by Hilary Boyd
Jared said nothing. She didn’t like to dismiss him, not when he had just pressed what looked like a substantial tip into her hand – even if it hadn’t come specifically from him. But she wished he would leave.
‘I should let you get to bed,’ Jared said, finally releasing the deadlock. He began backing into the corridor with a final lingering glance.
Connie took a deep breath. ‘Yes, long day tomorrow,’ she said, her voice faint. She waved the envelope. ‘Thank you so much for this.’
She breathed a sigh of relief as she let the door go. But Jared had stopped and was holding it back with the flat of his hand. As if in slow motion – a second seeming to stretch into eternity – he stepped forward and dropped a very gentle, very composed kiss on her mouth. A strand of his hair brushed her cheek. She had time to be shocked, time to clock the faint tang of mint on his breath and also to feel a sharp tingle at the touch of his lips against her own. On some unacknowledged level she had known what he was going to do, but she’d done nothing to stop it.
‘Goodnight,’ he said, sweeping his hair back, no trace of awkwardness in his eyes. He reached out, his fingers briefly pressing the bare skin above her elbow, then slowly walked off down the corridor.
Her door slammed shut. Connie was stunned. She walked unsteadily over to the window, fanning herself with the envelope still clutched in her hand and taking big gulps of cool night air. She could feel a warm vibration washing through her body and swallowed, trying to compose herself. What just happened? she asked herself, leaning her hot cheek against the smooth cold of the glass door. She knew she should feel guilt, knew full well she could have avoided the kiss. But right now all she felt was a breathless arousal.
6
Connie was up before dawn with a muzzy head and scratchy eyes. She’d barely slept, and began packing without her usual care. Normally she loved the process of filling a case with the utmost precision until it was a work of art with its neatly arranged layers, no space unemployed. But today she was hardly aware as she folded and piled and squashed her clothes any old how into the small wheelie.
It was going to be a long day, herding her passengers, plus luggage, tickets and passports – which someone always managed to mislay – onto the bus, then the train to Paris, across the city in another bus, then settling them into the hotel, before getting them back on the Eurostar in the morning. But she could cope with that. What she was really dreading was seeing Jared.
In the long dark hours of the night, Connie had attempted to analyse the kiss. Over the years, there had been the occasional passenger who’d tried it on with her. Just a mild flirtation – unsuccessful in every case – and harmless, occasioning the odd raised eyebrow from an irritated wife. On an Edinburgh tour to see the Tattoo, a burly Mancunian called Roy – who’d been putting it away, but was not so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing – had come up behind her, pinned her to the hotel bar and attempted to kiss her. Connie, horrified, had used the wooden bar as leverage and shoved him violently off, sending the man flying into a table and landing in an ignominious heap on the patterned carpet. His wife long since in bed, another man in the group had helped him to his feet and carried him off upstairs.
Roy had made a complaint about Connie, saying she was lazy and unhelpful. But Connie had got in first, immediately reporting the incident to her boss at the company, who knew beyond question that the adjectives ‘lazy’ and ‘unhelpful’ could never in a million years be applied to Connie McCabe. Roy was put on the banned list thereafter.
It was different with Jared. It had never even crossed her mind that he found her attractive. Why on earth would he? Connie had been told she looked good for her age, but there it was, her age. She was probably ten years older than he. As she thought back over their interactions during the week, though, she did accept that, after the first awkwardness, she’d begun to enjoy his company and find him amusing … sympathetic to chat to. They had bonded over Dinah, mostly. But also everything Italian and travel in general. It was good to talk to someone who shared her passion – Devan saw Italy as a rival, not a conversation.
But a kiss? And not just a random kiss: one that had set her body buzzing. She had been entirely faithful for the thirty-three years of their marriage, had never even been close to kissing another man, not once. Which was no hardship, just an unconscious faith in the love she bore for Devan. Sometimes, inevitably, she met men she found attractive, but she and Devan would joke about it, just as they did about women who caught his eye. She would not be joking about Jared.
After she’d finished packing, she sat down on the bed in a daze. It was a stupid moment, she told herself. I’ll never have to see him again after tomorrow. The thought was a relief, but the memory of his mouth against hers would not go away. A wave of panic swept through her. Would Devan detect something in her eyes? It was just a kiss, she tried to console herself. But she couldn’t escape the fact that she had enjoyed it … She had enjoyed another man’s kiss.
In her confusion, she realized she hadn’t opened the envelope, which was currently lying on the bedside table. She reached for it now and lifted the flap, withdrawing the wad of English notes. Counting, she saw Dinah had given her two hundred pounds. A fortune! The average tip from a couple might be between twenty and forty pounds, occasionally a bit more from warm-hearted Americans. But two hundred? She wondered if Jared had put her up to it.
Entering the breakfast room, she spotted Jared and his godmother at the hot-food section of the buffet, Dinah looking suspiciously under one of the domed stainless-steel covers. Taking a deep breath, Connie put her key on her table and went – head down to avoid Jared’s eye – to fetch some grapefruit juice and a bowl of fresh fruit salad. She wasn’t hungry, her stomach was in knots, but she knew she should eat something.
The young Polish waitress who had been serving them all week accosted her as she filled her bowl. ‘I bring you coffee?’ She grinned. ‘Black, hot milk on the side.’
Connie found a smile from somewhere and nodded, thanking her.
‘Morning, Connie.’ She turned to find Dinah at her side, holding in front of her a plate of scrambled eggs and a sad-looking grilled tomato as if it were contaminated. ‘I shan’t be sorry to leave these miserable offerings behind,’ she said, in a voice that must have carried clear across to Bellagio. ‘They cook it at five in the morning then leave it to wither till nine.’
Connie gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I’m sticking to fruit.’
Dinah leaned closer, her voice lowered to conspiratorial level. ‘I love fruit, but it plays havoc with my innards. I simply can’t risk it when we’re stuck with rackety train loos all day.’
Connie sensed, rather than saw, Jared approaching. ‘Listen, Dinah,’ she said, quickly, ‘thank you so much for the incredibly generous tip. But it’s way too much.’
Dinah waved her free hand imperiously. ‘Nonsense, Connie. Not another word. You’re worth twice that.’
Before she had time to object further, Jared was beside them.
‘Hi,’ he said, his turquoise eyes gazing steadily at her as Dinah made her way slowly towards their table. He didn’t immediately follow. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he added. ‘I …’ He stopped, gave her a warm, brief smile that might have carried an apology, Connie wasn’t sure, before turning away without another word.
She stood stock still. Her breath was shallow in her chest. She saw out of the corner of her eye the waitress setting her coffee on the white cloth. Luckily there were tables between hers and Dinah’s and she chose a seat with her back to them. The fruit salad was too cold, the chunks of unripe melon so big they almost choked her. The coffee was perfect, though, hot and strong, made from her favourite arabica beans. It would probably cause her to shake even more than she already was. But she badly needed a hit to get through the day.
The journey home passed in an anxious daze for Connie. The long hours to Paris, with all her passengers safely stowed, gave her too much time for reflection – espec
ially as she wasn’t occupied with a book or music.
At St Pancras the following day, she found she couldn’t wait to be shot of them all. She often felt weary as she waved her passengers goodbye and shed the responsibilities of the week, but this time it was more a need to be free from the temptation of Jared’s gaze. They had barely talked since leaving the lake. Dinah had old friends in Paris, so she and Jared had been whisked away for dinner the previous night. And Connie’s seat had been in a separate carriage on both trains.
Now Dinah was approaching, enveloping her in a warm hug. She smelt the reassuring fragrance of Chanel, felt the softness of the powdered skin. ‘Connie, my dear. How sad. It’s been such a pleasure meeting you.’
‘You, too, Dinah. I’ll miss you both.’ Which was true, although not quite in the context implied.
Jared held out his arms. ‘The wonderful Connie,’ he said, and wrapped her close against him, lowering his head to drop an unseen kiss to the side of her mouth. She stiffened in his embrace, terrified that Dinah would think them too intimate, and he let her go.
‘Come on.’ He gave his godmother a friendly grin. ‘Let’s get you home.’
Connie breathed a deep sigh of relief as she watched the pair make their way slowly across the busy station concourse in the direction of the taxi rank. I will forget it ever happened, she told herself firmly.
7
‘Sandwich at the pub?’ Connie suggested brightly, two mornings after her return.
Devan glanced up from his phone. Every time she met his eyes, now, she was sure he would see a change in her. But his gaze was dull. ‘Umm, could do.’
Connie sighed. ‘Bit more enthusiasm would be nice.’
Her husband’s brow creased. ‘Just because you suggested it, Con, doesn’t make it a good plan.’ He accompanied his words with a sham smile, behind which she could sense the stubbornness not to be seduced, to maintain his huffy position of a child abandoned by his mother.
Since she’d got back, she’d really tried. Guilt was partially driving her, it was true – and maybe he could sense that, without knowing why. But her efforts to be loving and sympathetic were not a pretence: she did, of course, love Devan. But she’d been shocked at how easy it was to slip into attraction to someone else. Treacherous attraction that still tormented her, the facile notion that she could forget what had been, after all, merely a fleeting aberration not proving so easy.
It was as if she were existing in a different zone, where the echo of arousal engendered by Jared’s kiss swirled constantly around her, like a miasma. She wanted release, wanted Devan to snatch her up in his arms and make wild, possessive love to her, let the kiss be deleted from her body’s memory bank. But she also felt like a traitor in wanting his hands caressing her as a substitute for what she would never have.
‘OK,’ she said now. ‘Forget it, then.’
Clutching his phone in front of him, as if it were a shield against her hostile invasion of his space, Devan sighed. ‘No … no, the pub would be good.’
Connie didn’t argue. She took the scraps he offered. ‘I’m having a coffee with Neil in a minute. Meet you there at twelve thirty?’
‘Sure. Say hi to Neil.’
She thought he looked relieved that she was going out.
Neil and Connie had been friends almost as long as she had been with Devan. He was a successful food stylist, whom she’d met while she was working for Fiona Raven. He’d created all the illustrations for Fiona’s glossy cookery books and they’d bonded early on over the chef’s diva ways – although Neil was initially flavour of the month to the predatory Fiona.
It would be ‘Neil, my darling boy’ and ‘Neil, sweetie’ and ‘Come here, gorgeous one,’ all accompanied by intimate strokes and arms pressed round his shoulders, private whispers in his ear. Neil – who was still ‘gorgeous’ with his blue-eyed, blond-haired charm, even in his mid-fifties – suffered her attentions stoically at first, but rolled his eyes and pulled faces at Connie whenever the chance arose. Things changed, however, when Neil asked his boyfriend of the moment to meet him at the Bridgwater emporium.
‘She must have known I’m gay,’ he’d complained to Connie at the time, when Fiona’s froideur became glacial.
Neil, though, was too good a stylist to be dispensed with. Gradually he and Fiona had settled into a new working relationship, of sorts. But he, too, became the victim of what Connie and the others suffered daily: her bitchy putdowns and imperious demands.
It was eight years since he and his husband, Brooks, had bought a house in the next village to Connie’s – much to her delight. She and Neil would often meet for coffee in the rickety wooden barn-conversion that passed as a mini arts centre in the corner of the recreation ground near his house. The cakes were to be avoided – flapjacks and millionaire’s shortbread, oversweet and bordering on stale – but the coffee was delicious.
Angela, who owned and ran the place in a cheerfully haphazard way, was a middle-aged, purple-haired Londoner, her wrists bandaged with multicoloured woven bracelets, sleeveless vests showing off the daisy chains tattooed on the inside of her ropy upper arms. She took her coffee seriously and was always demanding Connie and Neil try out her latest blend – Yemen Mocha with Sumatra Mandheling, dark roast Colombian with light roast Colombian – which she brewed in small cafetières and served with frothed milk in a tin jug. It was way more expensive than any other cup of coffee in the county, but they liked Angela, preferred the offbeat ambience to the chintzy local tea rooms designed for Cheddar Gorge tourists – and loved the coffee.
‘I’m exhausted,’ Neil announced dramatically, flopping onto a chair and leaning on the folding metal garden table, which wobbled alarmingly and threatened to deposit the potted lavender and sugar bowl on the barn floor. ‘I’ve been working my tushi off on this job for weeks now. I’m still there at ten o’clock at night … “Just one more tiny thing, Neil, if you wouldn’t mind.”’ He mimicked a fussy, high-pitched voice, then laughed. ‘He doesn’t sound even remotely like that, but you get the gist.’
Connie smiled as she listened to him talk. But her concentration was elsewhere, her thoughts in disarray. On one hand, she wanted desperately to splurge her secret to her friend, to get Neil to make sense of it and reassure her that she wasn’t mad or even particularly bad to have received, and found tempting, an unsolicited kiss from a virtual stranger. But she hesitated. ‘A shared secret is not a secret,’ her wise mother frequently warned her. And although she trusted Neil with her life, she didn’t want to give such a fleeting moment any currency. Didn’t want it to become a thing between her and Neil. Didn’t want, in fact, to make it more real than it deserved.
‘Enough about me,’ Neil was saying. ‘Tell me about your latest trip.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Como, wasn’t it?’
Connie couldn’t meet his eye. She fussed with the cafetière, pouring coffee into Neil’s cup, then her own. ‘Yeah … It was fine.’ When she did look up, Neil was eyeing her.
‘Something up, Con?’
‘No. Well …’
‘Devan?’
She nodded quickly – easier by far to talk about her husband than the recent trip to Lake Como. ‘He’s still on about me retiring.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s not unreasonable –’
‘Neil! Whose side are you on?’
He laughed. ‘OK. It’s just you did say a while back that you wanted to travel.’
‘I am travelling. It’s what I do for a living, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Yeah, but you said you and Devan wanted to go places together.’
Connie sighed. ‘I know I did.’ But the conversations Neil was referring to had been merely idle speculation, about trips she might like to take with Devan sometime in the future, Neil and Brooks being keen travellers. The trips, in her mind, were as well as, not instead of, her tour job. Now she looked at her friend entreatingly. ‘You think I should?’
Neil held up his hands. ‘I don’t think anything, C
on. Just reminding you of what you said.’
They sat in silence.
‘It’s not just that. He’s not being very nice. He spends every minute of every day on his wretched phone. Even when he’s watching a match, he’s still got the bloody thing in his hand. I can’t have a proper conversation with him any more.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘I mean, what’s he doing on it?’
Neil was frowning. ‘Have you asked him?’
‘Of course I have. He says things like “Just the usual”, whatever that means.’
‘Hmm … You don’t think …’ He stared at her.
‘What?’ She spoke sharply, not herself this morning.
‘Well, porn springs to mind. Or gambling.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘Or maybe he’s hooked up with someone.’
Connie practically choked on her coffee. ‘You think Devan’s having –’
Neil shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
Connie thought about it. ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ she said flatly, aware, uncomfortably, of the hypocrisy of her reaction.
Her friend grinned. ‘You look like you swallowed a spider.’
She didn’t reply as she trawled back through her husband’s behaviour over recent months. Could that be why he’s so distant with me? But it didn’t feel right.
‘I really don’t think it’s that,’ she said, after another silence. ‘He’d be more furtive … and, I dare say, a lot happier.’ She gave a sad laugh. ‘I just wonder if he still loves me, Neil,’ she said.
He snorted. ‘Oh, come on, Connie. That’s ridiculous. He adores you. You know he does. I didn’t mean to wind you up.’
‘You aren’t,’ she said, but felt tears behind her eyes. ‘Would I even know, if he was having a thing with someone else, when we communicate so little these days?’ she asked.
‘Of course you would.’ Neil was firm. ‘He’d be weird and secretive, giving you far-fetched excuses for where he’s going, then coming back late, smelling of someone else’s soap. Devan never goes anywhere, you say.’