Just Between Us

‘Jackie,’ soothed Stella, ‘we’ll sort it out, I promise. Please leave it with me.’

Jackie was quiet, as Stella knew she would be. When Stella Miller told you she’d sort everything out, you believed her.

There was something about the low, measured voice that calmed even the most highly-strung client; something about her serene, smiling face with its kind dark eyes that made anxiety seem silly. More than one person had seriously considered taking up yoga after learning that the tranquil Stella was a devotee.

‘Are you sure everything will work out…?’ Jackie asked more quietly.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Once Jackie was gone, Stella made a firm decision to stop thinking about Nick Cavaletto. It was ridiculous for a grown woman to get so excited about dinner with a man. This dreaming and staring out the window had to stop. She worked steadily for the next half an hour, making phone calls and trying to sort out Jackie’s problems. Jackie had split up with her husband of two years and every time Stella spoke to her, she seemed more shell-shocked than the last, muttering about joint credit union accounts and what were they to do with the oil painting of Venice. Was it Jackie’s because her rich old grand-uncle had given it to them as a wedding present or was it joint property? Privately, Stella thought that the distraught Jackie should seek counselling to help her climb out of the dark pit of sudden break-up. She’d hated that painting, she’d told Stella. Yet she was fiercely determined to have it, as if salvaging something that wasn’t communal property, could salvage her damaged soul.

Over the years, as she dealt with clients like Jackie, Stella had come to realise that she’d never loved Glenn enough to feel such emotion over their break-up. Teenage sweethearts who’d married when they were ridiculously young, they’d drifted apart. Their over-riding emotion at the break-up had been apathy for each other, and parental worry over Amelia. She wondered what it would be like to love and hate with such passion that splitting up would destroy you.

‘Lunch?’ said Vicki, peeping round the glass door with her tongue out, her normal signal that starvation was setting in.

‘Lunch. Yes, I forgot,’ Stella said absent-mindedly.

‘How can you forget lunch?’ Vicki wailed, shutting the door and perching on the edge of Stella’s desk. Then, catching sight of Stella’s serene face, she’d grinned. ‘You’re still living off love, then?’

‘It’s only a dinner date,’ protested Stella. ‘I wish I hadn’t told you. If you mention it to anyone else I’ll kill you.’

‘You mean it’s a secret?’ said Vicki, deadpan. ‘I’ve just e-mailed my 100 closest friends, all the LW & M partners and the Law Society with the news. It’s not unethical to sleep with a client, is it? I have such trouble remembering the whole ethics thing…’

‘We’re going to have dinner, Vicki, not rip each other’s clothes off over dessert.’

‘Pity,’ sighed Vicki. ‘Mind you, if it was me, I’d go for the actual dessert instead. It’s so long since I had sex, I can’t remember what it was like, except it was often an anticlimax, which is not something you can say about a double helping of double chocolate roulade with cream.’

‘We’re going for a sedate meal,’ Stella insisted. ‘That’s all. Anyway, you’ve been to bed with someone far more recently than me. I’m the poster girl for celibacy since Glenn and I divorced.’ Stella knew this wasn’t utterly truthful but she wanted to forget the disastrous fling she’d had with an old friend of hers and Glenn’s when Amelia had been a toddler. She’d discovered that even when you’d felt like you’d known someone for centuries, they were just as capable of being a sexual predator as a stranger. After a few weeks, he’d dropped her like a hot potato. Burned and humiliated, Stella had never told Vicki about it and she never intended to.

Vicki was in full flood on the subject of her last lover, a fellow lawyer she’d met at a charity ball. ‘If you’re referring to my encounter with that horrible man from Simpson and Ryan, then forget it. He was a disaster in bed. If he’d wanted to be paid by the hour, I would have wasted my money for fifty-eight minutes.’

Stella groaned. ‘You’re terrible, Vicki. The poor man would be horrified to hear you.’

‘Poor man indeed! He thought he was the last of the red-hot lovers,’ said Vicki in outrage. ‘That was the problem. He thought I’d be grateful, can you believe it? The louse. His sort think all women over thirty-five should quiver with thanks if a man so much as looks at them, never mind brings them to bed. They reckon we’re desperate for any crumb of affection that isn’t battery-powered.’

Vicki was getting into her stride on the women-over-thirty-five theme: ‘We’re on the conveyor belt to single TV dinners and interlock knickers that never come off…’

‘Vicki, you live with your sister,’ interrupted Stella, ‘and you know perfectly well that Craig from accounts fancies you rotten but you won’t deign to notice him.’

Deflated, Vicki sighed. ‘I know but he’s six years younger than me. That’s the last sign of absolute desperation. Imagine what people would say if I started dating a younger man? It’s easier to just sit at home and fantasise about Russell Crowe.’

‘Lunch,’ said Stella firmly. ‘You need your mind taken off men.’

Life conspired against Stella the next day. Jerry was still out sick, leaving Stella to deal with his clients again, which kept her in the office all through lunch when she’d planned to get her hair done. And the lurking demon of pre-menstrual tension paid a visit, bloating her stomach despite her post-Christmas detox.

‘Do hormones know when you’ve got something important happening and deliberately act up?’ Stella raged, as she realised she wouldn’t be able to wear the burgundy jersey dress she’d planned on because it clingfilmed around her stomach and could only be worn on thin days.

‘Yes,’ sighed Vicki. ‘It’s like herpes, which apparently appears on the occasion of any hot date.’

‘You have sex on the brain, Vicki,’ Stella reproved.

‘Don’t be so prim and proper,’ teased Vicki. ‘You don’t fancy him for his mind, do you? I bet you’re going to wear your best knickers too.’

Stella had to laugh. ‘I am, but only because they make me feel good, not because there’s any vague hope of anybody seeing them.’

As she drove home that evening, she remembered what Vicki had said. Vicki wasn’t afraid of the idea of sex, while it terrified Stella. It was five years since she’d felt a man’s arms around her; five years since she’d been to bed with anyone. If sex was like riding a bicycle, Stella decided that she’d obviously gone back to using stabilisers.

Going out with a man could, eventually, lead to sex but Stella wasn’t sure she was ready for that. Celibacy, by choice or otherwise, was easier, wasn’t it?

At home, she washed her hair in an agony of uncertainty. If only she could phone Nick up and cancel the date. Tell him she was washing her hair for the rest of her life.

No, she decided finally. That would be the coward’s way out. She’d go out and tell him that it was a mistake, that she was sorry. And she’d pay for dinner. If that wasn’t the way to stay in control, she didn’t know what was.

The restaurant was empty. So empty that Stella momentarily wondered if she’d got the time wrong. Starkly designed in black and white, there were no tablecloths on the black tables, and no other diners either.

The waitress inside the door fell on her with ill-concealed delight.

‘Good evening, lovely to see you, can I take your coat?’ she said joyously.

‘Yes.’ Stella surrendered her coat. ‘Miller for two.’ Why had she worried over booking?

‘Your guest hasn’t arrived…’ began the waitress.

‘He has now,’ supplied Nick, shutting the door behind him. His eyes were flatteringly appreciative as he looked at Stella, all dressed up in her faithful cranberry red shirt and a long black suede skirt she’d had donkey’s years but which was happily back in fashion again.

‘Nice to see you,’ he said, and leaning forward, he kissed her on the cheek. Stella felt something inside her go ‘ping!’ with excitement.

‘Nice to see you too,’ she said and, just as a test, proffered the other cheek for a double kiss. There it was again. Ping!

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, his eyes caressing her face.

Ping, ping, ping!

‘Will I show you to your table?’ asked the waitress.

Nick shrugged out of his coat, giving Stella a chance to admire him. He’d swapped the casual look for a steely grey suit worn with a pale pink shirt that only the most masculine of men could get away with. Nick got away with it.

‘Ready?’ He turned around and Stella rapidly averted her eyes, not wanting to be caught staring. But wow, could he fill a suit in all the right places. Nick didn’t look as if he needed a detox but then you could never tell with clothes on and…

Stella shocked herself. What was she doing thinking about Nick with his clothes off? Vicki was right: she was losing the run of herself. She gave herself a stern talking to while they were led to a table for four at the back of the restaurant. The waitress gave them menus and left them alone in the bare expanse of the restaurant.

‘It’s odd that we’re the only ones here,’ whispered Stella, leaning forward.

Nick nodded solemnly but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes.

‘What?’ Stella asked.

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.