, sent it on its way, and then completely forgot about it.
Three weeks later, as I browsed the ready-meal options at my local Sainsbury's on the way home (leaning towards something in the Taste the Difference range because you only live once, right?) when an incoming call from a withheld number appeared on my phone. I sighed and accepted the call, fully prepared for some telesales bullshit. Not this time.
'Am I speaking to Joe Barclay?'
'Yes, that's right.'
'My name's Bridget. I'm calling from XXXX about your application for the position we are advertising'
No, of course, she didn't say 'XXXX'. This is me being discrete -- you'll see why later. Anyway, it turned out that Bridget was the first of three people I spoke to about the peculiarly vague job advert in the travel section of a Sunday newspaper. She asked a few general questions, I provided some very specific answers -- I was able to, because the questions were all about me, of course. A few days later, in my lunch break, I had a further interview via Teams with someone further up the chain at XXXX (See, like I said - discrete). By this point, I still knew very little about the job in question; further information would be available if I was successful at the final interview -- this time with the owner of the company.
A few more days passed, during which I became almost frantic in my curiosity. I'd looked up the company in question, but there didn't seem to be any information available other than its registration with Companies House. And so I waited, as patiently as I could. I'd been given no information about when the big boss would contact me -- when I'd asked about this, I was told that people like him didn't really have to work to a schedule -- when they wanted to speak to you, they'd let you know. Besides, they said, they were still running background checks on me. I started to think that my new boss could be some kind of supervillain. Even underground lairs hidden in extinct volcanoes need someone to make sure the cleaners turn up on time, right?
Depending on how you feel about billionaires, you could argue that I wasn't too far from the truth.
I got the call at about ten past eleven at night. I'd had a couple of beers at home and was working through the third series of Battlestar Galactica in my boxers. In theory, this should not have been ideal preparation for a life-changing telephone call. As it happens, perhaps spurred on by the beer, it seems that I gave the interview of a lifetime. I was a little too buzzed to be as impressed by the guy on the other end of the line as I should have been. He'd invented a handful of things that you have definitely used in your own lives, although you might not know it. No, it's not Bill Gates. And no, it's not one of those lunatics with the spaceships. Stop trying to figure it out. Suffice it to say that he has more money than one person would ever need to spend in a thousand lifetimes. And he's interviewing me for a job.
I know what you're thinking. 'How has this happened?'
The thing is, this guy -- and given what I just said before, this seems ludicrous -- is pretty normal. When I explained up-front that I'd had a couple of beers, he asked what brand. We even bonded over Battlestar Galactica (Starbuck: hot but scary, Number Six: incredibly hot but really fucking scary, President Roslyn: absolutely yes). Hey, I said he's pretty normal -- I didn't say anything about him not being a geek. He explained that he'd given instructions for the job advert to be deliberately vague because he knew that if the actual details of the job were included, it would take a decade to read the CVs of everyone who applied.
Are you ready for this?
He wanted someone to keep an eye on one of his properties -- an island in the Maldives. Yes, the actual fucking Maldives. A collection of honeymoon-perfect islands in the middle of the Indian ocean -- blue skies, white sands, turquoise seas. He'd bought it on a whim (because that's what you do when you're a billionaire, apparently); he had an estate newly up and running on the island, with a full complement of staff from the nearby islands and accommodation for up to 20 guests. He said he didn't use the place himself very often but wanted to offer it out to business associates to visit when he needed to keep them sweet or for friends when they just needed to get away from things for a while. He talked about the island for a bit, but if I'm completely honest, I was too busy daydreaming from the word 'Maldives' onwards. Despite this, we got on really well. I tried to sell myself as best as I could, but I think the most important thing to him was that he felt he could trust me. It's possible that this was because my life was clearly so pathetic that he thought I would do absolutely anything to not make a hash of the opportunity of a lifetime.
The upshot is, he offered me the job then and there, and I was mostly successful in an attempt to not burst into tears.
I arrived on the island (No, I'm not going to tell you what it's called. Stop asking.) in mid-October. It turns out that this is towards the end of the monsoon season, so I had plenty of time to get settled in before there was much chance of any guests arriving. The estate has a helipad but for the likes of me the usual mode of arrival and departure is by speedboat from one of the other islands. We had a bit of a wait before setting off because the weather, and therefore the sea, was pretty rough. But when I did eventually arrive, the island was everything I'd dreamed of; stunning beaches, lush tropical forests, even its own series of picture-perfect waterfalls. The work at first took a little getting used to but it didn't take long to see how things were and how they could be improved. The staff, almost all of whom were middle-aged and married, were remarkably friendly to this outsider, as well as being open to new ideas. As estate manager, I had to be available at all times (at least until I could figure out who was up to the job of being my deputy) but I still found plenty of time to explore the island. I also made the most of the opportunities afforded to me to get in shape for the first time in a looooong time.
By the start of the new year, as the dry season approached, not only did I have the estate running at what I considered to be peak efficiency, but I was tanned, fit, and the happiest I had ever been. Sure, I was missing the company of people close to my own age, and boy was I need of a fuck, but all in all I considered myself to be one lucky bastard. We were ready for guests.
Ah, the guests. I've always prided myself on being able to read the room and adapt myself accordingly. Well, that was a skill that got a pretty decent work-out in my new position. To start with, the majority of our guests were business associates of the boss. 'The boss'. Hmm. I'm going to need something else to call him. You know the TV series Magnum, right? Mustachioed detective lives on an estate in a tropical paradise run by an Englishman on behalf of their mysterious employer? Yeah, so I'm gonna call my new employer 'Robin' as in 'Robin Masters'. That'll work. And no, I won't answer to the name 'Higgins'.
Anyway, these business associates were exactly what you'd expect them to be -- middle-aged guys wearing appalling clothes, with appalling manners, saying appalling things about -- and often to -- each other. They were rarely off their phones to other appalling middle-aged guys, talking about deals and contracts and all the other stuff which could not be of any less fucking interest to me if they tried. But here's the thing, and I know it's probably what you want to hear about; they always brought their wives with them.
Oh man, the wives! How do these filthy rich bastards get such hot wives? Oh yeah, I think I just answered that question myself, didn't I.
After a while, I managed to get an answer from one of these women about why they stay with their husbands. I mean, it's clear that they have absolutely no interest in each other, so what's the deal? It turns out that the secret behind a happy marriage, at least to someone you detest, is affairs. Lots and lots of affairs. But the key is that although everyone knows everyone else is having affairs, no-one does it blatantly. You never have an affair with someone in your own social circle, or even in your own class if you can avoid it. It sounds like a cliché that businessmen have affairs with their secretaries, while their wives have affairs with the poolboy or the tennis coach. But I kid you not, that is exactly what happens. It's like all these people have the same motto -- don't ask, don't tell.
The whole rotten set-up isn't without its double-standards of course. The middle-aged businessmen can get as fat as they like, and wear their awful golfing clothes, and smoke cigars that make them smell like sweeping out time at the stables, but the women have to stay fit and tanned and fashionable. They have to stay desirable. Because no rich arsehole wants to have a wife less attractive than any other rich arsehole.
A couple of weeks after the first guests arrived, one of the rich arseholes had to leave because of an emergency. Don't ask me what it was; maybe a deal was in danger of falling through, maybe some shares had dropped in value, maybe there was a sale on at Pringle. I don't fucking know, and I don't fucking care, but while we waved off the rich businessman arsehole on the first available helicopter, his wife stayed behind.
In many ways, Sarah seemed to be like most of the other wives that visited the island; she was athletic, tanned and quite lovely. Beyond that, she was effortlessly stylish in a 1950s film star kind of way; I could easily imagine her having cocktails on a yacht moored off Monte Carlo with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Her golden tan served to highlight her deep brown eyes and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. I knew that she was in her early forties, but she looked considerably younger than that. It's fair to say I developed quite a crush on Sarah pretty much as soon as she arrived.
