it’s possible, believe me,’ said Toby, those eyebrows smouldering, fixing me with his hypnotic blue eyes ‘And it doesn’t have to take ten years.’
I read a passage aloud. The drunker we got, the more seriously we were taking it. Or perhaps it was because discussing the book meant we didn’t have to acknowledge the strangling sexual tension in the room. I could feel Toby’s eyes burn my eyelids as I read. I looked up from the book and he was still holding my gaze. I read on, my heart thumping. Then there was a line where the narrator says how he never found a way to be ‘pleasurably idle’ with his wife; how she was always so busy, wanted too much out of life.
‘I know that feeling,’ said Toby. His gaze was intense, penetrating. Gone was the usual, puppy-dog Toby; he was serious. ‘Feeling neglected, unimportant.’
The room had gone deathly quiet and I pulled a face. No doubt wholly unattractive, but nerves do that to me.
Then Toby said: ‘You know what, Caroline (he never called me Caroline, only Steeley)? I think you may be one of the few women who
does
understand me.’
I downed a glass of red in one. Then Toby sat down next to me, moved his face millimetres from mine and kissed me, but I’d not had time to swallow the wine so a dribble ended up in his mouth.
‘Sorry!’ Another bit escaped down my chin, so I now resembled an incompetent vampire.
‘Don’t apologize,’ he said. ‘Red wine and Caroline Steele. Two of my favourite things.’
Things went from nought to sixty in about ten minutes. We abandoned the books and my top and started on the vodka (the beginning of the end). The next thing I know, I’m lying on the lounge floor smoking Lucky Strikes whilst Toby showers my belly with kisses (the end of the end) and he’s telling me he thinks I’m ‘enigmatic’ and I’m telling him I find it hard not to touch him at work, that I think he looks like James Dean. At which point, I imagine, I ceased to be enigmatic.
And then he says, giving me the most gorgeous, stubbly kiss, ‘Well, if I’m going to live fast and die young I’d better get the snogs in now …’ And a small explosion took place in my groin.
Then we ended up in my bed.
‘We need condoms!’ I said as he pulled my tights off. ‘We need condoms and we need fags!’ That’s the last thing I remember. I woke up, with just my bra on, a Lucky Strike – you live, or you die, the in-joke of the evening – lodged between my cleavage.
In this case, I died. Of utter embarrassment. Talk about out of character. Toby, on the other hand, thought it was hysterical.
‘And I thought you were stuck up,’ he said, laughing and laughing in the office kitchen the next day, as I stood, face in hands.
‘This can never, ever happen again,’ I hissed. ‘You are bloody well married and I … I want to be single.’
He raised his James Dean eyebrows at me. My cheeks burned furiously.
‘Not that I was suggesting …’
‘Oh, Steeley,’ he said, with his sexy little lisp, taking my hand. ‘Take a chill pill. It’ll be our little secret.’ Then he sighed. ‘But yes, you’re right, we can’t do this again’. He grimaced in a way that told me he didn’t mean this at all. ‘You are, however, sexy as hell. Remember that.’
I did. Oh, I did.
I shuffled into work later after a horrifying, near-vomit experience on the tube where I heaved, but nothing came out, so that people on my carriage just parted, like a wave as I made a sound like a dying walrus. I was green and the heel of one shoe was missing. Last seen, rolling down the escalator of Marble Arch station.
As the day wore on and the alcohol wore off, the reality of what I’d done hit me. I’d slept with a married man. In the space of five months, I had dumped my fiancé, dumped a string of men and slept with someone else’s husband.
And it had all started off so well, too! For the first four years of working together, I was the only person out of twenty-two
I read a passage aloud. The drunker we got, the more seriously we were taking it. Or perhaps it was because discussing the book meant we didn’t have to acknowledge the strangling sexual tension in the room. I could feel Toby’s eyes burn my eyelids as I read. I looked up from the book and he was still holding my gaze. I read on, my heart thumping. Then there was a line where the narrator says how he never found a way to be ‘pleasurably idle’ with his wife; how she was always so busy, wanted too much out of life.
‘I know that feeling,’ said Toby. His gaze was intense, penetrating. Gone was the usual, puppy-dog Toby; he was serious. ‘Feeling neglected, unimportant.’
The room had gone deathly quiet and I pulled a face. No doubt wholly unattractive, but nerves do that to me.
Then Toby said: ‘You know what, Caroline (he never called me Caroline, only Steeley)? I think you may be one of the few women who
does
understand me.’
I downed a glass of red in one. Then Toby sat down next to me, moved his face millimetres from mine and kissed me, but I’d not had time to swallow the wine so a dribble ended up in his mouth.
‘Sorry!’ Another bit escaped down my chin, so I now resembled an incompetent vampire.
‘Don’t apologize,’ he said. ‘Red wine and Caroline Steele. Two of my favourite things.’
Things went from nought to sixty in about ten minutes. We abandoned the books and my top and started on the vodka (the beginning of the end). The next thing I know, I’m lying on the lounge floor smoking Lucky Strikes whilst Toby showers my belly with kisses (the end of the end) and he’s telling me he thinks I’m ‘enigmatic’ and I’m telling him I find it hard not to touch him at work, that I think he looks like James Dean. At which point, I imagine, I ceased to be enigmatic.
And then he says, giving me the most gorgeous, stubbly kiss, ‘Well, if I’m going to live fast and die young I’d better get the snogs in now …’ And a small explosion took place in my groin.
Then we ended up in my bed.
‘We need condoms!’ I said as he pulled my tights off. ‘We need condoms and we need fags!’ That’s the last thing I remember. I woke up, with just my bra on, a Lucky Strike – you live, or you die, the in-joke of the evening – lodged between my cleavage.
In this case, I died. Of utter embarrassment. Talk about out of character. Toby, on the other hand, thought it was hysterical.
‘And I thought you were stuck up,’ he said, laughing and laughing in the office kitchen the next day, as I stood, face in hands.
‘This can never, ever happen again,’ I hissed. ‘You are bloody well married and I … I want to be single.’
He raised his James Dean eyebrows at me. My cheeks burned furiously.
‘Not that I was suggesting …’
‘Oh, Steeley,’ he said, with his sexy little lisp, taking my hand. ‘Take a chill pill. It’ll be our little secret.’ Then he sighed. ‘But yes, you’re right, we can’t do this again’. He grimaced in a way that told me he didn’t mean this at all. ‘You are, however, sexy as hell. Remember that.’
I did. Oh, I did.
I shuffled into work later after a horrifying, near-vomit experience on the tube where I heaved, but nothing came out, so that people on my carriage just parted, like a wave as I made a sound like a dying walrus. I was green and the heel of one shoe was missing. Last seen, rolling down the escalator of Marble Arch station.
As the day wore on and the alcohol wore off, the reality of what I’d done hit me. I’d slept with a married man. In the space of five months, I had dumped my fiancé, dumped a string of men and slept with someone else’s husband.
And it had all started off so well, too! For the first four years of working together, I was the only person out of twenty-two
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