The First Mistake(37)

Great, I’ll come to you. There’s a nice hotel over your way called the Clarendon. I’ll meet you there at 7.30 p.m.?

For dinner? I asked presumptuously.

He ignored my question, instead asking, What do you do?

Wasn’t that information we should be sharing over a meal? I cringed as I recalled falling into bed with him without knowing anything about him. He knew even less about me. But that was when I honestly believed it was going to be a glorious one-night stand, something I’d embarrassingly become accustomed to over the previous three years.

In my defence, whilst my friends were living their late teens and early twenties in a hedonistic whirl, I had been playing the faithful wife to Joel. Well, we weren’t married, but we may as well have been, as we lived the life I’d expected to be living fifty years later. We stayed in when everyone was going out. We drank tea whilst they were necking j?ger bombs. And we had Tyson whilst they were responsibility-free and able to jump on a Ryanair flight to Ibiza at the drop of a hat. How I had yearned for that life. So much so that after six years, I stuck Tyson under my arm and walked out.

‘Keep everything,’ I’d said, with a flourish of abandonment.

‘But you can’t leave,’ said Joel. ‘You can’t go, just like that.’

‘We both deserve better,’ I’d said honestly. ‘We both deserve more.’

‘Well, leave Tyson here then,’ was all he’d said, and I knew I’d made the right decision. We still bumped into each other every once in a while, but he could barely bring himself to say hello. Not because I’d left, but because I’d taken Tyson with me.

The idea of embarking on a new relationship with Thomas made me tingle. Now that would be worth staying in for.

I’m a teacher, I said finally, in answer to his question.

I’d better be good then, otherwise you’ll have to keep me behind after school.

I smiled. Maybe that’s exactly what I’d do. I could be the strict teacher, happy to dish out discipline. I’d delight in punishing him for his low mark in a test and would gladly put him in detention for starting a fight.

I resisted the temptation to search for ‘sexy professor’ images on Google, but I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the afternoon as I mentally scanned my wardrobe, whilst listening to the children take it in turns to read Horrid Henry.

Thomas wasn’t there when I arrived, at least not in the places I looked. He didn’t specify whether he would be in the lobby, the bar, the restaurant or a room. My stomach flipped at the thought of him in the latter, but if we went straight to that, there was every chance that I’d leave knowing nothing more about him than I already did.

I’d only just ordered a vodka and orange when I felt a silent presence behind me, the heat of breath on my neck. I could smell expensive aftershave, emanating from freshly washed skin.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he whispered, before leaning around to kiss my cheek. ‘I was just finishing my homework.’

I looked down, through the horrendously magnified glasses that Maria had lent me, at my pencil skirt and pale pink twinset, pleased that my efforts hadn’t gone unnoticed.

‘Can I get a large gin and tonic?’ he said to the barman, all the while stroking my leg through the crepe material. His hand stopped moving as his fingers reached the clasp of my suspenders and he turned to look at me with a wide grin.

‘I’ve made a dinner reservation, but I think we might have to take a rain check on that,’ he said, raising his eyebrows in question.

I nodded – it took all of my willpower not to unbutton him right there and then.

I followed him to the lift and moved aside as an elderly couple got out. We stood there, a foot apart, unspeaking as the doors closed. If I imagined this scenario in my head, I would have put money on me to burst out laughing; the role-playing and me being mute would have tickled the immature side of my character. But the atmosphere was so sexually charged that I didn’t feel anything other than an overwhelming desire to get our clothes off as quickly as possible.

‘So how did I do, Miss Russo?’ he said afterwards, with a naughty glint in his eye.

I rolled over onto my side and propped my head up on a bent arm.

‘I would say that you are a very willing pupil with an eagerness to learn. Your ability to focus on the job in hand is exemplary, needing only the most basic of tuition to reach a more than satisfactory conclusion. Overall, an outstanding performance and I look forward to welcoming you into my class again soon.’

He smiled, his full lips parting ever so slightly to reveal a row of perfect white teeth.

‘Dinner?’ I asked, having worked up an appetite.

His eyes bored into mine with an intensity that pulled at my groin. ‘Or shall we just skip straight to dessert?’

Butterflies fluttered in my tummy as he touched me. It didn’t matter what was on the menu, no dish was worth missing this for.





16


‘You didn’t tell me you had a dog,’ said Thomas when he came around to my flat for the first time a few weeks later. Seeing as we’d only met four times and had gone straight to bed on all of those occasions, it was hardly surprising that we’d not yet had the opportunity for small talk.

‘This is Tyson,’ I said proudly, as if I was introducing him to my child.