Turning Forty Read Free Page B

she still looked good enough to eat. ‘It goes without saying that I’ll trash you like all the rest of my no-good exes. If you really were that good, then why did it all come to an end? I guarantee you were to blame.’
    ‘Of course it was my fault,’ I replied, ‘the ends of relationships are always my fault even when they aren’t. But if I’m going to get trashed for being a rubbish boyfriend in the end I think you should give me a shot at a decent beginning. I don’t know whether you remember the early days of me and you but they were pretty legendary.’
    ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘your beginnings were pretty legendary. How could I say no?’
    That weekend I took her to a new sushi bar in Kings Cross and twelve hours later, as I watched her leave my quayside apartment building, I knew that I’d finally found someone I’d love more than work. I proposed to her on our sixth date, she said yes on our seventh, and by our eighth we were making plans for me to sell my apartment, return to the UK, buy a place in London and get married. Our future shone before us like a beacon in the night sky. Everything was going to be OK.

4
    Although in the end it took us three years to leave Australia it didn’t take too long at all for me to find a new job once we were in the UK. Lauren was ridiculously proud of me when after only a few weeks I landed a contracting position in Milton Keynes, which paid well but bored me senseless. But when a year later I was headhunted by a big-name recruitment firm for a great job that paid crazy money she was absolutely ecstatic. Suddenly we could afford to buy a house instead of rent, and all the dreams that we had back in Oz looked like they were about to come true.
    The position they wanted me to fill was similar to the one I had had in Sydney but on an international basis, so instead of spending Monday to Friday overseeing teams across a single country, I would be visiting offices across Europe and Asia. I’d also be working with the sales director to bring in new business from around the globe. As far as my career went it was a very big deal indeed and seemed to be the ultimate pay-off for all the personal sacrifices I’d made over the years. The package they were offering was bigger and better than anything I had ever enjoyed; the perks were lavish; and the the future prospects (‘we’d be looking to make you a director within five years’) were everything I’d ever wanted.
    From the business-class flights through to the car allowance that I splurged on the first of the two Porsches I ended up leasing, it was obvious to everyone in the industry that I had moved up a level and now that I was finally on my way to a directorship I drove myself harder than ever. Being away from home on weekdays was tough, but Lauren seemed to understand and when we were together we more than made up for it by treating ourselves to the best of everything, from Michelin-starred restaurants to extravagant luxury holidays that made friends green with envy. We were living the high life, or so it seemed, and I was convinced that the days of plenty would never cease.
    The first sign that everything was not as it should be came two years into the job when I started getting chronic stomach pains. At first I ignored them, putting it down to indigestion, until one night while away on a four-day trip to Hong Kong I woke up in such agony that I had to ring down to reception and get them to call an ambulance.
    Of course the job came with great health insurance and the hospital kept me in overnight but as I was due home the next day they simply made sure I was fit enough to fly home and advised me to see my own GP.
    My GP referred me to a specialist who ordered a gastro-intestinal endoscopy, which revealed that I had a peptic ulcer. The consultant asked me lots of questions about diet, work and exercise and concluded that while work stress had not necessarily caused the problem, she didn’t doubt that it had