Real Life Stories - October 2014

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I told him not to worry, that his secret would be safe with me if he did as he was told and to hurry up and compose himself because I wanted to eat. Over dinner that evening he told me his rather sad life story: remote and undemonstrative parents, boarding schools from the age of seven, the Navy, the exclusively masculine world of engineering in which he had excelled but never felt at home. I began to feel guilty about my plans to blackmail him into becoming my meal ticket and regretted having deliberately chosen the most expensive items on the menu. I told him of my own bad experiences and he was genuinely sympathetic and said if I needed anything of a practical nature doing around my new flat he would happily do them for me, I think he was still frightened that I would expose him.