aren’t they? And besides, women don’t join dating sites in the same way these days. They join and tell their friends all about it. They tell their friends and family where they’re going, who they’re going to be meeting, what time they expect to come home. They don’t join dating sites unless they have hope for the future.
‘Ah,’ I said, wanting to ask a dozen questions and wondering which of them would be the least offensive.
She handed me a plate containing slices of melon with prosciutto draped over them. ‘Could you take this through?’
For a moment we held eye contact. Did I imagine it, that she held on to the plate for a moment after I’d already taken hold of it? That she held my gaze for a fraction too long? That there was a challenge in her eyes, a curiosity… maybe – almost – a dare?
I smiled at her, feeling the warmth of my shame melting a little for the first time since I’d arrived, not relaxing exactly but starting to see the possibilities in the evening ahead. Audrey, Audrey, I thought, you little minx. You little bundle of surprises.
Vaughn sat her opposite me at the dining table, presumably so that he could touch her knee with his sweaty paw, but she clearly had other things in mind. I felt her foot brushing mine as we started our main course. At first she pulled it away and glanced up at me with a little smile of apology, as though she had kicked me hard and not just mistaken me for the table leg. I gave her a direct gaze in return, and left my foot where it was. And, a few moments later, her foot returned and this time gently rested against mine, whilst she listened to Vaughn rabbiting on about share prices and served him an extra spoonful of sauce. And the food was reasonable, I’ll give her credit for that.
After dinner Audrey asked Vaughn to take the plates through to the kitchen and she led me into the living room with the second bottle of wine, topping my glass up as I sat on Vaughn’s leather sofa. As she leaned forward I had an excellent view of her cleavage, although I tried not to make it obvious. Her breasts were well-rounded, the fabric of her top stretched across them, and I caught a trace of her perfume – or maybe it was even the soap or the shower gel she’d used earlier this evening, readying herself for my arrival. I wondered if she’d thought about the prospect of me burying my face between her breasts, if she’d considered the possibility that I might want to have sex with her.
‘It’s nice, this, isn’t it?’ she asked then. She’d seated herself on the sofa next to me, even though there was another sofa across the room from this one. She’d folded herself into a comfortable, cat-like curl, her feet towards me, neat little bare feet, with toenails painted a pale pink. How had I ever thought she might be nearly fifty? She was thirty, if that.
‘What is?’ I asked.
‘The wine.’
‘Yes,’ I said, although it tasted like vinegar to me. I should have brought something decent with me after all, something we could discuss properly. I could tell she was a woman who knew what she wanted.
From the kitchen, the sound of Vaughn rattling plates and cutlery provided an encouraging percussion to the melody of our conversation.
‘What do you do?’ she asked. ‘Vaughn’s never told me.’
‘I’m an executive performance analyst for the council.’
‘That sounds exciting,’ she said, and laughed, which was a relief to me, as it had been a clear lie. She was being ironic. A man could fall in love with a woman like this, I thought. Never mind fucking her, I wanted to marry her.
‘Anyone for coffee?’ called Vaughn, from the kitchen.
‘Yes, please,’ Audrey replied. She tilted her head back to rest on the cushions, exposing her throat to me, and more of that delectable cleavage. I wanted to run my tongue from the space behind her ear, down between her breasts, pushing the fabric out of the way.
‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you do?’
‘I work with Social Services,’ she said.
My usual sharp conversational skills struggled at this, most likely due to arousal: too much blood flow diverted away from the brain and down into the more vital parts of my anatomy. What, after all, was the point in a conversation such as this? Surely