Today was my last day at my temping job. In many ways I am glad I left but I also made some good friends being there for three months and I hope that some of the girls will keep in touch.

One of the reasons why I am glad to be leaving is because the situation was getting a little sticky with a male colleague there.

We went out a few times for dinner and drinks and got on really well. Had the situation been different maybe things could have even progressed between us.

Of course I was honest with him from the start and told him all about my relationship with Jayce, and like most men I have dated these past six months, he didn’t mind, mainly because like every other guy, he assumed that in the end I would choose him.

On our last date he took me to a nice Chinese place where we drank copious amounts of wine. Emboldened by the alcohol, he brought up the subject of my other relationship.

“I don’t see how you can date a married man” he said. “Why are you prepared to settle for being second best? Don’t you think you are being selfish? Don’t you ever think about his wife?”

I answered the questions as best I could.

“Firstly, I don’t consider myself to be second best. I get the very best of him. I get the fun and none of the responsibility.

Secondly. Maybe I am being selfish for not giving her a second thought, but I don’t believe for one second that if it wasn’t me he wouldn’t be with someone else. Jayce is the kind of guy who likes excitement and the thrill of the chase. Because of who he is and what he does, he can pretty much have a different girl every day of the week if he so wanted. There is no way that his wife does not realise this.

Thirdly. No, I don’t think of his wife beyond the odd occasion when I wonder what she looks like and if she’s better in bed than I am. I am not the one who’s married, and therefore, don’t consider her to be my problem.”

At this point he grabbed my both my hands over the table looked into my eyes and said:

“I can see that you have been hurt in the past and that you are afraid of getting hurt again. I think that this is your way of not getting too involved, that’s why you picked an unavailable man. I just want you to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. We could have something special”.

Mid way through his speech I had wrenched one of my hands away and had taken a big slug of wine from my glass. Unfortunately, as he got to the last line, I looked up and made eye contact. The earnest look on his face was too much for me, and I burst into strangled laughter, snorting wine across the table.

Wiping his eye, he glared at me, and then asked the waiter for the bill.

On Friday, I walked past him at the water cooler and heard him singing a little song under his breath.

Catching my name, I asked him what he was singing.

“Oh just a little song I’ve been working on:

‘Prick tease, prick tease, Jezabel’s a prick tease’

I made it up myself”


I actually have another date tomorrow night and am a bit nervous. The guy who I am meant to be seeing is a two years younger than me and was my best friend’s little brother’s best friend at school.

I bumped into him in a bar a week or so ago after not having seen him for six years, and boy has he grown!! He confessed to having had a crush on me at school all those years ago and asked me if I had felt the same. I smiled and nodded, not wanting to admit that the only feeling I had for the weedy, spotty youth who back then tried to set my hair on fire on the school bus, were of pity and revulsion.

But more of that tomorrow when no doubt, I shall post a drunken blog entry after my date..

Jayce rang today, and whispered that he couldn’t talk for long as he was at the supermarket after being blackmailed into helping with the household chores as penance for last night.

I cannot imagine a scenario where he would look more out of place than at the supermarket, in amongst every day items such as frozen peas and loo roll.

One of the many benefits of our relationship is how far from the mundane we are. Our affair is conducted on planes where bikini lines are always neatly trimmed, stockings and suspenders are everyday attire, and champagne and oysters are daily fare.

It is no easy task keeping up this façade.

If you think about this logically, for all the investments I make into this relationship I get very little return. Unlike a wife or a girlfriend, I cannot let the mask slip for a second.

I spend a fortune on underwear and outfits each month, and even more on beauty products and services. Nails must be neatly manicured, ditto pedicure.

I shave, wax, pluck every exorbitant hair, and re-do my roots every three weeks.

I straighten my hair and curl my lashes.

I conceal, enhance, shadow and shade every contour of my face and sometimes even draw on a beauty mark for added effect.

Underwear must always match, if worn at all. Stockings and suspenders rather than tights.

Shoes must be ludicrously high and look as though they could have been borrowed from a lapdancer.

Then you have to choose between showing legs or cleavage. Both and his PA will think you’re a slut (which you are of course. You’re just the girl he shags in his office before going home to his wife. His PA knows this already of course).

Jayce told me that he managed to convince her that he was talking big to some clients rather than talking dirty to ‘some girl’.

Later on in the day a single red rose was delivered to my door, without a note.

Adultery - Carol Ann Duffy

Adultery

Wear dark glasses in the rain.
Regard what was unhurt
as though through a bruise.
Guilt. A sick, green tint.

New gloves, money tucked in the palms,
the handshake crackles. Hands
can do many things. Phone.
Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now

you are naked under your clothes all day,
slim with deceit. Only the once
brings you alone to your knees,
miming, more, more, older and sadder,

creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it
on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night
up against a wall, faster. Language
unpeels a lost cry. You're a bastard.

Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness
in the afternoon; a voice in your ear
telling you how you are wanted,
which way, now. A telltale clock

wiping the hours from its face, your face
on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.
Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back
to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake.

Paranoia for lunch; too much
to drink, as a hand on your thigh
tilts the restaurant. You know all about love,
don't you. Turn on your beautiful eyes

for a stranger who's dynamite in bed, again
and again; a slow replay in the kitchen
where the slicing of innocent onions
scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep

in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body
stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.
You're an expert, darling; your flowers
dumb and explicit on nobody's birthday.

So write the script - illness and debt,
a ring thrown away in a garden
no moon can heal, your own words
commuting to bile in your mouth, terror -

and all for the same thing twice. And all
for the same thing twice. You did it.
What. Didn't you. Fuck. Fuck. No. That was
the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun.

Friday night

So why am I in on a Friday night, typing away at my computer whilst every other girl my age is out celebrating the start of her weekend with her friends?

Because my boyfriend has cut our evening short to go home to his wife. That’s why.

Our date started like every other date we have had before it; we meet at his office around one pm where I am shown in by his PA and wait on the rather comfortable black leather sofas for him to finish up his calls for the day.

We then head for one of the many discreet yet rather nice restaurants around the area, today we chose a little Italian place that we had been to several times before ( I ordered the Tricolore Salad, he the Carbonara which he just pushed distractedly around his plate for an hour) where they know us and give us a fantastic table where we can view the side streets yet can’t be seen by passers by.

We then head to a bar where we drink a few glasses of good white wine and where we both start to relax a little more. The chances of us being seen here are remote and if we are, it is far from unusual for him to take a client or a work colleague out for a drink so we are still safe.

When we are both starting to feel a little tipsy, one or both of us suggests moving the date on a little, so we either hail a cab to the hotel that he normally books for clients (that way any carelessly misplaced receipts or credit card statements can be easily explained) or if it is after hours return to his office (his option of choice, I guess because it saves him the £150+ hotel bill).

Tonight we went to his office.

Like a scene in a bad porn film, he swept the papers off his desk and hitched up my skirt. (I now know better than to wear anything fiddly or time consuming like jeans. Besides, the denim leaves nasty red imprints all over you stomach and arse. Hardly sexy. Plus anything that involves pulling or tugging to get off – no pun intended, just spoils the fantasy.)

I’ll spare you the details.. but pretty soon we were interrupted by the shrill of his mobile phone ringing.

Me: “Just ignore it”

Him: “I was intending too, you didn’t need to say that”

Then his work phone began to ring. A look of panicked swept across his face as he stopped, lent across me and answered his phone.

Pulling my clothes back on in a rather inelegant fashion, I was able to make out the words “So that’s what you do at your office then” being screamed down the phone by a rather angry sounding woman.

Somehow, Jayce had managed to lean on his phone at an intimate moment and had left his wife a voicemail.

Ashen faced, he hung up the phone.

“I guess you know who that was.” He said. “I have to go home now to prove that I am not having sex at my office”.

We walked to the door in silence. He kissed me on the cheek and hailed a cab whilst I walked to the station, my underwear still bunched up around my arse.