‘I didn’t want it to look too obvious,’ he told her. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’ His frank confession immediately thawed her coldness towards him.
‘Me neither,’ she replied.
They looked at each other, suddenly nervous and unsure what to do. ‘Drink?’ they both said at the same time and laughed. He gestured for her to follow him and they walked together but slightly apart, zigzagging down the small side streets of London, for about ten minutes until they came to a pub so hidden that she hadn’t even known it existed. Inside, it looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since the eighties and there wasn’t a single City worker to be found. She knew at once why he had brought her here – no one would see them, so they were safe from prying eyes.
Still, she found a little booth right at the back that was hidden from the rest of the pub while he went to the bar to get their drinks. When he came back he slid in next to her and the sudden closeness of him sent sparks of electricity through her. In all their previous interactions they had been divided by the chastity belt of the front desk. Their legs touched and she looked at him, sensing that he was feeling the same.
They never finished their drinks. She took him back to her flat in a taxi and they went straight to her bedroom, all the nerves from earlier banished. The sex was not as good as the fantasy she had played over and over again in her head, because it could never live up to that, but it was good enough. Afterwards, they lay there next to each other, unsure what to do. She looked at him and he smiled but she could tell he was grappling with something internally. The moment between them had passed, and she had lost him again to his other life.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked him.
‘Yeah, I’m good, I’m just… it’s just that I’ve never done anything like this before,’ he said. ‘I’m not sorry it happened,’ he added quickly as he looked over at her, ‘it was amazing, you’re amazing. It’s just a lot for me to process.’
She touched his arm. ‘It was amazing,’ she said. ‘And you don’t owe me anything at all. If you need to go now, then go. Don’t worry about me, okay? I get it and I’m fine.’
He looked at her gratefully, clearly relieved she had given him an out. Ten minutes later he was gone and she was alone in her flat again. It was never going to be romantic, sex with a married man, she knew. And that was all it was to her, she told herself, she had wanted to have sex with this man and now she had. Tick. Time to move on.
And yet she felt strangely bereft, a feeling that she couldn’t shake off all weekend. The following night she went out with some friends and as she sat in the crowded, trendy restaurant in King’s Cross, laughing and joking, her thoughts kept wandering back to him and the previous evening.
When Monday came about, she found herself feeling nervous, unsure about what, if anything, was next for them.
She opened her emails and saw she had a message from the recruitment company asking how she was getting on and if she wanted to stay on for another three months. Best to go, she thought, nip this in the bud now and get on with my life. No good can come of this. And she was just about to reply to say no thanks, she didn’t want to stay, when Pete walked in. The minute she saw him, she knew that they had unfinished business.
‘Are you free on Wednesday?’ he had asked her. Her heart had literally soared at the sound of those words, like music to her ears.
Later that morning she got a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. Looking forward to Wednesday, it said. She quickly saved the number to her phone under the name PG and returned to her email to the recruitment agency.
Hi Jess,
Lovely to hear from you! Everything’s going great here thanks, I’m very happy to stay on for another three months. Please feel free to send over the new contract.
Best,
Claire.
21
Pete
On Wednesday, just three days before he was due to fly to Greece with Kate and the girls, he broached the subject with Claire nervously, waiting for her wrath. She looked at him in incomprehension. ‘You’re leaving your wife in a couple of weeks and you’re still going to go on a cosy family holiday to Greece with her?’
‘What can I do, Claire? It’ll destroy the kids if I don’t go and it’ll probably be the last holiday that we all have together. I owe it to them. It’s just a week and then I’ll be home and I’ll be all yours, I promise.’
She looked furious but managed to swallow down whatever angry words were threatening to spill out, saying simply, ‘I don’t think it’s on, I really don’t.’
‘I understand,’ he said as soothingly as he could, ‘but think of it as one final trip, to mark the end of our marriage before you and I start our new adventure.’
‘And what about the sleeping arrangements then? Will it be sex on the beach after the kids have gone to bed?’
He laughed. ‘Hardly, Claire, we’re all sharing a room, the four of us.
