He came into the shelter one day to get a kitten for his daughter. He was divorced but his daughter came for weekends and school holidays, he explained, and he wanted a cat so that she’d feel like his place was still home. It was early June and we were overrun with abandoned kittens but, though there were plenty to choose from, most were still too young and were waiting to be weaned or waiting for their shots, or to be sterilised, before we’d let them go.
Anyway, Jake walked through the door one evening, just as I was about to close up, and I thought, simply, wow!
Now this is where the whole thing is going to get tooth-numbingly embarrassing and where it’s probably all going to sound horrifically shallow, too. But this is all supposed to be about honesty, and part of that honesty is for me, as well. It’s about admitting to myself that we humans are still animals at heart, no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise, no matter how sophisticated we’d like to think we are.
So here it is: the first thing that struck me about Jake was his clothes. I’ve always had a thing for guys in suits, and I know that you know that and I know that you’ve always done your best to ignore the fact for the simple reason that you pretend to hate wearing one. You and I both know that the truth is that for some inexplicable reason, dressing up in anything out of the ordinary embarrasses you. But that’s been a shame, really, because my so called thing for men in suits is actually quite a powerful thing. You see? I told you that this would make your teeth hurt. It’s certainly making mine hurt to say these things we never say.
Jake was a lawyer. In fact he almost certainly still is. And not a humdrum lawyer either, but a fairly high-flying, corporate lawyer. So he walked into our lowly, shabby cat shelter wearing a sheer, perfectly tailored, five-hundred pound suit and a silky, perfectly knotted polka dot tie, and a crisp white shirt with cufflinks and braces. And it’s entirely silly, but it all made me go a bit weak at the knees.
He had electric blue eyes and what people like to call a strong chin and good skin and a nice arse and big smooth hands coming out of those thick white cuffs and when he smiled, which was often, he revealed a set of nice white teeth.
He smiled and reached out to shake my hand and said, “Hello.”
When I tried to reply, I just croaked. It took me three attempts before I could even speak.
I hope you don’t think that I’m trying to rub your nose in all of this, because that really isn’t my intention. I’m just trying to explain what happened in a way that, perhaps with time, you’ll be able to understand. It wasn’t a choice, you see. At any rate, it never felt like a choice. It felt like … I don’t know. A compulsion, maybe?
Anyway, Jake strode in, shook my hand, smiled and said, “Hello.” He touched his tie in a sort of straightening gesture, which somehow made him look nervous to please, which was cute. And something strange happened to me. I felt drawn to him. I felt hot and a bit faint and my throat constricted.
He came back three times before he made his final choice, always after work and always in his work clothes. He was always very nice and always hung around a little longer than required asking questions about the shelter, and every time he left I spent half an hour thinking about him and then another hour convincing myself that I was being stupid, foolish; reminding myself that I was married, and happily married at that.
The third time he came, he touched my arm very gently and asked if he could buy me a drink. And it took truly every bit of energy and determination I could muster to say, “No.”
But I kept bumping into him, that was the thing. I bumped into him in Sainsbury’s and I bumped into him at the petrol station. I bumped into him walking back from school, and I came upon him when I was walking across Midsummer Common one morning. That was the first time I had ever seen him dressed casually, in a polo shirt and chinos. And I realised that the reason his suit hung so well was because he was incredibly fit beneath it. He later told me that he had been a competition swimmer in his youth and the least that I can say is that it still showed. Anyway, we were both heading the same way – towards the town centre – so we had to walk side by side for a bit, which felt awkward.
We made polite chit-chat. I asked him how the kitten was doing; he asked after Miaow, the kitten’s mother and I told him the truth, that the mothers were often un-adoptable and that many of them spent the rest of their days in the shelter.
Jake was shocked about that and he asked me whether she would still get on with her kitten if he adopted her as well, to which I replied that, yes, she almost certainly would. And he said he couldn’t bear the idea of Miaow spending her life kitten-less at the shelter. That glimpse of kindness softened the heart I’d been trying so hard to harden. It provided Jake with an opening; it gave him a way in, if you see what I mean.
It also meant, of course, that he had to come back to the shelter again and that I knew he was coming back in advance. And though I promise you I tried incredibly hard not to do so, I started to fantasise about him. I used to try to balance these fantasies out by overwriting them with another one about you, but the new is always so much brighter than the familiar… It never worked that well.
I was scared, in advance, about what I might do, and a couple of times it was on the tip of my tongue to tell you about him. I thought that perhaps the shame might cool things down; I thought your anger might save me. But I never did manage to tell you because I could never quite put the words together to express something so complex and sordid and exciting and stupid. I still wonder how that conversation might have gone.
He turned up the following Thursday night just as I was locking up. He had come straight from work, but his train had been late, so by the time he had driven from the station it was almost seven. He was wearing a silky, sharkskin three piece suit. He looked stunning.
I gave him some tips about reintroducing the two cats and then – and I’m sure you’ve seen this coming, because I had, too – he said that it all sounded terribly complicated and asked me if I had time to come back with him.
And I heard my mouth say, “Sure. Why not?”
That will sound like me shirking my responsibility for the whole thing, and perhaps that’s what it is. But I really was thinking, No, no, no! even as I heard my mouth say, “Sure, why not?”
We filled out the paperwork for Miaow and he paid the fee and added on a generous donation, and all the time I was thinking, You have to say, ‘no.’ You have to remind him you’re married and say ‘no’. It’s that easy. But I didn’t seem to be able to speak.
He asked me which was my car, and I explained that I took the bus on Thursdays. He offered to drive me home afterwards, and I remember thinking, After what?
We caged up the cat and went outside to the car park.
He took his jacket off and threw it on the back seat – he had this lovely old racing green MG – and as he drove I kept glancing across at his white shirt and his waistcoat and his tie which jutted out from his collar, and it was as if my mind had split in two. One half was saying, What are you doing, girl? Stop! And the other half was lost in the fantasy of kissing him, thinking about what it would feel like to put my arms around his stiff, starched collar. And I thought that one day, I’d be dead, and it would be a shame to miss the opportunity, because, somehow, surely everyone deserved the chance, once in their lives, to live out their fantasies. I told myself that we’d married so young and that if we’d met later on then perhaps I would have got the pretty, arrogant Jakes of this world out of my system. I told myself that you’d had your fling with Maggie, so it was my turn now. I told myself so many things in an attempt to make it all OK, Sean, but the sad truth is that his aura, his confidence – the confidence that meant he at least wasn’t embarrassed to dress like that – these things were like a magnet to me, and I didn’t seem to have the power to resist. Sitting beside him, my heart was racing and every part of my body seemed to be waiting for his touch. But even then, I was promising myself that nothing was going to happen. I don’t know who I thou
ght I was kidding.
When we got to his flat it was a huge, modern place out in Trumpington and I wondered if you’d perhaps helped to design it. We put Miaow in one room and Mitsi (his daughter had named the kitten Mitsi) in another, and fixed the door so that there was an inch through which they could peep at each other. But Mitsi went crazy, in a good way. She hadn’t forgotten who her mother was yet and so, within a minute, we opened the door and they were all over each other in a big love-in. It was so cute watching their reunion, it made me well up.
Jake offered me a drink, and I said, “No,” and then changed my mind and said, “Yes,” so he mixed me a gin and tonic.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, gently stroking his chin. “And I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t.”
I asked him what that was.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’d mind terribly if I kissed you,” he said.
“Best not,” I croaked. “You know… married and all that.”
“Oh, of course,” Jake said. He seemed quite cool about it.
I stayed and sipped at my drink, and all the while I was imagining my body pressed against the formal crispness of his clothes, imagining the feel of them against me, imagining how it would feel to kiss his lips. And it was as much as I could do to stop myself launching myself at him right there, right then. Does that make any sense to you? I bet it does. I bet you’ve felt that too, at least once in your life.
But it was all getting to be too much for me. I put my gin and tonic down, stood and walked to the door. “I’d like you to take me home, please,” I said. And Jake, bless him, did exactly that.
The weekend after that, I tried to get you to buy a suit. Do you remember? We were in the town centre and I attempted to drag you into Moss Bros.
I was thinking, praying, that perhaps, just perhaps, dressing you like Jake could save me from this madness, because even as it was happening, I knew it was a kind of insanity. But you just laughed at me and said something like, “What the fuck would I do with a suit? When would I even wear it?”
And because you’re right, because there are always things that we never can say to our partners, I did not reply, “Well, you could wear it in the bedroom, for starters,” and I didn’t say, either, “Because otherwise, I’m going to have an affair with a stunningly well dressed lawyer called Jake.”
The following Thursday when I got out of work, Jake was there again, waiting in his MG in the car park. “I wondered if I could drive you home,” he said. “You said you take the bus on Thursdays, so I just thought…”
I agreed. We needed, I had decided, to talk. I needed to tell him that there was no hope for us, once and for all.
He drove to that big roundabout at the end of the road, then said, “Do you have to be back quickly?”
I told him that I didn’t, and it was true. April was staying at Stacy’s and you’d texted to say you were working till at least ten.
“Perhaps we could go for a walk out in Brampton Wood?” he said. “It’s a lovely evening.”
And because I had decided to tell him that nothing between us was ever going to happen, and because I was going to tell him to stop stalking me, and because I was in no real hurry to do either of those things, I said, “Yes.”
When we got to Brampton Wood, he pulled on the handbrake and then gently touched my knee. I didn’t move. I bit my lip. I stared straight ahead.
“Please,” Jake said. “Just a kiss.”
And I caved in. I know, I know, I should have been stronger. But I wasn’t, and I lost track of myself. I launched myself at him. I ran my fingers over the cotton of his collar, over his silky tie, and then I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. And just for a moment, I wasn’t myself. For one fantasy instant I was a completely different person, a woman in a film, perhaps, kissing a very elegant, confident man on the leather seats of his perfectly restored MG. I’m pretty sure a shrink would say that it all came back to my lack of self-confidence. The bit of rough from Margate was still haunting me, I think.
We kissed for a bit and then I pulled away. I said something like, “I thought you wanted to walk in the woods, not frolic in them.”
Jake laughed and said, “All right then.” He was always the gentleman. He was never pushy. It was always as much my fault as it ever was his.
He pulled on his jacket and we walked into the woods together. The bluebells were in flower and it was like a sea of blue and I wished I’d had my camera with me. But then I realised I’d never be able to convincingly explain why I was out in Brampton Wood in the first place.
As both of our “real” lives were off-limits, for obvious reasons, it seemed hard to find things to talk about. Jake spoke about the cats, I seem to remember, and I eventually mentioned what a snappy dresser he was. He told me that one of the partners in the law firm had walked him to his tailor on the day he had started twenty years ago and he had never changed tailors since. “It’s just a uniform, really,” he said. “As a lawyer, you can’t even vary it very much. I allow myself some quirky cufflinks and a flashy tie or two, but there’s not much else you can do, really. It’s a bit boring, if you ask me.”
I told him that I didn’t find it boring at all. I said that jeans and t-shirts were boring.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ve heard that before. Women do seem to like a man in a suit. Considering how much effort guys seem to put into attracting the fairer sex, it’s a wonder more of them don’t wear them.”
When we got back to the car, we sat, side by side, in silence.
“We need to stop this,” I said, eventually. “I’m married.”
“I know,” he said sadly. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop if you want me to.”
“I think that would be best,” I said, “for everyone concerned.”
He nodded, stroked my fingers briefly with his big smooth hand – the contact felt electric – and then started the engine.
We drove in silence all the way back until we reached the first roundabout on the ring road, when he said, sounding miserable, “So, left, or right?”
“Oh,” I said.
“Right,” Jake said. “Please say, right. Just for five minutes?”
I nodded silently. I don’t know why I did that. I really don’t. I seemed to be on some kind of autopilot.
When we got to his place, he closed the front door and we kissed against it, and there really was something powerful and animalistic, something fetishistic, almost certainly, about being forcefully kissed by him dressed like that. Between the smooth wool of his suit, the satin back of the waistcoat and the crisp white collar, between the softness of his skin and the stubble of his five o’clock shadow, there seemed to be so many textures to run my fingers over. I’ve always had a thing for textures, and I couldn’t get enough of the feel of him. I couldn’t, somehow, get close enough to him.
We kissed frantically for a few moments and then I let Jake pull my top over my head and lead me by the hand into the lounge.
A big candle was burning in a glass lantern and there was a bottle of champagne sitting in an ice bucket. The ice had almost melted.
It had all been planned from the start, I realised, and I suddenly had second thoughts. I suddenly wanted to stop the whole thing and run away. But Jake was pouring champagne and walking towards me and I felt bad for him and bad for you, and confused and guilty. It seemed like an insolvable riddle.
He kissed me and pulled me towards him, and it felt heavenly again, and the sensible, doubtful, faithful parts of me were all momentarily drowned out by a rush of hormones or endorphins or something.
We did the wicked deed just once, there on the couch, and the truth is that even as it was happening, I had already changed my mind. But I liked Jake. He really was a very likeable guy, and I suppose I didn’t want to hurt his feelings either. And there was something about his willpower to move forward that overwhelmed my own desire to stop. When he pulled a condom as if from nowhere, I reali
sed again what I already knew, that this had all been planned and that Jake was way too cocky – way too sure of himself. What had attracted me to him was already pushing me away.
Nothing about it was violent or unpleasant, Jake was nothing but respectful and, though I thought about it a hundred times, I didn’t say, “No,” and I didn’t say, “Stop.” And yet, by the time it was over, everything felt wrong. It was as if I had come back to myself, as if I had woken up and couldn’t work out, suddenly, what I was even doing there. I had broken out in a cold sweat.
Jake was looking smitten. He re-zipped himself up (sensitive to my fantasies, he had remained fully clothed, throughout) and refilled his glass with champagne and said, “Sorry, I’m not usually that quick. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about you for–”
“Don’t,” I interrupted.
“I’m sorry?”
“Just don’t,” I said. “I can’t do this.”
Jake put his glass back down. “What’s wrong, darling?” he asked.
“I can’t do this, that’s all. That was a mistake. And don’t call me darling.”
I was already pulling on my top. “I’m sorry, but I need to go, now.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jake said. He crossed the room, and tried to grab my arm, but I pushed him away.
“I’m married, Jake,” I said. “You’re very lovely and you’re incredibly good looking. You’re like this perfect photo-fit fantasy man. You really are. But I can’t do this. I’m sorry.” And then I grabbed my own jacket and walked out the front door. I was shaking so much I could barely walk.
Jake came running after me eventually. He caught up with me in the street. “Catherine!” he said. “For fuck’s sake, at least let me drive you home!”
I just waved over my shoulder and continued to walk and, after a while, I flagged down a taxi.
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