One spring morning last year, I’d just got into work when my boss called me into his office. I’d been at the same marketing agency for 20 years, having worked my way up from receptionist to account management, and had a good rapport with him.
So imagine my surprise to be greeted not only by a peculiarly awkward expression on his face but a member of the HR team, too.
‘A complaint has been made against you for sexually harassing a male employee of this company,’ he said solemnly.
‘What, me?’ I stuttered, absolutely astonished. ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’
A 55-year-old married mum of four, I was the breadwinner while my husband stayed at home to raise our children. We were totally reliant on my salary.
There’s no way I would jeopardise my career – or marriage – for an office affair. Or indeed make any kind of move on a colleague. Yes, I can be a little flirtatious at times but that’s all part of the office dynamic. A tight-knit team of 40 or so, mainly men, there had always been a cosy familiarity and it was the norm for us all to indulge in harmless office banter.
Besides, though I took care of my appearance – I still dye my hair and have the odd tweakment – I knew perfectly well my days of attracting wolf whistles were long gone. And I was fine with that.
But apparently I had been sending inappropriate messages of an increasingly intimate nature to another employee, who felt under pressure to respond similarly.
It took me a good five minutes of utter horror and confusion before the penny dropped. Sure enough, it was Jamie, 35, who my boss had asked me to mentor after he’d joined the company the year before.
I must admit I burst out laughing at the mention of his name. It was utterly ludicrous!
Looking down at his desk and shuffling some papers, my boss muttered, ‘Jules, we need to be seen to take this seriously.’
He told me he was merely following correct legal procedures and that I would be able to put my side of the story across, too.
As a senior member of staff, when Jamie was hired I was asked to show him the ropes. I won’t deny it was a bit of an ego boost having someone hanging on my every word and deferring to me.
It helped that he was easy on the eye, too. Tall, clearly no stranger to the gym, with dark shoulder-length hair, I joked that his wife was ‘a lucky woman!’ to some of the girls.
In hindsight, I do realise that if the sexes were reversed and a man had said that to a female colleague 20 years his junior, it could have seemed like predatory behaviour. But nuance is everything and I genuinely don’t believe I’d crossed a line.
There was one occasion when he’d been there for a month when I asked where the ‘office hottie’ was and Jamie walked in and blushed.
Having worked in a male-dominated environment for so long, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had my bum patted or a colleague has complimented me on my ‘magnificent rack’. I considered it harmless fun and used to laugh.
Over the years, I’ve complimented one colleague on his two-stone weight loss and admired a female PA’s new breast augmentation – she even let me have a feel! Such comments and actions felt normal in the office; if anything the banter only served to bond us as a team.
I assumed Jamie would take my comments in the same spirit – particularly being a young man.
As nice as it was to be around someone as handsome as him – I’d been married to my husband for 30 years and he was balding with a bit of a paunch – I clearly wasn’t making a play for him.
Yes, I started taking more time with my make-up in the morning, lost half a stone over three months and found myself looking forward to going to work, but not for one moment did I ever entertain anything happening between us. I knew Jamie wasn’t interested in me like that… well, at the start, anyway. And I would never betray my husband and children.
During his first month, Jamie and I would have lunch together every day. A casual informality developed between us – we knew how the other one took their morning coffee, what we liked to eat for lunch.
The first exchange that pushed the boundaries came when I returned from our family holiday to Greece. That morning I was sitting at the desk in my office when Jamie messaged: ‘You look good in that skirt today!’ Followed by several flame emojis. I replied with a heart emoji and a thank you, with lots of exclamation marks and was on an absolute high for the rest of the day.
It didn’t occur to me that it might be inappropriate for him to comment on my appearance.
By then Jamie was now overseeing his own clients but would still message me for advice and we tended to have lunch together on Fridays. He talked about having got married the previous year and we discovered a shared interest in spirituality, reiki and Buddhism.
One Friday evening, I was at home alone with my husband (the children were out) when I received a late message from Jamie asking what I was watching. I told him The White Lotus and we discussed the plot. Then out of the blue, he sent the most explosive message yet: ‘Maybe in another lifetime we could be together.’
Heart racing, I replied with a dozen heart emojis. I knew this was dangerous territory, but in the heat of the moment I felt so empowered. It was such a compliment.
It had been a long time since any man had expressed any sort of desire for me. And yes that included my husband; like many middle-aged couples, our sex life was on the wane.
I’ll admit the last thing on my mind was my husband – or any kind of guilt. This was about me and a member of the opposite sex finding me attractive. As long as I didn’t act on it, it was harmless.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the message all weekend. I even took a screenshot of it and saved it on my personal laptop in case I ever needed to delete such racy exchanges, though I knew my husband couldn’t be less interested in the messages on my phone.
Until then I’d found Jamie attractive but I never considered him to be in my league. In any case we were both married. But was this his way of letting me know he found me attractive? If this was a line crossed, he was the one who had crossed it, surely.
I realise that some may question whether my ego led me astray at this point. Did the fact I believed my head-turning days were over mean the attentions of a strapping young man were all the more flattering? Did it make me more willing to take risks?
The next day, I wore my favourite red, figure-hugging dress. When he walked in, I messaged him saying ‘Good morning, superstar’ and he replied with a heart against my message and ‘Looking gorge today!’ It’s fair to say things had switched up a gear. We fell into the habit of flirty, cheeky, cheery messages. I found myself checking my phone obsessively throughout the day.
At times during work meetings, I’d find myself wondering if he desired me. And on warm days when his sleeves were rolled up, I gazed at his forearms, wondering what it would be like to brush my fingers along his lean and muscly skin.
I admit I did fantasise about how I’d respond if he ever made a move on me. Oh, the dilemma. I’d tell myself I’d gently turn him down, but in the heat of the moment would I really?
At networking dos or Friday drinks, we would gravitate towards one another, especially after a couple of glasses of wine.
A couple of the girls from the office teased me about the two of us being joined at the hip, but I assumed they were just joking.
Yes, we flirted but we’d never so much as touched each other.
I did have steamy dreams about kissing Jamie and undressing in front of him but it was harmless fantasy. There is no way on earth I’d have propositioned him in real life.
That year at our Christmas work dinner, we were seated next to one another. A gorgeous picture taken of us was put on our work socials. Jamie’s arm was draped casually around the back of my chair and I was leaning in towards him.
I was taken by surprise by how good we looked together; if you didn’t know us, you could have mistaken us for a couple.
But when we returned to work in January, the messages from Jamie suddenly stopped. So did the conversations at work. I was perplexed and whenever I saw Jamie in the corridor, I’d pull him to one side and ask: ‘Are we still friends?’ He’d irritatingly reply: ‘We’re cool, it’s fine.’ But I very much got the sense that it wasn’t fine.
I started to wonder if his wife had seen the picture from the Christmas party. I later discovered this was indeed the case. And I suspect he felt compelled to complain about me to demonstrate to her that he was the innocent party.
I can’t see any other motive. Unless his plan was to extract a sexual harassment payout from the company? Is that what he’d been plotting all along? Perhaps he didn’t fancy me at all.
As for the investigation, I had kept every single WhatsApp message exchanged between us. There were hundreds! Jamie might have subsequently deleted his messages in the thread but I had taken screen shots of the most incriminating.
Even though it was embarrassing to hand them over, I’m so glad I had them. Thankfully my boss didn’t read them, only HR. I was requested to provide a written statement of my side of the story, too.
Of course the news spread like wildfire through the office. I felt a mixture of fury and shame. No one said anything to my face and I was told to stay well away from Jamie; I couldn’t confront him because I wasn’t allowed to speak to him during the investigation.
On one occasion, we found ourselves walking towards each other down the corridor. When he saw me he did a sharp 360 degree turn in the opposite direction. I ran into the toilets and burst into tears.I felt so betrayed. He’d made such a fool of me and I hadn’t seen it coming.
Of course I had to tell my husband. He was appalled on my behalf and unbelievably cross with Jamie, which made me feel even worse. I glossed over the flirty messages and the idle fantasies. Even so he told me I had no one to blame but myself and I should stop being so generous with younger employees.
Rational me agreed with him, but the teenage girl me was quietly devastated, because I genuinely thought Jamie liked me.
Fortunately when HR went through my telephone records and requested Jamie’s, they decided there was no case to answer. But my boss did pull me aside and tell me I had crossed a line with a junior and he’d find it hard to defend me again.
Fortunately for me, Jamie left three months later. His replacement was thankfully female and we have got along splendidly.
I did consider making an accusation against Jamie, but in the end chose to be the bigger person. Even though I am now the one with sexual harassment mark on my employment record – a shameful stain on my hard-won career that feels completely unwarranted.
- Juliette Tewington is a pseudonym. Names have been changed.
- As told to Samantha Brick.
