The Art of Not Having it All by Melissa Kite

Author:Melissa Kite
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466858237
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

6

The Other Other Woman

In which I meet a rich, influential older man who sweeps me off my feet (and even hints that he might leave his wife).1

“Can you get yourself to Battersea heliport?” It’s very hard to turn down a man who asks you out on a date involving a helicopter. Even if he is married. And twenty years older.

It just seems a bit churlish to say no. How would you say no? “I’m really sorry but I can’t let you fly me to lunch in a custom-built Sikorsky tomorrow because I’m busy. Yes, I really must insist. I’ve got urgent ordinary person’s things to attend to.”

I thought about saying that. Then I thought, “Life is short. I can keep my dignity and moral integrity or I can find out what it’s like to be flown to lunch in a helicopter. In the name of all that is wrong and yet somehow enriching, I choose knowing.”

We had been introduced to each other by a friend who ran a charity we both supported and who sat us next to each other at a dinner he had arranged to further the aims of this organization. Instead of talking about how we would help the charity we immediately sized each other up and had one of those moments where something passes between two people and they decide, very definitely, if subconsciously, that one day they will sleep together. All this happened, I would say, within the space of about 1.5 seconds.

For the rest of the dinner we ignored everyone else at the table and talked only to each other. It was quickly obvious that for reasons neither of us really understood, or wanted to understand, we longed to tell each other our most intimate secrets. I told him about Scott and the shoes and he told me some stuff about his marriage and how he was basically just rattling around in this big country house with the dogs.

I had heard of him before I arrived and was sufficiently impressed by who he was to have made a mental note to try to talk to him even if I wasn’t sitting anywhere near him, so when he told me his marriage was over I thought, “Hmm, interesting.”

It was a slow burner. After dinner, we exchanged business cards and e-mailed each other off and on for almost a year and then, when I told him it was over with Scott, the e-mails became more frequent. Even so, it wasn’t until I got back from my riding holiday with the girls that he sent me an e-mail asking me out on a date. Not just any old date. The sort of date where he thought it was a bit shabby of him not to send a car to pick me up to get me to the helicopter.

As I say, this posed a small moral conundrum. I would quantify it as no more than that. It took about ten seconds to resolve. Once I had decided to sell my principles down the river, the next, more taxing problem was what to wear.

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