Just for the Rush
Jane Lark

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Jane Lark 2017

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is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008139872

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Praise for Jane Lark

‘Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards’

Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews

‘Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!’

Candy Coated Book Blog

‘This book held me captive after the first 2 pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would’

A Reading Nurse Blogspot

‘The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between’

BestChickLit.com

‘I love Ms. Lark’s style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I’ve been looking for in romance lately’

Devastating Reads BlogSpot

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Jane Lark

Author Note

Ivy

Chapter 1

Jack

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Also by Jane Lark

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Author Note

Before you begin reading let me say a quick thank you to Suzanne Clarke my editor who has helped me pin Jack down a little. He is a very challenging man but as always I like to stretch the boundaries of perspectives with my characters and so you are about to go on another Jane Lark journey of emotions. Enjoy!

Ivy

November

‘Are you ready yet?’ Rick called from downstairs.

‘I’m just doing my makeup. I’ll be down in a minute.’

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. Into my eyes. Trying to look inside myself. Why did I feel so miserable? It was my birthday. A birthday celebration should penetrate through the darkness and dispel at least some of the shadows.

I lifted the mascara brush and swept it up along my eyelashes.

When I finished with the mascara I put the brush back in the bottle and the bottle in my makeup bag, then took out the mauve lipgloss that matched my hair.

My hand shook as I opened my mouth to apply it.

The wobbliness in my stomach expressed itself with a desire to be sick. I didn’t want to do this. I wasn’t in the mood for a quiet, romantic dinner with Rick. It wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my birthday. I’d rather be in a club with Milly and some of my other girlfriends. I’d rather spend the night sharing large cocktails with a dozen straws, jumping up and down and dancing badly because I could barely stand up.

But Rick would be upset if I told him I didn’t want to spend my birthday with him.

I shoved the lipgloss into my makeup bag, then zipped it up and looked at myself in the mirror. My hands ran over the creases of my black dress, trying to straighten the clinging material. I pulled the hem down to the top of my knees. It would ride up again when I walked. But so what? I’d have my coat on and we’d spend the evening sitting down at a table.

I breathed out, steeling myself for this. It really wasn’t a good thing that I had to force myself into going out with my boyfriend, but I was just down. I’d been down and trapped in this darkness for months, though.

‘Ready.’ As I walked downstairs, he smiled at me in the way that said you look gorgeous.

My lips lifted in a quick, answering smile.

‘You look good,’ were the words he said aloud.

‘Thanks.’

He had his coat on already, a bomber jacket. He was so broad and muscular that the fitted styles rarely fitted him.

‘Hey, cheer up it’s your birthday.’

I looked down so I could slip my feet into my sparkly gold stiletto heels. His hand ran over my hair then settled on my shoulder for a moment.

I glanced up and smiled at him. The thing about Rick was that he was so nice I could never say anything bad to him. I couldn’t tell him no, or shout at him, or argue with him. But inside I was screaming. His kindness was confining. I was trapped. How foolish was that? Other women would think their fairytale had come to life with a guy like Rick. It was selfish and mean to not be happy. I should be happy.

I wasn’t.

I was in a prison with glass walls – and comfy slippers, and soaps to watch on the TV and cardigans to snuggle up in.

‘What is so bad about that’? My mum would say on the rare occasions I dared to complain.

Nothing. Nothing was wrong. So why did it feel like this life was strangling me.

‘Come on, then.’ He held my parka coat up for me to put my arms into the sleeves. He was such a gentleman. Other women would scratch my eyes out to get at Rick if they knew about this offer of a perfect masculine package that I was not appreciating as I should. He picked up the keys, then turned and opened the door.

‘Where are we going?’ Please God tell me we were not walking around to the local Chinese that we went to at least once a month, at least let it be somewhere different.

‘You’ll find out.’

Oh, whoopee! A surprise! How fucking radical! I was such a mean bitch to him at times in my head, even though I would never say the words aloud. He was too nice to be sworn at.

A black cab waited outside our two-storey flat in a terrace in a London suburb.

Rick walked ahead and opened the door of the taxi. ‘Here.’ He held the door as I got in, then sat next to me and pulled the door closed.

Sometimes the glass walls on my prison closed in and became solid.

‘Did they tell you the address I gave when they took the booking?’ he asked the driver.

‘Yep.’

‘Great, thanks.’

I looked out at the houses illuminated by the streetlights. The year was heading towards mid-winter. Christmas. Time was going so fast. I held my clutch bag with both hands because I didn’t feel like holding Rick’s hand. We’d had loads of settling-down conversations this year, and the number of them had been building since September. ‘Do you want kids?’ ‘What would you prefer first, a boy or a girl?’ ‘Where would you get married if you had a choice of anywhere?’ ‘Do you see us always living in London?’

Maybe that was the problem – I didn’t see me and Rick always doing anything. I could never imagine the future. I only thought about now. And since I’d been depressed, I couldn’t even imagine being happy again. So why would I care about five years from now?

Rick had ignored my lack of enthusiasm every time I’d shrugged off his questions, with comments like, ‘I never thought about it.’ I’m not sure if I want kids.’ ‘I’m too young to think about that.’ ‘We’re fine as we are, aren’t we?’ ‘Isn’t living here, okay?’

The cab driver put the left-hand indicator on. There was no street to turn into. ‘Oh.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick answered.

The cab turned into the car park of the boutique hotel that was just up the street from us. The taxi had been a decoy; we could have walked. But at least it was something different. We hadn’t been here before and I’d heard good things about the restaurant.

The cab stopped and Rick got out without paying, so I suppose he’d already covered it.

When we walked up to the door leading to the reception, his arm lifted and hung around my shoulders. My heart thumped. I was so miserable I felt uncomfortable when he touched me. But possibly because I felt guilty about being such a bitch to him in my head.

Sex was the worst. Sex had become endurance, and that was cruel. Because he played rugby, so he had a good body; it shouldn’t be awful to do it with him. But it was.

I kept telling myself it was the depression, and he was really understanding, as ever. He didn’t push me if I said I wasn’t in the mood, and he kept telling me I’d get better. I’d kept telling myself that the depression would go away too. But I didn’t feel like it would.

The hotel had a fun vibe; the walls were decorated with dark glass and deep-purple colours, and there were gilt accessories everywhere.

He smiled at the receptionist as we walked past, then pointed at a door as his arm slid off my shoulders. ‘Go on.’

I pushed the door, but it didn’t open easily. I had to push both of the double doors to get either one to open. Then the music kicked in, Katy Perry’s ‘Birthday’. The room was dark but at the far end disco lights were flashing, green, mauve, pink and blue.

‘Surprise!’ The room full of people yelled at me.

I turned to look at Rick. He grinned at me. ‘You said you wanted to do something different.’

‘Yes.’ I could hardly breathe. I hadn’t imagined this. See. He was soooo nice. Sooo thoughtful. How could I not love him any more? Or had I never loved him and only just started realising it? Maybe I’d grasped at all his niceness because he’d loved me, and how could I have turned my back on that?

‘Ivy, darling.’

‘Mum.’

‘He is a clever boy, isn’t he? You didn’t have a clue, did you, when you spoke to me this morning?’

I shook my head as Mum hugged me.

Then Dad hugged me. ‘Happy Birthday, darling.’

‘Hello, dear.’ Rick had even managed to get my frail Nan here. I hugged her too.

‘Ah! You look gorgeous!’ My best friend, Milly, squealed, before wrapping her arms around me. ‘I’ve been bursting to let this slip for weeks. Steve has been threatening to stitch my lips up.’

The stream of my family and Rick’s family and our friends, who wanted to wish me well, kept coming and they all thought Rick was amazing for doing this for me. I hadn’t even taken my coat off yet.

‘Let me take your coat.’ Rick was still near me. I turned and then his hands were holding my coat on my shoulders so I could take my arms out. Soooo nice.

‘Good job, mate.’ Steve slapped Rick’s shoulder. Steve, Milly’s partner, was Rick’s best friend. It made for perfect couples’ nights out – or in, my inner voice snapped sarcastically. I was such a bitch in my head.

‘Come and dance.’ Milly grabbed my hand.

‘I’ll get you a drink! A G&T?’ Rick shouted after me.

I nodded.

I should be happy. I still felt sick and miserable. I was glad I could dance, though. Glad I was dancing and not sitting at a table facing Rick on my own, and I was going to get drunk.

Maybe Rick was right. Maybe this would pass. Maybe if I hung on, tomorrow I’d wake up and be madly in love with him and happy again.

But I couldn’t remember when I’d been truly happy. Had I ever been properly happy?

Not for years.

I danced a lot and Rick kept handing me glasses of gin and tonic.

I drowned myself in the music and gin, to the point that I didn’t care that the hem of my dress had ridden up to the top of my thighs and was way too short and probably showing off the lacy tops of my holdup stockings.

When the DJ started playing slow songs Rick came over. I’d kicked my heels off in the centre of the circle of friends I’d been dancing with. I put them back on as Rick held my arm, steadying me.

‘Are you having a good night?’ he whispered into my ear.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Suddenly the music stopped playing and the lights went on. I blinked.

Rick descended on to one knee.

No! No!

‘Ivy, you know how much I love you, and I have loved you for a long time.’

Shit! Shit! Why was he doing this now? Why here, in front of everyone? Oh, my God. Rick!

‘So, I thought it was time…’ His hand went down and dug into the pocket of his black trousers. ‘…to…’ he glanced up and gave me a grin as he was still struggling with his pocket. But then his hand came up and between his finger and thumb a solitaire diamond caught the electric light and sparkled.

Oh, my God.

‘… ask you to marry me. Will you marry me, Ivy?’

My mouth opened, but I didn’t say a word. My throat was dry. Shit. Shit! Why had he done this? ‘I…’ I couldn’t say yes. I couldn’t. ‘I’m sorry.’ I swallowed, steeling myself to say the word. ‘No. I can’t.’ Oh, my God.

I turned away from him, shaking all over. My mum and dad stared at me. His parents stared at me. Nan stared at me. Milly stared at me. Everyone was staring at me.

Shit.

I walked across the empty dance floor. The entire room was silent.

He knew I didn’t want to commit yet. Why had he done it? What did he think, that because everyone was here I’d be forced to agree?

Images of his slippers, pyjamas and cardigans spun around in my head.

I wasn’t ready to settle down into a quiet domesticated life. I wasn’t a dog to be sat with and stroked on the sofa every night. I wanted to live life, to see and do things I hadn’t done yet; to be allowed to go crazy when I wanted to.

I wanted to do lots of things. New things. Wild things.

I didn’t want to be sitting at home forced to look after the kids he wanted me to breed.

I hid in a cubicle in the toilet still trembling.

The door into the toilets opened. ‘Ivy.’

Milly.

The door into the toilets slammed shut behind her. ‘Are you okay?’

‘No.’ I opened the cubicle door. ‘Will you get my coat for me? I need to get out of here. I can’t stay with Rick. I can’t go home with him.’ My eyes filled with tears that ran on to my cheeks, probably smearing the mascara I’d so carefully applied before I came out. I wiped the tears away.

‘It’s okay. Wait here?’

Shit. Steve was his friend. If I went home with them, this was going to be so awkward. But I couldn’t go home with Rick.

Chapter 1

Today, December 24th

The phone rang out its sixth ring. It was annoying me. Jack hadn’t come into work yet so the phone in his office wasn’t going to be answered. The answer machine would kick in on the next ring, like it had done four times in the last ten minutes. But whoever was calling hadn’t left a message and I was guessing it was the same person.

Oh bugger. I snatched up my phone and keyed in the number to pick up the call. Jack didn’t like his calls answered unless he’d transferred the calls to someone. But whoever it was wasn’t going to stop ringing and I wasn’t in the mood to listen to it. ‘J’s Advertising.’ I glanced at the clock; it was after twelve. Jack was really late. ‘Good afternoon. This is Ivy. How may I help you?’

‘It’s Sharon. Where is he?’

Shit. What did I say? I had no idea how my boss would like me to respond to the wife he was divorcing, and I had no idea where he was anyway. That was probably why he hadn’t transferred his phone to anyone. ‘Hello, Sharon. I’m sorry, he’s not in the office.’

‘Well, where is he, then? I want him to do something for me.’

I opened up his e-calendar to take a peek, although I didn’t plan on telling her. It said ‘private appointment’. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. I’m afraid he hasn’t let anyone know.’

‘Well, tell him to call me when he does come in.’ The call was cut off, with no goodbye, and no thank you.

‘Who was it?’ Emma, Jack’s business partner, called over.

I turned and smiled at her. ‘Sharon.’

‘Oh.’

A couple of glances passed around the office.

Rumour had it that Sharon had caught him cheating. But that was Jack; he flirted constantly with clients, it was part of his winning sales approach. But Sharon had been as bad – and the two of them put together—

The door into the office opened. ‘Morning, all you lovely happy people!’

Talk of the devil.

‘Nice to see you all smiling at me, but not surprising, seeing as you’re about to get a few days off. I suppose you’re going to the pub after work.’

‘Aren’t you, then?’ Mark asked him.

‘No, I need to work on the Mack’s account, seeing as you are all finishing early.’ Jack said it with a smile. ‘But you can knock off at two, and have several on me, so you can get thoroughly drunk.’ He stopped at the desk near the door, pulled out his wallet, and selected two fifty-pound notes, which he let flutter down on to the table. ‘That should do for a few rounds.’

He shot a smile around the room, gave us a nod, then walked on.

He was a good boss in many ways. Fun-loving and a little crazy, even if he had tendency to be a control freak. He liked laughter and noise. He said laughter and noise had energy, and energy was inspiring, and as we were an advertising agency we needed to be inspired.

He was the thing that inspired me. He had magnetism. It was in his smile and his enthusiasm. He pulled me along like the Pied Piper of advertising and his levels of positivity gave me more energy.

‘The Mack’s account isn’t urgent! They don’t need the idea until mid-January! You can come for a drink!’ Emma called over as he walked into his office.

He turned and gripped the doorframe, leaning back out. ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Em. I’ll pass this year anyway.’

‘Jack Rendell passing on a drink…’ I said in a low voice.

He heard and looked at me. ‘Jack Rendell working late, now that is nothing different.’

‘No, that is true.’ I smiled at him. He had nice eyes; they were a very pale blue.

‘Good morning, Ivy.’ His gaze skimmed over my hair and my face, then settled on my eyes.

‘Good afternoon, Jack. You’ve missed an hour or two.’

He glanced up at the clock, then shrugged. ‘Yes.’

He was being weird today. He wasn’t himself. He was missing his usual exuberance.

‘Sharon called you. She asked me tell you to call her when you came in. She said there was something she wants you to do.’

‘Well, she can get lost and find another fool to do her chores, and if she calls again you can tell her I said that.’

I didn’t know how to answer. But he didn’t expect me to. He turned and went into his office, a glass walled box to one side of the room, then took off his coat.

When he hung it up on the coat rack in there the movement pulled his jumper up a little and his shirt out of his waistband, revealing a line of pale flesh. He was always well dressed, in designer clothes, mostly. Today he was wearing skinny-cut black trousers and a black pinstripe shirt beneath a burgundy jumper. The jumper was tight and I’d guess the shirt beneath it was fitted. From side on, his stomach was like a board. He was slender and muscular. He must spend hours in a gym at his house – or somewhere.

His hands slipped into his pockets and he walked over to the window, looking out at the view the office had of London. After a moment he turned around and caught me watching. He smiled. I smiled back and when he sat down I picked up my phone.

‘Jack,’ was all he said when he answered.

‘You don’t seriously expect me to get in the middle of your messy separation do you? Because I’m not up for that.’

He laughed. ‘Not if you can’t take a dozen rounds with Sharon; she fights hard and she has a cracking left jab.’ He sighed out a breath. ‘Okay, if she calls again put her through.’

‘Okay, but she was calling your phone.’

‘Then why did you answer?’

‘Because she kept ringing and it was annoying.’

‘Well, expect lots of ‘annoying’ in the next few months, Ivy, because she’s not letting our ship sink easily.’ He put the phone down.

Ten minutes later his phone rang, the tone announcing it was a call from outside. I looked over and watched him. He waited until it went to the answer machine, then lifted the phone off the hook. Two minutes later I heard his personal mobile ring; he didn’t answer that either. Then he got up and stuck his head out of the office. ‘Hey, Em. Are you up for changing our number?’

I laughed.

He came over to my desk. ‘My life is not funny, Ivy.’

‘I know, sorry.’

‘It’s ok. I was only joking. Do you want a coffee? Does anyone else want a coffee? If someone heads out to Nero’s you can line your stomachs before you go out and get pissed up on me at two o’clock!’

‘I’ll get you a coffee.’ I stood up.

His lips lifted only at one side. ‘I offered one to you.’ He was flirting, but he flirted with everyone.

‘I’ll get it. You pay.’

He smiled fully. His mobile rang. ‘Oh, sod it. We’ll both go fetch the coffee. Listen up, guys! The boss is doing the coffee run! This has to be remembered!’

A few people laughed. We all knew he’d remind us that he’d gone out to do a Nero’s run for at least a year.

His phone stopped ringing.

My office phone started ringing with an outside-line tone.

‘Don’t you dare answer that,’ Jack said.

‘And what if it is a client and not Sharon.’

‘It’s Christmas Eve. If it’s a client they’ll call again in the New Year. Come on, let’s go get coffee. Make a list of what people want.’

I picked up a post-it note and went around everyone. There were ten of us. It wasn’t a huge team.

Jack had picked up his coat and was putting it back on. His mobile rang again. He knocked it on to silent and left it vibrating on his desk as he walked out of his office, hands in pockets. ‘Come along, then.’

I stuck the order on the sleeve of his duffle coat before I turned and grabbed my parka off the back of my chair. I pulled it on as we walked out of the office.

He tilted an eyebrow at me while we waited in the hall for the lift, and recited the list of coffee orders. ‘Are they taking the piss, seriously, gingerbread lattes with cream and iced mochas. I mean who wants anything iced in the middle of winter?’

I made a face at him. ‘You offered.’

‘Yes, I did. Mug that I am.’

The lift doors opened. ‘You’re not a mug. You’re a nice boss.’

‘Nice… That’s shit praise. It’s sour when you know there are words like ‘great’ and ‘awesome’ that have not been used.’

‘You’re in a bad mood today, aren’t you?’ I folded my arms over my chest and watched the light behind the numbers as the lift went down through the floors.

‘Is it any wonder, with Sharon on my back?’

I glanced at him as the lift doors opened again. ‘Yeah, but you did bring that on yourself.’

His lips quirked sideward, sharply. It wasn’t a flirtatious expression; it was a challenge. I’d annoyed him. His eyebrow lifted on one side once more too and his pale eyes looked their objection through his dark lashes. The expression said, what? Then asked, why?

A pull of attraction caught in my stomach. Jack was too good-looking and his flirtatious nature had always made my stomach somersault. I laughed, but it sounded awkward. The hit I got was not just an appreciation of his looks; it was sexual. My body was saying it would love to have sex with him. It had been a secret desire of mine for years. But it was one of those things that I thought about but would never do. It wasn’t going to happen because he was my boss.

He looked away and held an arm out, telling me to walk ahead through the revolving door. I had a feeling, even though I had my parka on, that his gaze dropped to my arse. He was such a player.

But that side of him had always been exciting. I liked him looking at me, like I looked at him. I smiled to myself, my hands slipping into my coat pockets to keep them warm. It felt like a compliment to be admired by a man like Jack.

On the far side of the spinning doors, the volume of London, on the last day before Christmas, roared into life. The traffic was bumper to bumper, and there were people everywhere, with hands full of shopping bags.

Jack came out of the spinning doors behind me.

I sighed out a breath as he walked next to me.

‘So what are people saying about the mess I made of my marriage? Did Sharon tell you what she’d like to do with my private parts? I’ve heard several versions. That was probably the chore she had in mind. She probably wanted me to pick up some nutcrackers on the way home.’

I looked at him. It wasn’t surprising Sharon wanted to do him harm. If he fancied me, I doubted he felt guilty. I used to feel guilty when I was with Rick, when my stomach flipped at the sight of Jack, like I was being disloyal to Rick. But Jack was one of those men you’d have to be blind not to have some feeling for, and he played up to it.

‘Is Sharon still at your place?’ I asked as we wove a path through the Christmas shoppers. There were thousands of people walking up and down the street, but it was the heart of Knightsbridge. They were here for Harrods; to see Santa and the windows and look at the Christmas lights as well as shop.

‘Yes. I moved out.’

I couldn’t play judge over their separation; I’d instigated my breakup too, and I’d moved out too. I’d rammed a stiletto heel right through Rick’s heart in front of an audience. Santa was going to be slipping a lump of coal into my stocking tonight. I was not on anyone’s nice list.

But I wasn’t sorry. Santa could leave me on his bad-girl list. I’d rather be on it than miserable still. It had been amazing how my depression had lifted since I’d left. But there was guilt. I’d hurt Rick, and that was the one thing that was preventing me from being wholly happy now.

‘Here.’ Jack pushed the door of Nero’s open and let me go in first. We were welcomed in with the sound of Wham, singing out ‘Last Christmas’…

The place wasn’t too busy. Most people were buying Christmas Eve bargains, not wasting time in a coffee shop.

I joined the queue. Jack stood behind me. I looked back to see his face, ‘So go on, then, what’s the truth with you and Sharon?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Harsh.’ It wasn’t all that harsh; he’d said it with a smile.

‘I don’t fancy talking about it. I save those conversations for my lawyer.’

‘Are you trying to get your place back?’

‘No. She can have it.’

Jack had many edges. As well as always bursting with enthusiasm. There was the risk addict and the control freak. The big picture that others glimpsed seemed ten miles wide when Jack described it. He was a true entrepreneur; an ideas man and a money-maker. Emma always said if you gave him a pound, tomorrow it would be ten thousand. Everything with him worked fast, his brain dodged all over the place and he loved long shots – loved anything that made his heart beat. You could see the light in his eyes get sharper when he had an idea or was after something. The harder a client was to convince the more Jack wanted the contract and the more he pushed us to win it. He worked stupid hours fighting to win new work. But that was why he was so great to work for, his energy was infectious and he was passionate about what he did.

The only thing that freaked me out sometimes was the intensity that came with the passion. He sucked us all in and had us screaming for more, no matter how heavy the workload was, but then he would suddenly stop and lean back and look at all the work, and my heart would be going like crazy because I wanted what I’d done to be what he was looking for.

‘She’s not getting a share of the agency, though.’

I’d never considered that his breakup might affect us. ‘Shit, I’d never thought—’

‘Of course she was going to be after it. Why would she not try to get her claws into the treasure trove of J’s Advertising?’

‘Sorry.’

He laughed sharply. ‘No. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t be telling you. Don’t worry, your job’s safe. And I’ll shut up. You didn’t ask me to rant at you and I said I wasn’t going to talk about it.’

‘It’s okay, I understand.’

‘No, I doubt you do.’

He probably didn’t know Rick and I had split. Jack didn’t sit around and talk much; he was always too busy.

I looked forward again and moved along with the queue, my hands slipping into the pockets of my parka once more.

Jack’s hands suddenly gripped either side of my waist and he shook me a little, sending my tummy into a backflip. ‘Hey. Sorry again. That was mean. I heard you split from Rick. But if you’re thinking it’s the same thing – it’s not.’

No probably not. I hadn’t cheated.

‘So, who got the house in your split?’

I looked back again and laughed, but it was a shallow sound. ‘Him.’

‘Where are you living, then?’

‘In a tiny flat; an attic room. I like it. Rick is in the place we used to rent together still. I think he’s hoping I’ll go back.’

‘There see, very different. Sharon wouldn’t want me back.’

‘And you…?’

‘Want her back? Are you kidding me, that money-grabbing, self-centred bitch. I’m celebrating being rid of her.’ His pitch didn’t say celebration, it was bitter – and maybe a little twisted.

‘Can I help you?’ The barista called along the counter, picking up the orders along the queue.

‘Hi, Susie.’ Jack smiled at her. ‘Here you go; there’s the list.’

The barista smiled at him. ‘Be with you in a minute, Jack.’

‘You’re on first-name terms with the Nero’s staff,’ I whispered as she turned away.

He smiled at me. ‘Why, aren’t you?’

My smile quirked. ‘Do you flirt with her?’

‘I talk to her. What’s wrong with that?’ His hands slid into the pockets of his coat, as if he was the most innocent guy in the world. He was so on Santa’s naughty list too.

But what was wrong with it? Flirting. Nothing. Flirting was fun and I hadn’t been able to do it for years because I’d tied myself down to Rick. ‘Nothing… But… I give up with you.’

‘That’s the sort of thing my mum would say, and I didn’t even know you’d started with me, Ivy.’

We moved three people along. ‘It’s no wonder Sharon is pissed off with you.’

His eyes widened, the pale blue challenging me as his lips formed a firm line, like he was going to blow off into a storm of rude words. His Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed them, then he said, ‘What do you guys think?’

Awkwardness wrapped me up with a nice bow. But he should know what everyone thought. ‘That you cheated.’

‘That I cheated,’ he said it in a disparaging way and his eyebrows lifted, saying, are you kidding me.

I’d guess he hadn’t cheated.

‘Well, if that is what you all want to believe…’

‘Sharon told Emma.’

‘That was good of her, and good of Em to repeat it.’

Shit, I was digging a deeper hole. ‘You didn’t cheat?’ I took a step out of it.

‘Oh, no, she’s absolutely right. I cheated. Loads.’ He’d leaned forward when he said the last word, and it shivered down my spine. Being up close to Jack was more than a metaphoric slap around the face, it was like I’d eaten a mouthful of the hottest curry; he made me sweat, as my temperature soared.

I turned away and faced the counter as we reached the till. He’d given the list to Susie and so I started reeling off the drinks we had on order. He pulled out his wallet. I stepped out of his way so he could hold his card over the machine.

‘Sorry, that was declined. Do you want to try putting your card in the reader?’

He slotted it in, then typed in his PIN.

‘Sorry, it’s still declined.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ he said under his breath. ‘Try this one. It ought to work. It’s just mine.’ He put another card in. The payment went through.

We moved out the way to wait for our coffees as the Christmas music aptly changed to The Pogues, ‘Fairytale of New York’.

‘Has she cleaned out your account?’

‘She cleaned out our joint account a month ago. Fortunately I didn’t have much money in there. Now she’s maxed out the credit card. I only left her access to one. She was meant to use it wisely. So if she hasn’t bought her Christmas dinner already she’s going to be hungry. That is probably what she was calling about. I had the limit lowered and didn’t tell her. It’s a full-on war I’m in, Ivy.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Again, not your fault, just me moaning.’

I hadn’t heard Jack moan until today. He was always upbeat. Where had he been this morning? To see his lawyer? He’d been managing his split with Sharon since the summer, but he hadn’t been like this before. ‘Well, I am sorry. I don’t like seeing you down.’

His smile tilted, then his hand gripped the back of my neck and his fingers squeezed. ‘Thanks, and, for what it’s worth, I think Rick is an idiot.’

He didn’t know how Rick and I had split then. ‘You know I dumped him?’

‘So Em said. What I meant was, Rick is just an idiot.’

I laughed. I didn’t know what to say to that. His long fingers slipped away from my neck, but I could still feel them there.

As we waited watching Susie make all ten drinks and load them into a box, the music changed to ‘Happy Xmas (War is over)’.

‘If I hear one more Christmas song…’ Jack whispered under his breath.

I laughed. But I knew what he meant. I was not in the spirit of the season this year. Rick hadn’t only taken custody of the house; he’d got custody of my parents and my friends. Everyone was on the side of team-Rick. But he was so nice, any woman would be stupid to say no to him, and so everyone had seen the complete and utter bitch in me.

I probably was the stupid one.

I glanced sideways at Jack. He was about four inches taller than me and I was five-eight, so he was tall. I caught his gaze as it shone through his dark eyelashes. ‘For what it’s worth,’ I whispered, ‘I think Sharon is a bitch.’

A bark of laughter left his throat.

‘Here you go!’ Our box of coffees was handed over, I moved to pick it up, but he leaned over and took it before I could. Really he could have done this on his own. Except maybe he needed someone to hold the doors. I pushed it open for him as we walked out.

The street was so crowded with shoppers it was like playing dodgems. I opened the disabled access door into the office block so he didn’t have to navigate the rotating doors with the box.

‘Back to the madhouse,’ he said as we stepped into the lift.

I looked at my watch. ‘There’s only an hour left before two…’

‘I can’t see much work being done, but maybe this coffee will charge you all up, so we can get all the account work wrapped up—’

‘Before Christmas.’

It was like he cringed at the word Christmas, as his face screwed up and one shoulder sort of ducked. But after that weird reaction, once his face had straightened up, he said in a flat voice, ‘Yeah.’

‘Weirdo…’ I said as the lift doors opened and I stepped out.

I got the office door and held it open.

‘Heartbreaker…’ he said when he walked past me into the office.

He was such a flirt, but so fit that even though I knew he flirted with absolutely everyone, it still had an effect. It was that pitch in his voice, the look in his blue eyes, and the quirk to his mouth, as much as any of the things he said – oh and how hot his body looked.

‘Coffee!’ he yelled as he set the box down on the desk, then he pulled a cup out. ‘Vanilla latte.’ He held it out to me.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

My fingers touched his when I took it and my tummy did a backflip, excited by a sexual jolt of attraction.

He turned away and looked into the box again, then pulled out his triple-shot espresso. He drank his coffee like the drug it was, taking shots to charge up his exuberant personality. He walked back into his office and shut the door.

I shouted out the types of coffee and people came over to collect them as I watched him take off his coat. He hung it up on the rack in there, then went over to his desk, picked up his mobile phone and made a call. He walked around as he talked, making large hand gestures. Then his hand gripped in his hair and he looked up, as if he was seeking Divine intervention.

It didn’t look as though he’d received it. He looked like he shouted something into the phone before ending the call. Then he put his mobile on his desk as if it had burned his hand and stood staring at it for a moment. His hands slid into his pockets. A look of exasperation played across his face.

When he sat down at his desk, he picked up his office phone. The phone two desks behind me rang. Tina answered. ‘Hi, Jack.’

‘Your lawyer… Okay, on to it.’

As I walked over to leave the empty box by the recycle bin, about three minutes later, I heard Tina say, ‘He’s on the line. I’ll put him through.’

I felt sorry for Jack. He’d worked hard to build up the business.

But then he had cheated.

I sat down to finish off the project I was working on. I wanted to get it completed before Christmas. I wasn’t allowed near the big accounts, but I’d recently been given one of the smaller ones to manage as a trial. I was trying really hard to come up with a new concept that would blow their minds.

If I was going to make my mark on advertising, this was my moment to start.

After about half an hour I sat back in my chair and sighed. The right idea wasn’t coming. I’d listed, in a mind map, all the things the client wanted, the demographics we knew about their market, the things that were unique about their products, looking for an angle, a hook, a catch… But I couldn’t spot one.

My stupid brain was absorbed with Christmas, and Rick.

He was going to my parents with his parents. The plans hadn’t changed since my birthday – I’d just been dropped from them. ‘Ivy, I think it’s best you stay away from home this year, Rick is very upset.’ Those were Mum’s precise words. Everyone loved Rick and so now everyone hated me. The only person who was sort of with me still, was Milly. But she couldn’t openly be on Team Ivy because Rick was Steve’s best friend – the two of them had paired us up at school. They could not have been more wrong.

Then why had I stayed with Rick for six years? Six years!

Because I’d been lazy. It had just been easy. I’d liked him. I still did. He was nice – why wouldn’t I like him? I even loved him, in a quiet way. But he’d never made my heart pound or my tummy backflip. I didn’t want to settle for ‘like’, or ‘comfortable’, or ‘kind’. I wanted a passionate love. I regretted hurting Rick by letting him think everything was okay. But I didn’t regret leaving. I’d wasted six years of both our lives staying in that relationship when I’d known it was wrong.

When the clock hit two, everyone started packing up. Emma knocked on Jack’s office door. When she opened it, she asked, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come for a drink?’

I didn’t hear what he said, but it was obviously a reiteration of no.

‘Have a good Christmas,’ Emma concluded.

She stopped at my desk then. I hadn’t stopped working; I wasn’t in the mood for a rowdy pub on Christmas Eve. ‘Are you not coming either, Ivy?’

‘No, I don’t feel like it.’ Emma knew all my troubles, she was my direct manager, and she’d been good about everything – she’d given me time off to look for somewhere to live after my life had crash-landed, and the place I’d found had actually been one she’d spotted advertised on Gumtree.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’ It wasn’t only the crowds, I wouldn’t be able to stand the Christmas music; Christmas was not happening for me this year and I didn’t need reminders of what I was missing out on. It was depressing and I was trying to leave my depression behind.

‘I don’t like leaving you here.’

‘I’m alright, honest.’

‘Why don’t you go home?’

Because there was no one and nothing to go home for. ‘No. I want to finish up what I’m doing on this account. I’ll use the creativity room while it’s quiet and try and generate some ideas before I pack up.’ I looked back at my computer and clicked on print, then stood up.

‘Well, if you want to come down to the pub later, text me, to check we haven’t moved on somewhere, and if you need me over the Christmas break you can call.’

‘That’s really kind, but I’ll be okay. Have a good time.’

‘Take care.’

When she went over to get her coat, I collected the printout of the mind map I’d done and then walked to the door with everyone. They were smiling and laughing, and they talked excitedly. Christmas had an atmosphere that was different to any other holiday; everyone was jollier – using the Christmas word. But there were the gifts, decorations and feasting to look forward to. I wasn’t doing any of those things this year. I was going to sit alone in my room and dine on baked beans on toast. I wasn’t very good at cooking for one. Rick had been the homemaker, not me.

A couple of the guys air-kissed me at the door and I hugged Tina and Mary, and wished them all a good time, and a Happy New Year, because this was it until the 2nd of January; we were finishing up for the whole period between Christmas and New Year.

So as of…. Now. When the door shut. I was on my own.

I walked into the creativity room. It was four walls of blue-sky posters that you could write on and then wipe clean. ‘To encourage blue-sky thinking,’ that was Jack. Emma was the organiser, planner and manager out of the two of them and Jack was the off-the-wall ideas and sales man. He did most of the client work; Emma managed the office and the accounts. The things Jack would find boring.

‘Right. Forget them, forget what time of year it is, I am going to do this. Come on, brain, give me some inspiration.’

I wrote up all the key things I’d thought of so far, then I used the computer in the room to Google relevant images and printed them off and stuck them up against all the facts and inspirations. As the images began to build, I started to think I was getting somewhere, that any moment the idea was going to come, but then suddenly the door opened.

‘What are you doing in here?’

I jumped. ‘Oh, God, you scared me.’

Jack stepped into the room. ‘Ivy, why aren’t you at the pub? I was just about to put the alarm on and lock up when I saw the light on in here. I nearly locked you in for the holidays.’

‘I didn’t want to go to the pub either. I’ve been working on an idea for the Berkeley account.’

‘I can see that.’ He glanced up at the wall. ‘But it’s Christmas; they aren’t going to do anything with it until the New Year and anyway I’m going now so you’re going to have to leave too.’

I picked up all the stuff I’d been working on, but left everything I’d put up on the walls. He stepped back and let me walk out. Then he knocked off the light, shut the door behind us and followed me.

I went over to my desk. The light was out in his office and his coat was in a heap on the desk next to mine.

‘I shut your computer down. I thought you’d gone and been sloppy and left everything out.’

I poked my tongue out at him as he dropped into the chair before the desk next to mine. One ankle lifted to settle on his opposite knee as he sprawled back in the chair, watching me.

I put everything down on my desk and then opened the drawer in the pedestal.

His skinny black trousers hugged the muscular definition in his legs as he leaned back in that cool, nonchalant pose.

He picked up a pen that had been lying on the desk tapped one end of it, twisted it over with his fingers and then tapped the other end, and kept on turning it and tapping it in an absentminded way as I shoved all my work into the drawer.

‘So what are you doing for the holidays?’

‘Nothing.’ I locked my drawer, then looked at him.

‘Me neither. Have you got anyone to go and visit, or anyone coming to you?’

‘No. I’m all alone.’ I gave him an awkward smile as I straightened up, ready to go. He didn’t make a move to get up.

‘Me too.’

His blue eyes looked at me and his fingers stopped turning the pen, then lifted to brush his black hair off his brow. There was that tug and my tummy did a dozen backflips like it had taken on a tumbling act.

‘You know, Ivy, we needn’t spend the holiday alone.’

Shit. What was coming?

‘We could spend it together, if you want?’

‘If I want…’

‘I’m going away. I’ve got a cottage in the Lake District. It’s my haven. It’s entirely isolated. You could come, if you want?’

‘If I want?’ I repeated. Where was this going?

His eyebrows lifted. ‘Ivy, come on, you get it. You could spend Christmas here alone. Or we could go away together and spend Christmas having naughty sex and leave the world to get on with their happy families’ celebration.’

I should feel insulted, I should feel shocked. What I felt was nothing like that – I felt – tempted…

He stood up. ‘You fancy me. We’ve had chemistry going on since you started here. Admit it.’ He was standing close to me, arms at his sides, looking at me like he wanted to reach out and touch. I wanted to reach out and grab, I always had.

‘Give into it,’ he said, as though it was the most normal thing for him to come on to me and ask me to go away with him.

‘Oh. You‘re so tempting,’ I said sarcastically and turned my back on him, deliberately, to cross the room and fetch my coat. My heartbeat raced manically. God, my body would love to do that. Sex! Naughty sex! The wicked side of me, the girl on Santa’s bad list, wanted to ask how naughty? But I didn’t really need to ask; I’d seen the glint in his eyes that had implied very naughty. But he was my boss.

‘I can be more tempting.’ I heard him getting closer as he followed me to the coat racks.

His voice ran fingers across my innards like they were guitar strings.

After I’d taken my coat off the hook I turned and faced him. A part of me was terrified and it yelled, don’t be more tempting! While the wicked me, the bitch that had refused to marry Rick because he was boring, wanted to leap at Jack’s offer.

I smiled.

One eyebrow and one side of his lips lifted. ‘You are tempted. I knew you fancied me.’

‘I didn’t know you fancied me that much.’ I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my parka. It would be entirely reckless of me to say yes.

His hands lifted, saying, look at you. ‘Seriously, Ivy, you must know what you look like, who wouldn’t?’

‘That isn’t a compliment that’ll win me over.’

‘I’m saying you’re gorgeous.’ He stepped closer and then his hands gripped the edges of my coat. ‘And there is one thing I’ve always known about you, you were too good for Rick. That guy was never right for you.’

My tummy did pirouettes. ‘I am tempted.’ My answer was a broken, dry-mouthed whisper. He’d had me at ‘Rick was never right for you’.

He glanced up at the ceiling, his head tilting back. ‘Yes. Come on temptation.’ His gaze dropped back to me. ‘Actually, why don’t we scrap naughty sex and go for all-out nasty sex, a whole week of it.’

‘And what happens when we get back?’ I could hear the words in Rick’s voice. Don’t be crazy, Ivy, he’s your boss. I’d spent too many years listening to Rick’s cautions.

‘Nothing happens. We act like normal.’ He looked around. ‘I don’t see anyone here; who’s to know we went away together?’ Then he looked back at me. ‘It’ll be our secret.’

‘But you’re my boss—’

‘I’m not going to sack you if you have sex with me.’

‘Or you have sex with me. This is your suggestion.’ I’d only ever done it with Rick. Was that desperately sad? It felt sad, and I was one hundred per cent sure that doing it with Jack would be incomparable to doing it with Rick. My bad girl wanted to know what it would feel like.

His eyes glinted. He still had a hold on my coat. The expensive aftershave he wore filled the air around us.

I breathed in and ended up breathing in his out-breath, he was so close.

‘As far as I remember, sex takes two people. If we have sex we agree no one’s to blame, no one’s leading the other one. We’re doing it for a bit of fun because we have nothing better to do and we’ll come back feeling much better than if we’d sat at home pissed off with everyone else enjoying themselves.’

Naughty. Nasty. Sex. My heart thudded, adding a bass beat to the moment, and my tummy was wobbly like a jelly shot. This was what I’d turned Rick down for – to feel a rush like this – this pounding and excitement in my blood. ‘Yes okay. Alright.’ The words left my lips without any bidding from my brain.

‘You’re sure?’ He sounded surprised.

But I was up for this. This was what I’d thrown my life up in the air to feel. This feeling was the thing I’d craved. Excitement.

He let go of me. I’d expected him to kiss me. But then it wasn’t romance he was offering.

‘I promise you, you won’t regret it.’

‘You…’ A nervous laugh escaped my throat. ‘You’re so full of yourself.’

His hands suddenly pressed either side of my head, his long fingers sliding into my hair. Then he did kiss me. It was hard and dominating. Nothing like the soft, gentle way that Rick kissed.

Oh, no, she’s absolutely right. I cheated. Loads.

I hadn’t ever admitted it, not even to myself in my head, but I’d wanted him to kiss me since I’d started here two years ago even though I’d been with Rick. Maybe I’d even have loved it if, at the end of my interview, he’d have pinned me up against a wall, kissed me, and whispered into my mouth, ‘You got the job.’ But there had been Rick at home and I wouldn’t have cheated. I’d never have let it happen before.

I cheated. Loads… Jack would have, and the whole idea of that made my tummy backflip when it should be turning in disgust. Maybe I’d dumped Rick not so much because he was too nice, but because I was too bad. Maybe all my family and friends were right to be on Team Rick.

When Jack’s lips lifted off mine, I rose on to my toes and captured his bottom lip with a nip. I was up for this. I wanted to be the sort of person who played. I wanted to try it. There was a rush inside me, inspired by the risk of who he was, and what he was – even though he denied it, if this went wrong, he employed me. But Jack would not even think of stuff like that, he thrived on risk. I wanted to think like him. I was up for a seven-night stand of naughty, nasty, sex.

He smiled then let go of my hand. ‘There’s one thing we need to make a deal on before we go,’ he said as he turned and walked back to pick up his coat, before looking at me again. ‘Let’s not mention the C word, I’m really not up for that this year.’

He meant Christmas. I laughed. ‘Deal. Me neither. We’ll make every day a normal day. ‘

He grinned as he slipped on his coat.

I should feel scared. All I felt was excited. This rush was amazing.

He held my hand, which wasn’t intimate because he’d put his suede gloves on, and then he led me out of the office, setting the alarm with his free hand before closing the door.

When we were in the lift, his free hand gripped the back of my neck and he kissed me again. The heat in my blood whizzed up to the four-chilli symbol temperature, as his tongue touched the seam of my lips. I opened my mouth. What was the point of playing shy when we’d agreed on sex already?

The way he kissed was purposeful, adamant and domineering. I pushed my tongue into his mouth. I was not going to let him be the boss of me in this.

When the doors opened he pulled away.

‘There is one thing I want to make a deal on before we go,’ I said. ‘You’re not my boss now, from this moment, until the 2nd of January. I’m giving you notice and you can re-employ me then.’

‘Deal,’ he breathed.

This was crazy.

‘Where do you live? I’ll drive you back, then I’ll pick you up at six-thirty and we’ll go up north tonight, okay?’

‘Yeah, okay.’

Jack

Six months before – in June

I shut the door to my office. This weekend was going to be different. Not the same old clubs and same people. I was journeying into the past.

‘Good luck with the reunion, Jack.’

‘Thanks, Em, enjoy your weekend.’

Em and I had shared a house through the last two years of university and now we shared a business. We were polar opposites but the two of us together were the perfect blend for success. I was the insanity and ideas and she was the voice of reason and a planning genius.

Ivy, one of the women who worked for us, was leaning on my personal assistant’s desk as I walked towards the door, telling Tina something, and her bottom was prominently aimed in my direction. She was wearing her chequered trousers; the ones that exaggerated her curves and made my groin heavy with longing.

‘Bye, Jack.’ Tina lifted a hand in parting.

Ivy straightened and turned around. She had the most amazing eyes. They were a lavender colour, purple-grey, and she dyed her hair a quirky pale mauve to match them. It made the colour of her eyes a dozen times deeper.

My diaphragm shoved all the air out of my lungs every time I looked at Ivy and those eyes. She was tall and slender but she had curves in all the places a woman should and a face that looked like something an artist would paint. Plus she had the purest ivory-white skin. Who kept their skin white these days? None of the girls I knew, but Ivy shied away from the sun and fake tan and kept her skin pure.

I’d have put her in front of the camera in one of our adverts but I had a feeling if I did that I’d never see her again; some modelling agency would pick her up and steal her away. And the thought of not having Ivy around to look at, and get my kicks over in the day, was gut wrenching.

But my kicks were all safe and innocent – she was with someone – and she was not the sort of girl to go anywhere near me when I had a wife. Plus Em would kill me if I tried it. And anyway I wouldn’t; Ivy was a nice girl. Too nice to treat like a throw-away.

‘Have a good weekend, Jack.’ She smiled at me.

I smiled too. ‘See you on Monday – have a good one.’

Nice, and someone else’s or not, though, every time she looked at me her eyes told me she fancied me too.

When I rode the lift downstairs I stared at myself in the mirror, looking into my eyes. I didn’t like who I saw in the mirror any more. I was getting bored of me. This school reunion had made me do a lot of reflecting on the boy I’d been and the man I’d become.

I changed into my leathers in the toilets on the basement floor, then lifted my hand to the security guy when I walked out.

This used to be the part of the week I looked forward to most. Friday night. Spending the money I’d earned, showing it off to win girls.

I preferred being at work now.

I shoved my clothes and the shoes I’d taken off into the pannier on my motorbike. Then I straddled the machine, revved the engine and gloried in the roar and vibration between my legs. I rode it out of the car park with a good feeling about going to do something different this weekend.

It was a warm night. The sky was pure blue. I dodged through the traffic, weaving in and out, avoiding the queues, unless I saw a police car and then I waited and queued with the rest, my feet on the floor as the engine rumbled between my thighs.

I loved the bike. I loved the anonymity of being behind a helmet and the freedom of speed. But it was getting out of the city on it that was the best. Then I could speed, especially in the middle of the night when hardly anyone else was around.

Riding the bike absorbed my thoughts and my mind needed to be absorbed in something else when I was heading home to my wife. Tonight I hoped Sharon would be out.

I used the word ‘wife’ loosely. My marriage wasn’t really a marriage; it was more like regular sex for the investment of half my income, the cost of a penthouse and every other thing Sharon wanted.

When the lift opened on to the top floor I owned, I sighed as I walked over to put the key in the lock. I hated coming home. I came home because this was where I lived, but the place didn’t feel like a home.

I turned the key and opened the door. ‘Sharon!’ I called out her name because I never knew what I was walking into and I wanted to give her the chance to stop if necessary.

I unzipped my leather suit and left my helmet on a chest by the door.

There was nothing wrong with the apartment. The place was amazing. It would be perfect if it didn’t house Sharon.

A part of me sulked all the time over the fact that Sharon had ruined this place for me.

I’d got myself tangled up in something stupid with her; every room in this place was tainted by it and I didn’t know how to untangle myself from the mess I’d made.

The place was a massive open space with three walls of glass. There was a Jacuzzi in the bathroom and a pool on the roof outside that had a view across London through another glass wall when you swam. I’d thought the place was ‘us’, me and Sharon, when I’d bought it. A wild place for a wild couple, who loved to live without limits. We had orgies up here and took drugs that made the skyline and the world distorted. We lived life to the extreme – on top of the world. Riding the world like the world was a motorbike, to be raced and dodged through the stationary and slow traffic.

I still loved the place, despite it not being homely. But I didn’t love Sharon any more. I probably never had and I didn’t like the way we lived any more. I think I’d just been in lust with Sharon in the beginning and excited by the way she lived – so fast and far on the outside of normal.

The life I led with Sharon ran parallel to everything else. It had felt like unleashing the true me in the beginning. The rebellious, fast-living, independent, unboundaried me. But if this was the real me, why didn’t I like it, or myself, any more?

Maybe I’d always known this wasn’t right for me because I’d never told my friends about it, not from school, not from my climbing club, uni, work or anywhere.

‘In here!’ Sharon shouted from the bedroom. I hoped this wasn’t going to be another gift. She knew my interest was waning and so she’d started trying everything she could to keep me in the game with her.

I didn’t want to play.

Ever since I’d had the invite to go back to my old school I’d been evaluating my life and nothing fitted. I’d been ambitious as a kid and Em and I had the business, and I had my investment properties and ten times more than I could have expected to achieve at my age – except that it all tasted sour because I’d never been ambitious for this empty fucking marriage. This was not how I’d seen myself. This was not where I wanted to be five years from now.

Sharon was on her own in the bedroom, in her underwear – just old-fashioned suspenders and stockings. Maybe she hoped I’d be motivated to react to her nudity before I left. I wasn’t. I started stripping off my leather suit. After I’d released my arms, it hung from my waist

‘What time are you going out?’ she asked.

‘As soon as I’m showered and ready.’ I removed my boots and took the leather suit off my legs. Then straightened and stripped off my t-shirt.

‘Is it okay if I ask some people over?’

By ‘some people’ she meant her friends – I used that term loosely too – and a mix of strangers, who’d take cocaine that I’d pay for and drink booze that I’d pay for. Then they’d come in here, into my bedroom and have sex on my bed, a twisting puzzle of tangled bodies. Or maybe not in here, maybe in the Jacuzzi or in the living room, or in the pool… ‘Do what you want.’

I left my clothes in a pile on the floor for the cleaner to pick up, then went to have a shower.

I washed my hair and let the water teem over my head, tipping up my face, then I sighed. I spat out the water that had run into my mouth and turned to face the wall. Fuck. The thought of tangled bodies and long legs wrapping around me and the tongues and mouths that would be all over me, if I stayed here, did still turn me on. With one hand flat on the cold marble slab lining the back wall, and the water running over my head and down my back, I took my dick in my hand.

The images in my mind had made me hard.

I gripped it with anger, because I really didn’t want to be like this. Then I shut my eyes and let thoughts of sex wash over me with the water.

Sharon would be willing to murder me if she knew I’d rather wank than have sex with her. She thought I was going to pick someone up at the reunion party. I had no intention of doing that. The girls I’d been at school with were not like Sharon.

But maybe that was why I’d been so absorbed by Sharon when this had started.

I groaned when the orgasm rattled through my bones. My head fell forward and I took another breath.

That would keep me going without sex until I got back.

I washed off the marble in front of me, then washed the soap off my body and turned off the shower.

When I looked at the guy in the mirror to shave, I still didn’t like him.

I walked back into the bedroom with a towel hanging low on my hips and droplets of water still on my skin. Sharon looked up at me from where she sat before a mirror painting on her lipgloss. She’d put a robe on. She turned around on the stool. ‘We could mess around before you go, if you come over here.’

‘No thanks. It’s a long drive. I’m going to be late already.’

I found a shirt and trousers out of the wardrobe and got dressed. She watched me, but she didn’t say anything else.

I picked out a dark-blue, thin tie just to break up the white of my shirt, but I left the tie loose, the top button of my shirt undone so the collar was open. Then I rolled up my sleeves. It was too hot to put a jacket on.

Tonight we were meeting for a drink in the hotel, then tomorrow the school were holding a formal dinner. I’d packed this morning when Sharon was asleep, so at least I didn’t have to do that with her watching me, like I was a panther she was trying to work out how to trap.

Two nights away. Two nights to look at my life and think about where I wanted it to be in another five years. I needed to work out what my end game was.

I turned and looked at Sharon. She uncrossed her legs, with her back arched, so her breasts looked good. She never said, don’t you fancy me any more? But the words were in her eyes all the time lately.

Yes, I did fancy her still. I’d have to be blind not to; she had an amazing body. I could still get hard for her and enjoy every minute of sex with her. But emotionally – she did nothing for me.

I walked over and gripped the back of her neck, pressed my lips on hers for an instant, then wiped the gloss off my lips with the back of my hand. ‘See you on Sunday. Have a good time.’

Her eyes, which some people called green, but were really hazel, stared at me. Ivy’s lavender eyes came to mind. She was the only woman I’d ever seen with really distinctive eyes. I’d never seen anyone else with lavender-grey eyes.

‘You have a good time too. Don’t shag anyone I wouldn’t.’

I gave her a crooked smile. ‘That leaves the field open, then. You’d shag everyone.’ She liked girls as well as guys. That had been one of the novel things about her, when I’d first met her – that she loved bringing other women to bed with us and she loved watching me fuck them as much as messing around with them herself.

She gave me a half-hearted laugh. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’ I walked out and grabbed my leather jacket off the hook by the door. Then picked up the keys to the Jag. I was going on an adventure. Stepping into the unknown. I probably felt as excited as most young guys felt when they were invited to join an orgy.

l was bored of orgies. They were full of self-centred, greedy people.

I was looking forward to going back to the simplicity of the life I’d led as a youth – with a heart-wrenching need. I wanted to be who I’d been then – the boy I used to look at in a mirror and like; the one who had dreams in his eyes. The person I’d been before I’d made my first million and had to fight off the parasites.

As I drove down there, I wondered what people would say if they knew how I lived. Some of the others had become involved with drugs too. I’d heard that. When you had money to waste and youth on your side it was too tempting. But some of them… most of them… would probably turn their backs on me if they knew everything about me – like my parents had. And my parents knew hardly anything.

Nostalgia hit me in the stomach with a punch when I drove into the small town where I’d gone to school. It was old-world. Dickensian. I’d spent years of my life here. This school had formed who I was; it had made me a stronger person and given me the confidence to believe in myself – and my belief had made me a millionaire by the age of twenty-two.

Loads of people here had money. It wouldn’t be exceptional turning up here as a rich man. But I would be one of the few who’d made it himself. Most people had trust funds; money given to them on a plate by mummy and daddy. Not that I hadn’t had that too; my parents’ initial investment had started me off, but I’d paid them back and I was still rolling in it. Advertising and my brain full of the weird and wonderful were my pots of gold. I had a skill for concepts and big corporations loved it, and I’d invested my profits in property.

I parked up around the back of the hotel, took a breath, then steeled myself to walk in there.

The guy at the reception desk signed me in, gave me my room key, said they’d take up my luggage, and then pointed me in the direction of the bar where everyone was meeting.

There were probably a hundred people in there; there would be three hundred plus tomorrow. I recognised a few faces.

‘Jack!’

Edward. He’d shouted from about ten feet away. He lifted a hand.

‘You made it,’ he said, when I got over to him. ‘It’s great to see you. I was looking out for you.’ He held my arm for an instant, pulling me into the group of people he’d been talking to. We’d been best friends at school – we’d kept in contact. He worked for a bank and sometimes I went over to Canary Wharf and met him for a drink after work. ‘This is Helen, my fiancée…’

‘Hi. Nice to meet you, Helen. Edward’s talked about you, and nothing else, every time we’ve met for the last year.’

The conversation they’d been involved in cracked up again. My hands slid into my trouser pockets as I stood there and listened.

I’d known you could bring partners; I’d never considered bringing Sharon. She’d have embarrassed me. She’d have tried to get into all the guys’ trousers and if she knew it made me uncomfortable she’d have been trying ten times harder. And if she’d succeeded with anyone, I’d have died if she’d expected me to share my bed with people I knew from school.

That was the thought that had made me start reflecting harder. If my life was not something I’d share with friends because my wife was embarrassing and the way I lived so bad it had to be a secret – what was I doing living like that?

Edward had never met Sharon. I’d been married for nearly three years.

When we were younger, maybe he’d have whacked me on the back in applause if I’d told him I was in an open relationship, which meant shagging anyone you wanted in any mix of people, anywhere and anytime. But we were meant to be grown up now; it was a very different thing to say it now.

It was weird. I lived a weird life.

I turned to the bar. I needed a drink to hold so I didn’t feel like a prick. The guy serving lifted an eyebrow at me to ask what I wanted. He was probably pissed off with the posh twits that must haunt this hotel all the time – people with more money than sense. ‘Champagne. A bottle. A good one.’ But you had to play the part if you had money. He showed me a list of the bottles they had. I picked one.

When he opened it, he gave me a taste. I nodded that it was okay, then he poured me a glass. ‘Put the bottle back in the chiller and keep it for me.’

‘Sure.’

When I turned back to the room I noticed someone I recognised in a way that was more than mental.

Victoria.

I knew her smell and her taste.

We’d dated for a year while we’d been at the school, but she’d left before year thirteen. She’d gone home one summer and I’d never heard from her again. I’d texted her a few times, but then I’d given up chasing her. I’d had enough girls chasing me. I didn’t have to chase them.

Her head turned and her gaze stretched across the room, catching a hold of mine, as though she’d felt me looking. She was still really pretty. Blonde and slim. I smiled. I’d have gone over to talk to her but she looked away, her expression saying, shit, not him. She didn’t want me over there, then.

I turned to the group Edward and Helen were among. The crowd around them were the guys he and I had hung out with at school. I didn’t listen to what they said, I thought of Victoria. Of the nights when we’d snuck out of our dorms in the dark and found quiet spots down by the river – of how it felt to slide my hand up under the long skirts the girls had had to wear. Of how soft her thighs had felt and how I’d discovered heaven between them.

Victoria had been my first. This was a true walk down memory lane.

But shit, if she knew how I lived my married life I’d bet her nose would screw up in disgust. She wouldn’t be into this me. I’d bet Victoria was a ‘normal’ person.

When the evening wound up I walked upstairs to my room alone. A little drunk but not high on anything. I stripped off, then lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.

I needed drugs or sex to sleep. I had neither thing to bring my constant adrenaline rush down.

I got up and opened the window on to the street. The shop windows were still lit up across the road. It was past midnight but the sky seemed light. It wasn’t much past the longest day and to me this was the best part of the year. I liked being up in Cumbria when it was like this, maybe I would go up next weekend. Maybe getting away from London and the people and the life there would put my head straight again.

Sharon hated the place I’d bought in the Lake District. It wasn’t her scene. There was no one else to have sex with when we went up there. It was quiet, peaceful and idyllic. To me it was better than the best trip I’d ever had on drugs, and it went on forever when you were up there. Nature was addictive. Life was addictive when I was there.

I dropped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, which was grey because the night was so bright.

Things churned around in my mind. The work I had to organise for clients next week. What Sharon would be up to in our bed back at the apartment. What I had got up to in that bed all week, and in the Jacuzzi, and the pool.

I took a breath, longing for some weed to smoke at least, so my mind could come down from its height of activity enough to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep. I never could. I’d been a raving insomniac for years.

Victoria came into my mind and I wondered how different things would have been if I’d stayed with her. But that was stupid, because I hadn’t loved her, just liked her a lot, so we’d have split at some point between then and now, either in year thirteen or when we’d gone on to university.

I slept for about an hour, maybe, I think, or maybe I’d lain there thinking all night, wishing I’d done what Sharon had thought I’d done and found an old school friend to fuck. One of the girls would have been up for it. I’d seen a few of them who’d used to sleep with me in year thirteen, looking.

There was something about a woman’s eyes that gave the game away when they were up for it. Sharon had taught me that. She was good at spotting the people in bars who were cool for a night of naughty sex. She said it was because their pupils flared. The easier measure was who stared back at you when you stared at them.

After breakfast everyone walked down towards the school. I walked beside Edward and his fiancée. None of the guys I’d kept in contact with had asked me why I hadn’t brought my wife. Every one of them who had a partner had brought them. I suppose they were used to me not taking her whenever I saw them. I guess they all thought I was just a bad husband. I think that was what everyone outside of the bubble I lived in with Sharon believed.

What would happen if the bubble burst?

The shit would fly.

My hands were in the pockets of my trousers, pinning my suit jacket open as I walked. I had skinny- cut trousers on and a pale-blue shirt. My suit was a dark blue. We were probably meant to wear black, everyone else was in black, but I’d always liked to be different.

I mentally heard one of the masters shout at me, ‘take your hands out of your pockets Mr Rendell!’ as we walked through the doors of the Harry Potter-ish school.

It was an amazing place. The building made you respect it. It had always gripped at my soul but today it seemed to look inside me and prod my conscience. It didn’t like what it saw either. It didn’t approve of what I’d become. It was ashamed of me.

We listened to speeches from the school heads about the achievements of our year’s alumni group and the achievements of the school since we’d left, as we sat in rows like we had as kids – only this time on chairs not the floor or a bench.

My theory was we’d been brought back because we were of average child-bearing age and they hoped we’d send our kids here.

Kids. That was one mistake I’d not made with Sharon and I had a very firm condom rule in our sex games. A child wouldn’t want the sentence of a life with me as their parent, or Sharon acting as mother.

After the speeches, we were given time to wander about the ancient halls and rooms, re-familiarising ourselves with the place. It was weird. I could see myself at desks, talking to people in halls, kissing Victoria and some of the other girls after Victoria had left, up against the walls.

Victoria had been three rows in front of me in the hall, but if she’d sensed me behind her, she hadn’t looked back.

As I wandered around the halls alone, wondering how my pathway from here had ended up where it had, I saw her walk out of a room with a friend. When she saw me, she walked back in.

I carried on, walking past the room she was in, as she clearly didn’t want to speak to me. I ended up outside on the lawn on my own, walking about the rugby pitch, wishing for a joint again. I hadn’t ever smoked cigarettes. I only smoked when the tobacco contained something with more punch.

Hands in pockets, I walked along the recently re-marked white lines, viewing me then and me now in my mind’s eye. I suppose the two of us were not that different. I’d been a self-obsessed shit then too, only then I’d valued it as self-belief. But it had helped me create a successful business. It was not to be knocked too heavily.

It was that cocky attitude that had made me tell everyone else they were wrong about Sharon when I’d met her. My parents and Em had warned me I was taking a wrong path. I’d told them to fuck off out of my personal business. But it was the wrongness and forbidden nature of the life I led that had made me get involved in it. It held a sense of risk and that made my blood pump with adrenaline. And, of course, anything that had pissed my parents off, and got my adrenalin raging, I’d been into it when I was younger. My self-focused attitude had made me rebellious and I wouldn’t have let my parents set boundaries around me when I’d just made a million. In my eyes, then, I’d been a genius and they’d been beneath me.

I’d been a big-headed dick, and now—

‘Jack.’ I turned around to see Victoria walking towards me, in a pair of pale-pink stiletto heels that were sinking into the grass of the pitch. She had a light flowery summer dress on, one that covered her breasts entirely and fell down to her knees. One that showed the outline of her body as the sunlight shone through the cotton and made me want to guess what everything looked like beneath.

I was more used to women who wore tops that shoved their breasts up in your face, or showed you the first curved edge in a dress secured by tape. While their skirts were so high you had no leg left to imagine, and if they opened their legs, which they frequently did deliberately, you had nothing at all left to imagine.

Imagination was nice and Victoria’s simplicity and prim dress had me hornier than any of the half-naked women Sharon liked us to play with.

I was glad Victoria had come looking for me. Maybe she’d been waiting for a moment to speak quietly. Just the two of us. Maybe I would do what Sharon expected me to do tonight and share a bed with Victoria, for old times’ sake.

‘Hi,’ I said, as she came closer. ‘I got the vibe you didn’t want to talk to me, otherwise I’d have come over and said, hello, last night. How are you? Is life treating you alright?’

She gave me a faint smile and looked me in the eyes. The look wasn’t there. Her pupils didn’t flare. She just looked awkward. It didn’t look like she even fancied me.

I had another sleepless night to look forward to… My internal voice, which never fucking shut up, laughed.

‘Hi,’ she answered. ‘I do want to speak to you, but I’ve been building up courage.’ She swallowed as if she had a dry throat.

I held her arm and turned her away from the school towards the edge of the narrow river where there was a path her heels wouldn’t sink into. She didn’t try to shake my hand off.

Was she thinking about the times we’d lain out here and used the grass as a bed? I remembered. I could remember every element of what it had felt like because she’d been my first.

I let go of her when we reached the river path, but we kept walking, following the path further away from the school. My hands slipped back into my pockets. I looked ahead, not at her.

‘You’re married,’ she said. ‘I heard Edward tell one of the others when she was asking about you.’

A sound of amusement slipped out of the back of my throat. So Edward had been guarding me from propositions. He definitely would not agree with mine and Sharon’s open way of life. ‘Yes, I’m married. What about you?’

‘But you didn’t bring her.’

‘No, this type of do isn’t her thing. She’s high-maintenance.’ It was the only way I could describe Sharon to people. She was, though – I had to invest eighty per cent of my mind and money on her to keep her happy, or to make sure she was not up to something that would make me unhappy. It had got to the point that I only really took part in the orgies because the argument if I didn’t take part took too much energy, Sharon never backed down.

I’d rather be with someone quiet like Victoria. It would be like going away to Cumbria. The solitude and solidity of having sex with one woman was currently the best fantasy I had. ‘And you? You didn’t answer. Are you married, settled down, single… What?’

‘Married.’ She looked at me with the smile I remembered from our school days and lifted her left hand to show me the ring. On top of it was a beautiful white-gold engagement ring too, with a sapphire and a diamond entwined.

‘Is he here?’

‘No. I have a daughter…’ Her breath caught for a second, but then she carried on. ‘She’s at home with him.’

‘Are you happy?’

She smiled. ‘Yes. Very.’

It was weird, because if I took Sharon out of the equation, the two women who’d counted in my life were the complete opposite of me. The sensible part of me was drawn to level-headed women like Victoria and Em. The wild me…

Here was Victoria settled into a quiet life with a husband and a kid, in her below-the-knee length print dress that covered all of her breasts, and I’d bet she only went out to a restaurant for special occasions because her world was all wrapped up at home. It was nice. I was glad for her.

Then there was Em, with her accountant’s brain, and her black-and-white way of looking at life. She had everything in our business and her personal life sewn up tight; she never let anything slip. I liked to be all over every project at work, but I didn’t need to be, with Em, because she was always there before me. But even she did not know how I lived my life with Sharon, and I saw Em every day. What did that tell me?

Sharon loved trying to rock that relationship; she hated me being close to Em. She even sent girls into work to try and get Em riled up with me, so that Em and me would fall out. My wild side laughed it off, and in the early days I’d indulged with one or two of the really pretty ones, because my attitude then had been ‘why not?’.

Now it was – why?

‘Are you happy?’

I should have known I’d get the same question back.

‘Yes.’ No. The white lie was easier.

‘There’s something I need to tell you, Jack. It’s the only reason I really came here. But I was a coward last night. Can we sit down and talk?’

‘Sure, shall we sit here and watch the river.’ The grass was dry. We’d sat down out here on the grass a thousand times before.

She let her handbag fall off her shoulder and dropped it on the ground, then swept her skirt beneath her and sat. I hoped the pale cloth wouldn’t be stained by the grass.

I slipped my jacket off, but I couldn’t offer it to her – it was too expensive to sit on. I folded it and dropped it on the ground, then sat down beside her with my legs bent up and my arms resting on my knees.

She twisted sideways, her legs bending so she could face me. One of her hands settled on the grass to balance her.

I smiled at her. ‘What do you have to say? That you’re really sorry you ran out on me at school. Don’t worry, I received the message, even though it was silent I got used to you not being here. And you were allowed to make choices that didn’t include me.’

‘It wasn’t a choice.’ She looked down, her gaze falling as if she found it hard to look at me. She hadn’t used to find it hard when we were at school. Her free hand picked a daisy out of the grass and then she spun it between her fingers, looking past me at the river. The sound of the water played on the air around us.

She was still being cowardly because whatever she’d come out here to say to me wasn’t erupting from her lips. ‘Did something happen, then?’ Maybe she’d left school to avoid me? Perhaps she was holding some blame against me because life hadn’t gone in the direction she’d wanted and she’d pinned it all down to not staying at school? But she’d just said she was happy. And I hadn’t done anything bad to her.

She took a breath and looked at me again, as if she’d spent the last couple of minutes trying to slot words into place. ‘My daughter is really beautiful. She’s made my life what it is. I love her – like you cannot imagine. She says funny things all the time and every new thing she does and learns… It’s beautiful… I have a picture on my phone.’ The daisy fell from her fingers and she turned to her bag.

That was nice for her, but I didn’t want to look at her photo.

When she found her phone she tapped in the code to unlock it and I saw her hand shake as she brought up her pictures. Then she held it out to me. ‘She’s seven years old, Jack.’

I looked at the image of a little girl, not really looking.

‘She’s yours,’ Victoria said.

The words hit me. Shit. ‘What?’ She’d punched me in the stomach and followed it with a slap around the face. ‘What?’ I rocked back, as though she’d really hit me.

‘I fell pregnant when we were here.’

‘We used a condom every time.’

‘Most times – not every time, when we were just messing around, and they aren’t one hundred per cent safe. You managed to get me pregnant, anyway. I did not sleep with anyone else, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

I looked back at the phone and took it from her. My free hand shook. Like hers had done. My fingers brushed back my hair.

No. This was insane.

The words, you’re fucking with me, spun around though my head in a sharp growl. But why would she?

The girl had black hair like mine and blue eyes like mine, and her face shape was mine. I stared at it. ‘Why are you telling me now? If she’s seven, why tell me now?’ I was looking at a picture of a child that was meant to be mine.

‘Because you should know. You should have known then, but my parents are old-fashioned, they didn’t want anyone told. I pretended it wasn’t happening, because I didn’t know what to do. They found out about Daisy when I had her a month early on the floor in my room. Mum found us there and they rushed us both to hospital. I was lucky I didn’t kill Daisy.

‘Afterwards Mum and Dad told everyone the child was a maid’s and they were going to adopt her and look after her. It took three years for me to stand up to them and tell them I was going to let people know Daisy was mine.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’ I stared at the image on her phone. My child. I had a child. Those words kept spinning through my brain. ‘What do I say?’

‘I met David after that, and he’s a great dad. He didn’t want me to tell you. That’s why he isn’t here. But when I got the letter from the school, it was like it was telling me I had to come here and let you know. You should know her, and she should know you.’

I stared at the picture. My daughter. I’d never choose to have a child. Never. My life was too fucked up. But I had a child. I’d had a child for all the years I’d been acting like a selfish bastard with Sharon. This little human being was made up of part of me. ‘You should have told me.’ I was a father. Me.

‘I should have. I know. I’m sorry. But at the point I felt capable of speaking to you about it, she was already four and I didn’t know how to begin.’

When she’d been five I’d married Sharon. Would I have made the same decision to lead a hedonistic life if I’d known about this child? Shit. I’d come here feeling introspective and nostalgic—questioning my life. This spun everything on its head. It was like someone had put my life in a box, picked it up and shaken it.

A child. I looked at Victoria, a frown probably making a line down the middle of my forehead. ‘Am I allowed to see her, then?’

‘Yes. David’s agreed.’

‘I doubt I need David’s agreement.’

‘Don’t be like that, please. If we’re doing this, if you want to see her and get to know her, then you have to do it sensitively. She’s a child. It will be a massive thing for her. You’ll need to take it slowly.’

‘This is a massive thing for me. I just discovered I have a seven-year-old daughter.’ When I’m not fit to be a father.

‘You’ll have to see her in my company, at least to begin with. I can’t let her visit someone who’s a stranger. You’d scare her.’

Scare her, my own child. But I had a legal right to her. I looked back at the picture. ‘Does she know about me?’

‘Yes, since she was four I’ve shown her your pictures from school, and said you’re her daddy.’

I looked at Victoria again. ‘So I’m not a complete stranger to her, but she is to me.’ I shut my eyes as a wave of pain washed through my soul. ‘You should’ve answered my messages that summer and told me. I would have helped you.’

‘Jack you liked me but you didn’t love me. You’d have felt guilty and made choices that changed your life, we’d have been stuck—’

‘It changed your life. If the two of us made her, shouldn’t the two of us have had equal impact? I would have loved her. I’m capable of love…’

Did I even know that? God, I hadn’t experienced it. I loved my parents and they were probably the only people, and look at what I’d done to them; we’d only spoken on birthdays and at Christmas since I’d been with Sharon.

I stared at the picture. My child. The emotion in me was like flowing ripples on a pond racing outward after someone had dropped a stone in the middle. Her eyes were so like mine. There was no point in denying it. I’d made a child. Me. God! I wasn’t going to mess her up. I had to do this. I had to be that man. As Victoria had said, there was no choice. I would love this child. I would shift heaven and earth. I would turn my fucking life around to be good enough for her. I had flesh and blood in this world.

How different would my life have been if Victoria had told me she was pregnant when I’d been seventeen?

There was no knowing.

Jealousy threw another fist into my stomach and clasped around my throat. I was jealous of Victoria, of her normal life, of her happiness – of the fact she’d brought up my daughter and seen her start to walk and learn to talk. ‘Tell me about her.’

I asked her everything. When did Daisy ride her first bike? What was the first word she’d said? What did she like to do? Was she a fast runner, like I’d been? Did she swim? Was she reading? I spent an hour talking to Victoria about Daisy, with her picture held in my hand, as odd emotions twisted over in my stomach.

The school clock rang out the hour.

It brought back a hundred memories of being in school here. I had a daughter who went to school somewhere… I was going to start asking questions about where she lived and what school Daisy went to but Victoria gripped my arm. ‘We’d better go back. I want to get ready for the ball this evening.’

‘Okay.’ I stood up, suddenly numb. This level of shock was like being hit by a car that had then reversed and run over me; it wasn’t just my feet that had been taken out from underneath me. ‘When can I see her?’

She smiled. ‘Talk to her on the phone first, Jack.’

I didn’t want to wait, I wanted to follow Victoria home. I didn’t want to stay for the ball. Patience had never been a skill I possessed.

She held my wrist. ‘I’ll see you at the ball tonight and we can swap numbers and organise something in the next couple of weeks.’

Weeks. Uh-uh. No. I wanted a deadline. Days. But I bit my tongue and nodded.

I didn’t ring Sharon when I got back to my room, I rang Mum. ‘Hi, it’s Jack.’

‘Hello dear. This is unusual. How are you?’ She never asked how Sharon was; they ignored her existence, sweeping the embarrassment I’d made of my life under one of their nice ornamental carpets.

‘I’m feeling a bit weird.’ I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and my forehead balanced on my free hand. ‘I’m at my old school. There’s a reunion thing.’

‘That’s nice.’ Her voice made it sound as though she was surprised I’d bothered to go. But I’d earned, and created, every ill opinion they had of me. Rebellious, self-centred bastard that I’d been. I think money was bad for you when you were a kid. It had made me take everything, including them, for granted.

But right now, Mum was the only person I wanted to talk to.

‘Mum, one of the girls told me I got her pregnant when she was sixteen. She had a baby when she was seventeen. A girl. A daughter. The child’s nearly eight now, and she’s mine. I have a daughter I’ve never seen, and you’re a grandma.’

The connection went silent. I didn’t know what I expected her to say, but despite the fact I’d hardly spoken to her in three years, Mum was the only person I’d had an immediate urge to tell because I was looking for reassurance – come on.

‘Well…’

The single word ran through my nerves. Was well good or bad? Mum’s perfectly rounded upper-class accent made it hard to tell what emotion was in her voice sometimes.

‘That is a shock.’

I was still not sure of her tone.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Numb. Weird, like I said.’ But beneath those, ‘excited too.’ I had a reason to turn my life around now the box of my life had been shaken. If I opened it up all the pieces inside would look different. I had a reason to pick the pieces up and put them back in a different order. I sighed down the phone. ‘Like I can change.’ I needed to tell Sharon and set down some ultimatums. ‘I wish I could turn back time and start over. I want to know her.’

Mum breathed in deeply. It sounded shaky. ‘It’s wonderful, Jack, and it will be lovely if you have a relationship with her. Children need loving parents who are involved in their lives.’

I choked back a laugh. I’d spent my life in boarding school while she and Dad had travelled on business; they hadn’t been all that involved. I didn’t say anything. She hadn’t been thinking of herself; her pitch was challenging me.

‘Children need consistency. I know you hated us leaving you in school but it was better for you than being on the move every other month. But what you must remember with this girl, if she’s yours, is that children are not toys. You have a tendency to lose patience with things, Jack, you always have. If you step into this child’s life you cannot walk out a few months later when you’re bored.’

‘Mum, I have a business I’ve been running for years. I’ve been climbing since I was a teenager. I don’t get bored of everything.’ But she was right, I did get bored of a lot of stuff. I was bored of my life. But I would not become bored of my child. Daisy. She would be a constant. Like Em. Like the business. Like my male friends. I had constants. ‘I know, Mum.’

‘Then I’m glad for you. I’d like to meet her.’

‘She looks like me; I’ve seen her picture.’

The sound of another deep breath slipped through my mobile phone. ‘I hope this turns into a good thing for you.’

‘This is a good thing. I know it.’ Hope… No. There was no hope about it.

‘Thank you for calling me, Jack. I’m glad you did.’

I took a breath, words wanted to come out of me which were not natural to me. ‘I’m glad I did too. I’m sorry I don’t call you enough. I love you.’

‘I love you too.’ That emotion was in her voice – loud and clear. She ended the call.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said those words to her. Years ago.

Maybe this was already starting to heal over the errors I’d made. A granddaughter could build a bridge to reach my parents. Maybe even Dad would forgive me for messing up.

When I stripped off and showered, my mind span through what I would need to do to become a man who’d make a good father. I’d never have planned this, but it had happened and I didn’t want irregular phone calls and hour-long visits, watched over by Victoria. I wanted to change my life. I wanted to be a dad. I needed to get a DNA test done and then I’d get my lawyer on to it, to get proper rights. I wanted part-custody, agreed by a judge – and if I was going to get that, then I needed to clean up my life.

I didn’t even drink at the ball, I watched Victoria as she talked to people and danced with friends. Now I’d had time to digest the news, I was angry with her. She should have told me. I’d made a mess of my life. I could have stopped myself doing it if I’d known there was a reason to live life differently. Suddenly everything wrong with my life was her fault, which was bollocks, but I was looking for someone to blame because it was easier to blame someone other than myself.

We swapped numbers at the end of the night, having hardly spoken to each other, so I bet people thought something weird was going on, but she hadn’t told anyone, so I didn’t. Then I said goodbye to the other people I’d caught up with and afterwards I made the decision to drive home.

What was the point in staying here? I hadn’t drunk and I wouldn’t sleep.

While I drove back, my mind ran through what I’d need to do to turn myself around – grow up. I had to become someone who wouldn’t make me feel guilty. Someone I’d be happy for my daughter to know. Someone who could invite a child over for the weekend. Someone I could stand to look at in a mirror

I called John, my lawyer, as I drove, even though it was two-thirty a.m., and left a message on his work phone. ‘Hi, John, I’ve got a new job for you. Please keep this quiet. I discovered I have a child. Call me on Monday and I’ll give you the mother’s details, then you can contact her and ask her to get a lawyer. I want a DNA test done and I want to apply for access rights. I want to be able to have the child stay with me.’

I was going to be the person who could have my daughter stay over. I’d needed a new ambition for the next five years of my life. I had it. Become a decent man who could be a father.

When I got home it was four a.m. I lifted a hand, acknowledging the security guard as I drove into the basement car park. He nodded at me with a smile. He’d know who was in my apartment, he saw everyone who went in and out, and at what time they went in and when they came out, because there was a camera in the lift.

He’d probably seen a lot of parts of Sharon and me in that lift too, and parts of the people we brought back. God, if Victoria wanted to stop me seeing my daughter she’d have a ton of evidence against it.

But I hadn’t known I’d had a reason to be respectable.

It was a pathetic excuse. I got out, locked the car up with the button and walked towards the lift, carrying my bag. I’d left my suits hanging in the car.

As I rode the lift up to the top floor I thought about the security guy watching me when I’d let Sharon suck me off in here, or fucked her, or fucked one of the girls we’d brought in. I bet he thought I was an arrogant prick. He’d probably watched it like a porn show and laughed at me.

I hadn’t cared before.

When the doors opened I walked into our private hall and unlocked the door. The place was quiet.

I didn’t shout. I had no doubt there would be people in here. I ran upstairs first and checked the spare rooms on the mezzanine level. There were no people in there. Thank God. This would be easier than I’d thought. I checked the bathroom and looked outside, no one.

I went into our room last, my heart pumping hard.

They were sleeping.

There was a guy I didn’t know on the bed, tangled up in the sheets with Sharon, and one of her girlfriends was cuddled into his back. She must have gone out with Sharon. Another girl, who I didn’t know, was sleeping next to Sharon. My guess would be they’d pulled a couple in a club and promised them the night of their lives. It was the promise Sharon always made. She’d used the line on me when we’d met.

I stood there looking at them for a minute. If Sharon was awake, her hand would be lifting out to me, begging me to join whatever tangled cobweb of sex they were in. I was her handsome, rich plaything. I don’t think she loved me any more than I loved her. I’d been kidding myself in the beginning and she’d been having fun. But this was the end. It was time to call stop. I couldn’t bring a child into a life like this.

I kicked the sole of the guy’s foot. ‘Get up.’

He groaned. He was going to feel like shit. They’d probably snorted cocaine and Sharon loved picking out people who didn’t normally do that sort of thing.

I kicked him again. ‘Get up.’

He rolled over, on to Sharon. ‘Where the—what the fuck?’

The women woke too.

‘Get up and get out. This is my place. I don’t want you in it.’

He sat up, looking back at Sharon. He was a bulky, muscular guy. If he wanted to fight me he’d probably win. ‘I thought you said your boyfriend was cool with this…’

‘He’s my husband—’

‘And he is cool with it, very cool,’ Sharon’s friend Karen, who had fairly regular sex with us, answered.

‘Not any more. Get out. All of you. I pay the bills here, I own the sheets you’re fucking on, and I am not cool with it. So, fuck off.’ I grabbed the top sheet and pulled at it, revealing some of their tangled-up naked bodies.

The guy got up. ‘Alright, mate, no need to go fucking mental.’ He walked past me and picked a pair of jeans up off the floor. Then looked back as he put them on. ‘Come on, Pen.’

‘You too, Karen. Get out.’ I glared at her.

She got up, all long skinny limbs. She was into heroin, not just cocaine. She had needle marks all over the inner sides of her arms.

My conscience kicked; her relationship with Sharon and I was probably a part of her addiction. I don’t think I’d ever looked at her when I was sober and clean before. I saw a different person.

She smiled at me, came over and touched my crotch. I gripped her wrist and took her hand away. ‘Just get out.’ She smiled as if she believed we’d call her in an hour and ask her back.

Never again. I’d received my wake-up shout and Daisy was my get-out-of-jail-free card.

When they walked out, clothes thrown on or hanging in their hands, I went into the hall and watched until they walked out the main door. It clicked shut behind them.

For the first time I thought about what all the hangers-on in my life might have done with the freedom of my apartment while I’d been out of my head. But I didn’t have much to steal. Sharon and I didn’t spend money on trinkets, we spent it on sex and drugs – and clothes – but Sharon did have some jewellery. We’d probably had stuff stolen and not even known.

I went back into the bedroom and looked at her. She was leaning up on her elbows in the bed. ‘What’s brought you back in a bad mood?’

I stared at her. I didn’t know what to say to this.

‘Come and get into bed. You’ll feel better.’

‘No.’ Oh, just say it. ‘I have a kid with one of the girls I was at school with. I found out today.’

She sat up and the sheet slithered to her lap, revealing her body to the waist. ‘What?’

‘My daughter is seven years old. I got a girl pregnant and she didn’t tell me.’

‘Oh, my God. That was a riot, then.’ It was said in a dismissive, sarcastic tone.

‘I need to change my life. I want my daughter in it, and this is not the sort of life a child can see. We’re not having any more parties and no more cocaine.’

Her face screwed up, as though she was annoyed and she thought I’d gone crazy.

‘I mean it.’

She slid across the bed and got up, then grabbed a dressing gown off the floor, walked past me and went into the bathroom. ‘Don’t be pathetic.’

‘I’ve had enough of living like this. I don’t want to do it any more. I’m not this man.’

‘You’ve never complained before.’

‘No. But I’m complaining now. We need to settle down. I want to be normal. I want to be able to invite my daughter here. I want to stand up in front of her and not feel dirty.’

She made a face at me, then squatted down over the toilet and weed, with the door open. ‘How do you know she’ll even want to see you? How can you know you’ll even like her?’

‘I like her already.’ Victoria was in my mind and through Victoria I could imagine our child. She’d be sweet, polite. If I’d had a child with Sharon, it would be a spoilt brat. ‘I called John. I’m getting a DNA test done and then he’ll start working on legal rights and I’m going to set up a trust fund for her.’

‘You haven’t even met the kid—’

‘I don’t need to meet her. She’s mine and I have seven years of her life to make up. So, Sharon, you need to change or we’re over.’

‘What?’ She shouted as she wiped herself. ‘What have you taken?’

‘Nothing.’ For the first time in a long time.

Only Sharon would have this sort of conversation with me while she was using the toilet. She had no decency. But even that had turned me on in the past.

‘Then where’s this sudden burst of anger come from?’ She walked past me, her dressing gown hanging open. Then she climbed on the bed. ‘Come to bed, Jack. You’ll get bored of the kid and forget about this and think differently in a few days. Come on. I’ll make you forget your bad mood.’

‘No thanks. Me and my bad mood are happy together. I like it. You can go back to sleep.’

I walked out and went into the living room, then sat on the floor with my back up against the sofa and my knees bent up, and watched the sun rise over London through the glass.

Sharon wouldn’t change and she wouldn’t go, and I didn’t want to be with her. If I was going to change my life, I had to be the one who left.

At seven I went back into the bedroom and started packing. She was out cold in the bed. I packed my clothes into five suitcases. She didn’t wake. My clothes were all I wanted – everything else I’d leave for her and buy new.

I took the cases down to the car, then went back up to tell her I was leaving her.

I shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened. ‘I’ve decided. You won’t change. But I’m changing. So I’m going. I’m leaving you. Don’t bother calling – and find a lawyer. I want a divorce.’

I took a room at the Hilton, left my car and my things there, then caught a tube back and got my motorbike out of the underground car park and rode that over to the Hilton too. Then I started looking on the Internet for somewhere new to live and rang Em.

‘Hi. Sorry to interrupt your Sunday, but I wanted to warn you, I won’t be in tomorrow. Can you run the meeting and tell everyone I’m off because Sharon and I have split? I’m going to get somewhere else to live. I want to do some viewings and then I’ll be back in.’

‘You split up?’

‘Yes, and do not say I told you so, or thank God, or anything. We split up because I discovered I have a daughter, a seven-year-old daughter.’

‘Oh my God. You—’

‘Say nothing.’

‘Saying nothing. I’ll see you on Tuesday, with any luck. I hope it goes okay. If you need me, call.’

‘Cheers, Em.’

I sat on the sofa in the hotel room and scrolled down through the pages of apartments. I’d done it. I was making a new start.

At one o’clock I called Victoria. ‘Hi, it’s Jack.’

‘I know, your number’s in my phone.’

‘Can I speak to her? Daisy. Have you said anything?’

‘We’re eating, Jack.’

‘Shall I call back, then?’

‘No. I’ll call you later.’

‘Do.’

‘I said I would, Jack.’

It was two hours later when she called. I grabbed my phone. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’

My heart pounded like the bass rhythm from a speaker in a club. ‘Is she there? Is she with you?’

‘Yes.’ Victoria sounded nervous. ‘Daisy, do you want to speak to him still? His name is Jack, remember.’

Victoria’s voice had become more distant at the end of the sentence, as if she held the phone out, then I heard some short, sharp breaths. She was there. ‘Hi. Daisy?’

‘Hello.’

Tears clouded my vision. ‘Hello. It’s nice to talk to you.’ What did I say?

‘Mummy said she met you at the party she went to.’

‘Yes, she did. I’ve only just discovered you, Daisy. I’d like to come and see you sometime.’ Sometime soon.

She took a breath. ‘Mummy said your eyes are like mine.’

‘Yes.’

‘I want to go and play again.’ The sound dropped away.

‘Sorry, she has about as much patience as you did.’

It felt like something had been ripped away from me. ‘When can I see her?’

‘Jack, don’t start pressuring me. It’s not only Daisy who needs to get used to this, it’s my husband too, and I’m not risking my marriage for you. Take it easy.’

‘You can’t dangle her in front of me and then say no.’

‘I’m not doing that. Please don’t start being awkward.’

‘Wanting to see my daughter is not being awkward.’ I was tired and desperate and falling to pieces. ‘But I will play it how you want to play it.’

John would fight my case. In the meantime I needed to do everything right, and if I was lucky, maybe by Christmas, I would have a daughter to spend that day with. That would be something. That was a goal worth aiming for.

Chapter 2

Today, December 24th

When I got out of Jack’s car, he said, ‘I’ll see you later.’

I looked back at him. He was leaning on the passenger seat, while his other hand still gripped the steering wheel. ‘Yeah, see you later.’

He smiled as I shut the door.

Shit. I must be mad. This was a stupid thing to do. When he drove off, I lifted a hand and stood there like an idiot, waving at him. A big guy was walking down the street. He looked at me. I turned to climb the steps up to the front door then glanced over my shoulder to take one final look at Jack’s car as it turned the corner. The stranger caught my eye, smiled at me like he was laughing at me, then pulled his beanie hat lower and carried on walking.

I keyed in the code to get into the house and up to my flat, my heart playing out a manic dance rhythm. I was excited and terrified all at once.

I’d never done anything crazy before.

My hands shook as I packed, while the adrenaline dripped out of my blood, the excitement draining out and leaving the nervousness behind. I didn’t put a lot in my case. I didn’t need clothes for staying in bed for a week—having naughty, nasty, sex.

The words gave me shivers. I heard them in Jack’s voice and I felt them in naughty places.

The buzzer on the intercom sounded.

I answered, ‘Hi.’

‘Are you ready?’

I looked back at the case on my bed. I’d shove some heels in and my black dress, then… ‘Yes.’

‘Do you want me to come up and carry your case?’

‘Oo, you’re such a gentleman when you’re not talking about sex. No. I’ll manage. I’ll meet you outside.’ My heart bounced against my ribcage, partly excitedly and partly terrified. The adrenaline was kicking back in now I’d heard his voice.

This was so random. When I’d woken up this morning I’d imagined spending a week in my pyjamas, streaming constant films so I could avoid all the C-word specials, with Ben and Jerry’s on tap.

‘You’re being stupid,’ Rick’s voice said in my head, with a sharp note of warning.

I squeezed my favourite high-heeled shoes into the backpack I had my makeup and toiletries in, grabbed my dress out of the wardrobe and lay it on top of my clothes in the case, then closed the lid. There. Ready. I was done. I was going. Doing this.

I smiled as I left my room and let the door slam shut behind me. But then I turned around and pushed it to check it had shut. In the way Rick would have done. It had shut.

I smiled again as I walked downstairs. I hadn’t left Rick to spend the rest of my life in an attic flat for one. And I didn’t want to begin breeding cats to fight the loneliness. I’d turned the opportunity of life with Rick down because I wanted to do different things. Exciting things. To live in the moment. To feel my heart race. I wanted to be one of the fast-living, uncaring, naughty people – like Jack.

When I opened the downstairs front door, Jack was leaning with his bum against his F-Type Coupe, his keys in his hand. He was wearing the same black trousers and shoes, but he’d swapped his duffle coat for a waist-length leather jacket.

He shifted into movement when he saw me and came over to take the case out of my hand, with one of those tummy-flipping smiles.

‘I was half-expecting a text calling it all off.’

‘Why?’

‘I thought you might go cold on the idea.’

‘No. Still hot.’ I followed him down the steps.

He pressed the button on the key fob and the lights on the car flashed as the locks released, then he loaded my case into the boot, came around and opened the door for me.

‘Are you this much of a gentleman in bed?’

‘You’ll have to wait and see. But probably not. I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Nasty and a gentlemen… Nah.’ The sound at the end of the sentence implied… not a good fit.

My heart raced through the steps of River Dance. How naughty and ungentlemanly/nasty would he be in bed? The idea blew shivers through me.

The seat in his Jag felt like it hugged me. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this. You do realise it’s nuts,’ I said as he dropped into the driver’s seat. ‘I have no idea how I’m going to work for you after this.’

‘With good memories,’ he said, as he started the engine.

I pressed my head back into the leather. Yes. With memories. That was a good currency; I was only going to trade in making amazing memories from now on – memories that made me go, wow did I do that? Memories that made my heart pound years later. Even if I ended up lonely, with loads of cats, I’d have memories.

Memories of Rick slipped through my head. But they weren’t anything to look back on in ten years’ time. They were like watching YouTube clips of cute kittens. There had been ‘ah’ moments. But never ‘wow, what was that?’ moments.

Biffy Clyro played out from the speakers in the car, ‘Animal Style’. Jack turned the music down a little.

‘I feel like I’m back at school, playing truant,’ I said when he pulled away.

He glanced over and smiled.

‘How long will it take to get there?’

‘It depends on the traffic: about four hours-ish, maybe five.’

He drove into the high street. ‘I have to keep my eyes open, as I’m driving, but feel free to shut yours if you want to avoid the C lights.’

I smiled, but it was twisted. He didn’t see my expression; he was watching the road. ‘You really are bitter. Is this offer of yours more to do with Sharon than me?’

‘Why? Would that make you ask me to turn around and drop you back home?’

My heart danced another Irish jig. ‘No. I’m not here for a relationship, am I? January 2nd, this is over. And you didn’t offer me anything but sex, so why should I care if you’re trying to shut Sharon out. This isn’t anything to do with feelings. So whatever the reason, I don’t care.’

‘Who is bitter?’

‘You. I split with Rick because when he asked me to marry him I couldn’t imagine spending my life with him. And before you ask why, he’s dull. I’m not bitter; I’m just seeking some excitement.’

He glanced at me, with an eyebrow-lift. ‘So your motive for fucking my brains out is to get the boring Rick out of your head. You’re right, I don’t mind if you make me your Rick-eraser. This isn’t about feelings. So that makes us even.’

A laugh came out awkwardly, then I turned the conversation off me. ‘Do you take women up to this place a lot?’

He glanced over again. ‘What, because I’m such a cheat?’

‘Jack, you flirt all the time. And you didn’t deny you’ve had affairs. And we aren’t blind at work, we see them flouncing into the office, and then you disappear—’

‘Flouncing into the office…’ He chuckled.

‘Have you ever done it with Emma?’ They were close, they’d been together for about six years. They’d become friends at uni and then built the business up from the ground together.

He looked at me with a twisted expression. ‘No. She’s my best friend, and she’d be really annoyed with me if she knew I was stealing you away for a dirty, extended weekend. I can hear her voice. Jack, you idiot, what do you think you’re doing? Ivy is one of our best people.’

‘Am I one of your best people?’

‘Doesn’t Em tell you that? She tells me it. She’s been warning me off you ever since you started.’

A surprised laugh was pulled from my throat. ‘Since I started…’

‘She’s seen me watching you.’

‘You watch me?’ I smiled, because I’d guessed he glanced at me at work, and it felt good to hear him admit it.

‘You watch me too.’

‘I do no—’ Him knowing that didn’t feel so nice.

‘Don’t you dare lie.’ He glanced over. ‘I’m not blind.’

I poked my tongue out at him as the traffic slowed and he stopped. His hand came over and squeezed my knee, then let go and returned to the gear stick.

‘But I’ve only seen you looking, because I watch you. The best view is when you wear those black-and-white chequered trousers and lean on to someone’s desk to talk. Your bum looks amazing in those. But then your bum looks pretty amazing in anything. I told you, people who look like you should not be with people like Rick. I cannot imagine, for one minute, that he knew how to deal with you.’

‘Deal with me…’ I discarded the comment, because it made a tremor run up my spine. I couldn’t imagine how Jack was going to, deal with me. ‘You’re such a player. I bet you watch Susie in Nero’s, and every other woman’s bum.’

‘No. Only the bottoms of the girls I really like. You’re one of them.’

A blush caught alight and flared into a hot flame under my skin.

‘See, Em doesn’t know what I know, that you fancy me too. I wouldn’t have made my suggestion to you tonight if I hadn’t known that.’

‘How could you know that?’

‘How could I know… ah, that’s nice, you admit it.’

I pulled a face at him as he stopped at a red light behind a scarlet double-decker bus.

We were driving along the Embankment, past Battersea, out of London. The dark, flowing water of the Thames was visible beside us, in places, reflecting the lights of the city.

His hand reached out again and his long fingers ran up my thigh, over my worn, faded, skinny jeans. ‘I’ve known it from the moment we interviewed you. Your eyes looked at mine through the whole thing. You barely looked at Em, like you just couldn’t take your eyes off me. You always look at me like that when I’m in a room. I like it.’

He made it sound cringe-worthy. ‘Have you fancied me since you interviewed me?’

‘You fancied me, remember. That’s a pretty good aphrodisiac to a man.’

‘And here was I thinking this invitation was a spur-of-the-moment thing, to get over a bad day.’

‘It is that. But also a good excuse to fulfil a few fantasies. Since you walked into the room for your interview, with those ridiculously long legs, I’ve been imagining some fun things.’

‘You’re far too sure of yourself, Jack.’

‘And you are far too unsure. I know you had no expectation this would happen.’

We’d flirted at work for years, but this wasn’t flirting, it was honesty. ‘If you fancied me, why didn’t you make a move earlier?’

‘I told you, Em’s been warning me off. Plus you had Rick on the scene, and I never got the vibe that you’d be up for cheating.’

‘No, I wouldn’t have done anything when I was with Rick, or you were with Sharon.’

‘Well then, perfect timing. A whole holiday of naughty to get over our sexual buzz, which has been crackling around the office for two years.’

‘And then what?’

‘Don’t be a woman, Ivy. Be a predator. ‘After’ doesn’t matter. Don’t think about it. ‘Now’ matters. Thinking about after is what makes life dull. You said you didn’t want dull.’

Thinking of ‘after’ is what makes people sensible. The retort Rick would have given raced through my head. But I wasn’t Rick. Think of now, I chanted in my head. That was what I’d wanted to do. That was why I was here.

Jack turned the music up as he navigated through the traffic in the city. There were thousands of people making their way out of London tonight, going home to family.

He glanced over at me. ‘What do you normally do this time of year?’

‘Go home to my parents, or Rick’s parents, it was an alternate-year thing.’

‘The parents fought over you two, then?’

‘No, what I mean is, alternate years his parents came to mine, or my parents went to his. They’re good friends.’

He glanced over again and laughed. ‘Oh shit. Now I get why you’re alone.’

‘I’m disowned.’ I laughed, in a weird way. I’d been trying to laugh it off, but it hadn’t been working. It hurt. ‘I was told to stay away. Mum’s embarrassed by me. She hasn’t worked out how to be in the middle of all the mess I made and she didn’t feel like she could cancel the dinner invitation. So Rick and his parents are with my parents and I’m here.’

‘And his parents?’

‘Think I’ll come around. They say what Rick says; it’s just jitters.’

‘Is it jitters?’

I looked at him, watching him drive. He was more of a silhouette in the dark as the streetlights and shop windows flashed past. ‘No, it’s not jitters. I like him, he is a really nice man, but I don’t love him. Or maybe it is love, but in the way I’d love a friend. I can’t build a life on that. I’d hate him in the end.’

‘Well, I know how that feels.’

‘What do you normally do?’

‘Me?’ He glanced over. It made me realise how rarely Jack spoke about himself. ‘One thing I never did was see my parents. They’d have considered it hell if I brought Sharon over for lunch. Sometimes we took Sharon’s parents out to a restaurant if they came to London, but not every year. Sharon preferred to party Christmas Eve and paid more weight to that than what we did Christmas Day. Christmas and Boxing Day were about recovering.’ He breathed in, like he thought of something else he would say, but he didn’t say it.

‘Do you realise you said that word three times, then?’

‘Oh fuck, I did, didn’t I? Alright, from now on, if either of us says it, the other gets to think of a forfeit.’

I smiled at that, imagining all sorts of forfeits I’d choose for him, while my tummy quivered, wondering what he’d pick for me. ‘I might start using the word to make you give me forfeits.’

He laughed. ‘Then I’d change the rules. I seriously hate that word now. I hate the whole notion of it and everything it stands for.’

‘Ooo, got it. Bitter… much…’

He glanced over at me and laughed, shaking his head.

‘When did you meet Sharon?’

‘The year we started the business up, oddly enough, although now I realise not oddly at all. I met her the night we won our first big contract. Em always had Sharon down as a money-grabbing bitch.’

‘If Emma didn’t like Sharon, why did you go ahead and marry her?’

‘Em is my friend, not my minder. I listen to what she says in business, I don’t listen to her when she is commenting on my private life, and that’s exactly why you’re in this car, Ivy.’

Point noted. I grinned at him. ‘But—’

‘No buts, leave it. I don’t want to talk about Sharon, not tonight anyway. I’ve had my fill of her today.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t need to apologise, just avoid the subject.’

‘We seem to be setting a lot of rules that are narrowing down our conversation, so I’m just going to shut up. Do you have any quieter music on your phone?’

‘Take a look. You can manage the music.’ He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out his phone. It had been playing the music via Bluetooth. I opened up his music and scanned through the albums as he drove out of London. I chose Ed Sheeran’s album Multiply, then shut my eyes, listening to the songs as we hit the motorway. The car was warm with the air-con up high and the seat was comfortable.

When I woke up Jack had Maroon 5 playing, and his hand tapped on the steering wheel as he sang along to ‘Sugar’.

I stretched my arms up. I’d dreamt he’d been watching me through the whole of the Monday meeting and then before he closed the meeting he’d walked up, taken my hand and pulled me out of there and we’d run away.

It was sort of real; I was in a car with him.

I looked through the windscreen into the middle of nowhere. We were on a virtually deserted motorway.

‘What time is it?’

‘Hey, sleepy-head.’ He glanced over and smiled then looked at the clock in the dashboard that I could have looked at. ‘It’s eleven-ten. I was just going to stop, stretch my legs and get a coffee.’

‘I need a pee.’

‘That too. These are the last services before the Lake District.’

‘How far away are we from your cottage?’

‘About an hour, maybe a little less.’

I yawned, even though I’d slept for hours. I hadn’t slept well for days. I’d been too messed up over everything going on with Rick.

The services sign was up ahead, and then the white bar signs counted down to the turning. Jack flipped the indicator on and turned on to the slip road.

There were only about a dozen cars parked in there. I guess most people were not in a motorway services at nearly midnight on… I didn’t say the word, not even to myself, he was right, we should treat this like a normal day.

After he parked up, he looked at me. ‘Pull the hood of your parka up, then you won’t have to look at any of that festive shit. I’m wrapping my scarf around my head.’

I laughed.

‘We’re going in, doing what we need to do, then we’ll grab a coffee from Burger King. They’re right by the door and they’ll be quick, and we can drink it out here.’

‘Don’t you want a longer break from the car?’

‘No. I’d rather not put up with that fucking merry music playing.’

He pulled a beanie hat out of his pocket, slid it on and pulled it down to his eyebrows. Then he reached over the back, through the gap between the seats, and grabbed a scarf, folded it double and wrapped it around his neck, then pulled one half through the other. Finally, he settled both his beanie and his scarf so they covered his ears and nearly covered his eyes. ‘I’m ready.’

I flicked my hood up. ‘Come on, then.’ I opened the door when he did.

It was cold outside. I’d swear it was colder than London had been. I shoved my hands into my pockets as I shivered, walking towards the services. He caught up with me and his arm came around my shoulders. It felt nice.

We walked up to the door like that, with me leaning against him.

As soon as we walked in, though, we realised his plan wasn’t going to work, there was a metal grill barring access to Burger King – they’d already closed up and gone home.

Wizzard’s, ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’, played out.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath.

‘I fancy a change of seat for a bit, anyway, a hard chair in the café will wake me up.’

‘Alright, I’ll brave the good cheer for you. But I need the toilet first.’

‘So do I. I’ll meet you in the café.’

‘Okay.’

We parted ways.

When I came out he was standing at the entrance to the café, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looking stupid with his hat pulled down and his scarf pulled up, but of course his striking blue eyes against his dark lashes and brows, and the bone structure of his cheeks were still visible. I’d bet, even half covered up like that, the women in here thought he was the best-looking man who’d been through here for days. The women in the café were watching him.

‘You owe me big time for making me stand here listening to this merry fucking music.’

The merry music, was now ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham.

‘Can we get something to eat? I’m starving.’

‘Sure, go on then. I’d be mean to make you wait another hour.’

I picked up a tuna-melt for the server to heat up. ‘Are you having something?’

He took a look at what was left in the chiller and chose a pasta salad. Then he shouted over to the girls who were waiting on our order. ‘I’ll have a cappuccino but with three shots, and a skinny, vanilla latte…’ He glanced at me with an eyebrow lift to check that’s what I wanted. I nodded.

When he got to the till he took out his wallet. While he looked out his card, he said, ‘Can you put that sign down for a minute please. I don’t want to see it. Not everyone is happy about that shit.’

The girl made an odd face, then knocked it over. I guess the customer was always right.

He held his card over the machine so it paid on the contactless connection.

‘We’ll bring the tuna-melt over, Ha—’

‘Don’t you dare say it.’

‘Who are you? Scrooge.’

Jack threw the woman a glare.

She flipped up her sign.

I laughed and grasped his arm, pulling him away before he decided to make it a full-on argument.

He picked up a plastic fork to eat the pasta with, and napkins and sugar. I’d never seen him take sugar before, but then he didn’t usually drink cappuccino either.

I took a sip from my latte, watching him as he opened his salad and took a forkful. I liked his hands. He was right, I had watched him a lot at work, but it wasn’t just his face I watched, and his hands were fascinating. I think he actually had his fingernails manicured; they were always perfectly shaped, with no cuticle. He had hands he could model with, his fingers were long and slender, and yet they looked as masculine as the rest of him.

I glanced up. ‘Can I have one of the serviettes?’

He smiled at me, ‘Sure, knock yourself out.’

I took one then leant down to get my handbag; I’d put it by my feet. I couldn’t find a pen, but I had a black eyeliner. I took the lid off and then I wrote on the white serviette.

When I finished, I slid it across the table. ‘Just to make things official.’

Dear Jack

I’m giving you my notice. I don’t want to work for you any more. As of right now, you are not my boss. You’re my lover.

Yours sincerely

Ivy Cooper

He looked up and laughed. Then he folded the serviette and slipped it into his inside pocket. ‘I’m keeping that as evidence that you said yes to me. I might even have it framed and put up in my office.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

He gave me a grin as the woman brought my tuna-melt over.

Chapter 3

We’d come off the motorway about thirty minutes ago, and since then the roads had been gradually getting narrower and darker. The place looked like Middle Earth, the little of it I could see in the headlights.

I’d never been this far north before. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it hadn’t been gnarly woods, broad glass-like lakes and tall hills hemming us in on every side as Jack drove through twisty, narrow roads. It really was like something out of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, even the little whitewashed cottages were like hobbit houses. ‘This place is cool, Jack.’

‘It’s more than picture postcard, isn’t it? It’s knock-you-off-your-feet stuff. Sometimes I just stand around here awed by nature. But you haven’t even seen it in the daylight.’

‘Have you brought anyone else up here?’

‘I brought Sharon here. But she hated it. I’m hoping you don’t.’

He glanced at me, then flicked the indicator on.

‘Are we here?’

‘We are.’ He turned off on to a track that ran across a field. ‘This is the driveway to the cottage and the house that’s next to it.’

I didn’t think I’d dislike it – it looked like I’d love it. ‘I can’t believe how out in the sticks it is.’

‘I told you, it’s my haven. This is where I escape to.’ He smiled, but he wasn’t looking at me.

Then I saw it. The moon had been hidden by clouds most of the way since I’d woken up, but now the clouds parted and I could see a two-storey whitewashed cottage glowing in the moonlight, nestled in a valley, in a meadow amidst the hills. It had a slate roof that glistened when the moonlight caught it. I saw the bigger house behind it, but the cottage was perfect. ‘That’s really awesome.’ Literally, the awe he’d talked about hit me.

‘Isn’t it? At least because Sharon hates it I know she won’t be going after this as part of the divorce settlement.’

I looked at him. ‘I love it.’ My words came out breathless as he pulled up in front of an old- fashioned-looking porch with a wooden carved frame and lamps on either side of it.

Someone had left a light on inside.

He got out of the car and stretched. I got out too.

He looked different; his shoulders had relaxed. He looked as if he’d dumped the weight of work and his problems from London in the car. He looked over at me, waiting for me to come around the car. ‘Thanks for saying yes and coming up here. I think I’d have hated being here on my own this time.’

He sorted through his keys and then held them out to me with one separated. ‘Open up. I’ll get our stuff.’

‘Thanks.’ My heart went bump, bump, bump in my chest. While my stomach was no longer doing backflips, something warm and elemental was stirring within it instead. In this cottage was a bed, and I had come up here to get in that bed with him.

I unlocked the door as waves of surreal washed over me.

Was I really doing this? Who was this Ivy? The bad girl who’d turned Rick down.

‘There should be wine and food in the fridge!’

‘How come?’ I shouted back as the door opened.

‘There’s a woman who comes in and looks after the place. I had her stock it up ready for me!’

The door opened straight into the living room, there was no hall, and on the far side there was a staircase, and to one side a fireplace with a log-burner full of wood, waiting to be lit. But in the corner beside it there was a very bare fir tree. I dropped my handbag into a chair.

When he came in behind me, I turned. ‘You forgot to tell whoever bought the food you aren’t doing Christmas.’

His smile twisted with a bitter look, but then he leaned forward. ‘That’s a blindfold.’

A forfeit. I smacked his arm and laughed with a nervous sound, because the way he’d said it, and what he’d said, made my tummy do even weirder stuff. It was like a coil twisted down through it.

‘You check out the fridge. I’ll put the cases upstairs.’

He had my rucksack on his shoulder, my case in one hand and his in the other.

I didn’t ask which room he’d be putting my case in.

‘There’ll be some champagne in there. Get that out, for a start, and anything else you fancy.’ I watched him walk upstairs, my gaze hovering on his bum. He’d said he liked watching mine, but his was nice too.

I turned to the kitchen. Ravenous, suddenly, but probably not for food. My heart pumped so hard. I couldn’t wait to find out what sex with him was going to be like, but I was terrified of making myself look stupid.

I sighed when I opened the fridge. Rick would be playing charades with our parents about now. Go him! He could keep ‘nice’.

There was caviar, paté, smoked-salmon mousse, prawns, salad stuff and chicken, along with a dozen varieties of local cheese. Jack knew how to eat well. The problem was, I didn’t.

My phone buzzed in the other room.

I pulled out the champagne and looked in the cupboards for glasses. I found wine glasses. They’d do. I took out two and held them with the stems between my fingers, then picked up the champagne and went back into the living room.

Jack was just coming downstairs.

I held the champagne up.

He came over and took it from my hand. ‘Take your coat off.’ He’d taken his leather jacket off.

I put the glasses down on the table, which stood in the far corner of the room, then slipped off my coat. There were coat-hooks behind the door and I hung it up there. But the room was really cold without a coat. I rubbed my arms.

He’d undone the foil on the champagne and had the cork ready to pop. His thumbs gently pressed it up. Bang; it went off and made me jolt as it flew up and hit the ceiling while a mist of champagne evaporated out of the bottle, but there was no spray. I guess he’d learned how not to waste any over the years.

He picked up a glass and filled it, then filled the second glass before putting the bottle on the table. He handed me a glass. ‘To a holiday of naughty sex.’ He tapped the rim of his glass against mine, just as a clock somewhere in the house chimed midnight.

‘I feel like Cinderella. Shall I peek out and check the Jag didn’t turn into a pumpkin. Something must be suddenly going to change or disappear.’

He shook his head. ‘I wish a week of sex could change stuff. But no. This isn’t going to change anything, Ivy, except it’ll either mean we look at each other more in the office, or we look less. More if we have hot memories we are continually thinking about. Less if we manage to burn out the flame of lust entirely.’

‘Have you done this before?’

‘Brought people up here? As I said, no. Had sex with people to kill my desire for them? Yes. It works. But some infatuations take a little longer to burn out.’

‘So, is that why you invited me, because you want to stop getting hot when you look at my bum in the office.’

He grinned rather than smiled. It was a more relaxed expression. This place changed him. He drank a large gulp of champagne, then set his glass down. ‘It’s cold in here. I’ll get the fire going.’

He knelt down at the hearth and picked up a pack of matches. The log-burner was set up, ready to be lit – all he had to do was light a match and when he held it to the paper on the fire, the paper burst into flames. He shut the door on the burner. The fire raged into life as it sucked oxygen through the grate.

He knelt back on his heels, watching the fire.

‘Why is that here?’ When he looked at me to see what I meant, I glanced at the naked fir tree.

‘I may have forgotten to tell the housekeeper that Christmas wasn’t happening.’

‘You said the word. Now I get a forfeit.’ I drank some of my champagne, pretending to think, but I already knew. ‘When you’ve finished with my blindfold, I’m going to use it to tie you up.’

‘I might say the word more if you’re going to come up with that kind of forfeit.’

‘Then I’d change the rules.’

‘You can’t change the rules, it’s my game.’

‘But you’re not the boss any more, Jack. You’re just my lover.’

He stood up suddenly and came towards me. ‘Do you know how sexy that sounds?’ His hand came about the back of my head. ‘Feel.’ His other hand gripped mine and pressed it against the front of his trousers.

‘Shit. I’m in for some fun.’

‘You are.’ His lips came down on mine and I spilt champagne on the stone-flagged floor as his tongue pushed into my mouth. Forget jelly, my stomach was lighter than that; it was soft snow melting into slush. A sexual tingle teased between my legs, while heat raced across my skin, four chilli symbols of heat. I’d felt nothing like that when Rick kissed me. Had I never really fancied him?

Jack broke away. ‘I think you spilt your drink down my jumper.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No need to be. It was my fault.’

‘I feel guilty about Rick—’

‘You’re not pulling out now we’re up here?’ He looked at me, his body stiffening.

‘I wasn’t saying that. I meant I feel guilty for staying with him so long. You’re right. I’ve fancied you since I started. I don’t think I ever fancied Rick. I should have let him move on years ago. Oh, I forgot. I got a text.’ I finished off the champagne, put the glass down and went over to my bag. I pulled out some tissue to wipe up the spilled champagne, but took my mobile out too.

‘Rick: Hey, I miss you. You should be here. If you change your mind over Christmas I can drive up and get you. I still love you, Ivy.’

Daggers pierced through my chest, a hundred of them… All dipped in guilt.

‘What is it?’

I touched my thumb against the screen to unlock my phone, then went into Rick’s messages and held the phone out to show Jack.

He took it from my hand. ‘He wants you back,’ he said after he read the first one, but then he started scrolling through them. ‘Oh shit. Are you sure he hasn’t got some sort of problem?’

‘I think his problem is just me. I walked out on him.’

‘There are hundreds of these things.’

‘I know. I stopped replying a fortnight ago. He still sends them. They generally start about ten and then, as the night goes on, they get more and more desperate. I think he’s drinking a lot.’

Jack looked up from the phone, at me. ‘You must feel like shit.’

I closed my lips and nodded. Stupid tears welled up. He pulled me into a hug. Crazily that did stuff to my innards too, just in a different way than the kiss.

‘It’s alright to feel shit when you’re breaking up. No matter what side of it you’re on. And you’re not obligated to have sex with me just because you came up here.’

I pulled away. ‘But I want to have sex with you.’ I sounded petulant.

He laughed as he dropped my phone into an armchair, then his fingers braced the back of my neck and he kissed me.

My arms reached around his neck, one hand still gripping the tissue I’d got out to wipe up the spilt champagne.

He was taller than me, but in my heeled boots, not all that much. We felt like a perfect fit physically—but otherwise, I only knew him professionally, getting personal and touching and exposing myself was scary. But that was why this felt so tummy-churning.

He broke the kiss. ‘If you had a skirt on I’d lift your legs up right now and do what I’ve been wanting to do to you for two years.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Have sex with you on my desk.’

‘Your desk isn’t here.’

‘No, but the table would do.’

He let me go and I squatted down to wipe the champagne off the floor. He turned to the fire, opened the burner door and poked it with a metal poker to make sure the wood caught properly, then shut the door again. ‘I thought we could get the cushions off the sofa and the chairs and put them out on the floor.’

‘Okay.’

My phone buzzed again. Jack picked it up and then read out the text. ‘Ivy. Please. I want to spend, the C word, with you.’

I looked at him. ‘See, it’s like the first text is a nice tester to see if I’ll reply and now I don’t, then he dives into being more and more pressing. But even when I was replying they used to end up desperate when I wasn’t saying what he wanted.’

‘You have two options. I call him and tell him to get lost – you’re here with me. Or we switch your phone off. I’m not listening to him texting and you shouldn’t be reading them.’

‘Just switch it off.’ It was nice to have someone else know about them. I hadn’t been able to talk to anyone because everyone was on Rick’s side.

‘Done.’ His thumbnail flicked the little switch, then he threw my phone back down on the chair.

‘Thank you.’

I went into the kitchen to throw away the soiled tissue. When I came back in Jack had spread out the sofa and chair cushions in front of the fire, and he was stripping off his burgundy jumper. His body was so firm and his black pinstripe shirt was fitted to every lean contour.

I loved watching his body. In the summer, when he just wore a shirt and trousers at work, when we were doing something in the blue-sky room, and he reached up, stretching, or bent down and twisted, my brain had me working on how his body might look beneath his clothes. His stomach was so flat and hard, and his pecs were not pronounced, but they had definition. Like his arms. He didn’t have massive biceps, but they were marked, slim, sculpted shapes. He was a man someone would love to sculpt in bronze.

He threw his jumper on to the now-bare sofa. ‘Are you going to come and get cosy with me? Do you want some music on?’

‘Yes, and yes.’ I threw him a smile.

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and toed off his shoes, while I bent and unzipped my boots then pulled them off. I left them near the door, but I was cold, so I didn’t take my hoodie off.

I sat down on the cushions, upright, facing the fire, with my knees bent up and my arms hugging my legs.

He’d put his phone in a docking system and the music played out through speakers, Maroon 5, ‘Maps’. He went into the kitchen and came back in a couple of minutes with a bowl of nuts and a bowl of olives, then he handed me my refilled glass and finally sat down near me, leaning back against the sofa, holding his glass. His knees were bent up too but slightly parted.

‘Oh fuck it…’ he said it out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, and then he drained his glass, set it down on the hearth in front of the wood-burner, and moved the bowl of olives there too, and the nuts. Then he lay down, with his knees bent upward and one hand behind his head.

He looked up at me as the next song came on. ‘Animals’, it was the V album. It was what he’d been listening to in the car when I woke up.

His eyes shut. Then he started singing.

‘You know your phone is full of breakup music, don’t you?’

His eyes opened but he still sang the next line, smiling at me. He had a good voice. I hadn’t heard him sing before, but his voice blended with the song and made it better—

‘So what, I bet you have a freezer full of cartons of Ben & Jerry’s.’

‘You got me.’

He shut his eyes again, and sang – the song was really laddish.

‘Did you love Sharon?’

‘That is a banned subject.’ He hadn’t opened his eyes.

I sipped some of my champagne then twisted sideways so I faced him. ‘I know, but answer the question please? I’d like to know, seeing as we’re planning on having sex.’

He stopped singing and his eyes opened. ‘Yes, I sort of did.’

‘When did you stop loving her?’

‘I probably never did, properly, but I didn’t start realising that until about a year ago.’

‘How did you decide what you felt wasn’t true any more?’

He stared at me, one hand still behind his head. ‘We weren’t like you and Rick, we lived fast and we played hard. We weren’t in each other’s pockets the whole time. And, believe me, it’s been pretty easy to cut her off. She’s proved herself to be an absolute bitch. But anyway, I really don’t want to talk about that. What about you and Rick?’

‘I do still love him like a friend. But there’s no desperation. I want to feel desperate when I love someone.’

His gaze held mine, the pupils at the heart of his eyes wide in the electric light.

I drank the last of my champagne.

‘Do you want more?’

‘No it’ll give me a headache. I wouldn’t mind a lager, though, if we’re going to stay up.’

‘I don’t drink lager. Ale? Do you want a bottle of ale?’

‘Yeah, okay.’

He got up and went into the kitchen. Then came back with two open bottles. He flipped the light switch off when he came past it.

The only light in the room then came from the flames in the burner. He handed me a bottle, then tapped the neck of my bottle with the base of his. ‘Happy morning. Technically we’re not staying up late, we’re up early.’

He put his bottle down on the hearth beside his empty glass, then turned his back on me and walked around behind the sofa.

He opened the cupboard under the stairs and reached into it to get something off a high shelf, something that he’d obviously had hidden away so his cleaner wouldn’t find it. He pulled out a tin. ‘Do you smoke cannabis?’

‘Shit, I didn’t know you did that.’

‘Do you smoke it?’

I breathed out, my heart dancing to the beat of his music. ‘No.’ Not even when I was at school. Rick and I had got together a month before my sixteenth birthday; I’d never had an adolescent stage when I’d tested out life.

‘Do you want to try it?’

‘I don’t know. What does it do to you?’

‘You sound like you’re fourteen. It relaxes you. It’s a downer.’

‘A downer?’

‘I’m not so good at relaxing; my head races with too much stuff—’

‘You drink too much coffee.’

‘I know, that’s an upper, it keeps me punched up and thinking fast at work, but I keep cannabis up here so when I get away from the city I can chill out.’

‘You don’t smoke it in London.’

‘Not so much now.’

‘Is it addictive?’

‘Do you want me to look up FRANK on my phone? There’s a whole website there that’ll tell you the risks and what it does. Or are you going to call the police…’ He dropped down on the cushions next to me again and settled his back against the sofa. ‘They wouldn’t do anything, you know, there’s hardly any here. I’m not a dealer, only a casual smoker.’

He opened the tin, then glanced up at me and smiled. His look took the piss, calling me naive.

I sipped from the bottle of ale and watched him pull out a long, white bit of paper. He lay it on the lid, then put what I thought was tobacco in that. I’d never been a smoker at all, so I knew nothing. Then he lifted out a bag of greener-looking stuff and sprinkled that along the tobacco.

He glanced up. ‘I haven’t put too much in, so you can see if you like the feeling first. But I wouldn’t put too much in anyway – you only want enough to relax and feel good.’ He looked back at what he was doing and rolled the paper up into a tube about the tobacco with his dexterous long fingers and thumbs.

I drank my ale while I watched him.

He licked the edge of the paper, then grinned at me as he rolled the joint so it sealed.

The last thing he did was tear a little bit of card off the packet he’d taken the paper from, then he rolled that up and slotted it into the end of the joint.

He looked up and grinned at me again as he lifted it to his lips and then, sucking on the other end, he held a lighter flame to it. It flared as it lit. He took it out of his mouth and blew out the flame, so the end glowed and nothing more.

‘You don’t smoke,’ I said really stupidly.

‘No.’ He sucked on the joint again, breathing it in deep, and held the smoke in his mouth for a while, then blew the smoke out upward.

‘But you smoke that.’

‘I don’t smoke it all that much now.’ After he’d inhaled from it three times, he held the end he’d put to his lips out to me. ‘Do you want some?’

‘You can still get cancer from that if it has tobacco in it.’ God, that was such a Rick thing to say.

‘Yeah, but one isn’t going to give you cancer, and you can get cancer whatever. Do you want it?’ He lifted it up in my direction, his arm out, like now is your moment, take it or leave it.

My heart knocked against my ribs. It was telling me to choose – not to do it – or do it. Heat and adrenaline pulsed in my blood, a rush of life, a rush of feeling. I wanted to feel like this. I wanted to take risks. ‘Yes.’ I reached out, took it and put it to my lips, then drew in a breath and choked.

He laughed. ‘I take it you’ve never smoked.’

I shook my head, still coughing.

When I stopped coughing, I took a mouthful of ale and swallowed it, my throat had literally burned.

‘Just put it to your lips, breath in a little, let the smoke fill your mouth, then blow it out for now. You won’t get the hit so hard, but it won’t make you cough.’

I did that; it still felt a weird thing to do.

I blew the smoke out upward. Then I took a swig of ale, and then tried again, this time I breathed in slowly. It didn’t make me cough. I handed the thing back to him.

He was smiling at me, like he thought I was funny.

I poked my tongue out at him. ‘How did you get so successful?’ I knew he worked hard, but where had it started.

‘I’m a natural entrepreneur, Ivy. I have ideas, I put them out there, and I work my arse off to make them a success. And my brain buzzes with stuff. That’s why I need things like this to bring me down.’ He lifted the joint. ‘That’s why Em and I work so well together – she has all the qualities I don’t. She’s calm, cool and organised.’

He inhaled from the joint.

‘You two are good together.’

‘I know.’ He breathed out smoke. ‘She knows it too.’ He laughed.

‘I like you,’ I said to him as he held out the joint to me.

His smile quirked as I took the joint from his fingers.

‘I mean, I haven’t just always fancied you. I’ve always liked you.’

‘Thank you. I’ve always liked you too. That’s why I employ you.’

‘You don’t employ me any more, I gave you my notice.’

He laughed as I breathed in some of the smoke. I felt different already, woozy, like being drunk but sober. Weird.

‘Oh yeah, right, I’m your lover now.’ His eyes looked at me in a different way when he said it.

I wondered what the cannabis was doing to him.

After my third turn smoking his joint I handed it back. I could feel it in my blood. The music seemed to play louder and I could pick out the sounds within it more: the beat, the lyrics, all seemed – separated out.

He watched me as he inhaled, then said, as he let the smoke slide out of his mouth, ‘How do you feel?’

‘Different.’

He handed me the joint again. I breathed the smoke in and held it in my lungs for a minute, like he was doing. Then breathed it out.

Shit, it hit my bloodstream hard and my head spun. It was like being drunk, except when you were drunk you had no control. I still felt in control.

I handed the joint back to him. It was making me feel sick.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah.’ I nodded. The room spun.

He took two more puffs, then leant and opened the burner and threw the rest of it into the fire.

I drank the last of my ale.

He drank his, set his bottle down on the hearth, then took my empty bottle and put that down too.

‘Take your top off, Ivy.’

I still had my hoodie on. I slipped it off as he got up, and I toppled on to my back, with my hoodie stuck on my arms.

I laughed as I stripped it off.

He’d gone into the kitchen.

When he came back. I threw my hoodie on to the empty sofa.

He had a tea towel in his hand.

‘Blindfold, remember.’ He waved it at me. His forfeit. Then I remembered my choice. After he’d done whatever, I was going to tie him up with it.

His legs straddled mine when he dropped on to the cushions and he lay the tea-towel over my chest and folded it over several times on a diagonal until it was a band. ‘Lift your head.’ He set it over my eyes, wrapped it around and tied it behind my head. It was tight. I couldn’t see.

My heartbeat was a sound joining in with the music; I could feel its rhythm in my chest. It reverberated through my body. Then there was a rush of adrenaline, but the rush came in an odd way, it was as if someone had pressed slow motion.

I wanted him.

I wanted to do things with him.

I wanted him to do things to me.

‘Ivy. Ivy. Ivy.’ His words danced on the air as he began unbuttoning the blouse I’d worn into work this morning – I was never going to be able to wear it to work again.

His fingers brushed against my skin – he wasn’t hurrying, he was doing it slowly and I could sense him watching what he did and looking at the skin he revealed. It made my pulse race, and my body hotter, and both sensations were amplified by the cannabis.

‘Oh, my fuck… You have abs.’ His fingers slid another button loose and then began tracing lines on my belly. ‘I always knew you were fit – I mean fit as in the amazing-looking sense of the word. But you are beautiful.’

His fingertips skimmed over the hollows on my stomach. Following the lines with reverence.

Rick had never made me feel appreciated physically like this.

‘I’m lucky, it’s in my genes.’

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