We Planned Sexy Roleplay. I Brought a Cape. He Brought a Briefcase.

Ben arrived at the hotel bar looking as if he could buy the building. Navy suit, good shoes, small leather briefcase.

I was wearing a velvet cape.

We stared at each other. Eight years married, both forty-six, and somehow this was our first serious disagreement about what a mysterious stranger ought to wear.

"Hello," he said.

"Mortal."

I'd practised that word. I wasn't wasting it.

We'd agreed on strangers, not which strangers

For our anniversary, we'd decided to meet as people who wanted each other and had never met. We'd talked about what we liked and what we didn't, and agreed we could drop the act at any time. What we hadn't discussed was the bloody story. My message had said: "Somewhere elegant. You're a mysterious stranger with a proposition."

I'd imagined a wealthy visitor from another century. Ben had imagined a businessman in town for one night.

"What did you think the proposition was?" I asked.

"A drink. Then upstairs, for me to bend you over the desk."

"Mine involved an inheritance."

He looked relieved. "So the cape isn't because someone died?"

"My fictional husband, actually."

"I'm trying not to take that personally."

The props had got out of hand

Ben opened the briefcase. Inside were a notebook and his best pen.

"You brought stationery to look sexy?"

"You brought half a theatre curtain."

Fair. I admitted I'd invented three relatives and a disputed estate. Under the cape, I had a dark dress he was starting to look at with far more interest than my family history. He loosened his tie, and that didn't help my concentration at all. I've seen that man take out the bins, unblock a sink and cry at a dog movie, and he loosened that tie, and I felt it in my knees.

"We can just have dinner," he said.

We could. But I still really liked the idea of being picked up by the man I usually ask to bring in the washing.

"Try again?" I asked. "Less paperwork."

We kept the flirting and dropped the backstory

We chose one simple idea: two strangers staying at the hotel, both leaving tomorrow. No estate. No business deal. Ben moved to the empty chair opposite me.

"Mind if I sit?"

"Depends. Are you going to explain an investment?"

"Only if the flirting goes very badly."

He asked me what I'd like to drink. He told me I looked gorgeous, and he let his eyes stay on me long enough for me to forget the ancestors altogether. His knee found mine under the table. It wasn't complicated.

"What made you come over?" I asked.

"The cape. I thought, there's a woman who commits."

"Careful. I can put it back on."

"I was hoping you'd take a few more things off."

There. A proposition I understood perfectly.

Upstairs, he didn't turn the lights on. He'd never met me before, he said, so he'd need to find out what I liked. He took his time finding out. He asked for directions, in that voice. I told a total stranger things I've never told my husband, and my husband went very quiet and did all of them. And I'll say this for the desk: it was exactly the right height.

I did put the cape back on, in the end. Just the cape. He had no complaints about the wardrobe by then.

At checkout the next morning, Ben offered me his arm. "Your carriage awaits."

It was our dusty hatchback.

"Finally," I said. "You've caught up."

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