Still, Pete wasn’t here and Nadia was and she needed all the friends she could get, so she replied to say she’d be there and headed back to the station, pausing for one last minute to savour the bustling anonymity of the City before reluctantly getting on the train that would take her back to reality.
10
Pete
Pete jumped off the Tube at Paddington Station and headed towards the coffee shop where they had arranged to meet. A little frisson of excitement ran through him. Today, instead of going to work, he and Claire were going away together. It was only for one night but he felt like a kid breaking up for the summer, as if time stretched endlessly ahead of him, with nothing but fun and carefree abandonment to enjoy.
He’d booked them into a trendy inn in Oxfordshire, one with a Michelin-starred chef, so they could go for country walks, eat and drink fine food and hopefully have lots of sex in a boho chic room. He’d felt under pressure to organise something trendy for Claire, she was that type of girl. He’d spent hours on the internet at work, when he was supposed to be doing the budget for next year, researching suitable venues. According to The Sunday Times this was one of the hippest mini-break destinations of the year and judging by how much it cost, it better be bloody exceptional. Thank God he had an Amex card that Kate didn’t have access to.
The train was leaving in fifteen minutes, so he ordered a couple of coffees to go and stood outside the café, waiting for Claire.
A couple of minutes later she rocked up, looking unhurried and effortlessly sexy as she always did, wearing her signature oversized sunglasses and clutching a small holdall. Her face lit up when she saw him and she walked over to give him a kiss. ‘I’m so excited, Pete,’ she said with a grin.
He grinned back. ‘Me too.’
It was the first time they’d been on a proper date, if you could call it that. It was a bit of a risk which was why he’d decided to go out of town, to a county where they didn’t know anyone. The chances of bumping into another mini-breaking Londoner on a Tuesday during term time were slim to none. They headed for the platform, instinctively staying apart from each other while London rules still applied. On the carriage he looked around furtively, making sure that they didn’t know anyone, before sitting down next to her.
As the train pulled out he felt himself relaxing and he reached towards her and kissed her. ‘I’ve been looking forward to doing that for days,’ he said.
‘I hope it was worth the wait.’
‘You’re always worth the wait, Claire.’
They regarded each other for a minute, the tension building between them, and she looked pointedly at the toilets and back at him. Was she suggesting what he thought she was suggesting? Train toilets were bloody disgusting. And there was always someone waiting outside, making you feel like you had to pee as quickly as possible. But already the thought was beginning to turn him on. This girl was something else. He nodded and they stood up silently and made their way to the toilet.
Inside, he locked the door and pushed her up against the tiny little sink. It was early enough in the journey that it didn’t smell of piss yet but Christ there was barely enough room for one person, let alone two. This was not going to be the most comfortable sex he’d ever had. Yet the sheer recklessness of what they were doing almost overwhelmed him and after only a few seconds of kissing he was shoving her underwear to one side, using his fingers until she shuddered with pleasure before pulling down his flies and pushing himself into her with such urgency that he thought he was going to explode. It was quick, it was dirty and it was amazing.
Afterwards they made their way sheepishly back to their seats, avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the carriage.
‘Well, that was a first,’ he whispered to her after they’d sat back down.
‘Me too.’
‘Possibly a last too,’ he added with a laugh. ‘Not the most luxurious experience of my life.’
‘But pretty hot, right?’ she replied, raising her eyebrows at him.
‘Pretty hot,’ he agreed.
The rest of the journey was somewhat less eventful. They bought another coffee and did a crossword together. When they got to their stop they jumped into a taxi and arrived at the hotel with a couple of hours to kill before lunch. Donning their wellies and waterproofs they prepared to go out for a walk.
‘Jesus, we look like a right pair of Londoners on a day out in the country,’ he said with a laugh, observing their pristine Barbour coats and Joules wellies in the mirror before they went out. Without warning he had a flashback to the first country weekend away he’d been on with Kate. They’d been skint students at the time so they’d stayed in the cheapest B&B they could find. It was the ugliest room they’d ever seen and the en suite they’d been promised had turned out to be a toilet in a cupboard and a shower cubicle in
