Out on a Limb (23 page)

‘You know, this doesn’t look too bad now,’ I said. ‘How’s it feeling?’

H e leaned forward to inspect it himself. ‘Not too bad. Not sitting here with you doing that, at any rate. A little stiff, that’s all.’ He sat back again, his mug cradled in both hands, while I pulled my chair around so I didn’t have to bend. He wasn’t the only one getting a bit creaky. I’d been too long in the car and on the plane. Yesterday suddenly seemed a long time ago. His arrival here at tea time only slightly less so.

‘You have a very gentle touch,’ he said. I looked up at him and smiled.

‘When I’m not pummelling you mercilessly, you mean.’

‘And soft hands. Like a surgeon.’ His gaze moved beyond me, towards the window. ‘You know, I hope you don’t have nosy neighbours,’ he observed. ‘They’ll think you’re engaged in unnatural practices.’

‘With a
knee
?’

‘It’s been known.’ He sipped his tea while I went and put the ice pack back in the freezer. ‘It’s a very tactile sort of a profession, yours, isn’t it?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘But then I’m a very tactile sort of a person.’

He smiled. ‘I suppose you’d need to be, wouldn’t you? I mean, it must be strange going to work every day and getting to grips with the intimate parts of absolute strangers. Don’t you find it strange?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve been doing it so long I don’t even think about it. It’s just what I do.’

‘You don’t ever feel self-conscious?’

‘Occasionally. I guess I do, a little, right now, with you sitting in my kitchen in your underwear.’ He smiled at this. ‘But, no. Not really. It’s what I do. It’s just work.’

‘But
they
must. You know. Sometimes. Your patients.’

‘Sometimes. When they’re new. But never for long. Five minutes of my twittering at them and they soon forget to be.’

‘But it’s still very intimate, isn’t it?’

I shrugged. ‘I guess so. But like I say, I’ve always been a very huggy, touchy-feely sort of person, so it feels perfectly natural.’

He drained his mug. ‘Runs in the family, then?’ he observed.

But it was an observation that didn’t immediately have resonance for me. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ I said.

‘I was thinking of your mother.’

Which had even less resonance. ‘My
mother
? God, no.’

‘Really?’ He looked surprised. ‘She’s always struck me that way.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s not my mother. That’s Diana Garland.’ I said the name with her customary flourish. ‘Different animal altogether. The public persona and the actual person are not the same at all. Far from it. We were pretty light on cuddles and hugs in our house. After my dad died, in any rate.’

‘That’s sad.’

‘I guess I didn’t know any different. That’s just the way she is. She finds intimacy difficult. Always has.’ I laughed. ‘And I don’t doubt a psychologist might draw some conclusions from that about why I chose to go into the profession that I did.’

And leave home and go to college ( husband-to-be number three had already been installed by this time), and then rush off and get married and have my babies so young. Which
was
something I’d thought about. And very probably true.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘It’s actually very good for you to have an other person touch you. You know, at least half of what makes physio work – for lots of people, anyway – is just that basic physical contact. You know, some of my patients – particularly now I’m working in the clinic – well, for some of them it’s the only physical contact they have with another human being from one week to the next. Can you imagine that?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it. But now you mention it…’ he gestured to my hands now, which had come to rest around his calf muscles. ‘You know, you don’t have to stop doing that on my account.’

Napping on the job, in fact. ‘Oh.’ I could feel myself blushing. ‘Right. Sorry.’

‘…I suppose that really is quite something to contemplate.’

‘I seem to contemplate it all the time right now. You know, with my eldest being not here. You take it so much for granted when your children are small and then… ’ I tail off. ‘Actually, I shouldn’t have said that, should I? I suppose you never did take it for granted.’

He sh ook his head now. ‘Er…no.’

Which left a melancholy flavour in the air once again. How transient, how quickly over, all the stages of life were. And how little you realised the fact while you lived them. He was right. How very quickly it was all over, and golf beckoned.

But not just yet. I got up and moved past him to go rummage in the cupboard. ‘I’m going to strap it for you now. It’s elastic bandaging so it won’t restrict your freedom of movement too much. You’ll need to keep it on overnight and… Ah. Here we are.’

When I turned around he was stretching his arms high above his head. ‘God,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure sitting here is doing me any good after all. I’m stiffening up all over now.’

I started picking at the end of the roll of bandage. What an idiot I’d been letting him run after that bloody dog. He’d been so helpful, so thoughtful, and all he’d got in return was more damage to his knee. ‘You will be,’ I said wryly. ‘That was quite a fall you had. You’ll be stiff as a board by the morning.’

He put his arms back in his lap and began slowly rolling his head on his shoulders.

‘Tell you what,’ I said, leaning over and plopping the bandage in his lap. ‘Grab that while I give your shoulders a quick once-over. Can’t hurt, can it?’

‘I’m not so sure. That sounds worryingly like a contact sport to me.’

‘No, really,’ I said briskly, splaying my fingers across his shoulder blades and smoothing my thumbs into the gullies either side of his spine. ‘You forget, I’m a qualified sports masseuse.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It says so on your business card. Ouch!’

‘Rel
ax
. You’re all hunched up where you’ve been tensing. Probably that walk back. I wish you’d let me get the car.’

I felt his shoulders begin to soften. ‘I’m very glad you didn’t,’ he said. ‘Because now you’re here doing this.’

And even then I didn’t fathom. I’m not even sure he had. ‘Least I can do,’ I said firmly. ‘Do you good.’

Though I’m not sure the same could have been said about me. Because it was now fully dark outside, and I hadn’t pulled the blind yet, I could see our reflections in the kitchen window, just as I could when he was here before. Him sitting, eyes closed now, a dreamy half smile on his lips. Me standing behind him. Bent slightly forwards with my elbows sticking out, my hair moving in rhythm with the action of my wrists, in swaying twin curtains either side of my face. My fringe was in my eyes, so I took a breath to blow it, and as I did so I saw that his eyes had now opened. They weren’t all the way open. Just half-awake open. Trance-like. Relaxed. And were looking into mine.

‘Feel nice?’ I asked.

‘Mmm,’ he said, still gazing at me. Our reflections smiled at each other above the flicker of the candles.

‘Good,’ I mouth ed at his now. ‘I’m glad to be of service.’ And I continued to work on the muscles of his shoulders, gloriously innocent. Gloriously unaware. Unaware, that was, until I did become aware. Aware that his eyes were now not just looking, but staring. And suddenly in a wholly discomfiting way.

And even as I thought that, I watched his hands leave his lap and his arms travel upwards, till all his fingers were resting on top of my own. I stopped moving, my expression in the window still politely enquiring. But he didn’t provide an answer. Just sat perfectly still. We were like a painting in the window now. Or a Byzantine mosaic.

I raised my brows and met his eyes in the window. His hands were hot. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

‘You know, I really think you’d better stop doing that,’ he replied.

When I was about eight, my parents took Pru and I to a bird sanctuary. A swan sanctuary, I think it was. We picnicked in a sunny field next to a farm. We had egg sandwiches, orange squash, crisps and pork pies, and I decided I would organise my feast inside the plastic tray that had held the pork pies. Picnic in hand, I took Pru off to have a potter in the field; there were some cows in an adjacent one, which she wanted to moo at. Except the two fields were separated by a low wire fence. I’d barely brushed it with the tip of my finger when, kapow! – a huge slug of electricity coursed through my body. Just four volts, but it might just as well have been a million. I’d never felt anything so powerful in my life. I leapt feet into the air and screamed my very lungs out. The pork pie was lost forever. The memory was not.

Which is why it came back to me now.

I whipped my hands from beneath his as if jet-propelled. And not knowing quite what to do after I’d done that, I walked across the kitchen and yanked down the roller blind. Not least to shut out the image in the window. My temples were thrumming. My cheeks were on fire. How on earth had I let something like
that
happen? How?

He said nothing. Just cleared his throat. Feigned utter insouciance. Whatever had passed between us wasn’t up for debate. Best thing too. Only thing.
What
a thing, frankly. ‘Right,’ I said briskly, ‘let’s get this leg strapped then, shall we?’

Normally I’d pop the patient’s leg up in my lap at this point, but for reasons that were becoming more insistent by the minute, I didn’t. I bent over him instead, issuing a stream of stern entreaties about rest and recuperation and the importance of proper exercise. Anything to ensure that the ever threatening silence could not be left needing something to fill it.

And need there now was. It was growing, expanding. It was all at once as if there was a storm heading in. Right into the kitchen. ‘There,’ I said, finally. ‘That’ll do. You’re all set. Keep this on overnight and see how you’re doing in the morning.’

‘Okay,’ he said gruffly. ‘Right then.’ He lowered his leg to the floor and winced a little as he did so. I hardly dared look at him now.

‘Not too tight, is it?’ I said as I put away the roll of bandage.

‘No,’ came the answer. ‘No. Not too tight.’ He seemed almost as embarrassed as I was.

I took his jeans from the chair back. ‘I’ll…um…let you get back into these then, shall I?’

I turned away and busied myself at the sink while he did so. Wiping all the surfaces that didn’t need wiping, fussily blowing out all the tea lights on the windowsill, then wiping down the surfaces all over again. God, how had I let this
happen
?

But happen it had. Still happening, it
was
. I could hear the swish of the fabric as he stepped back into his jeans. First one leg. The good leg. Swoosh. On it went. Then a huff as he balanced to attend to the other. The creak of the table as it took his hand’s weight. I could see him in my mind’s eye, if not in the window. See him tuck in his shirt. See him do up his fly. See the belt, even as I heard the metal jangle, being fed carefully back into buckle and fixed. And then silence. Then nothing. But it was such a powerful sort of a nothing that still I didn’t dare turn around. What the hell had I been thinking, massaging his shoulders? This was not work. We were not in the clinic. How thoroughly stupid was
that
?

I was just trying to arrange my features into something breezy and work-a-day and businesslike and wondering quite how I was going to haul this situation back into some semblance of normality, when I felt his hand touch my hair, at the side of my face.

I spun around, startled. Wide-eyed. A little dizzy. Proper dizzy now in fact, because I’d forgotten to eat. Since the plane. That was it. I racked my brains. I’d had a muffin. Just a coffee and a muffin. Since then I’d had nothing. I was existing on air.

Which right now, we were sharing. He was standing so
close
.

‘You ha ve something caught,’ he said slowly. ‘Right here. In your hair. See?’

He lowered his hand and between his thumb and finger was a little fairy seed inside its gossamer star. It must have caught in my hair in the park. He sat it in his palm and we studied it together, like a pair of zealous biology students on a field trip. ‘Thistledown,’ he suggested.

‘Um, no,’ I answered. ‘It’s rose bay willow herb, isn’t it? I think. I’m not sure. We always just called them fairies.’

‘In that case,’ he said, lifting his gaze to meet my own again. ‘Now you have to make a wish.’

His voice was just a whisper. His eyes bored into mine.

‘No, you do,’ I heard myself say to him. ‘You found it.’

He shook his head. ‘No, no. You’re wrong. It found
you
.’

He took my hand then and placed it over his upturned one. So the fairy in his palm wouldn’t become skittish and fly away. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Go on. What do you want to wish for?’

‘Gabriel, I –’

‘What? What’s the matter?’

‘You know, right now, I don’t think I’m up for making any wishes.’ I licked my dry lips. ‘Besides, you’re not supposed to tell anyone what you’re wishing for or it doesn’t come true.’

His hands were still cupping my own, between us. I felt his thumb trace a gentle yet deliberate arc ever so slowly across the back of my palm. ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll wish your wish for you. Sort of by proxy. Okay?’

‘Er, okay,’ I said, conscious even as I said it that there was something that was far from okay about all this.

‘Close your eyes, then.’

My heart thumped. ‘I don’t think I dare to.’

We could almost rub noses now. He smiled. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Because if I close my eyes now, I think your wish might come true.’

‘I told you, it’s
your
wish.’

‘You don’t know what I’m wishing.’

‘You want to know something, Abbie McFadden? I think I
do
.’

‘So you lied, then.’

‘Lied?’ He looked amused now. ‘About what?’

‘About how confident you are about your skills of prediction.’

I felt the pressure of his hand on mine increase as he spoke. ‘Well,’ he whispered. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

I don’t know what happened to the fairy exactly. Though Dancing Diana might, of course.

Chapter 23

‘G
ABRIEL
A
SH
,’
SAYS
C
ANDICE
, drawing little spiral doodles on the appointments book. ‘You know, it occurred to me just then. Isn’t that the name of that character in that film?’

It’s now Thursday and Gabriel Ash has just telephoned to cancel his appointment for physio next week. She hasn’t said more and I can’t bring myself to ask her, because I can’t trust myself not to turn beetroot. Or weep.

‘What film?’ I ask her.

‘You know. That one with Alan Bates in. In the Sixties. No, Seventies, probably. Come on, you
know
. And Julie Christie, wasn’t it? Of the book by Thomas Hardy. God, I’ve even read the bloody thing. And she was called Bathsheba. Come on, you
do
know. Anyway, wasn’t
he
called Gabriel Ash?’

Candice seems to think I know most things, which is flattering. And Candice knows much more than I give her credit for. Which is humbling. So easy to make assumptions about people. But I do know this, because I’ve read the book too. ‘
Far From the Madding Crowd
.’ I tell her. ‘That’s the one you mean.’ I think some more. Even thought it pains me to do so. ‘But he was called Gabriel Oak.’

‘That’s it!’ She looks pleased. ‘That’s the one. Gabriel Oak, Gabriel Ash. I knew it was something familiar. He was a shepherd, wasn’t he?’

I suppose, I realise, that it was inevitable that he’d do that. And for the best. Yes, definitely for the best, all things considered. It won’t work any more, him coming here. It can’t. I really hope I never, ever see him again.

‘Hellooo?’ Candice flicks her fingers. ‘You still there? He was a shepherd, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. Yes, he was.’

‘Hey, Gabriel Ash would make a good shepherd, don’t you think? Because he’d be clued up on all that red sky at night stuff, wouldn’t he?’

I turn the appointment book around to see how the rest of my day is going to shape up. ‘I think it’s the other way around, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘Shepherds are generally good at forecasting the weather, yes. But I’m not sure being good at weather forecasting necessarily means you’re also good with sheep.’

Or forecasting generally. I wish
I
could have forecast what’s happened to me. Wish he had. And way before what happened in my kitchen. How could I have let it? How could I? ‘Well,’ says Candice, winking. ‘I’ll just have to ask him when he’s next in, lovely, won’t I?’ Then her grin widens and she whoops and claps her hands. ‘Hey, but he will be! He’s Welsh, love ’ im, isn’t he?’ Which pronouncement she finds so completely hilarious that her cheeks run with tears, she chokes on her coffee, and, still doubled with laughter, she has to retire to the loo.

Which he won’t be, of course. Any more than I expected him to keep this appointment. Some things are for the best, after all.

When I was a teenager, I read a book by Malcolm Bradbury. It was called
Eating People is Wrong
. I don’t recall the plot now; it’s just the title that’s stayed with me. Such a clever one. So gloriously self-evident a phrase.

Kissing people is wrong, too. There are lots of occasions when it’s not wrong, obviously, but there is still a kernel of resonance between the one and the other. Yes, yes. You can kiss people on the cheek, kiss your babies all over, kiss your relatives, your friends, the more fragrant of your colleagues. But kissing – proper kissing – kissing of a sexual nature – has a very well defined code of conduct. You don’t just kiss people.
Ad hoc. Per se.
Not without a clear invitation to do so. Because a kiss is almost always the answer to the question that our reproductive genes are continually asking us. Would you like to procreate us with this person? It is a statement of intent. Of bodily commitment. A statement that pre-supposes a mutual acknowledgement that the reproductive process is, at the very least, a distinct possibility. And if not now, then at some future time. Which is not something one tends to think about much. But that’s what kissing is. That’s what kissing’s
for
. Which is why women tend to feel so uncomfortable when they wake up on the morning after the office Christmas party and think ‘ohmyGod.
Him
! I
didn’t
!’

Sometimes that’s because you are frankly repulsed, but often – too often – it’s not that at all. Sometimes it’s because they are with someone else. Procreatively committed already.

None of which was going through my mind then. Far from it. Having thought the brace of thoughts I am biologically programmed to think (
oh! Gabriel’s kissing me
and
he – no,
we
– shouldn’t!
), I then stopped thinking rationally altogether. Utterly.

Which is, of course, why human biology works so very well, and by extension, why babies get made.

And so we kissed. We kissed hesitantly, lightly at first. A mere featherlight brushing of lips against lips; a tentative exploration of alien skin. But kisses are governed by forces of nature, so unless something crops up to call a halt to proceedings (getting snagged on a tongue stud, inability to breathe, discovering the kissee has breath that could fell a hippo), then they tend to gather pace. Because that’s how they work.

And so this, had you joined the proceedings at that point, is how you’d have found us. Kissing one another with such terrible abandon that had the world seen fit then to slip off its axis and hurtle into the sun, we’d neither of have been any the wiser. All I knew was that where I’d begun this thinking ‘Oh! Goodness! Gabriel!’ my thoughts had long since changed both their tone and their timbre, and centred on thinking ‘ohhh,
Gabriel
…’ instead. And as so often happens when kisses reach that level of intensity (or, rather, that point where the kissing itself becomes mostly a metaphor for the carnal intentions you are attempting to pursue via the judicious and speedy shedding of clothing) Gabriel, similarly incoherent on the ‘ohhh’ front, had started to unbuckle his belt.

The very same belt he’d only buckled up minutes earlier.

Was it that that did it, perhaps? That necessary logistical break in the proceedings? Who knows. But pause it was. And into pauses fit thoughts. And not necessarily edifying ones.

‘Oh my God,’ he said suddenly. Presumably having thought some. Leaping away as if yanked by the hair. ‘Oh, my
God
, Abbie. I’m so sorry.’ He was shaking his head now. Backing away from me. ‘God, what am I doing?
No
.’

H e was speaking mainly to himself as he said this, but even so, it hit home. Because the word ‘no’ is not the word one usually expects to be hearing from a man when he’s speaking to a woman at such moments. Isn’t it normally the other way around?

I don’t know what it’s like to be a man, obviously, but at that moment, now
sans
my T-shirt, very nearly
sans
more, standing like a window display mannequin by my dishwasher, blinking, appalled, under the way-too-bright strip light, I kind of felt I might have an insight or two. All those boys I’d beached up at rejection central as teenagers; no I don’t want to dance. No you can’t touch my bra. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. No I don’t want to touch it. I’ve got a headache. You’ve got acne. Ugh. Put that away.

Yup. That was me now. Discarded by the dishwasher. By a man who had no business kissing me
anyway
. But more to the point, oh,
so
much more to the point, I had no business kissing
back
. What on earth had possessed me to
do
such a thing? And even more chilling, what might have happened next, had not Gabriel’s conscience (and almost married status, presumably) kicked in? Sex on the floor with my mother looking on? In the absence of gonads and a stiff upper lip, I immediately burst into tears.

Gabriel, still grimacing and reeling as dramatically as if personally coached by my sainted dear mother, in fact, took a few more awkward steps backwards, fetching up eventually against the kitchen table, arms held up, palms forward, almost in supplication. As if at the behest of a bank robber with a sawn off shotgun.

With his shirt hanging out and all his buttons undone. I gaped. Had
I
done that? Yes. Every last one. I snatched my T-shirt from the floor and scrabbled my way back into it, to spare the blushes of my still heaving bosom.

He was breathing hard. He looked stricken. ‘God, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I am so, so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Oh, Abbie, I’m so sorry. I –’

‘Stop saying sorry!’ I snapped at him. I was shaking all over. Top to bottom. Head to toe. Nerve ending to nerve ending. Erogenous zone to erogenous bloody zone. We had so very nearly…so
very
nearly… ‘God, Gabriel. Why did you
do
that?’

I turned around and wrenched some kitchen roll from the holder. But I did it so hard that it just kept on coming, spooling round and around and spewing all over the draining board. Which brought on another wave of almost hysterical tears. I ripped off a wodge of the stuff and slapped it over my face. ‘Why did
I
do that? God!’ I sobbed into the kitchen roll for a good few seconds, and when I finally lowered it – tremulous, mortified – he was rattling through his shirt buttons as if competing in a school getting-dressed competition. Last one fully-clothed is a ninny!

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, furiously stuffing his shirt back into his jeans (no buckle in play now, I noticed). ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I know I shouldn’t. Oh, God –’ His groan was both heartfelt and damningly impressive. ‘Oh, God. But it just… Jesus.’ He looked horrified. ‘
You
just –’

‘Me??’ I screeched. ‘
Me
?? So this is all
my
fault? Well thanks a lot, I don’t think!’

H e pushed both hands through his hair and then shook his head. ‘God,
no
, Abbie. Mine
entirely
. I’m sorry. I’m
sorry
. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. I had absolutely no…oh,
God
. I don’t know what else to say to you. I just forgot where I was…what I was
doing
.’

‘You forgot what you were
doing
? Well, there’s a novel concept.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t know, as it happens. It seems to me –’ I reached behind me and tried to do up my bra, ‘– that you knew
exactly
what you were doing. Every bit as much as I did, in fact.’ Which reality hit me like a sledgehammer as I said it. I moved my fingers frenziedly, but I couldn’t get it to fasten. My hands were shaking too much. I gave up. ‘Seems to me, the only thing
you
forgot was exactly who you were doing it
with
.’

Which made me burst into tears again. So I abandoned the bra strap and went back to the draining board, to get a fresh pile of kitchen roll to staunch it. Then I rounded on him again. ‘And then – pow! – you
did
remember, didn’t you? Boy, you remembered and then some!’ I gulped down a breath. ‘Can you imagine?’ I asked him, trying but failing to keep my voice level. ‘Can you imagine how that makes me feel about
me
?’

He took a step towards me, his expression now morphing (if one wanted to be fanciful about it) into one of lovingly tender concern. ‘Abbie,’ he said gently. ‘I really can’t apologise enough. You’re so lovely, really you are…and, and, well, you and I…well, it’s always been…’

‘Been what? Been on the cards that we’d start snogging at some point? Well, I’m sorry, Gabriel, but that’s news to me!’

He hesitated at this, and I could see his mind whirring, presumably the better to fashion the delicate words that came next, which were, ‘…but it’s just that…well, there’s
Lucy
. I’m
engaged
.’ He looked, in saying so, even more appalled now. ‘It was just one of those things that happen in the heat of the moment, and –’

‘
Whhaatt
!!!’ I was so horrified at how entirely he had misunderstood what I had been trying to say that for a second or two I considered violence against him. Just to wipe the sorry slick of compassion from his face and replace it with something less sick-making. ‘That’s not what I
meant
! God, Gabriel! That is
so
not what I meant!’

He looked completely at a loss now. Which only served to fuel my horror even more. ‘I
know
that,’ I said. ‘I know you’re bloody engaged! That’s precisely my point!’ I yanked out a chair and sat down on it heavily, then put my face in my hands and groaned. I heard him approach and then felt his hand on my shoulder. I snapped my head up again and he jumped back as if stung.

‘Abbie, I –’

I flapped my kitchen roll at him.‘This is not
about
you, okay? Neither is it about some mad, tin-pot scheme to lure you from her clutches. As if! God, Gabriel, don’t flatter yourself!’

Stung twice, in fact. Still stinging, even. I blew my nose and glared at him. ‘Look, Gabriel, just forget it, okay. Just forget it and go home. I feel bad enough about myself as it is without you cluttering up my kitchen looking tragic, okay?’

He didn’t. ‘Please don’t feel bad about yourself, Abbie. This wasn’t your fault. It was mine.’

I sometimes think men are irredeemably thick. Some men, at any rate. This one, for sure. I sat back in my chair and considered him. Which hurt.

And in ways I was only now coming to terms with. Don’t flatter yourself? Who the hell was I kidding? How powerful, I realised, my denial had been. How overwhelmingly intense was my desire for this man now. Where did that
come
from? How did it happen? Candice was right. Life bloody well
was
a bitch. I shook my head. To clear all such nonsense away. ‘No, Gabriel. You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘The kissing bit, yes. That was absolutely your fault. You started it, after all.’

‘
Exactly
. So –’

‘But the next bit…’ I felt my voice wobble. ‘The next bit was not. The next bit I did of my own volition entirely. Would perhaps
still
be doing, if
you
hadn’t stopped it. So you can apologise all you like but it won’t make any difference. Yes, you made it happen – you’re a man, after all – but I
let
it happen, which is much more important.’