said, still staring out of the window, ‘I’d had enough of big firms when I left London. I was with a little practice just off St Ann’s Square.’
‘OK.’
Dan knew that there was more than this but that she was someone who preferred to gather her thoughts first before speaking. There was no point in asking before she was ready. He let her continue to stare out at nothing until she turned to look at him again. Her face softened into a smile.
‘Most guys would have started digging by now,’ she said, ‘I do wish I’d met you before.’
‘Ditto. But it is what it is. All we can do is make the most of what we have.’
She nodded.
‘Alex Curry,’ she said, saying the name slowly, ‘Alex.’
She had gone thoughtful again.
‘How do you know him?’
‘Let’s sit,’ she said. They did, together this time, their knees touching.
‘We met in the usual way, in a bar after work. You know how it is, a thousand bars in the city and everyone seems to go to just a handful.’
‘Yeah we’re a bit sheeplike.’
‘I’d only been back here a few months. I did my degree in Manchester you know?’
‘I guessed you had.’
‘When I decided I didn’t love Henry enough to marry him I also wanted out of London too. It was always too big and crowded for me. I love Manchester and missed it so I just came home. And a few months after I arrived back I met Alex.
‘I didn’t go out much to be honest. I wasn’t interested but that night it was a friend’s birthday and I didn’t want to be rude.
‘Alex seemed so sweet at first. Quiet, thoughtful. He loved classical music too and so do I. That first night we met he invited me out to the Bridgewater. He had a spare ticket for a concert a few nights later – well he said he had anyway. I almost said no. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or anything like that really. But then I thought, why not? I was a bit lonely to be honest.’
Dan let her speak without interruption, sensing she had something important to tell him.
‘And it was OK, I enjoyed his company. At the start anyway. But there was one very odd thing, right from the start which set quiet alarms off somewhere in the back of my head’
‘What was that?’
‘He insisted that we keep it quiet that we were going out. He said it was because he hated how gossipy it was in the circles we worked in and that he wanted a private life for once.’
‘He had a point,’ said Dan, ‘You can’t seem to do anything in town without everyone knowing it almost before you do yourself.’
‘I know, and that’s why I went along with it. I like my privacy too. But then, after a while, it started to feel all wrong. It felt like I was always sneaking around, like I was having an affair, like I was his dirty little secret.’
‘Did you think he was married?’
Tess nodded. ‘It crossed my mind more than once, but then he said I could call him any time I liked – oh I don’t know.’ She shrugged.
‘So what happened?’
‘Well, as I said, it was fine at first, I had a good time with him. But then I saw a different side of him.
‘There was one night when we were due to go out and I just couldn’t. I just had to work late on a rush job, you know how it is sometimes?’
‘Yes of course. I would have thought he would have too.’
‘So did I but instead he went ballistic at me over the phone. He was really nasty, offensive, swearing at me and calling me…some really horrible things I don’t want to repeat. I was just so….well shocked I guess. I mean, I hadn’t done anything had I?’
‘So you stopped seeing him?’
Tess looked embarrassed. ‘I should have done. I was going to. But he came to see me though, so apologetic and begging me to forgive him. He seemed so genuinely upset. He told me how stressed he had been, that he was being driven into the ground and that the way he had reacted had been completely out of character and how badly he felt about what he had said.’
‘You took him back?’
Tess nodded, ‘Yes but it was worse than that. As an apology he gave me a first class ticket to Dubai. He was going there on business at the weekend and wanted