The Seven Steps to Closure by Donna Joy Usher Page B

sort of response. I glanced at the others. They all shook their heads.
    ‘Nah, sorry love we missed it. You’re going to have to say it slowly.’
    She put her hands over her face and said through clenched teeth, ‘It’s the cleaner at work.’
    Collective gasps followed this outburst. Natalie having sex with a cleaner? Stylish composed Natalie, whose life was perfectly ordered? Natalie whose only interest was getting a partnership? Natalie who hadn’t even looked sideways at a man for…… well forever?
    I giggled nervously. ‘Seriously? The cleaner?’
    ‘You’ve been doing the wild thing….. with the cleaner?’ asked Dinah bewildered.
    Elaine, frozen in shock, suddenly burst into gut-wrenching, convulsive laughter. Everyone in the restaurant turned to look at her while she doubled over and slapped the table. ‘Ahh God, this is too good.’ She wiped the tears out of her eyes. ‘So has he been hoovering your rug?’
    She collapsed again and Dinah and I started to laugh.
    ‘I hope he gets into all the cracks and hard to reach places,’ Dinah said, tears coursing down her face.
    ‘Yeah,’ I said giggling. ‘Is he good with his feather duster?’
    ‘Right,’ said Nat, ‘all of you shut up or I won’t tell you anything.’ She waited till we stopped laughing – like a teacher with some wayward students. Every time we had it under control one of us would catch the others eyes and start giggling again. Finally she began her tale.
    ‘Well he’s been cleaning there for about three months. He’s very thorough,’ she said enthusiastically, stopping with an annoyed look on her face when we all burst out laughing again.
    ‘Sorry, sorry, please go on. I promise we’ll behave.’ Elaine was the first to regain her composure.
    ‘It was a couple of months ago that I met him…not that met is really the right word.’
    I noticed the ladies at the table next to us had gone quiet and were leaning towards us like a pack of dogs towards a tasty bone.
    ‘I was working late trying to get some work for the Velucci family up to date. It must have been about 10 o’clock, and all I could hear was the vacuum cleaner working its way closer and closer to my office. The more I tried to ignore it the more uptight and angry I got.’ She paused and we all nodded encouragingly at her while she took a deep breath. ‘So when it got to the corridor outside my office I decided to ask them to move to a different area until I had gone. The place is enormous, it’s not like they had to clean right there right then. I got as far as the doorway when I saw him.’ She paused and shivered.
    ‘What does he look like?’ the woman at the table next to us asked.
    ‘About six foot tall with dark hair, but really thick hair – sort of crumpled looking.’
    ‘Like he’d just gotten out of bed?’
    ‘That’s it, like he’s just gotten out of bed.’ She sighed.
    ‘I love that look,’ a lady at another table whispered to her friend.
    ‘And he has the most beautiful, buttery brown eyes. When he looked at me it was like….,’ she paused to consider.
    ‘Like he was looking into you, into your soul?’ the waiter asked helpfully.
    ‘Just like he was looking into my soul,’ confirmed Natalie, totally unaware of the crowd she was drawing.
    ‘It was like he possessed me as soon as his eyes met mine. I got such a shock that I stumbled and had to hold onto the door frame for support. And then he was there, his arms around me, supporting me. I had goose bumps all over my body, and I mean ALL over my body.’ She paused.
    ‘Go on,’ said the chef, leaning over the kitchen bench to hear.
    ‘Well then he said “Are you all right?”’ she mimicked a low husky South American accent. ‘At the sound of it my knees went totally out from underneath me and he picked me up and carried me to my desk. “Have you eaten lately?” he asked me, “Maybe your blood sugars are down.” Which I thought was pretty funny coming from a cleaner. But I