THE SEX DIARIES: Henry had fancied me for decades. Now he wanted to try every position…

One thing was clear: I would never find anyone more attractive than Eliot, my 27-year-old lover, whose sleek, taut body was put together like a Rolls-Royce.

But I hated myself for being in his grip. I was as bad as those horrible middle-aged men who constantly leer over young women.

Eliot trained as a footballer before he gave it up to work in graphic design (too much pressure, he said). But sometimes he’d strut down the street and, sweeping his arms out, he’d leap over an imaginary ball.

A chasm of yearning would open up in me. I could never own this boy or keep him for myself. He was too young; he would want his own family.

Since we met two months before, we’d only had sex twice — in a hotel and at my friend’s house — because he had flatmates and I had three children and an ex-husband still living in the same house.

But in between we spent hours saying goodbye at Tube stations, kissing and pressing against each other until I thought I’d go mad with desire. I was obsessed, desperate, trapped by the strength of my yearning.

Which was why, when I was drunk at a house party in North London, I decided to have sex with someone else.

I hoped it might distil my possession into a more manageable form, such was my fear of the intensity of my feelings for Eliot.

I’d known Henry since my early 20s; he was part of a friendship group I’d had for years. He was now late-40s, like me, and separated, like me.

Henry had always found me attractive — I knew that from the way he looked at me and the compliments he gave. To Henry I was still the hot babe he’d always lusted after, not the older woman worried about her sagging neck.

It was easy to start kissing Henry as we swayed to the music pouring from the expensive sound system in the kitchen extension — too easy considering I’d never really fancied him.

Nevertheless, at the end of the party I let him grip my hand proprietorially and take me back to his.

‘I didn’t think the night would end like this,’ I said, as I stood squinting at him across his ex-marital bed. I’d had too much to drink but I was fast sobering up. ‘I did,’ Henry said. ‘I always knew.’

I didn’t like the sound of that, it was as if he’d been waiting to pounce, but still it was nice to strip down to my underwear and strut around under his admiring gaze. Brutal to categorise it so, but if Eliot was hotter than me, I was hotter than Henry, and there was a certain pleasure in that.

I was fitter than I’d ever been, having hit the gym with a vengeance since my marriage failed more than a year ago, and I was losing weight, too; my obsession with Eliot killed my appetite.

Henry pulled me onto his lap and kissed me. He had thin, purposeful lips and a shock of greying hair that I did not want to put my hands into. He was whiskery, too, and his skin felt dry, compared to Eliot’s velvet smoothness.

Pushing that thought away, I let Henry unsnap my bra. What we were doing was hot, I told myself. It had been on the cards for so long, and now we were finally doing it.

In his underwear Henry looked like an out-of-shape centaur, with very hairy legs running up to a completely bald chest. I closed my eyes. It was sexy how much Henry wanted me, I told myself. Mustn’t think about Eliot, not now, with his tight biceps and perfect sprinkling of body hair.

Now that he had his chance, Henry wanted to try every position imaginable; I wanted to get it over with.

I should have said stop, but the weight of our long friendship meant it felt easier in that moment to carry on, a decision I now regret.

Henry pulled me onto his lap and kissed me. He had thin, purposeful lips and a shock of greying hair that I did not want to put my hands into

Eschewing foreplay, I wrangled Henry into missionary and lay there waiting for him to finish. It was weird and lonely, but Henry didn’t seem to be finding it strange at all.

After his orgasm (mine didn’t even make it out of the starting gates), I ran to the bathroom and washed. I tried to normalise what had just happened by talking about his holiday plans, but things were off.

In the Uber home, I called Eliot but he didn’t pick up. I missed him. There’s no way he could have known what I was doing — would he care? It’s not like we’d said ‘I love you’ to each other yet or even defined our relationship. It was a ‘situationship’ — but I felt terrible.

Henry texted me the next day. ‘I miss kissing your beautiful lips.’

‘It was a mistake,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry. Let’s go back to being friends.’ But we weren’t really friends either, now. Sex is never nothing, even though on this occasion I wanted it to be, and that was both of our faults.

■ Annabel Bond, left, is a pseudonym. All names have been changed.