a gulp of wine and made a sterling effort to pull himself together.
‘Yes, being held…I do miss that,’ Lou was saying thoughtfully, unaware of Patrick’s confusion. ‘I think what I miss most, though, is the feeling that you don’t have to deal with everything on your own, that someone is interested in you for yourself, and not just because you’re a mother and there to be taken for granted. I don’t mind when the kids do that, I know that’s part of their job, but still…’
She glanced at him, evidently hesitating, and Patrick cleared his throat and nodded encouragingly.
‘Go on, tell me. This is confession time, remember? Nothing to be remembered or held against you tomorrow!’
Lou laughed in spite of herself. ‘OK, then, but you get to tell me an embarrassing fantasy too.’
‘It’s a fantasy? Better and better!’
A slight blush crept up her cheeks, but she hoped the candlelight would disguise it. ‘Mine’s not a very exciting fantasy, I’m afraid. I imagine that I can skip the awkwardness of meeting a man, dating him, getting to know him, all of that. I don’t want the falling-in-love bit again. It’s too consuming, and it hurts too much when you lose it.’
‘So where does the fantasy come in?’
‘I just want to wake up and find myself comfortably married to someone,’ she confessed. ‘Someone nice and…kind. Someone I could lean on when I needed to, and support when he needed it, and the rest of the time we’d be…I don’t know…friends, I suppose.’
‘What’s embarrassing about that?’ asked Patrick, his mind straying distractingly back to Lou’s stockings. If they were stockings. He really, really wanted to know now.
Could he ask her? Patrick wondered, and then caught himself. What was he thinking of? Of course he couldn’t ask his PA if she was wearing stockings. That would be sexual harassment.
‘It’s so politically incorrect,’ said Lou guiltily. ‘I’m a strong, independent woman. I shouldn’t need anyone to look after me. I can look after myself. And I do, most of the time,’ she said, recovering herself. ‘I only think about having someone else when I’m tired, or feeling down, or one of the kids is being difficult.’
Which was a depressing number of times in the week, when she thought about it.
‘It doesn’t sound to me like an impossible fantasy,’ said Patrick carefully. ‘You’ll just have to keep an eye out for someone suitable.’
‘Oh, yes, and there are so many kind, supportive, single men out there!’
‘There must be someone,’ said Patrick. ‘You’re an attractive woman.’ Rather too attractive for his own comfort, it appeared.
‘I’m also forty-five and have two bolshy adolescents who consume every moment I’m not at work,’ she pointed out. ‘Would you want to take that on?’
‘Not when you put it like that.’
‘There isn’t any other way to put it,’ said Lou. ‘I’ve been divorced over six years now, and I’ve learnt to cope on my own. I’m not looking for a man.’
‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Patrick cynically, thinking of the women who had assured him that they were just out for a good time and then started dawdling past jewellers’ windows and dropping heavy hints about moving in with him.
This was good. He wasn’t thinking about stockings any more.
Much.
‘It’s true.’ Lou fixed him with one of her disconcertingly direct looks. ‘Frankly, I haven’t got the energy to put into finding a man, let alone maintaining a relationship. When you work all day, and go home to two children who need all your attention, it’s hard to imagine being with anyone new.’
‘And even if I did by some remote chance meet someone who didn’t mind only meeting every few weeks when I could persuade a friend to babysit, and wasn’t put off by Grace’s moods, or the fact that I don’t have a bedroom of my own, and was happy with only ever getting the fraction of my attention that was left over from my children, I’d still hesitate,’ she said. ‘It’s taken me a long time to build up my life again after Lawrie left. I’m not going to let it all come crashing down in smithereens like before.’
‘You mean if you were hurt again?’ said Patrick.
‘Yes. I won’t expose myself to it.’ Draining her glass, Lou set it down firmly in front of her, absolutely definite.
‘So you won’t even take a risk?’
‘If it was just me, maybe I would,’ she said, and then thought about the pain and the heartache she’d been through. ‘Maybe. But I’ve got two children who were caught in the fallout of a failed relationship. I won’t do that to them again. Anyway,’ she said, going on the counterattack, ‘I notice you haven’t rushed to remarry either!’
‘No, once was enough for me,’ Patrick agreed. ‘I wasn’t good at being married. I hated the endless negotiations and guessing games.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ Lou pointed out. There had never been any question of negotiating with Lawrie. He had gone his own charming way without ever considering that she might be affected by what he was doing.
‘No, but it often is. Every relationship I’ve had since my divorce has been the same. The thing about women is that they’re never satisfied. You give them what they ask for, and then they want more.’
‘I don’t think that’s very fair,’ said Lou, trying to remember the last time she’d been given what she asked for by a man.
‘Isn’t it?’ Patrick demanded. He was feeling more himself now. Good. The stockings thing had obviously just been a momentary aberration.
He leant forward, counting off the points on his fingers. ‘You’re getting on well and having a good time together, but then they want to leave their hair-dryer or something at your house. Just something small to stake a claim on your space. They want you to say you love them, and when you say you love them, they want commitment. And when you’ve committed yourself, they want you to move in with them, or marry them, and then they want babies…
‘And those are just the big things,’ he said. ‘At the same time they’re working on you to change your life completely, they want you to understand them and talk to them and surprise them with little presents and weekends away. They want you to send them flowers and emails and to ring them from work so they know that you’re thinking about them the whole time. I tell you, it’s never-ending demands with women.’
He drained his glass morosely. ‘Basically they want to take over your whole life.’
Lou was unimpressed by his suffering. ‘So what you’re saying is that you want to have sex but you don’t want a relationship?’
‘What’s the big deal about relationships anyway?’ Patrick grumbled. ‘Women are obsessed with them! I thought I might get on better if I dated younger women. I figured they’d be happy to have a good time and not care about settling down, but, oh, no! We’ve only been out a couple of times and they’re talking about our relationship.’
