She waited outside the luxury apartment for over an hour hoping against hope that he might respond. She stared up at the building shimmering in the sunlight and marvelled at the fact he was inside, so close, but felt thwarted that he was still so far. Unless he responded, he would remain forever out of reach. Would he respond? If so, when? Should she wait here or go about her business? A watched kettle never boiled and yet wasn’t this fate? What were the chances of seeing someone as delicious and then being able to track him down so swiftly? Slim. Negligible. But she had; she felt it was meant to be. That is what people said, didn’t they? In their wedding speeches and things. In the end. It was meant to be. The feeling was bolstered by the fact that particular day she happened to be wearing a very flattering dress from Reiss and high shoes. She rarely bothered with heels in London nowadays, but her legs were her best feature and she’d been waxed yesterday. That all seemed a lot like fate. Or at the very least luck. She would take either. Her profile picture was flattering. Her hair fell in waves across half her face, which was at once slimming and provocative; she peeped out from the curtain of hair, like a burlesque dancer might peek out from behind heavy, scarlet, velvet drapes.
She really needed to get back to her desk, start thinking about tackling Mrs Federova’s pitch proposal but she held her faith, screwed up her courage and stayed put. She waited patiently for a further twenty minutes, telling herself she would give up at half past. There had to be a cut-off point. She almost exploded with delight when she saw the tick and the icon asking if she was available to chat.
Did we just meet?
She dithered. Would he think she was some sort of stalker if she admitted they had? Would he be scared off? Or would he admire her efficiency, her opportunistic nature? No one was overly syrupy about dating apps nowadays; pragmatism beat romanticism every time, so she replied:
Yes. I was in your foyer earlier. I have a client there.
She didn’t, not strictly speaking, she had a potential client, however, that level of nuance had no place in dating-app chat. She wanted to present herself as successful and purposeful, trusted. She waited a moment, but he didn’t respond. She wondered whether she had lost him. Already? It was possible. Bitter experience had shown that the first few moments of online chat could smother things before they had even spluttered into life. People were ruthless. Impatient. Quickly she tapped:
I saw you in the foyer and thought you were worth hunting down.
The use of the word ‘hunt’ was a gamble. Would it excite him? Intrigue him? It was a thin line between sexy, go-getting woman and desperate weirdo.
Are you a genuine redhead?
She did not hesitate. Yes.
I suppose I have to take your word for that.
I can prove it.
He replied with two love-heart-eyes emojis. One might have shown some level of sincerity, two showed appetite.
Are you free now?
It was hard for Fiona to tell herself that their first liaison met her expectations, which whilst only recently formed, were crystal. On the plus side, he was polite, he offered her a drink, she accepted even though she normally avoided drinking through the day. She accepted because she needed something to calm her nerves; yes, she was game, but she was also human and this whole encounter whilst entirely exciting was vaguely terrifying. He made her a gin and tonic. A strong one. He was breathtakingly handsome, and the apartment was one of the most impressive she had ever seen even in her professional life, and so much more impressive than anything any of her other dates had ever lived in. She knew she was getting ahead of herself, yet she could not help imagining waking up to the view, making supper in the kitchen, drawing a bath in that onyx bathroom and sharing it with him.
She was giddy with nerves. Not because she was breaking all the online dating rules by going to an unknown man’s home without alerting anyone to her whereabouts – which was dangerous, stupid – instead, her nerves came from an almost debilitating fear that she might put a foot wrong. That she would blow this opportunity. Fiona never came across good-looking, affluent, single men. It was a stunning opportunity. She had to get it right. Her loneliness had been all-pervasive for some time. Maybe years. A constant. White noise. A low drone, irritating and overwhelming. She tried to shake it at work, at book clubs, by talking to Leigh, her hairdresser or strangers in the shops. The more she tried to shake it off, the tighter it clung. It seeped into her, into the marrow of her bones. It became part of her. She was her loneliness.
But
