The Man She Married (ARC)

by Alison James

  Why now? I think. Why, when everything’s so great between us, does Dom have to be home late? Why – just for once – can’t he stick to the original plan? Does this mean the baby news has upset him in some way? But why on earth would it?

  To distract myself, I pick up my laptop and start going through some of the dozens of unanswered work emails in my Comida inbox.

  Finally, at ten past nine, I hear a car pulling up outside. I head to the front door and yank it open. But the person in front of me is not who I’m expecting at all.

  Two

  Alice

  Then

  I notice his eyes first.

  His features are handsome in an unremarkable, conventional way. His dark blond hair is worn slightly long, curling up at his shirt collar, and styled with more product than I care for. But those eyes! The irises are the most unusual colour I have ever seen, and one I would struggle to describe. They are too light to be brown; more a sort of café-au-lait colour. Or taupe, like chamois leather, with a ring of amber flecks around the edge of the coloured part. He has a faint tan and every single cell of his body emits vitality and good health. And confidence.

  We’re sharing a lift on the way down from the top floor of the Ellwood Archer building in Silvertown, on the north bank of the Thames. I’ve been meeting an executive assistant to negotiate for my company, Comida, to provide a series of directors’ lunches. If the plan comes off, it will be a major step up for my little catering business. So I’m smiling when the man steps into the lift after me, just as the doors slide shut. Even though it’s not aimed at him, he automatically smiles too.

  He’s dressed in a suit that’s a little too small for him, his tie slightly off-centre. This, and the awkward way he manhandles his briefcase, suggests that he isn’t someone for whom business dress is the norm.

  ‘Where to?’ he asks.

  ‘Ground, please.’

  This should have been the sum total of our interaction, except that the lift then unexpectedly jolts and grinds to a halt. The man presses the buttons repeatedly and, when nothing happens, hits the alarm button.

  A disembodied voice comes over the intercom. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Um… we’re stuck.’

  ‘Which floor, please?’

  ‘Between 12 and 13, I think.’

  ‘Hold on one moment…’

  There is a brief silence, during which the man and I exchange puzzled glances, then the speaker crackles into life again.

  ‘I’ve got our engineer looking at it: if you can hold tight, it should only be a few minutes.’

  The man turns to me with a dazzling smile. ‘You ever been stuck in a lift before?’ He has a faint accent, which I can’t quite place.

  I shake my head, clutching my trench coat and bag primly across the front of my body.

  He extends a hand. ‘Dominic Gill. Nice to meet you.’

  I shake it. ‘Alice Palmer.’

  ‘You work here?’

  ‘No, I’ve been for a meeting. I run a catering company, and I’m hoping to do some functions for Ellwood Archer.’

  ‘Wow, impressive.’ He smiles at me again, and it’s all I can do to prevent myself from staring at his eyes. ‘Being in charge of your own company, I mean.’

  ‘Well, it’s only small.’ My default setting, as always, is modesty. The deflection of compliments. ‘I’ve only recently started it.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘How about you?’ I’m keen to divert his attention and his intense gaze. ‘Do you work here?’

  ‘No, not yet. But I hope to soon. I’ve just been for an interview.’

  ‘How did it go?’ I ask, more to pass the time than because I’m really interested. Although, there is something arresting about him.

  ‘Oh, you know… it seemed to go fine, but it’s always hard to tell. And it’s been a while since I’ve done an office job. I’ve been working on the more… hands-on side of construction.’

  I look down at his hands, emerging from the too-small suit jacket. They’re tanned and weathered, with traces of ingrained dirt round his fingernails.

  The lift judders into life again, and a few seconds later, we’re on the ground floor. As the lift doors open, I turn to him again. ‘Good luck with the job.’ I begin to stride off through reception towards the street doors, with Dominic in my wake. I sense, rather than see, him hurrying to catch up with me.

  ‘Fancy grabbing a coffee?’

  I hesitate. He looks straight back at me, engaging full eye contact.

  ‘Maybe just a quick one. I really ought to get back to the office and write up my notes.’

  We find a café on Albert Road, near the turning for London City Airport.

  ‘So…’ Dominic wastes no time in launching into an interrogation, ‘are you married?’

  I shake my head. ‘No.’

  ‘And do you live round here?’

  ‘I’ve got a house in Queen’s Park.’

  ‘A whole house?’

  ‘A whole house, just for me.’ I look down at my hands, at my left ring finger where the engagement ring used to be. ‘I’m very lucky. I inherited some money.’

  The taupe eyes narrow slightly. ‘A lot of responsibility for you, though, the upkeep and so on. Not sure I’d be up to it, especially not in this market.’

  ‘Did you grow up in London?’ A waiter brings over cups of cappuccino and I grab mine, grateful to have something to do with my hands. This man’s directness is making me distinctly uncomfortable.

  Dominic shakes his head. ‘Scotland.’

  He’s Scottish. That would explain the hint of an accent.

  ‘I’ve not lived here long – and I won’t be able to stay much longer unless I start making some serious money.’ He smiles slightly, as though realising this sounds crass.

  ‘Well, hopefully you’ll get the job at Ellwood Archer.’

  ‘That’s the plan…’ He tugs off his tie, shoving it into his jacket pocket and unbuttoning his collar. ‘That’s better. Hate wearing these bloody things. So, you really live alone in this house of yours?’

  Again, the bluntness is unsettling. I look down at my hands again. ‘Yes… Look, sorry but I really ought to go.’ I stand up, slopping my half-drunk coffee into the saucer.

  He gives a rueful grin. ‘Me too. Stuff I need to do.’ He gets to his feet. ‘I’d really like it if we could meet up again?’

  ‘The thing is…’ I hesitate. I’ve already exposed more about myself than I intended. ‘I’ve sort of got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Only sort of? Is that grounds for hope?’

  ‘No, I do. I do have a boyfriend.’

  This is not strictly true, but since I have no intention of meeting Dominic again, I tell myself the white lie doesn’t matter. I started talking to someone called Richard on Tinder a couple of weeks ago, and since then we’ve met in person, once. One date, but it ended with us agreeing to meet again, soon. But, for all Dominic knows, I could be in an exclusive relationship. With Richard, who is a bit dull and whose surname I’m now struggling to remember.

  ‘Ah well,’ he sounds unperturbed. ‘Maybe see you around. Meantime, stay away from dodgy lifts.’

  I assumed that would be the last I ever saw of Dominic Gill. I was wrong.

  Three

  Alice

  Then

  ‘So you survived the trip to the top floor?’

  It’s nearly five weeks later, and Comida is catering its first directors’ lunch at Ellwood Archer. I’ve fully briefed my team of chefs and servers in advance but decide to show my face at the event so that the board have confidence in my commitment. So that they know I’m prepared to be hands-on if required. I’ve just emerged from the lift, and I’m heading towards the kitchen adjacent to the boardrooms.

  ‘Oh. Hi.’

  I become flustered when I look up and see Dominic Gill, partly because I’m trying to balance a huge pile of table linens in my arms and partly because I’ve forgotten just how attractive he is. He�
��s had a haircut and ditched the gel and he’s wearing a better suit this time – one that fits really well. It makes him seem simultaneously taller and broader.

  ‘You got the job!’ I say with a delighted smile. ‘Congratulations! I’d shake your hand, only…’ I indicate the heap of linen.

  ‘I did.’ He fixes his tawny eyes on me. ‘And how about you? I’ve been thinking about you.’

  ‘You have? Goodness.’ It’s lame, but I’m too thrown to come up with a better response. Colour rushes to my cheeks.

  ‘How’s the sort-of boyfriend?’

  It takes me a few seconds to realise that he means Richard from Tinder. Who eventually arranged a second date, during which the conversation was so shockingly clunky that we mutually decided not to go for a third. ‘Oh, it’s… that’s over.’

  Dominic flashes a smile. He has large, square teeth which have been on the receiving end of top-flight dentistry. ‘Good. Then you’ve got no excuse not to have dinner with me.’

  * * *

  ‘So you’re going on a date with him?’

  I’ve phoned JoJo, crooking the phone against my shoulder as I lay out dresses on the bed in an attempt to make a decision.

  ‘Well, no, not really. We’re just going to go and grab some dinner.’

  ‘And that’s not a date because…?’

  I don’t think I can explain to her what it is about Dominic that I find so unsettling. Maybe it’s because it’s been such a long time since I’ve met anyone naturally, organically; just by dint of them being in the same space and striking up a conversation. Or met anyone at all, really.

  I got together with my first boyfriend, Josh, when I was eighteen and still at school. That relationship lasted nearly three years, until I was twenty-one. We ended it amicably, agreeing that in doing a lot of growing up, we’d grown apart. I’d barely had chance to get used to being single again before I was set up with Alex by a mutual friend.

  Alex Lockwood. A junior barrister, he was handsome, exciting, alpha. I was smitten from the start, and when Mum died, I depended on him to steer me through the maze of bereavement. He became the centre of my world. If there had been more space in my brain, space that was not occupied with slowly losing my mother to cancer, and with adoration of my impressive boyfriend, it would have occurred to me that with Alex I was punching above my weight. I wasn’t alpha; I was definitely beta.

  But I had my emotional blinkers on and failed to see the signs. On my twenty-sixth birthday he proposed, and we started planning our wedding for the following year. Or rather, I did. Alex wasn’t very interested in when or where it happened. This was another red flag that I failed to spot. Instead, I ploughed on, obsessing over party favours and cake stands. I found the perfect dress: a beautiful silk chiffon creation by Philippa Lepley.

  Then, less than a week before the ceremony, with all my carefully curated arrangements in place, Alex called the engagement off. He wasn’t sure, he told me. Not sure how he’d feel about me in ten, or even five years’ time. He’d confused compassion for my orphan status with love. But he didn’t love me. Or not ‘like that’, as he put it. Whatever that meant.

  Planning a wedding is stressful, but trust me; it’s nothing compared with un-planning one. Returning gifts, phoning guests to explain. Hiding the dress, shrouded in its ivory garment bag, in the loft. For months I was wracked with self-doubt, paralysed by lack of self-worth. I refused to go to social events, instead throwing myself into my business plan for Comida.

  Two years later, with the world moving on around me and Alex married to someone else, I took up online dating without a shred of enthusiasm. I endured a string of soul-sapping bad dates, none of which ever attained the status of relationship. In some cases, there was a hint of a spark that quickly fizzled. In others, there was not only the lack of a spark, but a lack of attraction so extreme that it bordered on revulsion.

  There was Paul, who spent all evening talking me through the frankly grotesque assortment of inkings on his body. There was a Uruguayan called Cristian, who insisted on coaching me to speak Spanish and whose kissing technique involved licking my face. There was Terry, who looked like a long-term death-row inmate and who cheerfully admitted to having downloaded the photo of a handsome stranger to use on his profile. And Hugh, who got very drunk and started sobbing uncontrollably as he recounted the story of his ex-girlfriend’s cheating. Even worse than those – which had at least provided amusing dinner party anecdotes – were the unremarkable men whose names I could no longer remember, or whose faces I couldn’t recall.

  ‘Okay, maybe it is a date,’ I concede to JoJo.

  ‘It definitely is.’

  ‘But it’s not an online one, which is probably why it feels so different.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘So what do I wear? I don’t want to look too try-hard.’

  ‘Don’t turn up wearing a party dress and skyscraper heels. You’ll only feel like you’ve laid yourself out on a plate,’ JoJo observes sagely. ‘And that will just make you stiff and uncomfortable. Go for stylish but relaxed.’

  I take the formal dresses I’ve selected and start replacing them on the wardrobe rail. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Wear your jeans, and that black fitted jacket, and your Ash boots. Let him see how great your legs are.’

  * * *

  Revising my outfit choice makes me late, and Dominic is waiting for me at Harvey’s, a small organic brasserie just off Salisbury Road. The fact that he chose somewhere near where I live is not lost on me.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ I ask, as I sink into my seat and accept a glass of wine from the bottle he has already ordered.

  ‘Nope. Just read about it and it sounded good. I reckoned it wouldn’t be too far for you to come.’ He gazes down at the pointy heels on my ankle boots. ‘Wouldn’t want you to cripple yourself walking in those.’

  I order seared tiger prawns and he orders calamari, pulling a suitably contrite face when a dish of garlic mayonnaise arrives to accompany it. ‘Oops. Looks like snogging’s off the menu.’

  Unsettled by the idea of kissing him, I pretend I haven’t heard this, and he asks me about how Comida is doing, questioning me on the fiscal bottom line with rather more interest than I’m used to.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m a numbers guy, always have been. That’s the bit of a business that interests me most.’

  I seize this opportunity to shift the focus to his own career. ‘Where did you work before Ellwood Archer?’

  He gives me a full summary of his work life, starting with reading economics at Nottingham, then a stint in Edinburgh in various financial jobs, including working for the consortium creating SCOTEX – the planned Scottish stock market – before moving to a financial role in a sustainable building company, and now to Ellwood Archer.

  ‘When we met in the lift that day, you said you’d been doing some more hands-on construction?’ I remind him.

  ‘Oh yeah, right… there was a short hiatus between jobs because of moving down here to London, so I just helped a mate out on his project, doing some on-site supervision.’ He flaps a hand vaguely.

  ‘And where are you living?’

  ‘In a flat-share, in Deptford. It’s pretty grotty. But it’s just until I can get enough money together for a deposit on something decent.’

  ‘And your family? Are they in Scotland?’

  He shakes his head. ‘My dad’s dead, my mum’s in the North of England, and my brother… I think he’s still up North too, but I’m not one hundred per cent sure. He’s a lot older, so we were never close. To be honest, we’ve more or less lost touch.’

  I pull a sympathetic face as I behead a prawn. ‘That’s a shame… why’s that?’

  He shrugs, picking up the wine list and pretending to study it. ‘Oh, you know… like I said, there’s a big age gap, but I suppose we’re also just very different people.’ He puts the wine list down and grins. ‘So… enough about me. I want to know what happened to the sort-of boyfri
end. I’ve been feeling a touch sorry for the bloke.’

  I laugh. ‘Seriously, there’s no need. It was just one of those things that was destined to fizzle. You know the kind I mean.’

  He gives a sigh of empathy. ‘Oh, I do, believe me. Have you ever tried dating apps?’

  I colour slightly. Has he guessed that this is how Richard and I met? ‘Yes. I mean, hasn’t everyone our age?’

  Dominic gives a half-embarrassed smile. ‘Actually, I haven’t.’

  ‘Really?’

  As I say this, I acknowledge that my surprise is probably misplaced. He’s good-looking, masculine, successful. He can probably find all the women he wants just by walking into a bar. Whereas after Alex, I would never have had the confidence just to go out and pick someone up.

  ‘I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it,’ Dominic says quickly as he pours us both more wine. ‘But, from seeing some of my mates go through it, it’s pretty brutal. Fine if all you want is a shag, but the internet’s no place for one-woman men.’

  ‘And that’s what you are?’

  He smiles, showing those attractive teeth. ‘No question. It puts me in a minority, but I’m really not into playing games. I’m after something… real.’

  We fall into prolonged eye contact, and my heart rate picks up a little. ‘Pudding?’ I ask, turning my attention to the menu that the waiter is proffering.

  ‘I probably ought to have something to neutralise the garlic,’ he smiles, and orders a chocolate mousse with a glass of Sauternes. I order a mint tea.

  After the bill has been settled – by Dominic, refusing to go Dutch – he offers to walk me home. It’s a crisp early-autumn night, the faintest nip of frost in the air, the first yellow and bronze leaves strewing the pavement. He reaches for my hand as we walk, and it feels quite natural to let him take it. His fingers feel warm and strong around mine.