Free Guilty Pleasure by Jane O'Reilly

shake my head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. And he doesn’t push it, doesn’t try and question me further, he just lets it go, and I like that too.
    ‘You know,’ he says, as we meander slowly towards the underground station. ‘Cal is having a party at his place tonight, and he invited me. I think you might enjoy it.’
    ‘Me?’ I laugh. ‘Enjoy a party at Cal Bailey’s house?’
    Ethan looks down at me, and the corner of his mouth curves up. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Most definitely.’
    I stop, and Ethan stops too. I know him well enough by now to know that he would never suggest something without thinking it through first. If he thinks I would enjoy a party at Cal’s house, there’s a reason.
    And I can’t wait to see what it is.
    We make our way back to Ethan’s house, managing to limit ourselves to a little light petting on the tube. We stand indecently close, close enough to share air and a few more secrets, and before either of us realise it, we’ve missed our stop. We get off anyway and walk, and I discover that Ethan spent his teenage years at an all boys boarding school. He never intended to get divorced, but then he never intended to get married, and he certainly takes more responsibility for the former than the latter.
    We seem so different, the posh boy and the working class girl, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that we are two sides of the same coin. That there is more to this than just two overworked colleagues letting off steam with some crazy sex.
    We stop at a sushi place and he teaches me how to use chopsticks properly and I teach him the delights of sharing noodle soup. We slurp it up like a pair of giggling teenagers, mannerless and disgusting, and we laugh and touch and the rest of the world seems so irrelevant and far away. Slowly, carelessly, we walk back to his house and fuck up against the front door just for the hell of it. I want to ask him more about his wife, but I don’t. I want to ask him what happens next, but I don’t. Instead I stretch out on the sofa with my head in his lap and listen as he reads
Salem’s Lot
out loud. Something about his voice, about that cut-glass accent, just slices right through me, as if just being near him can make me better somehow.
    And then we catch a train and make our way to Cal Bailey’s house, which is in Hitchin, a stone’s throw from work. I’ve never been there before, and it takes me by surprise. I expected a flat, something blokeish and predictable, but it’s a stylish Edwardian semi, huge and imposing, with stunning detailing and a beautiful garden.
    Ethan takes my hand and leads me along the gravelled driveway towards the house, which is brightly lit, with the sound of music and tipsy voices already filtering out through the late evening air.
    ‘Why are we here?’ I ask him, suddenly anxious.
    ‘You’ll see,’ he says, squeezing my hand.
    I stop. ‘If Cal sees us together, he’ll know,’ I say.
    ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
    ‘People think less of women who screw around at work,’ I say.
    ‘Do you really care that much about what people think?’
    ‘I…’ I know we’re all supposed to say no, I don’t give a damn, to hell with them all, but the thing is that I
do
care. ‘I worked hard to get where I am,’ I say. ‘My job means a lot to me.’
    I stare at the house.
    ‘There’s more to life than your job,’ Ethan says.
    ‘I know that.’ Although recently, there hasn’t been. And now Cal Bailey is going to see us together, and he’s going to know. This isn’t about hiding, or pretending nothing is going on, or two overworked colleagues having crazy sex, not any more. It’s a conscious choice. I can either carry on as I have been, and having nothing in my life but work, or I can walk into that house with Ethan and accept that I need something more.
    By the time I’ve got my breath back and calmed my pulse, we’re at the elegant front door and we’re walking inside. The entrance hall has a