Smug Married Hell

Oh, God. Not again.

She thought a night at her married friend Magda's dinner party, even as the token singleton, would have helped get her mind off of the fact that her birthday was five days away, which meant it'd be a year since her first visit to Quicksilver. The longer she went without a shag—almost four months and counting—the more that outing had been on her mind.

She had even considered dressing up to the nines in her miniskirt, with her red lipstick and kohled eyes, and going to Quicksilver again, hoping against hope (and against all reason) that Mark might turn up, too. In the end, she did not go. It would only have been an attempt to punish herself, because there was no way he would have gone there looking for her.

Yet inexplicably, here was Mark at the dinner party, with Natasha, who was nothing if not tenacious.

Through Magda's introductions to all of the couples sitting around the table, she couldn't help noticing that Mark's gaze was trained on her in a way that she hadn't seen in months, not since they would meet in secret at Quicksilver. Frankly, it made her heart race a little.

Magda then explained that Mark worked with Magda's husband. That explained that. What a small world.

During the course of dinner, when it became clear that being single was akin to being a leper to most of these people, Mark had spoken up in her defence more than once. It had caught her quite by surprise. So, too, did his apparent disregard for the presence of his girlfriend. What had sparked this turnaround in attitude?

She would find out soon. She made her excuses to leave the dinner party from hell—not too early, as was decent to do—then went down to wait for her minicab. The group had split into groups, anyway; the marrieds had begun to talk about their progeny, and the lawyer, their cases. For her, the odd person out, it was as boring as fuck.

As she slipped into her coat, she heard footsteps on the staircase behind her, then then heard Mark speak.

"I very much enjoyed your Lewisham fire report, by the way."

If this was meant to be a peace offering (or at least an icebreaker), it was a strange, awkward thing to open with. Her knickers been broadcast all across London televisions as she had gone prematurely down a firehouse pole during a botched interview; he had to know it had humiliated her. So why bring it up? She continued buttoning her coat, facing the door, as she replied with a sarcastic sing-song, "Thank you."

She heard his continued footfalls down the stairs. It would seem there was no escaping an actual conversation. Probably long overdue.

She turned to look at him.

The next thing he said took her slightly aback. Stated, rather than asked. "It didn't work out with Daniel Cleaver."

How had he even known?

"No," she said. "It didn't."

His reply: "I'm delighted to hear it."

Between the likes of pompous windbag Cosmo about when she was going to get "sprogged up," Mark bringing up the mortifying fire report, and now his apparent delight at the end of the relationship with his former best friend, she had reached her boiling point, and she let him have it. "Are you and Cosmo in this together? Because you seem to go out of your way to try to make me feel like a complete idiot every time I see you… and you really needn't bother. I already feel like an idiot most of the time, anyway. With or without the fireman's pole."

He said nothing, his eyes intense as ever, though a very slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. The door buzzer signalling the arrival of her taxi went off just at that moment, saving her from further conversation, and she bade him good night as she turned for the door.

He surprised her yet again by speaking up with uncharacteristic uncertainty.

"Look, um…"

What more could he possibly want from her? It was already a kind of torture seeing him socially after what they had shared together. His rudeness on New Year's Day and complete disavowal of their passionate sexual relationship still left her feeling bitter and a little bit hateful whenever she saw him now. Neither though could she deny the pull of attraction she still felt for him when he looked at her with that intense gaze of his, when he had stood up for her against the Smug Marrieds. It would serve him right for her to ignore him and just go out to her taxi. Her better nature prevailed, though, and she turned to face him again, to hear him out.

He continued, trailing off: "I'm sorry if I've been…"

She prompted, impatient for her taxi, "What?"

His expression changed so suddenly to one of earnestness that she felt a slight spike of adrenalin.

"I don't think you're an idiot at all," he said. A nice concession, she supposed. Then he went on. "There are… elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mother's pretty interesting. And you really are an… appallingly bad public speaker." If this was his way of apologising, he was terrible at it; he should have stopped while he was ahead. And yet, he went on. "And you tend to let whatever's in your head come out of your mouth—" Here he reiterated the point with a vomit-evoking hand gesture. "—without much consideration of the consequence."

Her impatience must have started to show, because he got to the point.

"I realise that when I met you at the… Turkey Curry Buffet—" He said the term as if it had a foul taste. "—that I was unforgivably rude and… wearing a reindeer jumper that my mother had given me the day before. But the thing is… what I'm trying to say… very inarticulately…" Indeed, she thought. "…is that… um… in fact, perhaps, despite appearances, I like you. Very much."

She couldn't help but to laugh, thinking of his words to his own mother the day of the Turkey Curry Buffet. "Apart from the smoking, and the drinking, and the vulgar mother… and the verbal diarrhoea—"

"No," he interrupted firmly, all seriousness again. "I like you very much. Just as you are."

She wondered if the possibility of being overheard had made him choose more careful words. Liked her? After all of his iciness and insults? And what exactly had he meant by "just as you are"? If she hadn't been so stunned to hear this admission, so absolutely flabbergasted, she might have asked for clarity. If only, too, they'd had more time; if they had not been interrupted by the tall, thin, spanner-in-the-works, her shoes clacking on the same stairs that his had done just a minute or two (an eternity) ago.

Natasha. The girlfriend. Interrupting their private conversation yet again.

"Mark, we really are making progress on the case in here."

She saw his thoughts in the flicker of his eyes: Go away. Your timing couldn't be worse. She felt the same way, as Natasha went on about Jeremy's brilliant idea. However, Bridget suspected that Natasha knew exactly what she was interrupting; the green of envy in which Natasha had cloaked herself was not becoming. This was reinforced by the snapping of her fingers, as if calling a puppy to heel.

"Right," he said with resignation, watching Natasha retreat before turning back to Bridget. "I must go, because…" He indicated where Natasha had just been; that was enough. "Well. Good night."

She watched as he retreated up the stairs, feeling suddenly quite guilty about every nasty thought she'd had about how he deserved everything he got with Natasha.

She continued to mull over this conversation with him all of the way back to her flat. If his words were anything to go by, she had totally misread his reaction, his behaviour, that New Year's Day. Perhaps he'd just been as taken aback as she'd been, to have had their identities suddenly revealed to each other in front of the last people either of them would have wanted to know about their secret.

But apparently, as he'd gotten to know her during these sporadic real-life contacts, he had decided he had liked her. As she was. Flaws and all. His comment about being delighted to hear about things ending with Daniel suddenly made a little more sense. It may well have been an awkward way of projecting his interest.

But oh. They couldn't really start over, or even resume what they'd had, while he had an entanglement he was going to have to get himself out of. She had no qualms about sleeping with a man she didn't know well, as long as they had agreed on the parameters and were safe in every respect. But she was not going to be any man's "other woman."