Under His Influence

“The spark is the thing, isn’t it?” he pronounced, as if this was some great truth. “We never know where we’ll find it. But when we do…” He paused to sip from his glass. Anna waited for him to finish the sentence. He didn’t.

Instead he asked where she worked, and in the space of half an hour, she poured out the abridged story of her life, to his amused approbation, stopping to consider his punctuating questions, growing ever more vivid and garrulous and confident and not-Anna with each swallow of wine. Until it was gone.

“And the editor is such a monster! We don’t dare leave before the dot of six, or take

an extra millisecond for lunch. You’re so lucky, being able to manage your own time. Our editor would throw us from the top of the building if we suggested that we knew how to organise ourselves. Anyway. Look. Um, I’ve finished, so we can either leave together or I can just leave…“

“Anna. I would love to take you out to dinner.”

She blinked, giggled.

“What, seriously?”

“Very.” His lip curled and his eyes were cool and intent. “But not tonight. Tonight I have to take somebody else out to dinner.”

“Oh God, your wife? Are you married?”

He shook his head, as if disappointed at the question. “No, Anna, I’m not married. This is a business meeting. But I want your number. All your numbers.”

He flipped out a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry of Expectation, thought Anna, staring at it before she reeled off a succession of digits, without stopping to think whether this was a good thing to do.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, then he took her arm and left the bar with her, neither of them stopping to look back at Rob and his coterie, whose eyes were popping with gossip-mongering excitement.

Out on the pavement, it was hot again, and noisy, and confusing.

“So who are you meeting for dinner?” Anna asked, gaze half on the traffic already, wondering whether to pop into Tesco Metro on the way to the Tube, wondering what to buy, maybe wine, maybe pasta, maybe…

A hand reached out, wrapping fingers around the back of her neck, pulling it towards another face, other lips, bumping, latching on, oh, a kiss, a real one. Anna, with her eyes shut but her senses wide open, thought this was the first Man Kiss she had had. It wasn’t like the Boy Kisses. It was well-done. The hand was inescapable, the mouth firm but sensual, all the clashing and dribbling did not happen at all. It was so good she wanted to go on, and on, and on, and it was only when he let her go that she realised she was outside, on a public thoroughfare, across the road from the newspaper office.

“Your editor,” he said, and her last view of him was of white Cheshire cat teeth and a waving hand, crossing the road without regard to the traffic, looking back at her, shouting, “I won’t snitch!” before slowing to a more stately pace at the revolving glass door of her office.

“What’s your name?” she whispered, before all the Tesco Metro stuff came back into mental focus. “I don’t know your name.”

And that was how it started.

Chapter Two

On the Tube, all the way back to Tufnell Park, Anna kept touching her neck where he had touched it. It felt as if the impression of his hand was burned there, as if he had not quite let go. Her lips also fizzed, feeling a little too big for her face, swollen to assume proportions of great importance beside her insignificant nose and irrelevant eyes. She didn’t dare touch them, because she had this strange idea that if she did she might rub off something precious and lose it forever. She shook her head, almost loosening the earbuds from her iPod, which was treacherously playing love songs. This was silly. It was just a kiss. An opportunistic kiss from a rascally man. Oh, a man. A real man. Boys didn’t have that colour hair, did they? What was it called—salt-and-pepper? All the boys at work were fresh out of university, like her, on graduate schemes, and they had either flowing locks, or straight-up spikes of gel, or no hair at all, but none of it was salt-and-pepper. And yet this was suddenly, straight out of left field, her very favourite colour of hair on a man. That word—man. Oh, it was overwhelming, it was intoxicating. A man, a man, a man, she repeated to the rhythm of the treacherous love song.

As soon as she was out on the pavement, hurrying past the Tapas Bar on the corner and down Brecknock Road, she speed-dialled Mimi. Wherever she was, she needed to be consulted. The matter was urgent. The man might call at any time.

“Didn’t I tell you I had family stuff?” was Mimi’s disgruntled opener. “I’ve got five minutes before Mum and I sit down to dinner, okay?”

“Mimi, something happened.”

“I told you Liam wasn’t the type to hide behind an anonymous e-mail. You wouldn’t listen. Liam is confident—he is cocksure. He is as sure as a whole bag of cocks. Why wouldn’t he just ask you outright? I had a nasty feeling about it all along.”

“Oh, that, no, it’s not that. I mean, that’s pretty horrendous, but I’ll just have to deal with it. I suppose there’s no harm done. If Liam doesn’t fancy me, I’ll have to get over it.”

There was a silence.

“This is you, isn’t it? Anna?”

“Of course!”

“It’s just that the last time we spoke it was all undying love for Liam and taking him to see the Great Wall of China with your babies strapped to your back. What’s changed? What’s happened?”

“A man.” Anna closed her eyes and savoured the words, almost tripping over a rogue paving slab. “A man happened.”