I’d only really had one serious relationship before I started seeing Anthony – which had lasted several years before we split up. So the prospect of having what seemed to be a date with Joe made me both nervous and excited. In fact, I was so agitated on the day itself that I barely ate anything, and as I made my way to the trendy, expensive club where he’d suggested we should meet, my stomach was rumbling noisily.
‘Get a grip,’ I told myself severely as I pushed my way through the almost solid tide of commuters heading in the opposite direction, towards the train station from which I’d just come. ‘It isn’t really a date. You’re just meeting a man you barely know for a drink.’ It was true that I knew almost nothing about Joe, except that he was clever and seemed to be universally liked and respected by his colleagues. But, for some reason, I’d been looking forward all day to what I kept reminding myself was just a casual drink.
I’d been delayed leaving work and was a few minutes late by the time I arrived at the club and climbed the stairs to the rooftop bar where I was due to meet Joe. There was still time to stop for a moment in front of the long mirror on the landing, though, and when I did so I was horrified by the red-faced, flustered-looking woman staring back at me. ‘Well, that’s a good start,’ I told her. ‘He’s going to be thrilled when he sees you!’ Then I imagined what he might say, which made me wonder, anxiously, what I would say to him. What would we talk about? What if he thought I was boring – as well as being an unattractive shade of puce and suffering from severe, and very audible, digestive problems? What if he made a quick excuse and fled as soon as he could do so without appearing to be downright rude?
‘For heaven’s sake, calm down,’ I told the woman in the mirror, silently. ‘You can do this. People don’t normally dislike you. You can hold a conversation and have fun. You’ve got some really nice, intelligent friends who wouldn’t bother with you if you were boring and stupid. You just need to move away from the mirror now and believe that everything will be all right.’
When I stepped out on to the roof of the building a couple of seconds later, it was as if someone had suddenly turned up the volume on the muffled buzz of conversation that could be heard from inside. In fact, the bar was full of people, and as I scanned them in search of Joe I could feel the knot of anxiety tightening in my already protesting stomach. ‘Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet,’ I thought. ‘Maybe something’s kept him late at work. Maybe he won’t come at all.’
Then I saw him, sitting on a sofa with his head bent over his phone. Just a split second later he looked up and saw me, and as his face broke into a smile the knot in my stomach unravelled and I suddenly felt completely calm. After that, even the awkward bit was easy – those seconds when you’ve spotted the person you’re meeting but still have to cross the ground between you, not knowing whether to maintain eye contact and keep smiling inanely or look away until you’re within hand-shaking or cheek-kissing distance.
Joe stood up when he saw me, and as soon as I was close enough to be able to hear him above the laughing chatter of the crowd he leaned forward and said into my ear, ‘I’ve got you a drink already. A gin and tonic. I hope that’s okay?’
‘That’s perfect,’ I said, sinking on to the sofa beside him. ‘Thanks. And hi.’
On the relatively rare occasions when I go out on weekday evenings when I’m working, I don’t stay out late. But Joe and I were still in the bar four hours later, laughing and talking as though we’d known each other for years. He was funny and charming, and the more we talked, the more struck we were by how much we seemed to have in common. Everything I liked, Joe liked – and had something interesting or insightful to say about it. We laughed at the same things, had the same list of countries we wanted to visit, admired the same people, loved the work of the same artists, had read or wanted to read the same books, had the same opinions about films we’d seen, and loved or loathed the same foods …
That first evening I spent with Joe was quite possibly the best evening of my entire life. I don’t know whether I lacked self-confidence any more than anyone else, but I could hardly believe that someone like him could be so obviously attracted to someone like me. The hours just flew by, and when he leaned towards me, put his hands very gently on my cheeks and kissed me, it felt like coming home.
‘I don’t want this evening to end,’ he said, voicing the thought that had been going through my mind for the last couple of hours. ‘Will you come back to my place tonight? Let’s agree not to have sex. Just come home with me – for a sleep-over.’ Tiny lines radiated out from his eyes when he laughed. ‘I just want to go to sleep knowing you’ll be there when I wake up. I know it sounds crazy, but I think I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Alice. I’ve never felt this way before.’
And maybe it would have sounded crazy to anyone who might have been listening in the bar that night. But it sounded perfectly sane to me, and it didn’t even cross my mind to say anything other than, ‘Yes, I will go home with you. I feel exactly the same way. I can’t explain it, but I feel as though I’ve known you for years, not just a few hours. I …’ I can’t remember now what I was going to say before Joe kissed me again and pushed every thought out of my head.
Agreeing to go home with Joe that night was completely out of character for me. That might sound unlikely in view of the fact that, of the few things you already know about me, one is that I was having an affair with a married man. But it’s true. It was something I wouldn’t even have dreamed of doing in normal circumstances, or if it hadn’t felt as though everything in my life suddenly made sense.
Sitting in the bar that night with a nice, uncomplicated, charismatic, interesting single man with a good job and a great sense of humour, it felt as though I might find love in my love life after all. Even more important, perhaps, was the fact that, by the end of the evening, I didn’t despise myself as much as I had done until then, because if someone like Joe could like me, there might be hope for me after all.
Sitting there with Joe that evening just felt right somehow. I’d met a lot of sleazy execs over the previous few years, the sort of creepy guys who prey on junior colleagues – people like Anthony, in fact, although I didn’t realise that at the time. But it was clear that Joe wasn’t the sort of person to take advantage of anyone. I’d heard people at work talking about how he’d helped a colleague who was going through a difficult time in his personal life and how if it hadn’t been for Joe’s intervention the man would have lost his job. ‘He stuck his neck out for Barry when he didn’t have to,’ someone said. ‘It’s the sort of thing he does.’ Everyone seemed to like him. And now, apparently, this genuine, kind, intelligent person liked me.
One of the many things Joe told me about himself that first evening was that he was married, although he and his wife had been separated for more years than they’d been together. ‘We got married too young,’ he told me. ‘We didn’t have any children and there wasn’t any property to be divided up – we both have jobs that enable us to support ourselves more than adequately financially. So although we haven’t seen each other for five or six years, we just never got around to divorcing.’
Then I told him about Jack – the boyfriend I’d lived with for several years after I left university and who had broken my heart – but not about Anthony, because I didn’t want him to judge me or change his mind about liking me. In fact, by the end of that first evening Joe liking me was so important that I lied to him and said there hadn’t been anyone since Jack. That’s the trouble with doing something you know is wrong: you end up doing more wrong things – like lying, for example – because you don’t want people to find out about it.
When we left the bar, we took a taxi back to Joe’s immaculate terraced house in a tree-lined street in an expensive part of south-west London.