He wandered upstairs, choice phrases whistling past his ears.
‘… couldn’t keep your knickers on for five minutes …’
‘… on a break, Dave!’
‘… took advantage of you …’
‘… more of a man than you’ll ever be …’
Oh, that last one was good. He felt a certain welling in his chest.
He knocked and opened the door.
‘Are you OK?’
Dave made the opening moves of a launch in his direction, but seemed to think better of it and held his ground.
‘You bastard,’ he snarled instead. ‘You fucked my girl.’
‘She’s not your girl,’ said Rob. ‘Are you, Ruthie?’
Ruthie shook her head, lips pressed together, looking cautiously from one man to the other.
‘So that’s sorted,’ continued Rob. ‘There’s not much point your hanging around, is there? Perhaps you should go now.’
‘Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?’ Dave was enraged, but Rob had been accurate in his assessment of the other man’s tendency towards violence. After a furious standing of ground for a few moments, Dave stomped out.
Rob followed him to the door.
‘Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you thought you and Ruth were still on.’
‘We weren’t.’ Dave shrugged and almost smiled. ‘I came here to finish it for good. Just something about seeing her so obviously, you know …’
‘Yeah, I know. It’s for the best though.’
Dave snorted and made his exit.
‘And that’s the story of how you came out as kinky?’
Allyson sat back and crossed her legs.
‘You always remember your first time,’ said Rob, with a smile.
‘It’s a nice story,’ conceded Allyson. ‘You didn’t live happily ever after, though?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, you and Ruth. You ain’t still together, I presume, unless she’s very relaxed about you seeing other people.’
‘No, we split about two years ago. She got a place at an American university. Ivy League, as it goes.’
‘So you did her a world of good, then. She stuck at the studies.’
‘Oh, yes, she certainly did. It was hard going at first though. I made things worse rather than better by, uh, getting together with her. All she wanted to do was go to bed with me and, rather unhelpfully, that was all I wanted to do, too.’
‘Oh dearie me,’ said Allyson, with a yawn and a glance at the clock.
‘I was pretty strong-willed, though, and I didn’t let it throw our careers off course. She needed a lot of chivvying along though. A lot of quite painful chivvying along.’