The Affair

by Danielle Steel

  Chapter 2

  Nicolas came home for dinner on Friday night, as he still did several times a week, to be with his children and see his wife. He didn’t always spend the night, and slipped away after the girls were asleep so they didn’t know that he had left. They thought he had left for work early the next morning. He still spent some nights at home, though not many, because he wanted to keep up appearances for his daughters as much as possible. And he wanted to see Nadia too. Absurdly, he didn’t want to lose her, despite what he was doing and the way he was behaving. He was loving and kind to Nadia and the girls when he came home, which somehow made the situation even more painful for Nadia.

  She was willing to cooperate for the girls’ sake, at least for a while. He had always been a devoted father and adored his daughters. He had been a good husband too, with the one brief exception eight years before, and nothing untoward since. He and Nadia had a solid, loving relationship, or so she thought, until very recently, when she discovered his affair with Pascale Solon.

  Since he’d been on location for part of the shooting of the fateful film that had destroyed their marriage, she had been unaware of his spending his off hours, or nights, with Pascale. He had been managing it carefully once they got back to Paris. Nadia had suspected nothing. It had all exploded at the Cannes Film Festival, when he had been openly amorous with Pascale. He told Nadia it was as though he had forgotten who he was for those few days, and the press jumped on it immediately. He confessed everything to Nadia after Pascale told him, while they were there, that she was having his baby. He had lost his mind for a few days. For months before that, he had been excited, and terrified to be discovered. He thought he was in love with her and said he was flattered that a girl so young and beautiful would want him. He had thought it was a passionate interlude that would only last while they were making the movie, and Nadia would never know. He never wanted to hurt her and told her he had had no intention of ever doing anything like it again, with Pascale or anyone else, and he didn’t want to risk his marriage. He had wanted to end the affair when the filming of the movie ended.

  He knew that Pascale had a habit of becoming involved with whomever she was working with, which was not unusual among actors and producers or directors. And he assumed she would want to end it too. There was an otherworldly kind of atmosphere on a movie set, and then you came back to earth and went back to your own life. He had tried to do that with Pascale, and had counted on Nadia never finding out, and leaving the affair behind him on the movie set. And then Pascale had begged him to see her again, once they got home to Paris. He had, and discovered that their physical passion became addictive. He knew he had to stop, and wanted to, but discovered he couldn’t. She wouldn’t let him. Pascale appeared so lost and vulnerable, suddenly cast into the pressure and demands of major stardom, it made him want to protect and take care of her, just until she got on her feet.

  She had been so overwhelmed and terrified at the Cannes Festival, it had been endearing, and he believed he was in love with her. Then she told him about the baby, and he realized that they had created a new life together, which touched him profoundly, as it had when he and Nadia first conceived their babies. It made his bond to Pascale suddenly real. It was almost as though he forgot he had another life, and a wife and children. All he could think of was this delicate, gentle young woman, and the child that would be theirs forever. Her beauty wasn’t what drew him to her. He thought Nadia just as beautiful, which he told her, though she didn’t believe him. But the new life growing inside Pascale now had made him suddenly willing to risk everything so he could be with her and protect her, at least until the baby came.

  And then after the Festival, he woke up when he got home. Within days, he knew the terrible mistake he had made having the affair, letting it show in Cannes, admitting to the affair publicly, and telling Pascale that he loved her when she told him about the baby. It was almost like being in a movie, only it was real. Now everything and everyone he loved was on the line. He was faced with the consequences of his actions. He told Nadia honestly everything that had happened, even that the affair had gone on for months, all during the filming of the movie. Hearing it was like a dagger being plunged into Nadia’s heart, particularly for a woman who was so honest and pure and faithful. Her quiet dignity as she listened made it even worse.

  In the beginning, he hadn’t faced what his passion and elation could cost him later, and now he was trying to hold the torn shreds of his marriage together, and not lose Nadia, while trying to work things out with Pascale in some reasonable way. He had a responsibility to her too now, which he didn’t want to shirk. He had never tried to dodge his obligations, and never wanted to fall short with the people he loved and who counted on him. Even now, he wanted to continue to be a husband to Nadia, but she said she just couldn’t do that, not after being publicly humiliated for the past month and especially now that he was having a baby with another woman. His clandestine indiscretion while making the movie would have repercussions for the rest of their lives, whatever they did. Nadia had told him that Pascale’s pregnancy was the final blow to their marriage. It devastated him to hear it, and know it was true. He was going to lose everyone and everything he loved most. And he knew he deserved it.

  He had told Nadia that Pascale wasn’t asking to marry him. She felt she was much too young for marriage, but absurdly, not for a child. She said she had wanted a baby for the past two years, and she couldn’t think of a better father than Nicolas, and she fully expected their affair to peter out eventually. She didn’t expect or even want a long-term future with him, and he had risked his family and marriage for her and a moment of passion. He had allowed himself to be lulled into not worrying about her getting pregnant and gotten careless. Now, until after the baby was born and the affair ended naturally, Pascale wanted him to leave Nadia and live with her. At twenty-two, and given her casual, unorthodox, modern philosophies about life, she wasn’t a long-term prospect for him, and he wondered if she understood the forever responsibility of having a child. It wouldn’t be a baby she could cuddle forever like a doll, it would be a child, a person, with illnesses and problems, needs. It would have to have an education, and would become a troublesome teenager one day. She was only thinking of the present moment, and he had been unable to convince her what the future would look like. She was in no way prepared for what she had undertaken, and she assumed that he would be the responsible party, while she would be there to have fun with the baby, which he knew wasn’t how it worked.

  She had grown up haphazardly herself. She had never known her father, or even who he was, had a mother who came and went after having her at sixteen, and a grandmother who had raised her and died when Pascale was seventeen. She’d been on her own ever since. And she assumed that any child would survive since she had.

  Nicolas was willing to hold up his end with the baby since he had conceived the child with her, and he loved her to some degree, and Pascale insisted on having it. But he knew he would never love Pascale as he did Nadia. Pascale was ephemeral. Most of her charm and appeal were in how fey and childlike she was, but he couldn’t imagine her taking on the role of mother. Pascale didn’t pretend that she was going to love and stay with him forever. She had spoken to her mother, who had agreed to raise the child, since she was older now, and that way Pascale would be free to pursue her career and her life, meet other men, have other children, and do whatever she wanted. Pascale was a free spirit.

  So he had thrown away his future and a solid life and marriage for something that glittered for an instant in the sunlight and blinded him briefly. And now he had to pick up the pieces of his shattered life every day. He couldn’t think about writing right now, couldn’t concentrate, and although he realized that his current anguish might make a good book one day, he didn’t want it to be a modern-day tragedy. He wasn’t ready to end the affair with Pascale, it wouldn’t be right with her pregnant, but more than any
thing, he didn’t want to lose Nadia and their marriage. So he was running between the two women, trying to placate both, begging Nadia’s forgiveness, so she wouldn’t give up on him before he had time to clean up his mess. He thought that he’d be able to ease out of the relationship with Pascale sometime after the baby was born, if Nadia didn’t divorce him first. And whatever Nadia did, he knew the affair with Pascale wouldn’t last, but the baby would.

  Pascale wanted him around to play and sleep with, until they got tired of each other, which she fully expected to happen sooner or later. As she put it, you don’t choose a partner for life at twenty-two. But he had at twenty-six, when he’d met Nadia, and it had worked wonderfully for sixteen years, eleven of them married, until he ruined everything with the affair with Pascale. He was an interlude for Pascale, a chapter. Nadia was his life. He told her he realized that more than ever now. But extricating himself from Pascale wasn’t easy. She fully expected his constant presence now, at least until the baby came.

  He and Nadia talked about it again on Friday night, after she put the girls to bed. Dinner had been strained, although Nadia was determined to put a good face on for the girls for as long as she could bear it, but it was becoming harder each day, knowing that Nicolas was still with Pascale, at least some of the time. She had inherited her mother’s stiff-upper-lip genes, never airing problems in the presence of others. Sylvie had asked her recently why she cried so much and was in such a bad mood, and she had said that some of her decorating clients were giving her a hard time. Sylvie had asked her then if she and Papa had had an argument. Nadia had smiled through her tears and denied it, and made an extra effort to seem cheerful and pleasant when Nicolas came home for dinner that night.

  Nicolas appreciated what she was doing, and knew full well that another woman would have thrown all his belongings out on the street, although they both knew that many French women put up with their husbands having affairs and mistresses. It was part of the culture, even for some people their age. And many wives in France weren’t faithful either. After eleven years of marriage, many of the men they knew cheated on their wives regularly, and some of the women did the same. It wasn’t how either Nadia or Nicolas wanted to live, and wasn’t their vision of marriage. After his one earlier slip, Nadia thought that that was over for him, which made this all the worse now. This had blindsided her completely. She thought they were happy and settled forever, and now their whole life had blown up in their faces.

  Nadia was having a hard time getting through it, and he felt terrible about that too. She looked tired and strained, had dark circles under her eyes, and had lost at least ten pounds, which she couldn’t afford. She looked sick. She was still working as hard as ever and taking care of their daughters admirably.

  “I’ll spend this weekend at home. We’ll do something together,” he promised with a mournful look. Guilt was his constant companion now, whichever woman he was with.

  “You can’t,” she said in a small sad voice. She knew she should be angrier at him, and at times she was, but most of the time, she was desperately hurt. Anger hadn’t had time to set in. At first she had been shocked and numb, and now she felt crushed by what he had done, living with it every day, as he went back and forth between the two women like a metronome.

  “Why can’t I?” He looked panicked. So far Nadia hadn’t forbidden him to come home or spend the night, although she had threatened to, but she did make him sleep in their guest room now when he stayed, and warned him not to let the girls see it. She refused to share a room with him, and they had had no sexual contact since she learned of the affair after the Film Festival. And Nicolas wisely didn’t try to approach her.

  “My mother is coming for the weekend. She’s arriving early tomorrow morning,” she said simply. He groaned.

  “Oh Christ. Why now?”

  “Why do you think?” Nadia gave him a dark look and he nodded.

  “She knows, of course,” he said glumly, as they sat at the kitchen table.

  “Obviously. The whole Western Hemisphere knows. It’s been in every tabloid in the world and on the internet. There are dozens of pictures of you with Pascale. We’re just lucky no one has told the girls yet.” But sooner or later, it would happen. His books were sold and successful in translation in many languages and countries around the world. And Pascale had already become famous with her previous film, which was why they had hired her for his latest one. So they were fodder for gossip around the world.

  “Did you tell your mother?” he asked her.

  “I didn’t have to. She heard it in an editorial meeting, when they wanted to put Pascale on the cover of the September issue, along with an interview with you.”

  “I told you, Nadia, I won’t give any interviews. I know I started this horrible mess, but I don’t want to make it any worse than it is.” It was too late to stop the tidal wave of press, but he didn’t want to contribute to it. He was still hoping she would forgive him one day. But he also knew that although Nadia had lived in France for half her life, and in many ways had become very French, at the root of it, she was American and so were her sisters, and the four women were extremely close. He felt sure they must be trying to convince her to divorce him. He couldn’t really blame them, given how it looked, but he was still hoping to stem the tides of disaster, although that didn’t look promising at the moment.

  Nadia had retreated into her shell since the announcement of Pascale’s pregnancy, and was saying very little to him about her plans. They were living in a tenuous status quo at the moment, and he doubted it would hold for long. Just long enough, he hoped, for Pascale to have the baby, and for him to make some kind of arrangement or agreement with her, then return to the fold with his wife and daughters before their life burned to the ground. He knew it was a race against time as to how long Nadia would put up with the misery he was causing her. He was fully prepared to try to make it up to her for the rest of his life, but he didn’t know if she would let him, or if the damage was reparable for her. She wasn’t letting him near her, and avoided him when he came to the house, except when their daughters were in the room. Then she pretended to be friendly with him, although not affectionate, which they had always been before. Nadia was a warm, kind, gentle woman, and their relationship had been very close. He wondered now if it ever would be again, no matter what he did to make amends. She was a forgiving person, but he knew he was asking for the extreme. She was living with personal pain and public embarrassment of the worst sort for any woman, her husband openly involved with another woman and having a child with her. He himself cringed when he thought about it, as sanity returned.

  Everything about their life had seemed so perfect until now. She always talked about how lucky they were to have such a good life. They lived in a beautiful apartment overlooking the Seine on the Quai Voltaire on the Left Bank, in the seventh arrondissement, with the spectacular monuments of Paris spread out before them like a movie set, and the Eiffel Tower visible from their terrace and sparkling on the hour. Nadia had decorated the apartment with her usual exquisite taste, with a combination of unusual modern pieces and family antiques Nicolas had inherited. It was a warm, comfortable home, and at the same time a showplace when they entertained. They and the children had been happy there.

  Nadia had cut herself off from everyone they knew the minute his affair with Pascale hit the papers. She didn’t want to have to defend him, or share her pain. And he was lying low too. Suddenly, after living a full life before, they were living in a vacuum, with only the paparazzi for company. They had lost so much because of him. Knowing how close they were, he was sure she was talking to her sisters for support. Her mother’s visit was the first sign of it, and he dreaded seeing her. Rose could be glacial or brutally eloquent when she felt betrayed, and she was a lioness with her cubs. She was a remarkable businesswoman and opponent, but in her private life, she was a fierce advocate for her children, and loyal to
all those she loved. She was old-fashioned and conservative in her values. He had crossed every possible line and he wasn’t looking forward to seeing her. He could guess what her reaction would be, deservedly. Pascale was in the South of France with friends for the weekend, and he had told her he wouldn’t go so he could see his children. He could still call her and say there had been a change of plans. He could catch a commuter flight to Nice at Orly late that night, since Nadia didn’t want him with her mother, and he was grateful to avoid her.

  Despite the agonies between them, Nadia and Nicolas were still a beautiful couple to look at. She was petite, with dark hair, and fair English skin that she inherited from her mother, and her mother’s blue eyes. Nadia’s were darker blue, like sapphires. She was always elegantly dressed in a quiet way that he had been proud of. She looked more French than American by now, and had always felt at home there. She had fit right in, from the moment she arrived at the Sorbonne. Her sisters were more American in their style and points of view. Nadia had always been more European, and in a way more like her Italian grandmother, who was warm and funny. Nadia didn’t have her mother’s cool, restrained English demeanor, or her sisters’ more open, outspoken American style. She was very French in her manner and way of seeing things, after living there for sixteen years. She was also a woman of dignity who kept her sorrows private, and he had exposed her to public scrutiny in the worst possible circumstances.

  In contrast, Nicolas was fair, with thick blond hair and a chiseled face. She had always loved his looks but couldn’t bear to see him now. He was taller than most French men, broad shouldered and athletic, and looked like a movie star himself. They made a striking couple and, if anything, they had gotten even more attractive in the eleven years they had been married. In a subtle, quiet, distinguished way, Nadia wasn’t obvious or showy, like Pascale, who had dazzled him at first, blinded by her beauty and overt sexiness. Nadia was beautiful too, and infinitely smarter.