Under His Influence

“Shame. But I suppose you’re right.” Mimi handed it over, wincing at the sound of all the missed message tones. “Don’t listen to them, Anna. Don’t read the texts. Just delete them, please. For me?”

“He might call me at work.”

“You know his voice. Put the phone down.”

“What if I just tell him I know he’s married?”

“No. That gives him an opening. I know you, Anna. You’ll swallow whatever ‘I am so misunderstood’ line he feeds you. Don’t give him the ch

ance.”

“What if there is a decent explanation?”

“What if you are clutching at straws? Save your self-respect, love. Your heart is hurt, but it isn’t broken. Just be grateful it only went this far. One date, Anna. That was all it was. Leave it in the past, where it belongs.”

Anna swallowed the stupid, persistent tears. “I look like crap,” she said with a tiny laugh, observing her blotchy face and puffy eyes in her compact mirror.

“Liam still fancies you,” Mimi reminded her with a gentle squeeze of her arm. “Come on. Let’s get going. First day of the rest of your life and all that.”

If it was the first day of the rest of her life, Anna could only hope that subsequent days would be easier. She switched her mobile back off after deleting all the text messages unread—a task she had to perform with her eyes almost shut and lip chewed hard, every fibre of her being screaming at her to read them even as she hit the delete key over and over. She had to avoid Rob and Liam now, especially with Liam giving her the whipped-puppy eyes every time she caught a glimpse of him. The computer screen seemed blurred, everything was fuzzy, everything was vile, hard, cold, dirty, smelly, dull, drab. And all through the day, the strongest thought in her head was “Don’t think about John,” closely tied with its associate, “I hope John calls/doesn’t call/calls/doesn’t call.” Every time the phone rang she jumped, dreading his voice, and every time it wasn’t his voice, she slumped, hating the caller, irrespective of purpose, for not being John.

“Why hasn’t he called me?” she asked herself, fretful over her bitter coffee dregs at three o’clock. “He should call me. Beg my forgiveness. Crawl. Something.” Perhaps, though, it was kinder of him to let her go. Perhaps he knew she had found out his secret. Or perhaps he was with his wife right now, in the delivery suite of some private hospital, watching her give birth to their first child. She could imagine his face, his smile so wide it might split his cheeks, his eyes elated, his gestures big and sweeping, then tenderness as the tiny bundle was placed on her stomach. Ugh. It was sickening. Enough to make her bring that cappuccino straight back up again. Anna resolved that from now on, she was going to be cynical. Hard-hearted. Sophisticated and jaded. All that jazz.

At six o’clock, packing up her bag, Anna had decided how her Monday evening was going to play out. She had been paid recently, so she would buy a whole heap of magazines at the station, take them home, order a pizza and read until her eyes fell out of her head. Read about nothing stuff; about lipstick and film stars and seaweed wraps and which minor celebrity was calling another one fat. This would at least get her through one evening.

“So dramatic,” she scolded herself on the way to the lift. “Needing things to get me through the night. Mimi’s right. It was one date. One miserable date and he didn’t even take me anywhere—just the Heath. Cheapskate. Bet his wife gets taken to the Ivy.”

The internal pep talk ended abruptly when the lift doors slid open. Back against the far wall, sitting cross-legged on an easy chair, half reading the paper, was John.

Chapter Four

In that split-second of realisation, Anna could see his face was like thunder. He caught sight of her and rose, walking swiftly over to the barrier that separated authorised and unauthorised users of the building.

“Anna,” he said, and he looked as if he was never going to stop, that he would walk straight through that cordon and into the lift, so she backed away, almost tripping over herself in her haste to escape, and jabbed at every button, wanting the doors to close, to shut out his face, his handsome face, his haunting, angry, disappointed face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered when the doors had saved her and she was on her way to the basement, where she could take a back exit.

She needed a moment once she was safely out of the elevator, a moment to hunker down and bury her face in her hands and try to get her breathing back from this supercharged version he had induced.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” she mouthed, rocking gently back and forth against the supportive wall.

“Are you okay?” asked a concerned voice.

“Fine. Bit faint.”

“Right.” The concerned voice melted away with its footsteps, leaving Anna to inhale hard, hold it in for as long as she could, then let it all out, one long, restorative breath, feeling her heart slow, feeling her muscles relax, feeling herself coming back.

“I’m back,” she said to the empty air around her. “Time to go home.”

She stood. Her feet wanted to take her back to the lobby, run her back to John, but her brain somehow steered her to the back exit, past the security guard and into the car park. What if he found her here? What if he knew about this door?

Anna’s pulse sped up again and she felt shaky, as if her knees might give way at any moment. He could be in one of these cars, but of course he didn’t have a permit. Of course he wasn’t in his car. Anna dodged through the car park, trying to hide herself behind the taller vehicles in case she might be watched. At the gate, she looked left and right into the quiet back street. Empty. She could take an alternative route to the Tube station, or maybe use a different station, in case he was waiting for her there. This is ridiculous. Why was she afraid of him? He was just a man. If he caught up with her, she could just tell him to go away. There was no need for all this sneaking around—and yet a part of her brain, a very strong part of it, was telling her that she should avoid him at all costs.

She chose to compromise, taking a more circuitous route to the Tube station, making sure that she didn’t go past the front of the office block where he could still be waiting for her, or maybe lurking by the steps, or in the bar across the road.

Saffron Hill, like a canyon with office blocks sheering up either side of the narrow street, was not a thoroughfare with many hiding places, if it came to it, but there were people around, heading home from work, on whom she could call if necessary.

She was able to dart across Farringdon Road and slip swiftly into the street of dilapidated shops on which the station was situated. Past Starbucks and Costa, past the dry cleaners, past the estate agents, almost there, almost home and dry. She sailed around the corner to the station, her eardrums banging in time with her heart, and found herself face-to-face with her beloved nemesis, so close that there was no chance of outrunning him, or turning away; so close that she could only stare and gasp and feel that mad, big love wash over her once more.