Never in her most arousing of dreams did Maureen imagine she would bag the man who could so easily have been the leading man in the piles of romantic fiction which, for so long during her life as a single thirty something, had kept a small flame burning inside her lonely heart.
In those days, working as a lowly typist in the accounts section of a stuffy bank in the City, she followed the dress code to the letter, and the clothes rack in her modest bedsit in
a respectable postcode south of the river, was full of freshly laundered cream blouses and black pencil skirts that ended just above the knee.
Of party outfits there were few; just a floaty summer dress with a gay floral pattern which she had to admit showed off her slim arms and athletic legs to rather flattering effect. Alas, Maureen had few opportunities to meet, let alone catch the eye, of the type of well-heeled gentleman with a touch of dash and maybe even, a whiff of danger, who she so achingly yearned would step off the page and come into her life.
But as another paperback was placed on the pile beside her bed and she flicked the switch on her bedside lamp, she sank into a sleep full of melancholy premonitions of a lonely future in which she may never feel the warmth of a man beside her in bed, their bodies touching, the feel of his hands, and more, on her slim pale body.
Work was her life in those days. Though outwardly demure and consensual, she learned quickly and had a lively grasp of what it took to get ahead, away from the banal chatter and gossip of the other girls in accounts.
She wouldn't partake of such inane banter, but that didn't mean she wasn't listening, in between inputting figures and bashing the keys on her electric Olympia.
