Sitting on the side of my bed is the man I have just had sex with. Totally naked, his muscled torso glistens, his six-pack in contrast to my own more Rubenesque form.
At 55, I am 20 years his senior, but I’m not embarrassed by our age gap – it only added to my pleasure.
But once we’re fully clothed and back downstairs in the kitchen, my satisfaction shifts to embarrassment as I reach for my handbag and fish out the £150 we agreed on for this, umm, transaction.
You see, Alex is not my boyfriend or my husband – though he does know my husband, David, who is 60. Alex is our gardener. And this is the second time I’ve paid him to have sex with me.
For two years, he’d tended the gardens at our large home in rural Warwickshire. But last summer there was a dramatic change in our relationship. You’ll rightly wonder how on earth this could happen, and why. Why would I cheat on my husband of 30 years? And why, if I wanted an affair, would I pay someone for the pleasure?
Well, I don’t want an affair. I still love my husband, and have never thought about walking away from my marriage.
We have a good life together; David is a busy surgeon on a decent six-figure salary, and our two adult children have secured good careers since leaving home too.
But five years ago, David was diagnosed with prostate cancer – and the effect on our love life has been seismic. While I’m hugely relieved his treatment was successful and he is now in remission, it has had the unfortunate side-effect of leaving him with erectile dysfunction.
In the BBC dramatisation, Joely Richardson’s Lady Chatterley has an affair with her gamekeeper, played by Sean Bean
Physically, there are things we could do to counteract this, but David has no interest in doing this – or trying to have sex at all any more. Whenever I have raised the idea of exploring options that would allow us to be intimate again, David just shuts the subject down. He seems to be content for our sex life to be done with.
But despite all the clichés about middle-aged, menopausal women’s attitudes towards sex, that’s not how I feel at all. I miss the physical act of making love, as well as all the emotional closeness it brings.
Which is how, after four years without sex, I found myself entering into my arrangement with Alex.
David and I met in our 20s via his sister, who was my best friend at Bristol University. He’s always been a bit of an introvert, very focused on his career, so I was the one who did the initial chasing. Yet things were easy between us from the get go –and our sex life was always good.
We married when I was 25 and David 30. After we had our two boys, I gave up my job as a teacher to be a full-time mother, which I loved, and we had a good life.
David’s cancer diagnosis in 2020 came after both the boys – now working as a doctor in Australia and a banker in New York – had left home. He was given a stage 3 diagnosis, which meant his prostate was removed and he would need to undergo radiotherapy and preventive chemotherapy. While my heart sank at the news, David is one of life’s stoic chaps and isn’t one to show fear. So we both kept our emotions in check, instead focusing on the advice of the oncology team.
Following David’s treatment, he still needed a lot of care. I found managing his needs as well as our five-bedroom home and large garden – we have an acre of land – was too much for me. So in 2022 I looked for a gardener to come by once a month to keep on top of things.
The local garden centre recommended Alex’s firm. When Alex first turned up with his boss, a chap older than David, I was reassured that they knew what they were doing.
Every month, Alex would turn up and spend a morning outside cutting back the plants, mowing the lawn and generally tidying up. It was a godsend to have him and his sunny disposition in my garden.
After he was done, I’d offer him a cup of tea and we’d have a chat. It was all light stuff – catching up on my boys, or his girlfriend – but he really listened.
Our easy conversations were in contrast to how things were with David at the time. The cancer diagnosis changed David; he was more short-tempered, no longer the ‘glass half full’ man I’d married. While we were still close, there were times our relationship was less husband and wife and more patient and carer.
While he’d been going through treatment, sex was of course the last thing on either of our minds. I was understanding, too, when he didn’t want to be physically intimate during his initial recovery period. Now experiencing erectile dysfunction as a result of his prostate removal, I knew it was a sensitive subject, and I didn’t want to make him feel self-conscious.
His muscled torso glistens, his six-pack in contrast to my own more Rubenesque form (file photo)
But by the time we hit the two-year mark, my patience had worn out. I tried to discuss it with him – to share how frustrated and rejected his complete lack of interest was making me feel – and to gently suggest there were things we could do that would help him, but he just wouldn’t have it.
He said he had no desire for sex any more, and kept reminding me he was the one who’d stared death in the face – not me – and he wouldn’t be pressured into anything.
Though at first this made me feel guilty, I soon started to feel he was being terribly unfair. After all, what happened within our relationship affected me too. But soon, if I even mentioned sex he’d leave the room. When I compared our current situation to the good sex life we’d enjoyed before, I felt short-changed, and more than a little angry.
My craving for intimacy started entering my dreams, and I’d wake up feeling both aroused and deeply frustrated. So I found myself looking forward to Alex’s visits, and in the summer months I was constantly out in the garden offering him drinks to keep him cool.
The first time I saw him remove his T-shirt, I did a double take. Something stirred inside me.
But I never did anything but stare. Until, last year, after two years working for us, Alex came to knock on the kitchen window to say he was done for the day.
I’d just been Facetiming one of my sons, and was feeling quite emotional about not knowing when we’d next see each other in person. When I turned to look at Alex, I just started crying.
He came in and sat down next to me and it all just came tumbling out; how lonely I was feeling, how hard it had been dealing with the aftermath of David’s treatment –and how, four years on, still nothing ever happened in the bedroom.
It was then, God forgive me, that I joked: ‘In fact, if I ever want any sort of sex life again, I’ll likely need to pay for it.’
The moment the words came out of my mouth, I was mortified. Yet Alex met my eyes and stared at me intently. You could have heard a pin drop.
The atmosphere became so charged I could hardly stand it. It was Alex who eventually broke the spell by saying ‘things will work out’. When he got up to leave, he gave me a hug that went on for a beat too long.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d looked at me. I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be with him. And yet, the idea of betraying my husband romantically felt impossible.
I wasn’t looking for a new life partner – I just wanted to feel those physical sensations again, to feel alive.
I had no idea if Alex really felt attracted to me or not, but I wouldn’t want him to think I wanted a relationship with him. I didn’t want to cross the line between employer and employee. Which is how the idea of paying him for sex entered my mind.
At first, I tried to shrug it off as an outlandish idea. But I couldn’t fully block out the little voice that whispered that if, just if, Alex said yes, it could be the perfect solution to my problem…
So the next time Alex arrived and started to deadhead the roses I gave him 20 minutes before walking up behind him and saying the words I’d spent days rehearsing.
‘You know, you’d really be doing me a favour if I could financially compensate you to help me feel alive again,’ I said, trying to sound casual, before getting to the point: ‘Alex, I want to pay you to have sex with me.’
Alex dropped the secateurs and didn’t move. As the silence continued, I scuttled back to the kitchen, heart thumping, berating myself for doing such a stupid thing.
When he finally finished for the morning, packing his tools away, I beckoned him into the kitchen. I was about to apologise when he cut me off.
‘Honestly Helen, I’m flattered,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to help you through this rough patch, as long as we’re clear about the, erm, arrangement?’
Staggered, yet thrilled, I suggested £150 – double what I paid his company for his three hours of gardening – and his eyes lit up, giving me a slow nod of his head.
We agreed he could pop by the following morning after David had left for work, and before his working day started. In the company van, I was convinced none of my neighbours would bat an eyelid that my gardener was here for two days on the trot.
I barely slept a wink that night, so anguished was I about what I was about to do. David complained about me tossing and turning so much he went off to sleep in the spare room – which actually made me feel slightly less guilty.
As soon as he left the next morning, I stripped our bed and remade it with freshly laundered sheets, had a shower and then dressed in my best underwear and pulled a dressing gown over the top.
When I heard Alex’s van, I thought I was going to be sick. Opening the front door, I noticed he had also made an effort; he smelt delicious and was wearing clean jeans and a T-shirt.
As the front door clicked shut, Alex pulled me towards him, running his hands through my hair. ‘Where shall we start?’ he murmured. Within five minutes we were both naked in my bedroom.
As Alex caressed my body in places that hadn’t been touched in a very long time, I closed my eyes at the intensity of all my emotions. It wasn’t just that the physical act was incredible, but that, for the first time in a long time, I felt desired – and alive.
When we finished, we both silently dressed. Heading downstairs, I popped the agreed notes on the kitchen counter and he took them, before leaving without a word.
The second time it happened was a month later. David was totally oblivious, and I told myself that what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.
I knew I wasn’t in love with Alex – my attraction to him was purely physical. So this wasn’t a romantic betrayal.
And, arguably, David was the one betraying me by refusing to be intimate with me. I’d never have been driven to do this if my husband would really listen to my concerns and act on them. Instead, much like the gardening, I needed Alex to provide what David couldn’t.
But I refused to think of Alex as an escort, or worse, a male prostitute. I told myself he was just the gardener – though deep down, I knew I was kidding myself.
After the third time, last Autumn, Alex casually mentioned he had recently got engaged to his girlfriend – who, I confess, until then I hadn’t spared a thought. I hadn’t considered his love life and his future – only mine.
It was the wake-up call I needed. I told him this could never happen again.
Yet, almost a year later, Alex is still my gardener. And though he’s now a married man, I can’t help but wonder if – were I to offer to pay him to return to my bed – he would say yes.
Because, sadly, a year after I stopped sleeping with Alex, I’m still not having sex with David either. There have been occasions when I’ve tried to seduce David, because sleeping with Alex gave me a renewed realisation of what I was missing out on – and, really, David is the only man I truly want to sleep with. But he continues to reject me.
And so, the spectre of what I could be enjoying with Alex remains.
What kind of woman does this make me? Wanton? Pathetic?
In my defence, I’ve tried my hardest with my husband. And knowing that there’s another man out there that will give me what I desire is hard to resist – even if it comes at a price.
- Helen Laporte is a pseudonym. Names have been changed
