and mentally pleaded with myself not to cry. Peter had no idea. Of course Jean did. She came to find me later, while I ate a double helping of cheesy pasta for lunch at my desk.
‘Have you heard?’
‘About Adrian and Mariella?’ I asked without looking up from my lunch.
‘Oh, Sunny, you’ll find somebody lovely.’
‘Sorry?’
‘And I’m sure Adrian and Mariella won’t turn into anything.’
‘Jean, you know I’m not bothered about Adrian, don’t you?’
‘Oh. OK. I just thought you liked him.’
‘Why would you think that?’ I said, still not looking up.
‘Sunny, you’re a lovely girl, really pretty, lovely hair, you always dress nicely – why don’t you ask him to go for a drink?’
‘Are you crazy?’ I looked up then, and the tears in my eyes were obvious.
‘He could do a lot worse than you, you know.’
‘I know. But I’m not interested, Jean.’ One tear spilt onto my cheek. Jean looked as if it were her heart that were breaking but said, ‘OK, I have to get back.’ She smiled at me, and brushed down her cardigan.
Of course, I couldn’t ask him out for a drink. The squirming embarrassment, the silence just after I blurted it out, the dawning realisation that he was going to have to let me down gently, because I was a ‘lovely girl’. A tiny part of me did scream, ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get! Men aren’t that bright; they just don’t see it unless, like Mariella, you make it screamingly obvious.’ But then the voice of reason told me what we all know is true. If a man wants to ask a woman out, he will, especially a fat woman who isn’t exactly fending off admirers. I was there, primed and basted and ready to be plucked off the shelf, I wasn’t ‘intimidating’. If Adrian had any feelings for me he would have asked me already. But asking him, hearing the rejection out loud, was too much for me to bear. That was the day I realised I had to leave the Feel Good Company, before the irony killed me.
It took me another six months to pluck up the courage to hand in my notice. In that time Adrian slept with Mariella again twice. She was interested, but he wasn’t, and it fizzled out, but the threat of it always loomed the morning after a heavy night before, because it is, of course, so much easier to sleep with somebody a second or third time. My leaving drinks were held in the office itself, with four hundred pounds’ worth of drink consumed in reception by eighty-five people. We had a buffet, and I can never walk away from a buffet; they are my nemesis – even now, when I can tell you the calorie and fat content of every plateful of sausages on sticks and mini quiches and peanuts and mozzarella sandwiches and mini pizzas. All that food laid out in front of me is still hard to resist. Buffets for the serious dieter are to be avoided like wine tastings for an alcoholic.
Adrian with his big northern laugh was one of the last ones standing at my farewell do. I had masochistic daydreams that he wouldn’t even attend, or stay for a few beers, then head off for more fun elsewhere with his mates, or even worse, slide off with Mariella at about half-past nine. But at 11.30 he was opening one of the last bottles of red wine, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, laughing with one of the guys from systems support. He poured out a couple of glasses and brought one over to me, as I stood teary-faced, waving goodbye to Jean whose husband, Jeremy, was waiting downstairs in the car and who was already angry because she was drunk and an hour late.
‘Here you go, love. Have another one of those!’ Adrian thrust a glass of wine at me.
I took it, but put it down behind me on the reception desk saying, ‘I’ve had too many already, I’m starting to feel a bit sick.’
‘Come on, it’s your leaving do! You can’t back out on me now! Where are we going afterwards?’ Adrian did a little dance and drops of red wine threatened to fly out of his glass.
‘Well I don’t know where you’re going, Adrian, but I’m going home.’
‘No! We have to go clubbing or something, give you a proper send-off.’ He flicked ash on the carpet. My mouth opened to reprimand him, before I realised that the carpets weren’t my responsibility any more.
‘I don’t go clubbing.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m too old.’
‘You’re only twenty-seven. What are you talking about – you’re younger than me! And I’m not too old! Come on, let’s go on the pull, pick ourselves up a couple of teenagers!’
‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
‘Come on, Sunny, why not?’ He was pulling at one of my hands, grinning, trying to get me to dance, certain I would be persuaded, because life was simple for Adrian.
‘Because … I’m dressed for work.’
‘You look lovely!’ He winked.
‘It’ll be all hot and sweaty!’
‘That’s a good thing!’ He winked again, but this time it was accompanied by a dirty laugh.
‘I’ll be twice the size of everybody else in there!’ I blurted it out because of the wine, and because I felt like I was being backed into a corner, and because it was the truth. He only looked embarrassed for a moment.
‘Shut up! What difference does that make? Come on, let’s go and have a dance.’ But he wasn’t dancing any more.
‘No, you go. I’m going to go home in a minute.’
‘Fair enough. Where’s Peter?’ Adrian smiled, but his bubble had been burst and he stumbled off.
He wasn’t hitting on me, although that’s what my nicer friends would have said, to raise my hopes. But in these instances I firmly believe in being cruel to be kind. It hadn’t even occurred to him that we could go home together, and I never would have let it happen: couldn’t have been naked with Adrian without feeling violently exposed and vulnerable. The sex would have lasted for minutes, if he could manage a sloppy erection after that many drinks, and the excuses would have lasted an hour. I’m sorry about my sagging stomach, my bulbous arse, my huge thighs, everything! Everything! Besides, I had never pictured Adrian and I just having sex, fucking. We would have to be making love, because he liked me, and I liked him. I didn’t have that animal instinct in me that craved thrashing violent passionate orgasms. I wanted somebody to love me, and to make love to me, softly, and without apologies, to look into my eyes, and only my eyes, and not even think about the body beneath them. I wanted the body to become completely unimportant, just machinery, and I wanted all the fireworks to be in our heads. I wanted mental and emotional orgasms. I wanted his eyes to stare into mine, and a moment of realisation to hit us both like a volcano erupting, convincing us both that it was the best, most intimate, most overwhelming orgasm either of us had ever had. And it would have nothing to do with how we looked, and everything to do with who we were.
But Adrian fucks with his eyes closed. I know, because they are closed now. The first time I had sex with Adrian I just wanted to prove I was good at it. He initiated the kiss, and I didn’t want him to regret his decision. And so it was a twisted sexual theatre of shivers and breaths
