The Affair

by Colette Freedman

  Sheila shrugged. “Ask him. Did he lend it to someone? Was it in the garage?” She turned and caught her sister by both arms. “You’ve got to be so careful, so sure of your facts. You’ve already made one accusation you couldn’t back up. Some men would have walked away at that point. Now you’re about to make another accusation. Be sure. Be very sure this time.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Kathy asked shakily.

  “Yours. Always yours.” They reached the gates of the cemetery. Sheila stopped and held her sister’s hands. “I’ve been there, but from the other side. I was once stopped in the street by a woman I’d never met. She accused me of having an affair with her husband. I knew the man, I’d worked with him on a couple of occasions, but I was most certainly not having an affair with him. Turned out he hadn’t been having an affair with anyone. The couple broke up almost immediately after that. He couldn’t live with the mistrust. Don’t make that mistake, Kathy. Don’t throw away eighteen years of marriage.” Sheila hesitated before giving her parting words of warning. “Don’t find an affair if there isn’t one to find.”

  CHAPTER 14

  At least he hadn’t changed the locks.

  Kathy Walker pushed open the door of R&K Productions and stepped into the office. A blast of warm air hit her, and she frowned. He’d left the heat on over the weekend. If Maureen had been there, she would never have allowed that to happen.

  Then the alarm began to blip.

  Had he changed the code? Kathy doubted it as she shoved the door closed and pulled open the little box on the wall behind it. ENTER CODE was flashing in bright green digital letters. She entered #328—their anniversary—and the blipping stopped. When they had first moved into the offices, she had chosen #328 because Robert had managed to forget every other combination of numbers. And, so that he’d remember their anniversary.

  The office was more or less as she remembered it, though she hadn’t stood in it in nearly six months. Back when she had been more involved in the business, she had been there almost every day. There were a few new framed posters on the wall, stills from print jobs and brochures that R&K had worked on. The iMac on the receptionist’s desk looked new. Otherwise, it was the same: black leather and chrome furniture, looking a little tired now, and the same combination television and DVD in the corner. Just inside the door, a dispenser for Poland Spring water sat alongside the coffee pot. The ceramic mugs had been replaced by disposable cups. So much for being environmentally friendly. She was tempted for a moment to take a cup, but she didn’t want to leave any evidence that she’d been in the office.

  She still wasn’t sure why she had come to R&K’s offices. Because of the traffic, the drive across the city had taken over an hour, and parking was impossible. Luckily, she’d eventually found a space around the corner from the office behind Hill House on Mt. Vernon Street. Maybe it was her sister’s parting words, “Don’t find an affair if there isn’t one to find,” that had sent her here. Is that what she was doing—looking for an affair, looking for an excuse?

  An excuse to do what? Leave Robert? Throw him out?

  What was she looking for? Two days ago, when she’d first suspected that he was having an affair, she’d known instantly what she would do: She would ask him to leave. No, not ask—demand. That had seemed so clear the day before yesterday. Today, she was less certain.

  But she had to know. For her own peace of mind, if nothing else, she had to know. However, on the exhausting stop and start drive, she’d come to a decision: If she found nothing concrete in the office, then she’d forget about it. She would try to push it from her mind and would make a conscious effort to pay more attention to both Robert and the business. If her fears about an affair had forced her to do nothing else, they had made her evaluate her own behavior over the past few years. And she wasn’t thrilled with what she had discovered. Yes, it was all too easy to say that they had drifted apart. Easier still to blame him and the pressures of work. But what had she done? Or, more specifically, not done. As she had become more absorbed in the children and the new house, she’d certainly taken him and the work he was doing for granted. Reading his e-mails yesterday, discovering how hard he was struggling to keep the business afloat, she felt ashamed. When had she become so consumed with her own life that she had started to ignore his?

  Kathy stepped around behind the receptionist’s desk. It was pristine—not a paperclip out of place. The new receptionist was certainly neater than Maureen, she thought. She pulled open the drawers looking for a diary or notepad; all receptionists usually had a scratch pad where they jotted down the names from the incoming calls. Even the drawers were neatly organized; even though she’d never met the new receptionist, she wasn’t sure she liked her.

  Kathy finally found a pad under a well-thumbed version of the Oxford English Dictionary in the bottom drawer. It was a red and black spiral-bound notebook. Across the top of each page was a date and below it the times and names from all the phone calls into the office. Kathy carried the notepad to the window and tilted it to the light. She didn’t want to risk turning on any of the interior lights and drawing attention to the premises. Most of the names and numbers were unfamiliar; a few were recognizable to her from the days she’d worked the desk. She ran her finger down the calls for the previous day.

  There was no Stephanie Burroughs listed.

  Kathy fished out the sheet of paper from her purse with Stephanie’s details on it and checked the number against the incoming calls. Nothing.

  Before she returned the notepad to the bottom drawer, Kathy looked back over the week’s calls, but as far as she could see, no phone calls had come in from Burroughs on the office line.

  Maybe she was using the cell, a little malicious voice argued. Maybe she wasn’t calling at all, an even smaller inner voice countered.

  Kathy pushed open the door and stepped into Robert’s office. It was exactly as she remembered it. The only change was the scattering of Christmas cards on the liquor cabinet and a real Christmas tree in the corner, scenting the air with pine. The small tree was decorated with winking white lights that had been left on and the Waterford Crystal ornaments her parents had given them for their first Christmas together. Kathy and Robert had decided that they were too good to use at home—the children might break them—and that they would make a much better impression in the office. She ran a fingernail down one of the handblown pieces, vaguely touched that he’d kept them for all these years and was still using them.

  The room was a long rectangle. There was a circular conference table at one end of the room, while Robert’s desk occupied the other. A large window took up one wall, while an oak bookcase stood against another wall. It proudly displayed the various awards the company had won in the last two decades: Tellys, CLIOs, ADDYs, Summit International Awards, and Communicator Awards. The statuettes were crammed into the three bottom shelves, while a framed picture of Robert holding the Palme d’Or stood proudly alone on the top shelf. The conference table gleamed, papers piled neatly on the center of the table. She touched a page, spinning it toward her. It was a headshot of an incredibly handsome young man. She quickly looked over the other pages. They were all related to DaBoyz, a boy band she’d never heard of. It looked as if Robert was pitching to shoot their next music video. He knew nothing about music videos, but she guessed that the band didn’t know that.

  She crossed the office and stood before Robert’s desk. It felt strange to be here, sneaking like a thief into her own company. Because she did own half the company; fifty percent of the shares were in her name. What would happen if they broke up, she wondered. Would the company have to be sold or broken up, or would he have to buy out her share? And what happened then to his share of the house? Would she have to buy him out in turn?

  Kathy deliberately drifted away from that thought.

  As Sheila had reminded her, she had to be sure of her facts before she went off making wild accusations.

  She moved around Robert’s desk and sat i
n the heavy leather chair. It sighed beneath her weight. She’d bought him this chair shortly after they had moved into this office. Like his office at home, the desk was clean and bare except for a fountain-pen set that was placed at an angle off to one side, alongside a modern desk lamp. Mirroring it, on the left-hand side of the desk was a silver photo frame in three panels. Kathy reached for it, then stopped, unwilling to touch and possibly move it. She forgot her fear about drawing attention to the building and turned on the lamp, flooding the desk in warm, yellow light. The frame held three photos: Brendan in the left frame, Theresa in the right, and Robert and Kathy in the middle frame. It was an old photograph taken in New York just before they were married, with the Empire State Building in the background. She’d almost forgotten about the photo. That had been a fabulous vacation, just the two of them, madly in love, engaged to be married, with the world full of possibilities and hope.

  If Robert was having an affair, he was hardly likely to keep photos of his wife and children on his desk, was he?

  She tried the drawers. They were locked. So this trip had been for nothing. No, not for nothing. At least it had gone a long way toward confirming that Robert was not seeing Stephanie. She wasn’t phoning him every day, and there was a family photo on the desk, which at least suggested that his mistress was not visiting him in the office.

  Placing her elbows on the desktop and cradling her head in her hands, she squeezed her eyes shut. She felt sick and yet curiously elated. She’d overreacted. She was tired, exhausted, stressed out by the season. Next year they would go away for Christmas. Boycott the holiday.

  Well, at least she’d had a wake-up call. The last couple of days had highlighted some problems in her marriage, but problems that could be solved. After Christmas, the pair of them would finally get away for that weekend at the Cape or the Vineyard, and talk. It had been a long time since they had talked, really talked about stuff that mattered. With the constant pressures of modern life, it was so easy to lose touch with what was really important.

  Thank God, she hadn’t said anything....

  She was leaving the office when she saw the filing cabinet behind the door. She hadn’t noticed it when she first came in. It was a small, two-door, dark oak cabinet that matched the bookshelf. On impulse, she pulled at the top drawer, expecting to find it locked. It clicked and slid open easily. The files were all neatly tabbed and color-coded, and she saw the hand of the new secretary in it.

  The top drawer seemed to be mainly brochures, letters to and from other production companies, pitches for projects.

  Kathy knelt down and rummaged through the second drawer. It was full of invoices and bills. She hesitated, then lifted out the file marked AT&T. All of Robert’s cell phone bills were neatly arranged in chronological order. She pulled out the most recent bill.

  And her heart almost stopped.

  Robert Walker phoned Stephanie Burroughs seven or eight times a day. The first call of the day and the last call at night from his cell phone were either to her home phone or her cell.

  Kathy’s heart started to pound hard enough to vibrate through her flesh. She swallowed bile.

  Calls ranged in duration from a couple of minutes to an hour. And texts. Innumerable texts. Mostly to the same number. Kathy flipped to a random page and ran her finger down the list of fifty numbers. Two of the text messages had been to her own cell; the other forty-eight were all to the same number: Stephanie Burroughs’s number.

  Every day.

  Seven days a week.

  Hundreds of calls. Hundreds of texts.

  Kathy barely made it to the toilet before she threw up.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Kathy!”

  “Hi, Maureen.”

  Kathy stood on Maureen Ryan’s doorstep, a bunch of flowers held awkwardly under one arm, a bottle of wine in a tightly wrapped brown-paper bag under the other.

  “Come in, come in. I wasn’t expecting you. I’d kiss you, but I don’t want to give you whatever I have.” Maureen stepped back and allowed Kathy to squeeze past her. “Go straight through into the kitchen.”

  Maureen lived in Mission Hill in a row house near the Triangle District. She’d been born in the house, and she always said she would like to die there as well.

  “I should have called,” Kathy said slightly breathlessly, walking down the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. She stopped, shocked. From the outside she had been expecting dark and gloomy Formica and linoleum; instead she was blinking in brilliant light, looking at the latest in Swedish kitchen design, polished blond wood and cool chrome. The rear window, kitchen door, and a section of the wall had been removed and replaced with French doors that led down into a circular conservatory that was bright and fragrant with Christmas blooms. “This is gorgeous,” she said.

  “Isn’t it fabulous?” Maureen said, voice wheezing a little as she came up behind her. “We did a pilot for a reality makeover show a couple of years ago. It never got off the ground, but I volunteered my house for the pilot. Not only did I get a new kitchen, a patio, and a conservatory, I actually got paid for it as well.”

  “It’s fantastic. And you’ve decorated it beautifully.” Kathy turned to look at the older woman. She handed her the flowers and the wine. “I’m so sorry, Maureen. I only found out last night that you were sick. Robert forgot to tell me. He insisted he had, but he hadn’t.”

  “I’m sure he’s had a lot on his mind lately,” Maureen said. She turned away, set the flowers and wine down on the counter, and started to fill the kettle. “Sit down. Go out into the conservatory. It’s my favorite part of the house.”

  Maureen Ryan was twenty years older than Kathy, a tall, masculine-looking woman, with strong, sharp features, pale green eyes, and a shock of snow-white hair that she wore in a single tight braid that hung to the small of her back. When Kathy had first met her, she’d worn half-moon glasses, but she’d thrown them away in favor of contact lenses, claiming that the glasses made her look old. She had never married, but over the years had been romantically linked with several minor politicians and one equally minor movie star. Maureen liked to say that the stories were only half true; it had been a dozen minor politicians and two not so minor movie stars. Normally, she kept up with the latest fashion trends, and she was still slim and svelte enough to get away with jeans and boots. Today however, she was in a plum-colored velour tracksuit and incredibly ratty slippers.

  Kathy stepped down into the conservatory. The air was perfumed with the scent of the flowers and the musky odor of a fat candle burning on an ornamental stand. Two enormous, fan-backed white wicker chairs were placed on either side of a circular glass table. A Stephen King paperback, his book On Writing, was open on the table. Kathy remembered that Maureen had always talked about writing a novel based upon her experiences of forty years working in and around the entertainment business.

  “How are you feeling?” Kathy asked.

  “I’m fine. Slowly getting better.” Maureen’s voice echoed down from the kitchen. “I picked up a cold, which turned into a chest infection. Pleural effusion is the official medical diagnosis. I wanted to continue working, but there was so much fluid that I had trouble breathing. So, for once in my life, I took some good advice and took some time off.”

  “You should have let me know. I’ve have visited you sooner.”

  “I thought Robert might have told you,” Maureen said, stepping out into the conservatory. She was carrying a wicker tray, which held a hand-painted teapot and two matching cups. “Aren’t these fun? I got them in Ayia Napa.”

  “In Cyprus? Isn’t that the place where all the young people go for raves?”

  “There and Mykonos, but I’ve already been there and done them,” Maureen suggested with a mischievous glint in her eye. “And I like to think of myself as one of those young people.”

  “Hey, you’re the youngest person I know. I hope I’ve still got your energy when I’m . . .” She allowed the sentence to trail off.

  “Wh
en you’re my age, you mean.” Maureen grinned.

  “Something like that.” Kathy sank into the creaking wicker chair and watched Maureen pour tea. “What keeps you so young?”

  Maureen lifted her head and grinned, showing perfectly white teeth. “I used to say ‘regular holidays and Spanish waiters,’ but lately I’ve been saying ‘attitude . . . and Spanish waiters.’ I picked an age and stuck to it.”

  Despite the sick headache throbbing at the back of her skull, Kathy smiled. “What age?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “I thought most people chose eighteen.”

  “I knew nothing at eighteen. I knew it all by the time I was twenty-two. By the time I turned twenty-three, I knew too much.” Maureen passed the cup to Kathy, then waited while she added milk. “I don’t think I’m old, therefore I’m not old. That’s why I hate this chest infection; reminds me that I’m not as resilient as I once was.”

  The two women drank their tea in silence, looking out over the tiny rectangle of garden.

  “This conservatory must make you the envy of your neighbors,” Kathy said eventually.

  “I started a trend. There are three similar conservatories in this block alone. It was a shame we couldn’t get the makeover show off the ground. I had plans to have the whole house transformed.” She sipped her tea. “I must come out and see what you’ve done with your place. How long have you been there now—five, six years?”

  “Six, and it’s still a work in progress. Somehow there never seems to be the time. I seem to have become a professional chauffeur now that the kids are both involved in sports and clubs and band and student government; they seem to be coming and going at all hours of the day. But next year, I’ve plans to get in and make some more changes. I definitely want to renovate the kitchen. . . .” Realizing that she was babbling, Kathy abruptly shut up.