My friend Jenny is the most delightful lady. In her mid-30's, like me, she has striking good looks, dark hair and flashing eyes, a wicked grin and a ridiculous bubbly sense of humour that makes her great company. She is also totally scatty, has no idea of the meaning of the word punctuality, and is decidedly unusual.
She has two small children and a figure to die for - tall, slender, supple, willowy with slight but perfect breasts. She dresses superbly, and can afford to, for the family business is extremely successful. Around where we live, in a beach area, pretty much anything goes, but Jenny is always dressed head to foot in Gucci or Armani, and has the kind of casual elegance that allows her to get away with it when others are slopping around in old T-shirts. She comes from a fairly humble background herself but has acquired no airs - I have never heard anybody bitch about Jenny, despite the million dollar beach home, the penthouse in town, or the launch (the boat cost well over a million, but Jenny made the cushions herself). She is just too normal - too nice - to bitch about.
As you can imagine, Jenny and I are good friends although we don't socialise as families because with Jenny's wonderful lifestyle comes one enormous drawback - her husband Brian. I suppose Brian must have been attractive once - well, I know he was because I've seen the wedding photo's - but he is certainly not that way now. He is grossly fat, rude, unfriendly and treats poor Jenny like dirt. I stopped for a cup of tea once when he was there and was so appalled by his language and the way he talked to my friend I swore I never would be in the same room as him again. His mother seems to encourage this, and as she lives close by he gets his own way. I wouldn't like to say whether or not he actually hits poor Jenny - I've never seen any signs of it - but the verbal rubbish is quite bad enough.
Although I am careful never to interfere in anyone else's marriage, I have wondered why she puts up with it. I honestly don't think it's the money - I think she really and truly stays with him for the sake of the children. At public events which Brian can't be bothered with, she is sometimes accompanied by a charming lawyer from the city, and for a while I wondered if he was her 'consolation' until I discovered he was gay. It seems that Brian despises him for this but reckons she's OK with him and it gets Brian out of any need to be even mildly socially acceptable - for example, at public functions. I can't help going on about him but he makes me so angry - and he makes my skin crawl. The thought of poor Jenny having to sleep with that every night is revolting.
I don't actually think she likes sleeping with him much either. She led a pretty sheltered life before she met and married Brian, and she knows I didn't. Over a quiet bottle of wine one evening I suggested that she actually deserved a man who expressed his love for her (thereby breaking my own rule) and she said yes, it would be nice but she could never have an affair. I asked if she were afraid of being found out and she said yes, Brian would kill her, but that it was more a question of what would happen inside her. She felt that if she were to sleep with another man it would break the taboo and she didn't know what might happen. That was why her architect was safe. He was funny, kind, gentle and thoughtful but totally uninterested in her sexually. As you can imagine, I grieved for my friend.
Brian travels abroad a good deal - he has an international agricultural firm - and I am certain that he is not so considerate to his wife when he is away. I know from Jenny that 'when he has to have it, he has to have it' and no-one else has any choice in the matter so I'd be amazed if he were faithful. Those spells when he is away are little holidays for Jenny - you can see her relax, and I see more of her and we enjoy a good few girly evenings once her children are in bed.
It was during one of those evenings that we got around to talking about Bali. I have been there a couple of times, once while travelling and once with my husband, but Jenny hasn't. She has travelled to the States a lot and around Europe, and even done a safari in Africa (Brian likes shooting things), but he has always refused point blank to go to Asia. 'Too poor, too backward, too fucking boring' was how he put it in his typically charming fashion. He valued the market for his products in Japan but sent somebody else there to deal with 'the slant-eyes', so Jenny had never gone. We have a fair few things around our house from Thailand and Indonesia, and she was always admiring them and wanting to go.
Anyway, this particular evening she was telling me that in the coming school holidays her parents up North would be taking the boys for eight days, which was the longest she's ever been without them. Their granddad had been planning all sorts of treats from taking them fishing to four wheel drive treasure hunts around the farm, and as far as I could tell from their grandmother's intentions which all seemed to revolve around the meals she would cook, they would come back at least twice as heavy!
I thought she and Brian might seize the opportunity for some time together, and so had she, but apparently this had been dismissed with 'That's the most stupid fucking idea I've ever heard' and he had declared his intention of going 'home' to Eastern Europe to see what sort of a mess was being made of the family interests there. She didn't want to go, but then, as he said, he hadn't asked her too - so Jenny was left to her own devices. 'Sounds like your chance to see Asia,' I said casually. 'That's just what had occurred to me,' she said. 'Will you come too - I'd hate to be on my own.'
It hadn't actually occurred to me to go too, but the time she was talking about was not busy in my own business, and I'd actually set myself the goal of taking a bit more time off every year than I had done in the past - I could feel myself reaching burn-out. I wondered if my husband could come too, but that wasn't really fair on Jenny. Perhaps he wouldn't mind? After all, he was as keen for me to take breaks as I was, but his own job only allowed him four weeks holiday a year so there were bound to be times when I was free and he wasn't. By the end of the evening, we had agreed we should go for it.
As I thought, my husband was only too pleased for me to go and get some R&R after a particularly hectic few months in my business, and while he pronounced himself totally jealous of the idea of Bali we had been there recently enough for him not to mind. 'Just don't go back to Thailand without me,' was his concern. Brian was considerably more difficult, I gathered, but eventually Jenny got a 'Do what you fucking well like' after much moaning, and she was happy to take that as permission.
My previous trips had been to the backpacker's area of Kuta, but this time we thought Sanur would be more in order - the luxury hotel area further out of Denpasar. This was, after all, more about R&R than serious exploration (although I promised Jenny we'd get out to the hills as well).
