It was just me and Jo at Deborah’s office today, and we met her and the company’s finance director. They want us to look at everything their existing accountants are doing and check that it’s legal and also the best thing for their company, and to suggest any other ways they could structure it to avoid having to pay so much in customs duties. It’s quite a bit of work.

And when I say “us” I can boast that she actually said “me”, Kate, by name. It made me feel so good. She said that when she met me at the office party last year and I talked about all of this she didn’t believe I really knew it, because the company had no track record of this kind of work, but having seen the press releases since she realised she underestimated me and didn’t want to make that mistake twice so she thought she’d get in before I was in so much demand she couldn’t afford me.

Also, she’s such a fox! I forgot just how luscious her voice is. She could seduce a gay man I’m sure of it. And I’m sure she knows exactly who I was from the party at Mel’s, when all I was wearing was a mask, because she said that the office party was the second time we met, but really it was the first time she met me as Kate. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to care, and I get the feeling that anything that adds some fun to her life is fair game. It’s amazing that she’s still so sexy when she’s recently turned fifty. (I looked it up as part of my research.)

Jo and I were on such a high after that we went to the nearest bar and worked our way through a bottle of wine, and then some tapas, and, of course, I missed Pilates, but I didn’t care.

We talked about work, of course, and now we have even more to do before we see Deborah again next week, because despite all of that it’s still not certain how much work we’ll get out of it because we’re just being paid for an initial consultation, so that better be good enough to lead to more.

Well, after that we talk relationships, and how Jo had been dumped, again, by somebody who didn’t know a good thing when he saw it. She said she was thinking maybe she should just be a spinster, now she was in her forties, and give up on men altogether. She said that all the women in her life were so much more reliable, like we didn’t really know each other but she appreciated how much I listened to her complaining.

Anyway, I said that it was funny she should mention it, because I said I hadn’t given up on men altogether, but I’d recently had a lot more fun with women. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. So I told her a bit about Mark and Ana, and how now I’ve slept with both of them, and sometimes at the same time, but that I might have to end things with them as I really liked this girl called Elise, but she might be moving back to France, and Jo said she now wished she had my life. I said she should try it, being with a woman, because at least you know they’re not just thinking about themselves.

I could see the cogs working in her head but she said she wasn’t sure if she could change her ways at her age. I joked that maybe her and Deborah would get along, and she did have to admit that the older woman did pretty much ooze sex appeal, and it can’t just be that voice of hers. I said “I’d do her”, like I was a guy on a building site, and Jo fell about laughing.

But before she left she said more seriously that we’d have to have a date night on Saturday, except it would be the afternoon and not the night, and not so much a date as work to prepare me for next Wednesday when I’m supposed to be going back to meet Deborah – but this time alone!

Well, I wanted life to move along, and it most certainly is.