Free The Younger Man by Sarah Tucker Page A

probably let it lie there.’
    ‘I agree.’
    ‘But that’s not all…he has a girlfriend.’
    ‘They always do, Hazel.’
    ‘She came into the office today. Just now, this morning. Just popping in to ask him for lunch. She saw me and introduced herself and said he had spoken a lot about me and he looked shocked and guilty and lost his composure and when she hugged him he looked as stiff as a board.’
    ‘So, he obviously does remember last night then. Why would he look guilty?’
    ‘I know, I thought that. I thought that. But you know, Fiona, the girlfriend, I think she’s about my age, and she looked, well, she looked nice. She looked really nice, and sad. You know. Sad eyes like I used to have when I was splitting up with David. She had those eyes. Rest of the face, the demeanour was smiling. The eyes were sad.’
    ‘Don’t get involved, Hazel. Don’t get involved. You went out last night with someone you have a chemistry with and you have to work with that person. You don’t like the fact he’s there in the office, but you are attracted to him sexually.’
    ‘Well…’
    ‘Well, nothing, you want him, darling, but you’re not going to do anything because your life is settled, you’re happy and you need someone in your life but not one you work with ideally or with baggage. This guy works with you and has baggage in the shape of sad-eyed Fiona. Notyour problem. Don’t make it your problem. I have to go Hazel, meeting Daniel to talk about honeymoons. And by the way, don’t forget we have lunch on Sunday with the girls at Le Pont.’
    ‘I won’t forget and thanks for the advice.’
    ‘All advice is bad, and good advice is worse. I’ve just told you what you already know. Byee.’
    Click.
    Lunch on Sunday with the girls—Doreen, Carron, Valerie and Fran. All old school friends I’ve known since I was eleven. All forty this year. All different from me. And all of whom would probably tell me to steer clear of Joe.
    Joe walks through my door without knocking, looking transparently uncool.
    ‘So you know I have a girlfriend.’
    He stands in my slightly untidy office at 9:00 a.m., in the doorway. He’s wearing a smart, what looks like a Paul Smith suit, dripping with guilt and pheromones. I don’t say anything. Why should I? We haven’t done anything. Okay, we danced and we had this electric non-kiss moment, or whatever you call it, but it’s not as if we had sex or anything. Then why am I miffed? Why can I feel something in my stomach go thud. And he obviously feels guilty. He feels he needs to explain so that it doesn’t happen again—the dance and the non-kissing. I think about saying something trite like, ‘that’s fine’, but I don’t. I say nothing. This fazes him a bit. I can see it’s confusing him. I can see he expects me to fill the embarrassed gap. I don’t.
    ‘I’ve been going out with Fiona for twelve years. I live with her.’
    I smile and tell him I think she’s lovely, which I genuinely do.
    ‘She’s lovely. Very beautiful.’
    ‘She is,’ he says. ‘She is and I’m happy. And I love her. And she loves me… Okay, I’m not happy, I haven’t been for some time, but we’re treading water emotionally at the moment. Things are okay. But I don’t feel for her the way I used to. I don’t love her that way anymore.’
    I freeze. I don’t love her that way anymore. He said, I don’t love her that way anymore. That’s what David said to me all those years ago and that’s what male clients say to me when they’re petitioning or have been petitioned, usually when they’ve met someone else. And Joe doesn’t love Fiona that way anymore. And hasn’t done for years. And has been treading water emotionally and doing nothing about it until he meets another woman. And this time, I’m the other woman. I’m in the same play I was all those years ago, just a different character, with a slightly different plotline. Just like one of the those Elvis Presley movies which are set