They clattered out into the car park together.
"Do you have a car?" she asked him.
"No," he replied.
"Shit, of course you don't," she murmured apologetically, "Sorry."
"It's ok," he told her, because it was, she probably hardly knew what was going on, "Come on, let's get a cab."
He led her towards the road, where, as luck would have it, there was a cab coming along. He hailed it down and held open the door for her.
"Where to?" the cabbie asked them when they were both inside.
They hadn't talked about that.
"We can go to mine," she said quickly, leaning forward to give him the address.
"Peter won't be there," she told him, settling back into the seat as the car pulled back into the road, "He said he'd go to a hotel."
"Right," he murmured apprehensively.
She turned towards him.
"Don't look so worried, Joe," she told him, "If he gave you any trouble-… after this-… I'd kill him."
He believed she would too. But she was mistaken, thinking his concern was for himself or for Peter. He watched her looking distractedly out of the window of the cab, she seemed almost out of breath. Carefully, he offered his hand to her across the seat.
"Are you alright?" he asked her.
She turned towards him, saw his hand, slipping her palm gently against his, her fingers.
She nodded silently.
The light from the passing streetlights was glancing over the bridge of her nose and he was fascinated by it.
/
It did take a long time to get to her place, but he paid for the cab without a second thought. She slipped away up the stairs to the front door to let them in, and closed the door snuggly behind him as he joined her.
He categorically did not expect to find himself pressed into the door by the belting force of her body half a second later. He tried to gasp in surprise, but her mouth was already on his, he nearly choked. Her lips were urgent, hot, needy against his. For a startled moment he succumbed to the delicious pressure of them. He would have had to have been a saint not to. But he couldn't-… not with her like this-…
"Phyllis," he managed to put his hands on his shoulders and press her gently away.
"What's wrong?" she asked him, looking up at him in confusion.
A look of horror dawned on her face.
"Shit," she murmured, "You don't even fancy me, do you?"
"Yes," he insisted without a moment's hesitation, "Are you mad? I more than fancy you."
They both stood in breathless silence for a moment, taking in what he'd just said.
"Then what?" she asked him, confused, "What's to stop us-…?"
"Apart from your completely overwrought emotional state, you mean?"
"I am not overwrought," she insisted, stepping closer to him, pointing her finger straight at him.
He raised his eyebrows a little, looking at her finger. She took a moment's pause, and then stepped back a little.
"Alright," she conceded, "I'm, perhaps, a little overwrought. But that doesn't mean I don't know what I want-… Christ, I've fancied you for ages, Joe! And part of me is thrilled that Peter's been such a shit because it means I've got a reason to leave him and-…"
"Phyllis, love, slow down," he murmured, clasping her shoulder gently.
Her head bowed, her hair falling loose around her face.
"It would be wrong of me to let this happen like this, for the first time," he told her, "Even though I do want… us to happen. But I should say," he started again, his voice growing a little uneven, "If we did-… I we were to sleep together, I don't think I could pretend it hadn't happened."
She turned her head to where his hand rested on her shoulder and planted an almost defiant kiss on his knuckles.
"I don't want you to," she told him softly, "Nor could I."
"Alright," he murmured, carefully soothing her shoulder with his hand, "Well, I'm glad we're on the same page about that."
"Will you stay?" she asked him.
He paused just a little.
"You can sleep on the sofa," she said, and then with half a smile, "Shit, I'll have to sleep there with you. I don't want to be by myself."
He raised one of his hands to her face, gently tucked some of her thick black hair away.
"Alright," he told her.
/
"Where did you end up last night?"
Thomas was depressingly chipper this morning.
"What do you care?" Joe asked in reply.
"I don't, for your sake," Thomas freely confessed.
Joe had to admit he was quite glad to hear that.
"I've got more of an interest in who you left with."
Joe was up straighter, allowing the journal he'd been reading to fall shut and giving Thomas a cursory glance.
"So, let's face it, if you know who I left with you probably know where I ended up," he told him.
Thomas looked smug.
"To be honest, after that dick didn't turn up I don't blame her for going home with you."
Joe almost told Thomas that it was kind of him to say that, but he thought that might be taking it a bit far. And he wasn't going to tell him that Peter had in fact turned up, or what had happened when he did.
But Thomas was on another line of thought now.
"Did you take her back to yours?" he asked.
"No, we went to hers," he answered, picking up the next journal and pulling it in front of himself.
"Was wanker boy not there?"
"No, he was out."
Again, he wasn't going to say where.
Thomas gave a low whistle.
"Nothing happened."
Joe smiled; he could see out of the corner of his eye that Thomas looked appalled.
"What do you mean, nothing happened?"
"We had a cup of tea and went to sleep on the sofa."
"Together?"
"Yes, together," Joe answered simply, "But that's hardly high treason."
"You mean there wasn't any-…"
"Not even a little bit," Joe confirmed.
He didn't need to know about the scene by there door. No one did.
Thomas looked appalled and confused.
"Why aren't you in her office now?" he asked suspiciously.
Joe shrugged.
"She's on the phone," he replied.
She was. To the divorce lawyer.
"But," Thomas insisted, "You two always look like you're about ready to shag each other. You can't ask me to believe that you went home together and then didn't-…"
"Well, we didn't," Joe told him, and then, in a moment of smugness that he knew he'd live to regret, "We're having dinner together tomorrow night."
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