Give Me a Break/Kate Holmquist:I've fantasised about living in Belmayne. Of being that long-legged big-haired glamour girl in total charge of sofa plus remote control, while behind her a gorgeous guy with a wicked sparkle - concierge? boyfriend? - delivers a beverage on a silver tray.
I've wondered what it's like to be her, making out with the guy on the granite kitchen island before heading up to the roof to the communal jacuzzi where the young and the beautiful cavort in string swimsuits like film extras on their uppers.
But my dreams of Belmayne have given way to a more opulent, ambitious fantasy: life at 18 Baggot Street. I can be that woman residing in the €3.2 million penthouse apartment with the Italian coffee machine built into the gleaming oyster-white kitchen units with the crystal-like acrylic handles that never get dirty because I'm never called upon to cook - not even at Christmas, which I spend alone at my lover's place in Dubai with my mother.
That's why the oven and the sink are so small that you'd hardly know there was a kitchen there at all. Living at 18 Baggot Street, I dine with my lover in Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, Thornton's and L'Ecrivain. Sometimes I meet my girlfriends in the Town Bar & Grill or the Unicorn to swap stories and show off my Boodles. The rest of the time I live on sushi and steamed veg, since my figure is my fortune.
Which is why I spend so much of my day keeping fit in Pat Henry and having my skin pampered in Thérapie. Should my lover call unexpectedly, I ring down to the concierge - just in case the fridge has run out of champagne and the coffee machine out of Illy.
In my enormous candlelit bedroom - screened from the bathroom by a frosted glass wall that I like to pose behind even when no one's looking - I wear nothing but the starched white lace-embroidered pinny that the decorator thoughtfully arranged on a chair. (I've bought the place furnished - I mean, why bother? - and the concierge organises the ironing.)
Living at 18 Baggot street, with its lift that goes straight up to my penthouse, I have flowers delivered daily, sometimes lots and lots of flowers for those occasions when I want to make the girls living in the smaller non-penthouse apartments feel jealous when I invite them round for tea. Desperate non-housewives, some of them - already flirting with the rich students whose parents have bought them investment flats in the complex so that they won't be discommoded while attending TCD.
I'm serene in my exquisitely designed world of Colourtrend greyish off-white - the same colour as the impersonal corridors that lead to my personal lift that brings me straight into my own entry hall. I don't regard my closets as small or storage as practically non-existent, since the first guestroom makes a handy dressing room and I prune my wardrobe every week (benefiting local charity shops). I hardly need shoes, not with the under-floor heating, the smooth waxed oak floors, the plush white carpeting and the time I spend on my back.
I wander around naked, unconcerned that my place is overlooked by the alley below.
I amuse myself by shopping (the first guest bedroom has become a dressing room, I admit it), which requires remaining size six, with the help of my personal trainer and nutritionist - the guy who got tired of serving beverages with remote-control girl at Belmayne.
During these invigorating sessions we avoid the efficiently-small white quartz kitchen island, since the built-in electric cooker makes it dangerous for anything but food preparation. But in the generously proportioned living area there's an upholstered "coffee table" (that is, place to display unread coffee-table books) the size of a double bed that does quite nicely.
My lover is married so he's hardly one to judge. Anyway, all the nice corporate types and married couples who use their own 18 Baggot Street apartments as pied-à-terres are never around often enough to notice. As I stride into the communal living room on the ground floor, I always nod politely like a discreet French mistress, never boasting of my ideal world.
No housework, no children demanding to be taken to soccer and shopping, no homework to help with, no meals to prepare, no dentist's appointments (my white teeth are perfect), no pets to walk (the concierge exercises my lapdog and cleans up after it, too) and no bills to pay. My lover underwrites the credit cards, no questions asked.
Oh yeah, him. Well - the stress of running a billion-euro business hasn't done him any favours (Pat Henry despairs). He's an advertisement for Viagra (the "before" picture) and won't leave his wife - but do I mind? Absolutely not, why would I miss jammy morning kisses from children climbing into my bed? Or the opportunity to watch endless DVDs of Bonesin a flannel nightie and chunky-knit socks when I can wear that starched white maid's costume with a pair of stilettos that mark the waxed oak floors?
My life is serene, ordered, uncomplicated (apart from worries about what would happen to me should anything happen to him). I am the woman in the sexy novel who is so self-satisfied that she doesn't even recognise herself in the unread Patricia Scanlan's City Girlsleft artfully on the bookshelf by the decorator.
