In the late 1990's, I gladly accepted a re-assignment from the London office of the consultancy company for which I was working to head-up their office in Cape Town, my home city. As well as the promotion, the change of environment was a great relief.
As far as the living in London went, I'll leave aside the horrible weather and the hassles of an overcrowded city with a dysfunctional public transport system. For me, as a woman, there was an over-arching sense of being under threat. I'd live in Rio de Janeiro, one of the most violent cities in the world, for more than 3 years and never had any such feeling. In London, I think it was to do with the public drunkenness and the number of vagrants on the streets in the evenings. Then, when it came to obnoxious men, London seemed to have well more than its fair share of them. It actually prompted me to join a self-defence course for women at my gym. The instructor was an ex-special forces guy and, to this day, he was the coolest and most congruent guy I have ever met. What I learned on that course didn't change the feeling of threat but it did give me some confidence that I might be able to deal with whatever might happen. So, all in all it was a heartfelt good riddance to the British capital.
As for the male-dominated London office, all that I will say is that it was hard to believe that so many feeble and insecure men, together with a number of hardcore misogynists, could all be assembled in one company.
So, Cape Town was indeed a great relief. As well as being able to put my own stamp on the office, I saw it as an opportunity to revitalise my personal life and especially my intimate life. I was rapidly approaching 40 and had devoted the great majority of my life to my career albeit with occasional encounters, a few affairs with other women and the odd man. This story is about how I began to expand my sexual proclivities.
On my return home, one of the first things I did was to reclaim the apartment I had bought some 15 years earlier. It was on the top floor of a newish, beachfront block in the prime location of Sea Point. I was living and working overseas for all of those 15 years so I let the apartment to a series of tenants and on my return, since Cape Town was becoming an international destination and a very cosmopolitan city, it was worth more than ten times what I had originally paid. The block was well maintained with good security but the apartment itself was in need of extensive refurbishment.
Settling into a new job with considerable responsibility as well as organising and supervising a refurbishment of the apartment was never going to be a viable proposition so I hired an interior designer. After a number of interviews and checking out some of their other projects and references, I opted for a Swedish woman named Hanna. My intuition told me she was the one as soon as I met her but I checked her out as I had done with the others. Her previous projects reflected my own tastes and the quality of the work was difficult to fault. In my finalise analysis she was by far the best choice and I engaged her to design and manage the work. In the meantime I rented another apartment in a nearby block.
Hanna was more or less my age and looked just what she was: Scandinavian. She had short blond hair and fine features; an embryo of the look of Robin Wright as Claire Underwood. Her skin tone suggested that she enjoyed the Cape summer sun and she almost always wore some kind of jeans with a variety of stylish tops. Altogether she was a very attractive woman but there was much more to her than that. Whilst she had a feminine charm which would be useful in pacifying my neighbours who were sure to be disrupted as the refurbishment work progressed, I felt she would be more than sufficiently assertive to handle any disputes that she might encounter with the various contractors needed to carry out the project.
Hanna and I had a series of meetings to work through my thoughts and ideas and I liked the way that she picked up on me, returning time and again with sketches, floor plans and mood boards that showed possible colour schemes and textures, as well as projected costs. It all served in helping me to clarify my own thoughts, eliminating what was not structurally possible, and to take on board new ideas from her side. It was a rewarding experience and by the end of it I was confident that the outcome would exceed my original aspirations for the apartment.
It was during one of those meetings that I met her husband, Viktor, who was also Swedish. He was a good looking man with dark hair greying at the temples and perhaps in his mid-40's. He was the one who produced the sketches and plans. As well as working with Hanna he did freelance work for some of the smaller architectural companies, illustrating and draughting. To me he seemed quiet and studious though not without a cool charm and a nice smile, and his work spoke of serious talent.
Two weeks after I had signed off on the design and various other documents, work had started on the project and I met Hanna on a Saturday morning at the apartment. It looked like it had been hit by a bomb, stripped bare of all its fittings, a wall in the process of demolition, floor tiles half removed and rubble everywhere. It was a horrific site.
"I know what you are thinking," Hanna said with a chuckle and putting her arm around my shoulders. "Don't worry, it will all come together. I will make this place a dream home for you. Trust me, I know what I am doing."
I looked into her eyes and she tightened her hold on me. Her eyes were re-assuring and did I see a hint of desire there too? I couldn't be at all sure of that and, besides, my sole concern was for the shambles that surrounded us.
"I guess you have seen all this kind of thing before," I said after taking a deep breath.
"Many times," she responded, "but in two weeks time all this mess will be cleared and we will have most of the new electrical and plumbing work completed. It's my pet project and when it's all done I want you to be the happiest you have ever been in your entire life."
"I know you do," I said, turning to her and giving her a brief hug. "It was a bit of a shock at first sight but I want you to know that I have full confidence in you."
"Thank you," she said. "How about we grab a quick lunch? There's a little Italian place just around the corner.'
"Good idea," I agreed.
It was the first of a number of such get-togethers, sometimes with Viktor present, and we gradually got to know each other; our backgrounds, our work lives, our plans and aspirations and our mutual interest in dance but apart from that we kept things on a professional level.
She had all the attributes that attracted me: a body shape and height similar to mine, stylish in the way she dressed and presented herself, energy and capability in what she did, well balanced in herself and a warm personality. However, to all appearances she was a happily married woman. If it had been otherwise, I would have made a few subtle moves on her to see how she responded.
At what was to be the final progress meeting with Hanna, I met her at the apartment on a Wednesday afternoon. It had taken just 3 months for the place to be transformed and it was looking sensational. It was modern and functional with no unnecessary embellishments; rather it relied upon proportions and the colour scheme for its effect.
"Wait until you see it at night with the lights on," advised Hanna. "It will be stunning."
She offered to help me move in and we set a date for delivery of my various items of furniture which had been waiting in storage. It was just another couple of weeks to go before I could get out of rented accommodation and into my own beautiful home.
*
As well as attending to the apartment, I made a point of catching up with an old friend, Lydia. We'd grown up together and while we were at school we were inseparable. We even attended ballet class together, though it wasn't really her thing. As time went on and I was in my late teens, I managed to win a scholarship for overseas students to attend the Royal Ballet School in London which was a huge privilege. I lived there for most of 20 years, going to university after abandoning ballet, then finding a job.
Lydia and I had kept in touch and we would always meet up on my various trips back to Cape Town, including attending her wedding some 10 years earlier. Unfortunately, her marriage hadn't worked out and they had divorced after less than 4 years, and I hadn't seen her since then.
