“You didn’t tell me you had a dog,” said Thomas when he came around to my flat for the first time a few weeks later. Seeing as we’d only met four times and had gone straight to bed on all of those occasions, it was hardly surprising that we’d not yet had the opportunity for small talk.
“This is Tyson,” I said proudly, as if I was introducing him to my child.
Thomas couldn’t help but laugh as he went to pet him. “But he’s the cutest dog I’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t be fooled,” I said. “He lives up to his name—Cockapoos can be ruthless.”
“He’s not one of those territorial dogs, is he?” asked Thomas, in between planting kisses on my lips. “The type who won’t let you go into the bedroom with a man—no matter how hot he is.”
“He can be, but he should be all right with you.”
Thomas smiled as his hands wandered onto my behind, pinching it.
“Ow,” I laughed, swiping him round the shoulder.
“So, shall we test your theory?” he asked, as he began to unbutton my jeans.
“No,” I said, playfully pushing him away. “We’re going to eat first.”
“Aw, seriously,” he whined, sounding like a disgruntled little boy. “Can’t we just…?”
“No, absolutely not. If I keep choosing sex over food, my mother will wonder what’s happened to me.”
“You’d tell your mother something like that?” he asked incredulously.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the horrified look on his face. “No, I meant she’ll notice that I’ve lost weight.”
“Oh, right.” He dipped his finger into the béchamel sauce in the pan.
“Honestly, you’re worse than the kids in my class,” I remonstrated, swatting his hand away. “Will you just behave yourself for a minute and get the wine out of the fridge.”
“I’ve got something to ask you,” he said later, as he tucked into my homemade lasagne.
“Mmm,” I replied, though I wasn’t really listening—too busy concentrating on whether the pasta sheets were cooked enough.
“I’m in the middle of setting up a deal with a really important client.”
“O-kay,” I said, hesitantly, wondering how that could possibly have anything to do with me.
“He’s coming over to London next month and it’s important that I create the right image. I need to present myself correctly, you know?”
I wrinkled my forehead as he pressed on. “It would just help my cause if he could see that I have a girlfriend and that I’m a serious guy.” My expression went from one of confusion to one of surprise, but although I thought I knew where this was going, I still wanted to hear it from him. “I just wondered if you were free to, you know, come with me.”
“Are you asking me to be your trophy girlfriend?” I said, having to stop myself from giggling, though I don’t know whether it was from embarrassment or excitement.
“It’s okay, if … you know, you don’t want to. I understand.” He looked at me with doe eyes, like Puss in Boots from Shrek.
“Don’t pull that one,” I laughed. “I’d love to come. What do I have to wear? Do I need to be a slutty girlfriend or a posh bit of totty? Oh, can I be like Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman? All the gear, no idea.”
He looked at me as if I was completely mad. “You can just be you,” he said, before smiling and adding, “You won’t be needing to coax any slippery suckers out of their shells.”
He knew the lines from my favorite movie! I think that might have been the moment I began to fall in love with him.
As the weeks passed, I began to feel more comfortable around Thomas and dared to be confident that we had something special going on. Walking hand in hand into the restaurant to meet his business associate seemed like the next big step, and I felt dizzy with excitement, conscious of other diners watching us as we followed the maître d’ to our table. A good-looking man with olive skin and dark smoldering eyes stood up as we approached.
“Mr. Rodriguez, good to see you. This is Miss Russo.”
Mr. Rodriguez took my hand and brought it up to his lips. “Very pleased to meet with you.”
“Likewise,” I said, looking furtively around for his “better” half.
“Alas, my wife has been called away,” he said. “So, I’m afraid it’s just me this evening.”
I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or not. There was a shred of relief that I didn’t have to make superficial small talk, but that then meant I would have to listen to their business dealings.
Thomas looked at me, as if to say sorry, and ordered a bottle of Laurent Perrier Rosé.
As it turned out, the conversation was actually very enlightening, and if nothing else, I felt my social standing had been elevated somewhat just because I now knew the difference between a Meursault and a Petit Mouton.
“Who knew wine could sound even better than it tastes?” I said, as we just made it onto the 11:50 from Waterloo. It was the last train from London to Guildford, so everyone was packed in like sardines, with Thomas and I pressed up against each other.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, his face belying the fact that his hands were surreptitiously traveling up under my lace top, and into my bra. “I hope you weren’t too bored.”
I closed my eyes and a breath caught in my throat as his fingers deftly teased my nipples. If it wasn’t illegal I would have gladly let him take me there and then, regardless of who was watching.
“N-no, I mean it,” I managed. “I found it really interesting.”
He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Which part? Was it the juicing of the luscious, ripe grapes, or the fact that you can make thousands of pounds from buying and selling wine? What turns you on the most?”
“All of it,” I said as his hand slid down into my trousers. His fingers just reached the lace top of my knickers before I grabbed his wrist and looked at him wide-eyed.
“What?” he said, all too innocently.
“Patience is a virtue,” I said, in between kissing him. “In one hour, all of your dreams will come true.”
Except they didn’t. Instead, we spent the first two hours after we got to my place searching for Tyson, who had, it seemed, let himself out of the back door.
“But there’s no way I would have left it open,” I said, verging on hysteria when we still hadn’t found him. “I’m sure I would have checked that it was locked before we went out. Don’t you remember seeing me do it?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t say that I did, but I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“It’s the last thing I normally do before I go out,” I cried. “How can I have been so stupid?”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it,” he said gently. “We’ll find him—he won’t have gone far.”
As soon as the sun was up the next morning, we both headed out in different directions, our breaths billowing in the cold air as we shouted his name. “Tyson, Tyson! Come on, boy.” I choked on the words, furious with myself for the stupid mistake I’d made and terrified of what might have happened to him. “Please, Tyson,” I begged. “Please come home.”
Thomas and I met again an hour later at the park where I usually took Tyson for his walks.
“No sign?” I stupidly asked, willing my dog to be at Thomas’s feet.
He looked at the ground, shaking his head glumly.
“I need to go to work,” I said. “We should go.”
“I’ll stay, if it’s all right with you,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting I can push back, so I’d like to carry on looking.”
“Oh, yes, well, of course that would be amazing, if you really don’t mind.”
I’d not seen him looking quite so somber. “I feel responsible too. If I’d not distracted you, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.”
I thought back to the night before, when I’d asked Thomas to do my necklace up.
“This is beautiful,” he’d said as he admired the delicate diamond hanging from a silver chain.
My hand had instantly gone to it, my fingers feeling its weight.
“Thank you. It was a gift from my dad.”
“Well, he obviously has very good taste.”
I didn’t tell him that he’d had very good taste. Instead, I batted away the tears that threatened to fall every time my dad was mentioned and closed my eyes as Thomas kissed my neck. The fifteen minutes we’d then spent having sex instead of getting ready meant that I’d been in a mad panic to get out of the door to catch our train. Perhaps I’d not had time to check that the back door hadn’t been left ajar. I could blame Thomas, but what was the point? It was a distraction that I had readily encouraged.
“Thanks,” I said, kissing him at the park gate, his lips cold.
“I’ll call you with any news,” he said. “If I find him, is there a cafe or something around here that I can wait in until you come back?”
Was there? I’d lived in the area for five years, but suddenly I couldn’t even recall the shop where I usually got a coffee on the way to work.
“It’s okay,” he said, sensing my difficulty. “I’ll find somewhere.”
“No, no … of course, sorry, I’m not thinking straight. Here, take my keys.” I struggled to get my house key off the ring that carried a worn photo of me and Dad. I was prepared to give Thomas the key to everything I held dear, but not that.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Is there an alarm or anything I need to worry about?”
“No,” I said quietly, paranoid that anyone might overhear how lax my security arrangements were.
“Keep me posted, won’t you?” I said as I reluctantly left him.
My mind alternated between Tyson and a man I was fast falling for all morning, and when I’d heard nothing by lunchtime, I could feel myself welling up.
“I can cover for you if you want to go home,” said Maria as she rubbed my back.
I shook my head. “I’m better off here. There’s nothing I can do at home, apart from wait.”
“Honestly, I can do your classes this afternoon; you’re no use to the children when you’re like this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, go on, go,” she said. “I’ll tell the head.”
As I walked from the station to my flat, my mood was lifted a little at the sight of “LOST” posters on every other lamp post along the route. Anyone with information was being urged to call an unfamiliar phone number.
“Do I assume I have you to thank for the posters?” I asked Thomas when I got home. I daren’t call the number on my phone as I risked “Hot Guy,” the childish pseudonym I’d saved him under, appearing. I made a mental note to change it, even though it was still accurate.
“Yes,” he said sheepishly. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not,” I exclaimed. “That’s really sweet of you.”
“No one’s called yet, but I’m hopeful. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Thank you,” I said, kissing him.
“Are you okay if I go to this meeting? I was able to put it off for a few hours, but I could really do with getting it done today, if you don’t mind.”
I was astonished he even felt the need to ask. “Of course, you should go.”
“But I’ll be back tonight, if that’s all right, and I’ll leave you my phone, just in case anyone calls about Tyson.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, shaking my head. “Take your phone with you.”
“No,” he said adamantly. “I won’t be able to answer the call if it comes in. We can’t take the risk of missing it.”
“But—”
“Take it,” he said as he put his jacket on and handed me the phone. “I’ll be a couple of hours. Feel free to answer any call that comes in.”
It felt very odd to have someone else’s phone in my possession, especially one that belonged to a man I was seeing so casually, yet knew so intimately.
I held the phone in front of me as I walked around the park, calling for Tyson, and showing anybody I encountered a photo of him. I could almost feel my eyeballs burning the screen every time I looked at it, willing it to light up. When it did, just as I reached the gate, where another poster had been attached, I couldn’t answer it quickly enough.
“Hello,” I said gingerly.
“Oh, hi,” said a male voice. “I’m calling about the dog.”
My heart soared, making me feel as if it might lift me off the ground. Yet the very real possibility of being told that something had happened to him quickly followed. “Yes?” I said, urging the man on, my chest a mangle of emotions.
“Is there a reward?” he asked, stopping me in my tracks.
“Er, I … I don’t know,” I stuttered.
“Well, is there or not?”
“Does it matter?” I said, suddenly indignant. “Have you any information or not?”
“Well, it all depends on how much the reward is.”
I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it aghast, horrified that the safe return of my beloved dog was reliant on how much I paid. Wasn’t this akin to kidnapping and demanding a ransom?
My head wrestled in vain to win the tug of war with my heart. It was a poorly fought battle.
“A thousand pounds,” I said, suddenly aware of how much I wanted Tyson back. The ache was so profound that I would pay five times more. I wonder if he heard it in my voice.
“Woah,” the voice said. “You really like this dog, huh?” I stayed silent while he conducted a muffled conversation at his end. “We’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow.”
The call abruptly ended as I cried, “I’ll give you five thousand!” into the dead air.