Jellyfish

"You only need to know one thing about me..." he had told her when they first met - "and that's that I'm a shark!" And he had smiled his best, toothy, shark smile at her.

He told everyone this. A few years ago, the FT had run an article about his operation and had described him as "the Shark of The City". He had bought extra copies and given them to everyone he knew.

He liked the idea of being a shark. "Never sleeping, always moving forward, eat or be eaten...". And, for a while, she had taken him at his word. He was powerful and efficient. And cold-blooded.

But, lately, she had come to see him as a different animal. A shapeless passive creature largely formed of the world that he swam, or rather, drifted aimlessly through. And with the unpleasant habit of stinging people who had done nothing worse than to swim in his vicinity.

He was a jellyfish.