Date Monday 6 February Time 11.15pm
My thoughts and reflections:
Saw Guy again after work – that’s the third time, so I’ve already beaten Charlotte.
He sent me an email telling me to come straight to the serviced apartment and that the concierge staff would let me through.
I could happily live in a serviced apartment.
(I stupidly mentioned this to Astrid last night and she said in effect I always have lived in serviced accommodation, and that if I didn’t start replacing the loo rolls when they ran out, she’d tell Arrie I would babysit the weekend after next.
Arrie’s been trying to rope one of us into childcare whilst she and Roger go to some farming convention: apparently Mum and Dad can’t help – and both Astrid and I have covered each other’s excuses because neither of us want to be saddled with our nephews.
You wouldn’t , I said. Try me , she said.)
Anyway, the serviced apartment is quality, if box-like.
If you want a glass of wine, or ice, or crisps, you just ring concierge, and someone in a fawn uniform brings it to the door.
And they’ll do laundry. (I’m thinking of getting them to do my sequinned trousers but may wait until week three of relationship – tactics and all that.) So, whilst I was waiting for my Diet Coke to arrive, Guy spoke to me about work a bit (another success story for my manifesting).
He didn’t say much, mainly that he’d had to start handing over loads of paperwork to these third-party business consultants that Alistair had bloody invited in, and that whilst he was absolutely confident Carsons couldn’t operate without him, he’d be under real pressure during his divorce if anything were to happen.
‘You’re not really worried, are you?’ I checked.
‘Worry gets you killed,’ said Guy. ‘I don’t worry.’
His army background is quite hot. ‘What’s the timeline?’ I asked.
Apparently the top people had meetings off-site the next couple of weeks and then the consultants would begin to meet staff.
‘None of this is to be repeated, Alice,’ said Guy.
He’s particularly sexy when he orders me about.
‘Of course not,’ I agreed, thinking how I’d probably only tell Drunk Stephen.
‘I don’t trust them,’ said Guy. ‘It’s one of these new, woke companies. They’re looking to catch people out.’
That didn’t bode well. There was a lot I could be caught out on. ‘So they’re not coming in to the building yet?’
‘End of the month soonest,’ said Guy. ‘No one’s coming in yet.’
Then he gave me a lascivious look and started grazing his knuckles up my thigh which I do find as erotic in reality as I did in my fantasies – the hair makes it simultaneously tickly and a smidgen disturbing – and told me that it was high time he was coming.
In me. ‘Or, better still, on you, Alice.’
I tried not to imagine Arrie’s reaction if she heard this.
What she doesn’t acknowledge is that I’m not Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Personally, I like a bit of jism. We don’t all have OCD, frigid tendencies, like Mum and Arrie.
Besides, Arrie objectifies Roger all the time.
She calls him a ‘fun vacuum’. And when you think about it, she’s pretty much his boss too, so equally troubling.
I am letting go of:
Sisterly ideals of feminism