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The Quiet Man and never even got to see her naked. He never ravished anyone in his life. How could I take this cowboy seriously?

      ‘You don’t look like John Wayne,’ I say He looks bored. Disappointed. ‘Everyone says that. That is the first thing everyone says to me. No, I don’t look like the actor John Wayne. My mother, however, thought it was a good name. He was a good actor and a nice man and played good roles. So she gave me this name. And I like it. Sarah Giles, on the other hand, is ordinary and bland. And you, Sarah Giles, are unoriginal.’

      He is obviously from the treat-them-mean-keep-them–keen school of how to talk to women. Either that or he utterly detests my company already.

      Enough of the small talk. I tell him that I’ve been told to speak to him because he knows about customer focus and that I’ve got to write this report on customer focus and why the regional part of the regional part of Rogerson Railways is failing to communicate with its customers when disruption occurs. He tells me it’s because management is bad and no one communicates. He then asks me if I have a boyfriend and what he does.

      I have a boyfriend. His name is Paul. I tell him he works for a bank.

      I ask him if he has a girlfriend.

      He says this is very personal.

      I say he’s asked me a personal question so I’ve got a right to ask him one too.

      He says he has. That her name is Amanda and that she is curvy, has fat calves, short squat legs, likes pink, has big tits and large eyes and eyelashes and long blonde hair. I visualise Miss Piggy. Then I revert back to reality.

      ‘What have you been told about me?’ he says, unblinking and staring straight into me rather than at me. I swear he has not blinked for a good hour.

      I tell him that I’ve heard he is a womaniser. That I am not to trust him. That he is amoral and that he will probably make a pass at me and try to seduce me. But that he is also well thought of professionally and has a good mind.

      He smiles. It scares me. It looks very unnatural. Like when Wednesday smiled for the first time in Addams Family Values. I ask him to stop smiling and look mean and brooding again. He laughs, which looks more natural than the smile, but the laugh still looks out of place on his face.

      We order.

      John has a pizza. No fuss. With everything on it.

      I order salade niçoise. With dressing on the side. No potatoes. No anchovies. No dough balls. Extra tuna.

      John says he will have my dough balls.

      I say I will have the dough balls after all, but can we have them on a separate plate?

      I order Diet Coke.

      No, they don’t do English beer. Only the foreign muck.

      He orders Diet Coke too.

      I ask him why he has a fetish for English beer. He says he always has. He says he lives in Surrey in a yellow cottage by a railway line and is surrounded by five pubs within walking distance which all do good English beer. It makes him salivate just thinking about it. At which point he starts to salivate just thinking about it. Methinks this is unsexy, so I ask him what else makes him salivate.

      ‘Cats and women’s legs. I can’t see your legs, so I don’t know if you would make me salivate,’ he says straight-faced, ‘but I have two cats. Hannah and Jessica.’

      I try to flirt. I tell him I have nice legs because I used to be a dancer and that I would like to have a cat. He says that he can’t tell me if my legs are good because I’m wearing a disgusting pair of culottes. He also says he will report me to the animal cruelty society if I get a cat, because as I am working full time I won’t be able to look after it properly. He is not joking. Or at least I think he is not joking. He doesn’t smile while he is saying this, which is some relief.

      I interview him about customer focus. I fantasise about him drinking beer in a pub in Surrey. It’s the summer. There’s him and me. I’m wearing a short white dress. Hannah and Jessica are there, rubbing their bodies round my ankles and his ankles. And I start to run my fingers through his hair. Very slowly. Then I revert back to reality. Get real, Giles. I’m talking to a guy who works for a regional part of a regional part of the railways called John Wayne.

      2nd September

      7 a.m. Flatmate Karen is still not up yet. Completely scatty, she makes me feel and look organised. I love her for it. It’s some feat to do that. She is nanny to a four-year-old who is being hot-housed by his financial advisor parents. He can speak two other languages fluently. French and pocket money. She gets a taxi to pick her up every morning at six forty-five a.m. The taxi driver knocks on the door. He usually bangs it a few times. She is always asleep. She gets changed, washed, brushed in five minutes. Between the change and wash I tell her I’ve met a man called John Wayne. She laughs very loudly.

      ‘Does he ride well?’

      ‘Er, no. He has a girlfriend. And, Karen, I have a boyfriend.’

      Door slams. Boyfriend Paul is two years younger than me. Very sensible. Good with money. Attractive. Charming. Everyone likes him. Everyone thinks he is sensible, good with money. Including me. Been going out with him for five years. Not all good, but know I love him, been through a lot with him, and he is a ‘good catch’. Everyone likes him. Except Karen, who thinks he is too straight for me and has something missing and has a dark side. Her most affectionate nickname for him is Flatliner.

      ‘You need someone with some va-va-voom, Sarah. He’s a non-starter. He’s insecure and controlling. And a potential bully. And you don’t want that.’

      My friends also don’t like him much. They thought he was OK in the early years but as he did better at work gradually became an arrogant, boorish, self-serving prat. But I don’t see much of them these days.

      My insecure, sensible control-freak Flatliner lives in a two-up, two-down in Chelmsford. I have a two-bedroom flat in an old Victorian house in Brentwood. Largest commuter town in the country. Full of back-office suits wanting to be front-office Ferrari-drivers. I have a flatmate who pays her rent on time and is fun as well as funny and sensitive and has a boyfriend who doesn’t understand her and lives up the road and is in awe of her and threatened by her and treats her badly. And I have a job at the railways as Situation Manager (I recover situations, or cover over situations—whatever is more pertinent to the issue).During the six months I’ve been there, the company has sponsored me to go on three positive thinking, power and assertiveness training courses in wonderful country hotels in the Lake District and New Forest. And I still can’t say no.

      So life is sweet. Ish. Boring but sweet. Until I meet John Wayne.

      3rd September

      I disagree with Karen. My boyfriend is not boring. I met him at his twenty-first birthday party. He was going out with someone called Gillian. I was going out with someone called David. I thought he was cute, had a smooth dark brown voice and had the most amazing long eyelashes. He told me later he also thought I was cute but that I wouldn’t stop talking about David.

      I then met him two years later. At Liverpool Street Station. He liked my legs. He saw me from the back. He told his friend he knew me. His friend bet him fifty pounds he didn’t. He came up to me. Introduced himself and won the bet. He also got a date with me.

      The date went well. In a local pub, called the Dead Duck, beamed, mid-eighteenth-century, lighting so low you couldn’t see what you were eating or drinking. And it had an unfortunate sewer problem. Despite the stench of sulphur in the pretty beer garden outside, we managed to make each other feel good. He had lovely eyes. The sort you get lost in. An open, honest face. And a wonderful smile. No pretension or artifice other than he worked in the City in a bank and was aware he was surrounded by people who were full of both.

      He invited me back to his two-up, two-down in Chelmsford, which he’d just bought with a heavily subsidised mortgage. He asked if I wanted to see his etchings. The charm of it is that he genuinely did want me

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