Zoe’s Modern Life

Most days in Marbella began in exactly the same way: a huge family breakfast, followed by what had somehow become my daily portion of churros and Nutella.

It was my birthday, after all.

Well, my birthday was technically still two weeks away, but I was on holiday, so the celebrations had officially begun. I had also taken a break from Mounjaro.

Did I mention this was also the summer I gained 14 lbs?

After breakfast, we would head back to the room, cover ourselves in sunscreen and make our way to the pool. Whenever George went to kids’ club or disappeared with his cousins, Paul and I grabbed some precious alone time.

There are enormous benefits to going on holiday with a large family when you have an eight-year-old. It’s essentially free childcare, only with people you vaguely trust.

Our afternoons were usually spent wandering around the shops or having lunch in a local restaurant, and most evenings we went out for dinner.

Paul’s business partner lives in Estepona, so one afternoon my brother took George while Paul and I went to meet him for lunch. I hadn’t seen him since George was about one, so we had a lot to catch up on.

He collected us in his Aston Martin convertible.

There’s something undeniably fun about driving around Marbella in an Aston Martin with the roof down and the sun shining. It gives you a brief glimpse into how the other half live before you remember that the car isn’t yours.

He first took us to see the restaurant Paul had asked him to book for our big family meal at the end of the holiday. It was meant to be the official celebration of my 40th birthday, despite the fact that I was still only 39 and had already been celebrating for several days.

We then went to a beach bar, where I ate some of the best pulled pork tacos I’ve ever had and drank definitely one mojito too many.

During lunch, Paul’s business partner let slip that Paul was planning to buy my birthday present while we were in Marbella because it made sense with the tax back.

“Hey, it’s practically printing money,” I laughed.

He gave me a look that simply said, Do not push your luck.

But eek.

I knew exactly what Paul’s plan meant.

The following day, with the cat now well and truly out of the bag, Paul took George and me to Puerto Banús.

We started with lunch at Jack’s Smokehouse, and if you’re ever in the area, you need to go. It’s an American-style, family-friendly restaurant, but the food was genuinely unreal.

We were seated in the window, which was perfect for one of my favourite hobbies: people-watching.

Paul and I ordered beers, and George had a Fanta. Paul chose the Double Royal Smokehouse Burger with truffle chilli Parmesan fries and onion rings. George ordered a kids’ burger and fries, then ate more than half of Paul’s onion rings because apparently other people’s food always tastes better.

I had the lobster roll, which was to die for.

Then I ordered a cocktail for dessert—partly because I was on holiday and partly because I needed some Dutch courage for what I knew was coming next.

When we had finished eating, Paul said the magic words:

“Shall we go to Louis Vuitton?”

My imposter syndrome arrived before the bill did.

Before I continue, I feel I need to make something very clear:

I am not a posh twat.

Not every day of my life involves lobster and Louis Vuitton. In fact, this was the first time in 39 years, 50 weeks and four days that it had involved either.

I’m far more likely to be found wearing a Next hoodie and shopping in Aldi.

I grew up on a council estate in Manchester, and I still live on an ex-council estate in Manchester. My husband and I work hard, and we play hard. Running your own business can be feast or famine. At the moment, we’re fortunate enough to be enjoying the good times, but we’re always only one client away from tightening our belts, putting our heads down and doing whatever it takes to meet our commitments.

We’ve learned the hard way that life can change in a heartbeat.

So, when the good times come, we enjoy them.

Before entering Louis Vuitton, George received another serious talk about how to behave inside the shop.

I was armed with my pre-loved Gucci bag from Vestiaire Collective, which I was essentially using as camouflage. Hopefully, it would convince everyone that I was native to the world of luxury handbags and hadn’t just wandered in after drinking a cocktail with my lunch.

Between the Gucci bag and my Dutch courage, I felt almost convincing.

The saleswoman greeted us, and I asked to see the Speedy 20, which I had already fallen in love with online.

I adore the guitar strap it comes with. I know some people think it’s tacky, but I think it gives the bag an edge. My hair is bright purple—of course I want a handbag with a guitar strap.

It speaks directly to my millennial emo heart.

I also asked to see the Nano Speedy and the Speedy 25, just so I could be sure. But the moment I saw them all together, I knew.

The Speedy 20 was the one.

We bought it.

The saleswoman was absolutely lovely. She brought us drinks, chatted to us and somehow made me feel as though I belonged there. It was my full Pretty Woman moment—without the rude shop assistants or Richard Gere—and I was living the dream.

She asked if there was anything else I would like to see.

There was.

The Petite Malle.

The Petite Malle is my ultimate dream bag, but it was miles outside my budget. I told her I would love to see it, but completely understood that she had other customers and I didn’t want to waste her time.

Once we had finished buying the Speedy, she brought the Petite Malle over and let me properly look at it.

She didn’t have to do that, and it completed the whole experience for me.

I will absolutely be buying one pre-loved, though. They don’t hold their value particularly well, so somebody else can take the depreciation hit. They still make my heart skip a beat; I just don’t need to lose several thousand pounds for the privilege.

On the second-to-last evening of the holiday, it was finally time for my official birthday meal.

Paul’s business partner had knocked it out of the park by booking La Sala. The restaurant was amazing. There was a live band, the food was gorgeous, everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to me, and my dessert arrived with sparklers.

I was completely in my element.

After dinner, my mum offered to take George back and keep him overnight so Paul and I could stay out.

See? I told you she was my favourite person in Marbella.

We went to a bar Paul loves down by the port. The original plan was to have one drink there and then move on to a few other bars.

We never left.

Instead, we talked to people, flirted with each other and enjoyed being Paul and me rather than Mum and Dad, business owners or the people responsible for remembering whether there was enough milk in the fridge.

When you’ve been together for as long as we have, you need to make an effort to find each other underneath all the everyday bullshit. Children, work and responsibilities can easily take over, and sometimes you need to remind yourselves that you’re still a couple.

Later that evening, we started chatting and flirting with another couple. Innuendos were flying between all four of us, and they mentioned that they lived just around the corner.

They were lovely and eventually invited us back to their house.

Paul and I, being the exceptionally talented swingers we are, naturally assumed they wanted sex.

So we accepted.

Their house was less than a five-minute walk away—probably considerably less if any of us had been sober.

The moment we arrived, my imposter syndrome made its second appearance of the holiday.

They lived in a mansion beside the port.

Not just a very nice house.

A mansion.

They led us into their home bar, which contained more alcohol than our local Wetherspoons. If the world ever ends, that’s where I want to take shelter.

We sat drinking, chatting and swapping stories. Everything was going perfectly well until the man casually announced that he was one of the biggest gangsters in Newcastle and couldn’t return to the UK because there were warrants out for his arrest.

He then left the room.

Paul and I stared at each other.

We didn’t say a word, but after all these years together, we’re capable of holding entire conversations using nothing but eye contact.

What the actual fuck?

How do we get out of this?

Have we made a terrible mistake?

Before we could come up with an answer, our host returned carrying what can only be described as a flour bag full of cocaine.

A flour bag.

Full of cocaine.

Our vice is sex. We love sex. We can’t get enough of it.

Class A drugs, however, are not our thing.

I immediately began giving Paul the look that said:

We have massively fucked up here. We need to leave immediately, before I end up doing copious amounts of cocaine out of sheer politeness and you spend the rest of our marriage never letting me live it down.

Fortunately, Paul has a very unusual party trick.

He can dislocate his knee on cue.

He stood up, pretended to stumble and—bam—his knee was out.

It was both horrifying and magnificent.

Suddenly, we had our exit strategy.

We called a taxi, apologised profusely and made a very quick escape.

And that is how, at nearly 40 years old, I learned an important lesson:

Not every attractive couple who invites you back to their mansion wants to have sex with you.

Sometimes, they just want to do cocaine.

We were safely back in bed by 3 a.m., ready to enjoy one final day of sunshine, swimming pools and food before flying home.

I assumed the holiday had delivered its final plot twist.

I was wrong.

Obviously, I had posted about my birthday meal the night before. I’m a millennial—does something even count as having happened if we don’t post about it?

The next day, I was chilling by the pool, trying to avoid the ultimate water fight taking place around me. All the kids were involved, including the big kids—a.k.a. my nineteen- and twenty-year-old nephews—and, of course, Paul.

He loves a water fight.

I was safely out of the splash zone, scrolling through AIBU on Mumsnet—because who doesn’t love highly dramatised accounts of other people’s minor inconveniences?—when my phone pinged.

The message was from a name I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Laura.

She had seen my post on Insta and messaged to tell me I was kicking off our birthday celebrations early—and how rude it was of me to do it in Marbella without her.

Before I continue, you need a little background on me and Laura.

I would describe myself as bisexual. Romantically, I’m straight: I love having sex with women, but I couldn’t imagine myself being in a relationship with one.

Laura, however, is the closest I’ve ever come to questioning that distinction.

From the moment I met her, the sexual connection between us was intense.

Paul and I met Laura and her now ex-partner at a club called Townhouse in the North West four years ago. It happened to be both mine and Laura’s birthday—we’re birthday twins.

She walked over to me with a level of confidence that was second to none, looked me directly in the eye and said, “I heard it’s your birthday today.”

“Yes, it is,” I replied.

“It’s mine too,” she said.

“And I’m fucking you tonight.”

The sexual submissive in me went weak at the knees. I was instantly dripping and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would be doing unspeakable things with her as soon as I could get her into a playroom.

Later that night, I spotted her at the bar and asked if she wanted to go upstairs.

There are lots of different dynamics within the swinging world, which I promise I’ll explain properly at some point. At that stage of our swinging relationship, Paul and I mainly played with other couples as a full-swap couple—and we would never turn down an orgy train—but that night felt completely different.

It was very definitely a girls’ night.

Laura and I were drawn to each other with this pure, animalistic passion. We thoroughly enjoyed every inch of each other’s bodies while the men enjoyed the show.

It was a completely new experience for me. Laura is a natural Domme, and I have a very strong sexual submissive streak. By the time she had finished with me, I was ready to leave Paul and go and live with her as her full-time sex toy.

Well, for a weekend, at least.

Over the past four years, Laura and I have played together on and off. We’ve also always made a point of celebrating our shared birthday in a suitably naughty, depraved and indulgent way.

But in her message, she explained that she and her fiancé had split up and that she’d been away from the scene for a while.

I told her my life had been a bit shit too.

So this year, we agreed to do something a little more civilised: birthday cocktails and a proper catch-up.

And just like that, it was arranged for the Sunday after we got home.

It had been the perfect holiday: full of love, laughter, family, a few tears, my dream handbag and one deeply questionable invitation.

Now I also had the rather vague promise of a birthday “catch-up” with a woman who had once informed me—with complete confidence—that she was going to fuck me before we’d even been properly introduced.

After a holiday involving Louis Vuitton, an alleged gangster and a flour bag full of cocaine, surely birthday cocktails with Laura would be the civilised option.

Wouldn’t they?