Putty In Her Hands (4 page)

Posh friend? Where did that
come from, I wondered?

I spent some time googling
Dawn’s name. It comes up hundreds of times, and with the
unpronounceable surname that she has, there can only be the one.
She has her own website, with plenty of examples of her work, and
all the people and places she’s taken photographs of. OK, there are
no ‘A’ list celebrities here, and the list of locations is more
Holyrood than Hollywood, but it’s still an impressive list. But
more intriguing were the pictures of her as a model. She had the
figure for it – there was nothing of her, just brown sleekness and
prowling grace, like an exotic animal in a hot country.
Fortunately, she’s fleshed out since then, she’s still very slim
but now her figure is perfectly feminine and curves in and out, if
I may use the male cliché, in all the right places.

I haven’t even finished writing
up my diary from yesterday yet and I’ve just seen Dawn again. She
came up to the office floor, looking all wondrous, carrying a bunch
of leaflets, and headed straight for the stationery cupboard. I
would have done anything for a look, some form of acknowledgement,
but all I saw was her back as she disappeared into the cupboard,
the heavy fire door swinging firmly shut behind her. Having made me
promise last night not to ignore her I now have the distinct
feeling that she is ignoring me. I click ‘Save’ on my diary, a Word
document I’ve cunningly named ‘Absence Monitoring, second quarter’,
and switch to my job descriptions document; a list of impossible
tasks we expect the lowest paid, like Dawn, to fulfil at a salary
that would have seemed indecent even in 1973. I read point number
fifty-two (OK, I exaggerate) which states: ‘
And any other duty
to this post deemed appropriate by the post holder’s line
manager’
– a final catch-all clause that we all have nestled at
the bottom of our JDs. I wonder whether mine should include the
stipulation:
To kiss temps at Christmas parties and on every
possible occasion thereafter.

I can’t concentrate knowing
that she’s in there now, in the stationery cupboard, rummaging
around, sorting out leaflets. I wonder what she’s thinking. When
was the last time I ventured into that windowless, dimly lit room,
with its dusty shelves and stale air? But I’ve decided: I’m going
in. I need to know how she is, whether she’s full of regret
following our tryst last night, and where we stand. Can the future
of our relationship, still less than twelve hours old, be decided
in a two-minute confrontation in a dusty cupboard? Perhaps not, but
not doing anything is killing me. I’m on my feet now, my heart
heavy. This is ridiculous, I’m more nervous than last night when I
so calmly stopped her on the path. But now my breathing is coming
in short bursts, my heart is punching me from within. I feel
exposed just wandering across the office floor. I return to my desk
and pick up a sheet of paper with some writing on it, anything to
act as a prop.

I am now only a matter of feet
from the door.
Don’t come out now,
I think.
Stay in
there
. I feel everyone looking at me; I daren’t turn around for
fear of seeing a sea of eyes looking at me, puzzled –
Why’s Rob
going to the stationery cupboard?
Almost there and it’s too
late to turn back now; I’m committed. Pushing open the door, I step
inside, startling her.
Oh, Rob,
she says, her hand on her
chest.
It’s you. You made me jump.

I swear she can see the beating
of my heart beneath the fabric of my carefully chosen cotton shirt.
Sorry. I just wanted…

To see if I was OK?

Yes. Exactly.
She
smiles, a lovely, warm smile. Encouraged, I reach for her hand,
knowing now that she’ll take it. She does.

I’m fine, thanks to you. And
you?

Yeah.
We’re close now, I
can smell her perfume, its warm aroma draws me in closer still. I
lean in and plant a gentle kiss on her lips. She kisses me back and
I feel almost faint with relief.

Rob, someone might come
in,
she says, smiling, subtly pushing me away.

No one ever comes into
here.
This isn’t exactly true but it is rare.
I thought you
might be regretting last night.

No. Are you?

No.

I still can’t believe you
pounced on me like that. No one’s ever done that to me before. Are
you sure you don’t make a habit of this sort of thing?

Dawn, what sort of man do you
take me for?

I don’t know, Rob, you tell me.
What are you doing for lunch?

Having lunch with you.

She giggled.
Naughty boy.
OK, one o’clock, yeah?

It’s a date.

I’m back at my desk now, having
run the gauntlet from there to here, my face flushed as I scurried
back to the security of my cubicle, avoiding all eye contact. Now
that I’m safely back my shoulders expand and my fists clench with
masculine glee; I am the king of the jungle, and I feel fantastic!
How cool was
that?
Ernie passes my desk.
Hey, Ernie,
where’s that mistletoe?

You keep your hands to
yourself, mate.

It’s almost one. I wonder where
we should go for lunch. As a first date it’s fairly low pressure –
just a lunch hour in a local café, and thank goodness for that. I
couldn’t have faced a proper date – expensive restaurant, soft
music, hours stretching before us, wondering what to say, etc, etc.
But with this, expectation will be at a realistic low, I can be
myself and we’ll have a better time for it.

1 p.m.
I wait for Dawn
at the front of our building, a corporate monster of a place with a
huge revolving door at the front, and inside a large reception desk
with smiley staff to meet and greet, and, hovering nearby,
uniformed security guys. The usual corporate stuff. Dawn strides
out purposefully through the revolving doors, wearing a red puffer
jacket with a fur collar. She looks nothing less than gorgeous.

I have to move my car, do you
mind?

Her car, a black hatchback, is
parked nearby in a car park. As she invited me in I noticed her
removing a disabled badge from the dashboard. Why would she have
that, I wondered, was she in some way disabled?
The badge only
covers me for a few hours so I’m going to drive up to the other
side of the golf course.
Five minutes later, we were there,
warm and cosy inside her car, the radio on.
Come here,
she
says. I lean over the hand brake and we kiss.
You have such a
nice kiss.
I thank her.

You know, I’m a married
woman.

Are you? You’ve kept that
quiet. And last night, you said you didn’t have a…

Boyfriend. Exactly.

Wow. How long?
Two years. Nowhere as long as you guys.

And you, er…

Yes, I love him very much.

So why then…

You love your wife.

Fair point.

I absorbed this new bit of
information. Why shouldn’t she be married? She’s 36, she’s
beautiful, she must have had no end of suitors over the years. Did
it make a difference? No. In fact, it made things better, because
it meant we were on an equal footing; starting in the same place.
She described him, this Duncan. An architect, has a goatee,
Scottish by birth but always lived in England.

I have a place of my own
though.
Really? This sounds too good to be true.
I have a
dual life – one with Duncan in Westminster, where we share a flat;
and another this side of town where I have my own flat and where I
can be near my parents. I flit between the two.

Perfect, I thought, perfect. We
kissed some more, and talked again. But we didn’t go out to eat.
Somehow I had no appetite and as she didn’t mention it, nor did I.
And in no time, fifty minutes had gone and it was time to get back.
We walked through the park, passed the golf course, hand-in-hand,
lovers out for a stroll, returning to the office with a smile.

In the afternoon I tackled the
job descriptions with a little more enthusiasm than usual, wondered
about Dawn’s disabled badge and tried to imagine her husband with
his goatee.

But most of all I thought about
Dawn. It had started with a kiss, several kisses, and a nice warm
feeling on a Wednesday evening three weeks before Christmas. If
only it had stopped there things would have been OK. But of course
it didn’t. And they weren’t.

Saturday, 8th December

I’ve always assumed that when a
person has an affair, or even just kisses someone at a Christmas
party, it must derive from unhappiness at home. At least a degree
of discontentment. But I am far from that. Everything at home is,
as they say, rosy. Emily and I had been married five years before
our first-born, Joshua, appeared on the scene. It wasn’t that we
had difficulty, we just weren’t in a hurry; too busy enjoying
ourselves. Joshua is now ten, a bright if lazy child, obsessed by
football and gadgets he can’t afford. Lola is three, a little doll
of a girl, inhabiting a land of pink, adorable and sweet, but can
talk with such loudness I have to reach for a pair of ear muffs.
And Emily? After fifteen years of marriage, I still love her. She
can still make me laugh, we have great sex, she’s a keen and very
good cook and, having met at the age of eighteen, we have a
lifetime of shared history. What more could a man ask for?

Monday, 10th December

Dawn has invited me out. We’re
going out for a drink straight after work. I feel excited and
nervous. I phone home and tell Emily that I’m going out to the pub
with a few work colleagues.
But you don’t like them,
she
says.

Oh, they’re not so bad; I’m
sort of getting used to them.

After seven years?

Although technically not a
falsehood – I am going out to the pub with
a
work colleague,
I feel the burden of having told the first lie. There’ll be many
more to come.

It’s almost six, and with half
a pint each we’re sitting in the pub, one of a chain, unnaturally
clean and virtually empty. On the walls framed photographs of the
local area in times gone by. The one above Dawn’s head is entitled
High Street, circa 1909,
showing a horse and cart on a muddy
street, the clock tower the only recognisable feature between then
and now.

So
,
tell me about
your wife.

Must I?

Yes, I want to know. How did
you meet, how did you propose?

Well…

I couldn’t believe it when you
told me you were married.

Yes, I remember. Why was
that?

It was perhaps late summer;
we’d bumped into each other in the pedestrian shopping mall. As we
walked back to work together, I mentioned my wife.
You’re
married?
she exclaimed as if I’d just declared that I was a
freemason or a naturalist.

Er, yes.

How long?
Fifteen years.

Whoa. Kids?

Two. Boy and a girl.

Oh my word.

What do you mean? Why are you
so shocked?

Nothing. Really, nothing. I’m
just surprised, that’s all. You don’t look like the married type –
if there’s such a thing. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude.

So,
I said, back in the
present.
Why were you so surprised – I’ve been meaning to ask
you for months?

I thought you were gay.

Gay? Me?

Yes, I really thought you were
gay. And I usually have a very attuned gay radar.

A what?

You know.

Well, you’re wrong in this
instance, baby!

Yes, so I see,
she said,
taking a sip of beer, grinning.
Have you googled me yet?

No,
I say a bit too
firmly.

I google anyone I meet. In
my business it’s a necessity. You never know who you’ve just met.
I’ve googled you.
And here, my conscience is clean – there’d be
nothing about me on the web. Nothing.
I found that article you
wrote.

What? What article?

About interviewing
techniques: ‘
The Art of Interviewing: a New Approach’ by
Robin Collingbourne
.

I cringe.
Oh, God, how did
you find that? How embarrassing. It was about twenty years ago when
I was a student. I’d never interviewed in my life, not for real,
and the whole thing was plagiarised anyway. A terrible essay that
somehow got printed. And now, it seems it’s on the bloody
web.

So have you always wanted to
work in HR?

Sometimes, for a moment, when
you see yourself as an outsider, from someone else’s perspective,
the truth reveals itself. It did, at that moment, when Dawn asked
whether I’d always wanted to work in HR. I wouldn’t have blamed her
if she’d walked straight out, muttering,
Is this as exciting as
your life gets?
A working life devoted to Human Resources,
making sure others work according to the rules; not a single
mention on the World Wide Web apart from one pathetic work-related
article, the HR equivalent of angst teenage poetry. My life damned
by Google, a non-entity, not even a footnote in cyberspace. I’d
been humbled.