Love, Lipstick and Lies (26 page)

We all chatted for a while and then I got everyone into my cinema room for a thriller marathon that included
Eden Lake
and
Orphan
. Because of my dry humour, I’m not really into comedy, and the only romantic films I really like are
The Notebook
and
My Best Friend’s Wedding
. Thrillers are what I really prefer. As I sat next to Kieran it was exactly like the scene in the film
Grease
, where Danny doesn’t know whether to put his arm round Sandy but he really wants to. And I thought, What the hell! I’m single, why don’t I just cuddle up to him? And as I did so, I thought, Wow! He is absolutely fit.

He had the most ripped body ever! I could feel ridges of muscle in his biceps and abs. Impressive! He must really work out to have achieved that. I loved how strong and solid he felt. You know how when you cuddle
someone you either match or you don’t? Well, this felt as if we were completely compatible. We didn’t kiss, but we stayed cuddling up until four in the morning. And then he had to go because he had to get ready for work at six. I didn’t let him stay, not that he asked.

When Kieran left I was thinking about him for a long time. He had made quite an impression. His looks were perfect and I really liked his personality. But he seemed quite shy and quiet, and I wondered if he might be too quiet for me. Overall, though, I thought he was gorgeous. Really gorgeous. And I wanted to see him again. I had started out thinking that this was going to be no big deal, a bit of fun, a bit of male attention. But it was already more than that.

But there was a problem. Later that day my sister came round and she said, ‘Oh, yeah, so you had that stripper guy up here last night, didn’t you?’

‘How did you know?’ I asked, taken by surprise by her question as I hadn’t told anyone except the friends who were with me that Kieran was coming round.

‘Well, obviously he’s been talking,’ she replied.

Instantly I felt disappointed. It turned out that Kieran had told his mum that he was meeting me, she had then told her boyfriend, who had told someone else, and so on. This had happened to me so many times before … Next thing I knew it would be in the press, which was the last thing I wanted.

So I texted Kieran.
Have you been talking about us? I’m not into all that. Who have you told?

Instantly he texted back asking me to call him. I didn’t reply. Then he tried calling me but I cut off the calls. I thought, Fuck you, you’ve ruined it now, you’ve obviously opened your mouth; you’ve got no chance with me. I liked you and this has put me right off you. I was so relieved things had gone no further than a cuddle. I was really angry and disappointed.

I’ve only told my mum!
he texted me. And then he said that he’d had a real go at her for telling someone else. I still didn’t know whether to see him again, but he sent me a huge bouquet of flowers with a card saying,
I’m never going to disappoint you or let you down again.
It was a sweet gesture and as he sounded genuinely upset by what had happened, I thought, Maybe I’ll give him a second chance …

He came round to my house again. Because he seemed quiet I thought it would be easier to have a film on rather than sit on the sofa together, in case there were any awkward silences, so once again we hung out in my cinema room. I couldn’t tell you what the film was because my whole attention was on him. This time we kissed. And a very good kiss it was too. I’ve always thought you can tell a lot about a man from the way he kisses and get a very good idea about what he is going to be like in bed … and from the way Kieran kissed me, I thought I was going to be in for a treat.

All the time I was falling for him. I had the idea in my head that I would stick to the five-date rule, and not sleep with him until then. We lasted until the
third date. I fancied him like crazy and I knew he felt the same about me. I won’t go into details, because of course he is now my husband and I respect him. When I saw his body, I was not disappointed. It is perfect. And put it this way: no woman would ask for their money back if they went to see him stripping! He doesn’t shave so he doesn’t have red rashes all over him; he’s got hair on his arms and legs like a normal man (other men I have been with have shaved theirs, which I hated). He uses clippers on his chest and in other areas, so it certainly doesn’t look like plucked chicken down there … I’ve had that experience as well in my time. So all I will say is that he was fit in every sense of the word!

Kieran’s body is a temple. I found out he’s a complete fitness freak; he works out all the time and has a really healthy life-style. He doesn’t take steroids or anything else to get that perfect body, and hardly ever drinks. And he had met me when I was completely sober, which felt good. I wasn’t out on a wild one; I was at home, being myself.

Does it bother me that he is a stripper? Not at all. If anything I was intrigued that someone as quiet as he is could do something so extrovert. Before I saw the show I would tease him in front of my friends and say, ‘Go on, get your kit off!’ And he refused, saying that he only ever did that on-stage, he didn’t do it any other time. That impressed me. I know I’m a terrible wind-up merchant but he’s always stood up to me. Even if I went
to lift his top and said, ‘Come on, show us your abs,’ he wouldn’t.

Of course I had to see his show for myself. He’s not the kind of stripper you see coming into a pub and getting their kit off. The audience can’t take photographs and nor can women touch the performers. It’s a proper choreographed show, with three strippers and a drag queen. When I saw it for the first time I was so nervous for him, because I couldn’t imagine him taking all his clothes off in public, he just didn’t seem the type. I already knew women wouldn’t be disappointed with what they saw, and I had learned about the stripper’s tricks of the trade. They use a cock pump before the show (who knows if that’s the right term!), which gets the blood pumped into the relevant part, and then they have to tie an elastic band at the top to keep it in. It f****** hurts, according to Kieran. But like all good performers he suffers for his art.

The show isn’t sleazy at all. It’s very tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted, with plenty of comedy. There’s also great music, which you can sing along to, and the guys wear all these different outfits, like a gorilla suit, Scooby-Doo, a fireman’s uniform, a sailor suit. But not for long … everything comes off. They get girls up on-stage and do silly things with them, like wrap themselves up in Clingfilm then get the girls to spray whipped cream on them and lick it off. But like I said, it isn’t sleazy, it’s funny.

The first time I saw the show, if someone had been
filming me and my friends you would have seen that our mouths were open in complete amazement and our jaws practically on the floor because the Kieran in front of us was so completely different from the one we knew. And as I watched him strut around the stage and strip off, inside I was thinking, Yes! Get in there, my son! You’ve got it in you. And I realised that I liked him even more because he could be this extrovert performer and he wasn’t afraid. And because he wasn’t like that off-stage, he wasn’t cocky or vain, he was just a regular, lovely guy.

So we started seeing each other and we were getting on so well,
ridiculously
well, to the point that when I wasn’t with him, I was thinking about him non-stop and getting butterflies and wanting to be with him! Was I worried about the age gap? To be honest I didn’t think the nine years made any difference at all, because I think I’m quite a young thirty-five and he’s quite a mature twenty-six. It wasn’t as if I was in my late forties and he was in his early twenties. That really would be a big gap.

I was a bit worried that my mum would freak when she realised I was seeing someone, so at first we pretended that Kieran was gay. Funnily enough, no one questioned that, probably because he is so immaculate-looking! Even so, Kieran had only been in the house thirty seconds when she presented him with a confidentiality agreement to sign. That’s typical of my mum, being so protective of me. And nor can you fool her for long. She quickly cottoned on that he wasn’t gay.

However, even though we were getting on so well, I wondered if I should be committing myself to another relationship again. Maybe it was too soon after Leo. For once I thought: I shouldn’t rush into things, I should see how it goes, not get caught up in a whirlwind romance, take it more slowly. But then I had a wake-up call. I nearly lost Kieran.

It was one night early in December and we were both up in London. Kieran had been performing and I’d had work commitments during the day, and was due to work the following day too, so I’d booked into a hotel. I planned to go and see a film and then meet up with Kieran in my suite. But then my friend Phil called and said there was some event or other at Mahiki, the club on Dover Street.

‘Actually, I’m not really dressed for it,’ I told him, ‘I’m just wearing jeans.’

‘Oh, pop in for a quick one,’ he suggested.

I agreed but insisted it could only be a quick one as Kieran was back at the hotel and I didn’t want to keep him waiting. I did call Kieran and told him I was going to be about half an hour and asked if he wanted to meet us there. But as it was only going to be for such a short time, he said he’d wait for me at the hotel.

I don’t know what happened, but the one cocktail I had at Mahiki turned into a complete bender. I was out all night and half the next day. Possibly my drink was spiked, I don’t know, but the whole night was a blur. Apparently, after Mahiki I ended up at Balans with
Charlotte Church’s ex-husband, the rugby player Gavin Henson, and a group of other people. And I carried on drinking. I don’t know how I did it as I’m such a light-weight. I can honestly say that nothing happened with Gavin. There was probably a bit of flirtatious banter, nothing more. But I was still at Balans at 11.30 a.m. the following morning, and after that we all went back to Gavin’s friend’s house.

It was a completely mad, lost night. My PR woman had to come and collect me and take me back to the hotel. Kieran had gone and I felt awful. I couldn’t even call him as I seemed to have lost my phone. I collapsed into bed and slept for hours. When I woke up my sister was there with her boyfriend, along with my PA, but I still wasn’t in a fit state to talk, and only managed to have a bath before going back to bed. That day I was supposed to be working on my
Sun
column and it was the first time in my career I think that I’ve ever missed work because I was hungover. I felt terrible for letting people down; it was so out of character. But worst of all was knowing that I’d stood Kieran up. What must he think of me?

I had dropped my phone in the hotel lobby and when it was returned to me by one of the staff the battery was flat. When I’d charged it, I saw that I had heaps of messages from my friends and from my manager, wondering what the hell I’d been doing. I discovered that Kieran had spent last night calling my friends and saying, ‘Why has she left me like this? I can’t believe
she’s done this to me.’ I felt awful hearing that. Really ashamed. I imagined how I would have felt in his place. I know that if he had done that to me, I would have told him it was over.

I left it a day before I got in touch with him, figuring he might need some time to cool down. When I texted him asking him if he was okay he didn’t reply for a while and then he wrote back,
No.

Shit! I thought. I’ve lost him now. And I admitted to myself that I really liked him and didn’t want to lose him. Then we spoke on the phone and he was short and offhand with me. Part of me thought, Well, I’m not going to grovel! But the other part liked it that he wasn’t running after me. I was in the wrong and he was letting me know that. We arranged to meet up at my house and I still felt very bad for the way I had treated him. He told me that he had been so angry with me that if I had called him any earlier than I did, he would have told me he didn’t want to see me again. Wow, that really shocked me.

After I’d said sorry about ten times, I said, ‘I hadn’t committed to you as a boyfriend when I went out the other night, but even so the way I behaved is no way to treat anyone. I feel terrible for what I did and I swear I don’t know how I got into such a state. But I promise I will make it up to you.’ And as we spoke I realised that this was my wake-up call and that there was no way I was letting Kieran go. From that moment we made a commitment to each other. This was no casual fling, no rebound relationship. This felt like the real thing.

The press had a field day linking me with Gavin Henson, but absolutely nothing happened between us and if anyone says differently then my drink must have been spiked because I don’t remember anything. They made out it was just the two of us, yet the truth is we were surrounded by a group of friends. One paper said that we had done a photo shoot together, which was completely untrue. Anyway, as I’ve said, I’m so used to them printing bullshit lies, it’s like water off a duck’s back.

* * *

I’d always said to myself, after my experiences with Alex and Leo, that the next man I was with had to have more than me, but yet again it hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t make any difference to the way I feel about him. The feelings I have for Kieran are very similar to the ones I had when I first met Pete: it’s a complete whirlwind passionate romance, as if we were always meant to be together.

Kieran and I realised we wanted to be with each other all the time. It felt so right. I thought, Oh my God! He’s actually perfect, he goes to work and pays his way. It is a physical and emotional attraction. Basically I struck gold! Kieran is a lovely guy, through and through. He’s a clever little soul and did well at school. You can tell he’s been well brought up as he’s got good manners and is respectful.

The only worry I had about him was that he was too
quiet for me. I’m such a loud mouth myself and have always gone out with men who are equally as loud. But as we got to know each other better in the weeks that followed I realised that Kieran wasn’t quiet or shy, it was more that he was thoughtful. He didn’t just come out with the first thing that came into his head, for the sake of speaking and because he loved the sound of his own voice. Hmm, not like some of my exes then … And so when he spoke it made more of an impact. Typically we will be sitting having dinner with my friends and family and everyone will be chatting away, and when Kieran says something they all sit up and take notice because what he’s said is worth hearing. I always say he’s silent but deadly, he speaks only when he needs to.