He had the biggest feet I’d ever seen and as I stared at them I found myself wondering if it was true about the size of a man’s feet indicating the size of, well, other extremities…
‘You’re new in London aren’t you?’ he said, and I looked up. The corner of his mouth had kinked up in a knowing smile and I blushed, certain that he could read my mind.
‘Just this minute arrived.’ There was no point in pretending otherwise. I’d dressed for warmth and comfort rather than style. With nothing more glamorous than baby cream on my face—I’d chewed off my lipstick in the tussle with the underground—and my hair neon-red candyfloss from the damp, I was never going to pass as a sophisticated City-girl. ‘I suppose the suitcase is a dead giveaway,’ I said, wishing I’d taken a lot more trouble over my appearance.
A tiger, according to my magazine, would always leave the house prepared to meet the man of her dreams. But how often did that happen? Besides, I’d left the man of my dreams in Maybridge. Hadn’t I?
‘And the A-Z,’ I added, stuffing it into my shoulder bag, alongside the treacherous magazine.
‘Not the suitcase,’ he replied. ‘It was your willingness to surrender a taxi at this time of day that betrayed you. You won’t do it twice.’
‘I won’t?’
‘They’re rarer than hen’s teeth.’
Hen’s teeth? ‘Are they rare?’ I asked, confused. It seemed unlikely. Hens weren’t on any endangered list…
‘I’ve never seen one.’ Oh, stocking tops! The rain was dripping from my hair and trickling icily down the back of my neck. I suspected that it had seeped right into my brain. ‘But then I’ve never felt any desire to look into a hen’s beak,’ he added.
‘No one ever does,’ I replied. ‘Big mistake.’ And he was kind enough to smile, giving me ample opportunity to see for myself that his own teeth left nothing to be desired.
In the dark and wet of the pavement I hadn’t noticed much more than the fact that my ‘tall, dark stranger’ was the requisite ‘tall’. Of course, when describing yourself as one point six metres was pure vanity, everyone seemed tall. But he was really, really tall. Several inches taller than Don, who was my personal yardstick for tall.
And his voice. I’d noticed that, too.
Low and gravelly, it was the voice of a man you just knew it wouldn’t be wise to mess with. Yet his impatience was softened by velvet undertones. Sort of like Sean Connery, but without the Scottish accent.
Now I was sitting opposite him I could see that the ‘dark’ bit fitted him, too. I sat mesmerised as a drop of rainwater gathered and slid down the jet curve of an untidy curl before dropping into the turned-up collar of his overcoat. And I shivered.
Tall and dark. His skin so deeply tanned that he looked Italian, or possibly Greek.
But he struck out on handsome.
There was nothing smooth or playboy pretty about his features. His cheekbones were too prominent, his nose less than straight and there was a jagged scar just above his right eyebrow, giving the overall impression of a man who met life head-on and occasionally came off worst.
That was okay. There was something about a cliché that was so off-putting. Two out of three was just about right. Tall, dark and dangerous was more like it, because his eyes more than made up for any lack of symmetry. They were sea-green, deep enough to drown in and left me with the heart-racing impression that until now I might have been dreaming in sepia.
‘Have you come far?’ he asked, in an attempt to engage me in conversation. Presumably to stop me from staring.
I was jerked back to reality. ‘Oh…um …no. Not really. From Maybridge. It’s near…er…’ I struggled for a coherent response. I was used to having to explain exactly where Maybridge was. People constantly confused it with Maidenhead, Maidstone and a dozen other towns that began with the same sound, but my mind refused to co-operate.
‘I know where Maybridge is,’ he said, rescuing me from my pitiful lapse of memory. ‘I have friends who live in Upper Haughton.’
‘Upper Haughton!’ I exclaimed, clutching at geographical straws. Upper Haughton was a picture-perfect village a few miles outside Maybridge that had outgrown its agricultural past and was now the province of the seriously rich. ‘Yes, that’s it. It’s near Upper Haughton.’
The mouse in me wanted to groan, bury my face in my hands. Wanted to go back five minutes so that I could keep my big mouth shut and let him steal my taxi. His taxi.
But the tiger in me wanted to write my name and telephone number on a card and murmur ‘call me’ in a sultry voice. Since he must by now believe I was at least one sandwich short of a picnic, it was perhaps fortunate that I didn’t have a card handy and was thus saved the embarrassment of making a total fool of myself.
Instead, I glanced at my wrist-watch, not because I wanted to know the time—I had no pressing engagement—but to avoid looking into his eyes again.
‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. Then, ‘Are you staying long? In London.’
‘Six months,’ I said. ‘My parents are travelling…Australia, South Africa, America…and they decided to let the house…’ I was ‘wittering’ again and, remembering his impatience, stopped myself. ‘So here I am.’
‘While the cat’s away?’ he suggested, with another of those knowing smiles.
Clearly he hadn’t had any trouble spotting that I was a mouse. Fortunately, the taxi swept up to the front of a stunningly beautiful riverside apartment building, terraced in sweeping lines and lit up like an ocean liner, and I was saved the necessity of answering him. For a moment I sat open-mouthed at the sight while, apparently impatient to be rid of me, my companion opened the door and stepped out, lifting my case onto the footpath. Then, gentleman that he was, he opened his umbrella and handed it to me as I followed him, before turning to speak to the driver while I dug out my purse and found a five pound note.
‘Put that away,’ he said as I offered it.
‘No, really, I insist,’ I said. I couldn’t let him pay my fare. He didn’t bother to argue. He just closed the taxi door, picked up my suitcase and headed for the front door, leaving me with a five pound note in one hand and his umbrella in the other. The taxi drove off.
‘Hey, wait…’ I wasn’t sure whether I was shouting at the driver, who clearly hadn’t realised he still had a fare, or Mr Tall, Dark and Dangerous himself.
I’d been warned about the security system on the front door. You had to have a smart card, or ring the bell of the person you were visiting so that they could let you into the building. TDD bypassed the system by catching the door as someone left the building, and was now holding it open. Standing in the entrance. Waiting for me to join him.
He wasn’t going anywhere, I realised.
‘While the cat’s away…’ he’d said.
And my memory instantly filled in the blank. ‘The mouse will play.’
And I hadn’t denied it.
Did he think I couldn’t wait to get started? Expect to be invited in? Offered…and I swallowed hard…coffee? Had my invitation to share the taxi been completely misunderstood?
I realised just how rash I’d been. Naïve. Worse…just plain stupid.
I’d allowed this man whom I’d never met before, whose name I didn’t even know, to give the driver the address. I hadn’t heard what he’d said and, too late, it occurred to me that I could be anywhere.
And who’d miss me?
I’d actually told him that my parents were on the other