Tried something a little different; looking at one of those conversations from a woman’s point of view. Women readers feel free to roast me. I’m just a man. Whose intentions are good. Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.

“Celia, he’s back again,” said Julie, from over by the window. I glanced across, with my eyebrows raised.

“Really?” I said, not knowing how to feel about that.

“I’ll call security,” she offered.

“No!” I said, perhaps a little too urgently. “I’ll sort it out.”

I didn’t want to get my company involved in my personal life.

‘Seriously? Now you don’t want your work to get involved? A little ironic, wouldn’t you say?’

The voice in my head sounded remarkably like my mother.

I ignored it. I stood up, took off the earphones blaring out some vintage Jethro Tull, and dropped them on the desk next to the keyboard.

“I won’t be long,” I said, hoping that was true. I didn’t know if I could take another disappointing conversation like the last one we’d had.

Julie moved to my side. “Who is he? If he’s some kind of stalker I can get my boyfriend to gather up some of his friends and warn him off. At least then I’d get some use out of the idle sod. He’s useless normally.”

She looked at me and then lowered one eyelid. “Apart from in the bedroom; he’s handy in there – as long as it’s vanilla flavour and only one scoop. So, not great there even, when I think about it.”

‘Not just guys who get handy in the bedroom though – is it?’

The voice in my head wouldn’t go away.

I smiled, fighting the urgency to push her down on a chair and race away.

“That’s guys for you,” I said, trying not to sound false and flat. “Thanks for the offer, but no. It’s not a stalker.

“So who is he?” she asked in a whisper. There was just the two of us working in this office, but I think she was trying to create a sense of intimacy so I would let on all the juicy details. I didn’t want to, but had to give her something. Otherwise she’d be on my case non-stop.

“It’s my ex,” I said, hoping it would be enough, but knowing that she would demand more. Nicely, of course. She’d be pleasant, but still demanding.

Her expression showed sympathy and understanding. “Ex-boyfriends are the pits. If it’s not them phoning to try and get me to put out just one more time for them, it’s me phoning them when I’m really pissed to cry about not being with them. They’re the absolute pits! There should be a law that says when you split up, your ex has to move at least 50 miles away from you.”

“My ex went ten thousand miles away,” I remarked.

‘Honesty? That’s new.’

The voice could get really nasty at times.

To show how honest I could be, I continued, “And he’s actually my ex-husband. He went to live in South Africa for a while; assistant manager on some mine there.”

She stared at me for a moment, and I actually saw her pupils dilate with interest. Chatham and Sons was a good place to work; it paid well, and the benefits were good, but it was pretty boring - and I had just opened up a whole new well of gossip material. Ah well, I’d always known I couldn’t remain completely anonymous within the company. I’d actually thought that someone within HR would see my file and be the first to drop that juicy little morsel into the talking pot at some stage. My saying it just beat them to the punch.

“I didn’t know you’d been married,” she said, managing to turn a statement into a question just with her tone of voice.

“Yeah, three years.”

“That’s not a long time,” she remarked, continuing my interrogation. I knew what she was doing – of course I did. I’m a woman. We all learned that black art at our mother’s knee.

‘Are you going to be honest? Are you actually going to stay with that policy? Because that would be different. Ooh, I can’t wait! I never thought you would pull that one.’

“No, we parted ways.”

‘Oh come on. You’re divorced. So of course you parted ways – you’re dissembling. How many couples do you know who stay together after they’re divorced? Until they’re officially split apart, sure – but afterwards? I knew you couldn’t stay honest.’

“It didn’t end well,” I added after a moment.

Julie’s eyes cleared a little – she knew the girl code. “I get it; guys and their dicks. It’s always the same. They get the scent of some loose pussy and they’re in there like a dog needing to bury a bone. They just keep digging away.”

She giggled and nudged me. “See what I did there? Burying their bone.”

“Yeah, I got it,” I said sadly. Then, after the silence grew stultifying, continued, “There was cheating. But it wasn’t him.”

‘Wow! Owning up to your own mistakes! There’s a first. Alert the press! Clear the front page!’

“Oh,” said Julie. “Right. Well, most people make mistakes sooner or later. Unless your ex wasn’t doing what he was supposed to, of course? Then it’s kinda understandable.”

The girl code deciphered that as, ‘yeah, if your ex was a dead-weight in the bedroom, then you had every right to look for some strange dick. We all got needs!’

“No, he did everything he was supposed to. He looked after me like I was made of spun glass, at home and everywhere else. Honestly? He was very good in the bedroom - and in the kitchen. He cooks like a chef.”

‘But you wanted more!”

The voice sounded a little fainter.

“But I wanted more.” I couldn’t help but agree with the voice. I had wanted more. More than Mickey was prepared to allow me, to give me. But it was my right!

Julie interpreted that through the girl code and nodded. “Wouldn’t go down on you, huh? I get it. You’d think sucking their dicks would clue them in as to some need for fair reciprocity. But no – they never get it! Morons, every one of them. My current boyfriend is a complete loser when it comes to my needs, and I’ve decided I’m dumping him as soon as I get home.”

I couldn’t help laughing at the irony of that, although tears threatened. “God no. Mickey is brilliant at that and always more than happy to reciprocate. He always took his time and made sure I got more than I needed. Often I would have to force him off.”

“Oh, really?”

There was a long pause as we both thought of that – her imagining and me remembering.

“So...” she prompted.

‘Now comes the good bit, If you don’t just fall back into your old ways, as I fully expect you will.”

I decided to gamble on Julie’s goodwill. She had implicitly made herself my confidant, so I would hopefully be able to impress on her the need not to spread every detail.

“You know...” I started. “You know that feeling you get sometimes, when you meet a guy, I mean. Sometimes you get to feeling that you want to be thrown over a shoulder and just carried off and fucked - hard. Like he doesn’t give a shit about how good it feels for you, it’s all about him. So he just ploughs your furrow. I met that someone.”

She stared at me.

“I was in a bar; a guy came up and asked me to dance. Mickey said he didn’t mind if I wanted to, so I got up ... and the next ten minutes were amazing.”

“He could really dance, huh?”

“No, it wasn’t the dancing. Mickey was the dancer in our family. This was more a shuffle while he pressed himself against me.”

‘The truth! Tell the whole truth!”

It was an order.

“Well, while he pressed his hard-on up against me.” I swallowed. There seemed to be a lump in my throat.

“That big?”

“No, not really. No bigger than I was used to, or any other I’ve had. It was just, he didn’t ask, he just took. It was as if what I wanted had no bearing on what we were doing.”

Julie showed understanding. “I bet Mickey had a fit and laid into you. Been there, got the bruises.”

“No, of course not. He was royally pissed off and laid down the letter of the law after he dragged me away from Neanderthal man. But he would never hurt me. He just reminded me that while I had free choice, every action has a consequence.”

“So what was the consequence for you dry-humping Neanderthal man?”

“I wasn’t ... To be honest, I guess I was doing that with him. Things got very frosty around the house for a few days, and Mickey even lost his temper badly and threw my clothes out into the garden at one stage. But then he helped me bring them back and even helped me wash them.”

“He does laundry?”

“Not every time! I always did nearly half the washing in our house. Even then he slept in the spare room. I had to go all out to show him how sorry I was for slutting around on the dance floor, as he put it.”

“But... ?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, but ... you weren’t really sorry,” she said. “Let’s face it, no one gets divorced for strumming one off against a guy’s leg while you’re dancing, no matter how pissed off your man might be. So there must have been more.”

“I’d given the guy my work number.”

“You gave him Chatham and Sons’ number?”

“No, my previous company. I know how utterly dumb it was, but I wasn’t thinking at the time.”

“Not with your brain, that’s for sure,” Julie said, not sounding as friendly as she had been.

‘Thinking with your cunt!”

The voice in my head was definitely fainter now, as if it was speeding away. I was glad. I hated that voice.

“Neanderthal man...” I continued. I had to call him that – I never did get his name. “Neanderthal man somehow traced my work number to a name and was waiting outside one afternoon when I left work. He grabbed me, told me he had cooked it on the dance floor and was now all ready to eat it. He was so dominant, and I felt like I was dazed. He was pressing me up against him again, and so I just followed him to his car and let him drive me to a hotel. I’m not sure I said a single word.”