‘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 boyfriend. 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.
‘Wow,’ he says, when I stop at the front gate. ‘Is this you?’
‘This is me.’
He takes in the handsome Edwardian terrace with its ornate gable end and carved wooden porch, the ornamental cherry trees in the front garden.
‘I hope you don’t mind if I don’t ask you in. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’
‘Of course not.’ He adjusts his position so that the unsettling eyes are looking right at me, pale in the street light. With my heels on, we’re more or less the same height. ‘But is it okay if I kiss you?’
I don’t answer, but he runs his thumb over my lips anyway before pressing his own mouth against them, not too softly, not too hard. It’s not a sloppy kiss, nor a dry one. His lips are warm and pliable, and they taste of the sweet dessert wine. Just as I’m starting to respond, he pulls back fractionally, teasing me before going in again with his lips slightly parted. His hand is just above the waistband of my jeans, and his fingers move gently across a patch of bare skin as he kisses me once more, making me shiver with pleasure. I return the kiss with more fervour now, and once again he backs off imperceptibly before reapplying pressure, sending a little coil of desire through my insides.
Did you snog?
JoJo texts later, when Dominic has left and I’m upstairs kicking off the heels and wriggling out of my jeans. I grin happily at my phone screen as I type a reply.
Only the most amazing kiss I’ve ever had.
Perhaps I should have told JoJo the kiss was life-changing. Because my life was about to change, and in ways I could never have imagined.