pulled my legs away from Dom, stood up and flounced into my tiny kitchen where I slumped against the work surface. Rebecca was the reason Dom was only my ‘sort-of boyfriend’. Because she was sort of his wife. Well, if I was being honest, there was no sort of about it. She was his actual wife. Which made me his actual mistress.
I wasn’t proud of myself. I knew what I was doing was wrong. But Dom had charmed me and I felt as though I had no control over my actions. He’d broken through all my defences. And actually, the secrecy and the subterfuge suited me quite well.
Dom and I had been working together for two years. We’d been sleeping together for nearly a year. The first time it happened I’d been working late in the office, desperate to make my mark in a company full of overachievers. As I pored over files and wrote reams of notes, Dom appeared at my office door.
‘Come for a drink,’ he said.
‘I can’t,’ I replied, not even looking up. Dom had been circling me for weeks, months even, flirting and going out of his way to pay me attention. I wasn’t interested. I avoided relationships and preferred to spend all my spare time working.
‘You work too hard.’ He walked towards my desk and sat down on the chair in front of me.
‘So do you.’ I turned a page in the folder I was reading and carried on making notes in the margin.
‘Pleeeease,’ Dom whined like a little boy. ‘I’m sooooo bored.’
In spite of myself I laughed and finally looked up. His wide, blue eyes with a hint of mischief met mine, and a tiny bud of lust curled in my stomach. How could I resist?
‘I can’t go for a drink,’ I said firmly. ‘But if you go and get me a coffee, I’ll take a break and we can chat for five minutes.’
Dom had brought me a coffee – and a bottle of wine – and we chatted for hours that night. And the next night, when we both worked late again. And after a few ‘dates’ in the office, we went out for dinner. Just an above-board business dinner between colleagues at a restaurant near work.
Except the restaurant was expensive and softly lit and we didn’t talk about business.
When we finally staggered out into the street, dizzy with red wine, good food and lust, I raised my arm to hail a cab. Dom caught my hand and pulled me to face him.
‘What now?’ he asked. His face was close to mine and I could feel his breath on my lips. My legs were like jelly and although I knew I should pull away, I couldn’t.
‘You’re married,’ I whispered.
Dom nodded. A flicker of something – guilt? – crossed his eyes.
‘The ball’s in your court, Esme,’ he said, pulling me closer.
I opened my mouth to tell him to go home to his wife. But instead I found myself leaning forward to kiss him. He tasted of garlic and coffee and fun and I was bewitched.
So when a taxi pulled up beside us and Dom got in with me, and gave the cabbie my address, I didn’t protest. And that was that.
A year of snatched meetings and illicit evenings later I still felt terrible whenever I thought of Dom’s wife. And I still hated it if she called when I was with him.
I didn’t want Dom to leave her, I told myself. I was happy working long hours and spending time alone in my flat or at the gym. Having a full-time boyfriend would cramp my style. Plus, it suited me to have some distance between us. I may not have been an enthusiastic user of magic, but all my family were. Just the thought of inviting a boyfriend home and watching his face as Mum made Sunday dinner in her own special way gave me chills. And my family’s track record when it came to my love life was not good. But still my heart ached when Dom slipped out of my bed at night and went home to his wife.
I ignored the nagging voice inside me that told me what I was doing was wrong. I ignored my guilt about Rebecca, and, most of all, I ignored the feeling that despite my fabulous, well-paid job, my gorgeous flat and my handsome, sophisticated sort-of boyfriend, I was lonely.
‘I’m going to miss you.’ Dom interrupted my thoughts. He had finished his phone call and come to find me in the kitchen. He snaked his arms round my waist and planted a kiss on my neck.
‘No you won’t,’ I said, pulling his arms off me. ‘You won’t even notice I’m not here.’
Dom winked at me. ‘Of course I will. I love you,’ he said. I gaped at him. He’d never said that before. Ignoring my silence, Dom picked up his car keys.
‘Bye,’ he called from the hall, as he blew me a kiss.
I pretended to catch it. ‘Bye then,’ I whispered.
The next day at work was mental. My boss, Maggie, almost tipped me over the edge because she was frantically preparing for a meeting with another Hollywood couple about the baby they were trying to adopt, and she couldn’t decide what to wear. I was trying very hard to tie up any loose ends and pass on the cases that I could pass on before I went to Scotland. And I was wrestling with a client who’d decided to start Tweeting vindictive messages to her cheating husband despite my desperate voicemails begging her to stop.
I am a family lawyer. That sounds quite fluffy but believe me it isn’t. In my experience, family law is about as nasty as it gets. Especially the bit I’m involved with. Think cheating Premiership footballers, wronged pop stars and celebrities buying African babies and you’re pretty close. Still, it’s a living. And it keeps me very, very busy, which is the idea.
Eventually, things calmed down enough for me to sit back in my chair and look at my phone. I knew I had to phone Mum and tell her I was coming up. Harry had emailed to say she’d passed on my flight details, but if I was expecting to stay it was only polite to call. It’s not like Mum and I never talk. We do, of course. But we’re not mates, not close like Harry and Suky are. I would never tell her about Dom, for example, or really fill her in on anything happening in my life – because the last time I did, when I was sixteen, it all backfired on me in the worst way and Mum and I had a major falling out. Major.
To be honest, it had been brewing for years. I was a shy, clumsy teenager whose desperation to fit in clashed – badly – with my family’s bohemian side. But until the big drama, we’d all rubbed along pretty well. Harry was ten years older than me and thick as thieves with Suky, who’d had her when she was barely out of her teens herself. Back then I adored Harry – whose real name is Harmony. She was beautiful, funny, clever – still is, I suppose – and amazingly talented in the witchcraft department. She’d long since left home and was living in Edinburgh, but we still saw a lot of her.
My mum – who is Suky’s twin sister – and I were less close but we still got on – pretty much. My mum – who is Suky’s twin sister – and I got on pretty well back then. We weren’t as close as Harry and Suky, who were more like friends than mother and daughter, but we did ok. And unlike many teenagers, I also got on with my dad, who’d split up with Mum before I was born and now had a glamorous wife and two little boys.
As for the cause of the rift, I won’t bore you with all the sorry details but imagine a spiky teenager who had fallen in love for the first time and a mum who – in some misguided attempt to make us as close as Suky and Harry – decided to meddle.
After the sparks had stopped flying (and I mean literally of course) I fled. I took off to Edinburgh, to my big cousin who would make everything OK. Except she didn’t. She sat me in the kitchen of her tiny top-floor flat in Leith and listened as I poured my heart out. And then do you know what she did? She laughed. She laughed and she told me not to take myself so seriously. In short, she took my already fragile heart and shattered it into a thousand pieces.
That was that really. Luckily Dad came to my rescue with an offer of paying for me to do A Levels at a school near where he lived in Cheltenham. I packed