My Secret Life. Various

He’s bad for me. Everybody hates him. He’s arrogant and faithless, self-absorbed and cruel.

      When he dumped me, three years ago, by publicly feeling up another woman at my twenty-fifth birthday party, all my friends practically haemorrhaged with relief.

      ‘I didn’t like to say anything at the time but …’

      ‘I know you were really loved-up but …’

      ‘I was dreading the wedding invitation because …’

      Followed by the chorus: ‘I’ve never liked him.’

      I couldn’t possibly blame them. I don’t like him either, for all the reasons outlined above.

      So why am I meeting him, in secret, every chance I get?

      My dictionary defines addiction as: ‘the condition of being enslaved to a habit or practice to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma’. It’s as good an explanation as any. I’m not sure I experienced severe trauma when we split, but there were a lot of wet pillows on my bed for months afterwards. And even when the pillows were dry again, the bed felt so empty, so bleak. I couldn’t envisage a replacement for him there, even if I did go to the pictures or eat out with the occasional nice guy. The occasional nice guy never made it up the stairs. He just seemed to have the wrong pheromones. He wasn’t Luke.

      He didn’t size me up and strip me with his eyes within a second of looking at me. He didn’t do that slow burn over the table linen that had me gagging for it by the time the dessert menu arrived. There wasn’t that constant low-level possibility of being thrown up against a wall, whenever and wherever, and taken.

      Those things were part and parcel of Luke. If only they didn’t come with the cruelty and the self-absorption and the rest of it.

      It helped that we didn’t live in the same town, and I thought I was over it until he walked into my estate agency, looking for details of executive one-bed apartments by the harbour.

      I was in the back office at the time, so I didn’t see him come in. I walked out with a sheaf of mailing lists to put into envelopes and almost dropped them all over the floor. I thought perhaps I’d been shot. That face, that hair, that tall athletic body. The shock of the initial bullet through my heart spread to infect my crotch with unwanted waves of sense-memory. The things he’d done to me … wicked, delicious things that nobody had done since. I couldn’t look at his fingers without recalling their explorations, nor hear his soft-spoken voice without the words mutating into the hot-breathed obscenities he used to whisper into my ear.

      He looked up and I gripped the mailshots harder, determined to look unflustered and indifferent.

      ‘Ruthie.’ That smile. Why was it having the same effect on me it used to have? I looked for hatred and bitterness, found only lust. ‘I was just asking after you. I hoped you’d still be here. Do you mind?’

      He dismissed my colleague, who vacated his chair for me and disappeared, taking over my envelope-stuffing task.

      ‘Of all the estate agents in all the world …’ I said, trying to keep control of my wobbly voice, keep it calm. ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘I got a promotion to the local office.’

      ‘You aren’t moving here?’

      ‘On the contrary. So I need your finest selection of bachelor pads. You’re looking well.’

      The change of tack steered me off course. I think, to my horror, I might have blushed.

      ‘Bachelor pads,’ I said, studiedly ignoring the compliment, clicking my mouse ostentatiously and scrolling through pages of listings.

      ‘I’m just grateful you didn’t knock my block off,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘Can’t really ask for more than that.’

      ‘What’s your upper price limit?’

      ‘It’s wonderful to see you again. I think about you a lot. About how we were … I was so stupid. There’s never been anyone like you.’

      ‘Price limit?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t really have one. I’m loaded. Just give me anything you’ve got that’s fucking huge with a sea view.’

      ‘You’re still an insufferable show-off then.’

      ‘Yeah, you know me. What have you got?’

      He leaned forwards, trying to get a view of my computer screen. I caught the whiff of his aftershave, the same one he used to wear. I had to pinch my lips together so as not to groan at the procession of images of us fucking that ran through my head. I clamped my thighs. My knickers were wet. Damn him to hell.

      ‘New development – Anchor Quay. Seems to be popular with the more-money-than-sense crowd. There’s a penthouse you might like.’

      ‘Take me there.’

      I stared at him. ‘What?’

      ‘I want to look at it. I won’t have time unless I do it now. I’ve got meetings all afternoon. Set up an appointment.’

      ‘I don’t have to. It’s vacant. I’ve got the keys.’ This is what came out of my mouth, instead of my intended Fuck off.

      ‘Even better. So what are we waiting for?’

      Me to get a grip, presumably. But the grip remained ungotten. I found the keys, grabbed my handbag and gave a brief explanation to the office manager, then we were on the street, striding up towards the harbour under a sun whose very heat seemed to be warning me off.

      I couldn’t help scoping the crowds of daytime shoppers for people I knew who might see us together and gasp and gossip. Luke’s behaviour had been the talk of my little section of the town for weeks. He was pretty much on a par with the Antichrist around here.

      ‘You’ve got some front,’ I muttered, once we were off the main drag and heading across the cobbles towards the quayside. ‘Rolling up and expecting me to talk to you after the way you … ugh.’

      He put his hand on my shoulder. He put his hand on my shoulder! How dared he? But I didn’t shrug it off. I half-expected the fabric of my jacket to burn through where he touched it. I think I was trembling.

      ‘Ruthie,’ he said, in that gentle, hypnotic, evil way of his. ‘Ruthie, Ruthie, Ruthie. I know I can’t make that up to you. I know I broke your heart, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

      ‘No you didn’t! Don’t flatter yourself. My heart’s perfectly fine, thanks.’

      ‘Good. That’s great. So you’re seeing someone?’

      Busted! But I could always lie.

      ‘Yeah, yeah, I am actually. It’s fantastic. I’m really happy.’

      ‘Well, I’m really happy for you. You deserve a good man.’

      The hand came off my shoulder. Had my fake boyfriend done his work? We arrived at the apartment complex and I showed him through the airy plant-filled atrium to the lifts.

      Being alone in a lift with Luke was a test of resolve. He stood close to me, the sleeves of our respective linen jackets touching, his heat pouring over me, his smell filling me up. We’d snogged in a lift before. We’d come pretty close to shagging, if I remembered correctly. I didn’t want to remember correctly. I didn’t want to remember at all.

      I was light-headed when the lift doors pinged open at the top floor.

      ‘Here it is,’ I said with exaggerated bonhomie, fitting the key to the lock. ‘The penthouse apartment.’

      I let him in before me, giving him a good few moments to get out of my personal space.

      ‘I like it,’ he said. He would. All that smoked glass, clean lines, blah, blah. It was impersonal enough for his tastes.

      Within