The Affair

by Hilary Boyd

  But he laid his finger gently to her lips. After a moment’s hesitation, he was gone, striding purposefully along the quay. She watched him until he was round the bend of the harbour road and safely out of sight.

  No one was answering the bell. Anxiously, she pressed it again, smoothing her tousled hair and tucking it behind her ears, running a finger beneath her eyes to catch any errant mascara, applying lip-balm to her stinging lips. She knew she must look like somebody who’d been doing exactly what she and Jared had just done. What if nobody comes?

  After what seemed like an eternity, she heard shuffling behind the wooden door and a gruff voice – not one she immediately recognized in her distraught state – calling, ‘Chi è?’

  ‘It’s Connie. I’m a guest.’

  She tried to remember the words in Italian as the voice repeated more loudly, ‘Chi è là?’

  ‘Io resto qui,’ she said, as loudly as she dared, ‘in the hotel.’

  There was the sound of a key grating in the lock, then bolts being drawn, deafening in the still night. She cringed, wondering if any of her group with the lake view were awake and listening. Then the door swung open and an older man, whom Connie recognized as Franco, the hotel’s handyman, was peering out at her, dressed in an old sweater and loose trousers, slippers on his feet. He’d clearly been asleep.

  ‘Franco, it’s me. Mi dispiace tanto …’

  He stood aside to let her in, grumbling under his breath as he did so. But Connie didn’t care. She was safe. With a mumbled ‘Grazie … grazie mille,’ she raced up the stairs two at a time, fumbling with the key card until the green light flashed and she almost fell into her room.

  Once inside she leaned against the door. The bedroom looked so normal, so exactly how she’d left it before her life had been turned upside down tonight. She began to cry. They weren’t tears of sadness, or even guilt. Connie was crying because the turmoil she was experiencing was so bewildering, so all-consuming, the exhaustion so great, that sobs simply burst from her throat, propelled by the maelstrom inside.

  She didn’t know what to think about first: Jared, Devan, her behaviour … Sex against a wall in a back alley? Me, Connie McCabe? It was unthinkable. And she was, indeed, too tired to think. A frantic day lay ahead, including hours on trains with too much silence in which to contemplate what she’d done. When she closed her eyes at last, laying her cheek gratefully against the cool cotton of the hotel pillow, she was aware of nothing else until her phone alarm’s painfully insistent buzzing.

  9

  Connie opened her eyes to find herself in her own bed again. She looked around, expecting to see her husband, but Devan was not there, the sheets and pillow on his side untouched. She tried to clear her head. Then she remembered.

  Devan’s greeting to her the previous day when he had picked her up from the station had been muted, scarcely even friendly. And she was barely through the front door when he announced he was off to the pub.

  ‘It’s Dix’s birthday,’ he’d said. ‘Come if you like.’

  Connie had no desire to sit and watch Dix fall off his stool yet again, even if it was his birthday and he had an excuse for once, so she declined.

  ‘By the way,’ Devan said, in parting, ‘I’ve moved into the spare room. I’m sleeping really badly at the moment and I don’t want to disturb you. You’ll be exhausted after your trip.’

  Connie had stared at his retreating back. Was this his form of punishment for her intransigence? Was his sympathy for her tiredness just veiled sarcasm? She wasn’t sure: he had spoken from the hall – perhaps deliberately – as he was opening the front door, so she couldn’t see his face.

  In a sense it was a relief. On two counts. The tension at bedtime in the past months had been huge – pretty much since the incident with the lilac negligee – Devan always avoiding coming up at the same time as she, then smartly turning his back. She felt like a pariah in her own bed.

  And then there was Jared. On that front she deserved more punishment than her husband moving into the spare room. In the rush and busyness of the previous two days – overnighting in Turin and so on – there’d been no time to think. She’d slept on the first train. Against the rules, but no one seemed to notice or care. Then her seat had been beside Cheltenham Martin, as a single traveller, on the day-long leg to Paris and the Eurostar to London. He’d talked non-stop until somewhere south of Paris, Connie having to crane her neck awkwardly sideways as he told her about his plumbing: by some system incomprehensible to her, he’d proudly linked the renewables in his house to the fossil fuels via a clever new widget. Her head bobbed up and down, like that of a nodding dog in the back window of a seventies car, as she dropped in the occasional ‘Wow, fascinating,’ her mind fighting to find space to process what had happened with Jared.

  When she’d woken to her alarm in the lakeside hotel the morning after, she felt as if the late-night interlude had been a dream. It still did not seem possible – although she was painfully aware of the after-effects of Jared’s touch: her lips were rough and sore, and she still tingled when she remembered what he had done.

  But any hope that her behaviour was a fantasy, or her late – and dishevelled – return to the hotel might escape censure, was instantly dispelled by Bianca’s level gaze as Connie checked out the group. Franco must have said something, she thought miserably. Bianca looked disappointed, although there was doubt in her kind eyes. Her goodbye hug was tempered, her usually effusive warmth missing, which broke Connie’s heart. She couldn’t meet the handyman’s eye as he loaded the coach with the piles of wheelie-cases.

  Now, as she lay on her back in bed, blinking in the early-morning light, she was bemused at the extraordinary licence she’d allowed an almost perfect stranger. Someone with whom she’d exchanged only brief conversation and had absolutely no future.

  ‘It’s just sex,’ she remembered a cheating work associate insisting. ‘I don’t love her.’ As if that made it perfectly fine. But now she thought she could appreciate the distinction. What had happened between her and Jared was just a one-off crazy thing and seemed to have nothing whatever to do with Devan. She felt almost detached from her behaviour, now she was home. It was as if that night by the lake was completely separate, contained in an illicit bubble, a million miles away from her marriage, her home, her friends.

  She would be away again in two weeks. Auschwitz was part of the Polish tour, which she’d never done before and was quite nervous about. It would be a far cry from the lazy Italian sunshine, the decadent hot chocolate, the humorous Carpaccios … and, thankfully, Jared. The intensity of that night would eventually fade from her memory, she was certain. She would never forget, but she would put it firmly behind her and swallow her guilt. What she needed to do now was concentrate on mending her marriage.

  The door creaked open and Riley’s face appeared. He trotted over to the bed and nuzzled her face. He always seemed to know when she woke, even though she hadn’t made a sound.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said, delving into his warm coat and massaging his neck with her fingers. ‘I know what you want.’

  She got out of bed and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. It was a beautiful morning for a walk, and she felt glad to be back in the temperate English climate. She knew Devan would sleep late, and she was happy for that. Facing him would be a challenge this morning.

  ‘Hey.’ Devan emerged from the spare bedroom as Connie was taking the washing basket piled with her tour clothes down to the kitchen.

  ‘Good night?’

  He stretched, yawned. ‘Great, yeah. You should have come. Everyone asked after you.’

  The smile he gave her as he brushed her arm on the way to the bathroom was more giving than yesterday’s and she smiled back, encouraged, keen to coax him out of his recent truculence, bombard him with sweetness and love. ‘Shall I make coffee?’

  When they were seated with it at the kitchen table, she asked, ‘So, who was there last night?’ The garden doors were open, a warm breeze wa
fting the scent of lilac from the bush by the wall.

  ‘Just the usual suspects. Gloria popped in. I haven’t seen her in ages. She’s been on a cruise around the Galápagos with her daughter.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘They snorkelled and hiked … The wildlife is incredible, apparently – giant tortoises, turtles, sealions and iguanas, tons of birds. She says it’s stunning.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I would really love to go one day.’

  Despite her determination to make an effort, Connie felt a spurt of irritation at his martyred sigh. But she smiled brightly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we should plan a trip.’ The expression on his face implied the wind had been taken out of his sails. ‘Why not?’ she added.

  Devan shrugged. ‘You’re working most of the year.’

  ‘No. As I keep repeating, there are five months when we can go wherever we want.’

  Her husband seemed almost disappointed at the unexpected reduction in his firepower. ‘It’ll cost, I imagine,’ he said. ‘Gloria’s not short of a bob or two.’

  ‘You could investigate.’

  He stared at her, maybe wondering if she was serious. ‘OK.’

  Connie felt the skirmish was over but was also aware that one cruise was not going to change the world. She genuinely wanted to hug her husband, to love away his detachment. But she could still feel, reprehensibly, the imprint of Jared’s mouth on hers and she knew it would be wrong just now: it would be fraudulent.

  There was a knock on the front door.

  ‘Postman?’ Devan said, getting up.

  Connie heard him chatting, then laughing, thanking whoever was at the door.

  ‘It’s for you,’ he said, dropping a heavy package onto the table and sliding it across to her. She picked it up, puzzled. She hadn’t ordered anything. ‘I’m meeting Bill later,’ he added. ‘He wants to look at a car and I said I’d go with him.’

  Bill Kitson was married to Jill, a good friend of Connie’s in the village. He was obsessed with classic cars, frequently buying wrecks, which he then lovingly restored. Jill’s only objection was that he kept them all. There was now a barn on the edge of the village that had upwards of ten: MGs, Sunbeam Alpines, Morris Minors.

  ‘Count me out for supper.’ Devan grabbed his phone from the table and turned away. ‘We’re going over Oxford way, probably won’t be back till late.’

  Connie sat on at the table after Devan had disappeared upstairs to get dressed. She was worried about her husband’s sudden desire to be out socializing all day, after so many months slumped comatose on the sofa. Is it just a desire to avoid me? But she was pleased he seemed more motivated. She stared unseeingly at the package on the table in front of her, her fingers smoothing the cardboard exterior. Then she automatically began to pull at the tab that would release the contents.

  Inside was a glossy hardcover, full of illustrations: Carpaccio. She gave a small gasp. There was only one person in the world this could be from. How did he get my address? She felt her heart pounding.

  But she was quickly reminded that she and Devan were in the phone book. She thought back to all those questions of Dinah’s, that night by the lake. She didn’t remember specifically mentioning the name of the village they lived in, but she knew she had talked about Somerset and the Levels. It would be a matter of minutes to trace her online, knowing her husband was a doctor.

  With shaking hands, Connie examined the paperwork tucked inside the cover of the book. There was no message, no indication of where it came from, only a gift invoice from a French forwarding company called DFB – Connie was familiar with forwarders: Fiona had regularly used them for shipping her products abroad.

  The book was beautiful. As she leafed through the pages, she found herself smiling at the reproductions of the panels in the Scuola di San Giorgio, lost for a moment in the artist’s mastery … and remembering the smell of the darkened chapel, Jared close at her side. But although she felt flattered he’d been thinking of her to the extent of sending the book, marking the time they’d spent together in Venice, his attention made her instantly nervous.

  ‘What is it?’ Devan, dressed and ready to go, was standing in the doorway, jangling the car keys.

  Connie jumped. ‘Oh, I’d forgotten I ordered a book on Carpaccio when I was away. We saw these wonderful panels of his in one of the little churches in Venice.’

  Devan seemed uninterested. ‘Never heard of him.’

  She didn’t reply, unable to trust herself to say any more. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, although her heart was beating like a bass drum as she rose, folding the cardboard from the package and squeezing it into the bulging recycling bag hanging from the kitchen-door handle. ‘I thought I might ring Jill, see what she’s up to, if you two are off for the day,’ she said.

  ‘You’re back!’ Jill shrieked, when Connie called. ‘Yes, yes, please come over. Save me from all the grisly chores I’ve been avoiding.’ Jill, a petite sparky brunette a few years older than Connie, had taught history at Bristol University. Since her retirement, she’d been researching a novel – a murder mystery set in France, during the great freeze of 1709.

  ‘You know they used ice skates instead of gondolas to get around Venice in the freeze?’ Jill said, when Connie had filled her in about her trip. They were taking the dogs up to the top of the village and into the woods – a walk they frequently enjoyed together. Jill’s Scottie was old and not as fit as Riley, but she panted bravely in his wake as he chased elusive scents and stuck his nose down rabbit holes. ‘Even the lagoon iced over.’ She frowned. ‘Imagine … it must have been hell. People burned their furniture – if they were lucky enough to have any, of course – to keep from freezing to death.’

  ‘Horrible.’ Connie shivered at the mere thought. She hated being cold. ‘How are you getting on with the book?’

  Jill laughed. ‘Can’t really call it a book yet. I’ll probably be researching for the rest of my life because I’m terrified of actually writing the damn thing.’

  They walked in silence for a while, Connie finally beginning to calm down from the shock of the morning delivery. The Carpaccio, however well meant, felt like an invasion into her real life. Jared had been thoughtful enough not to leave any sign on the documents that it was from him – in case Devan had opened it, she supposed. But it implied a connection with her that was way too intimate. And pricked the bubble in which Connie had carefully placed him.

  As they stopped at the top of the rise, looking out across to the Mendips, Connie realized Jill was eyeing her with a frown. ‘Is everything all right, Connie? You seem preoccupied.’

  Connie shook herself. ‘Do I? Sorry. It’s always tricky, settling back after a trip.’ Although in the past, before things had gone so wrong with Devan, she had always loved coming home.

  Jill didn’t reply at once. Then she said quietly, ‘I gather things aren’t so good between you two at the moment.’

  Connie raised an eyebrow. ‘Has Devan said something?’

  ‘Not to me. But he admitted to Bill he’s struggling with retirement, and finds it tough you’re still working. Said it was driving a wedge between you.’

  She was stung, hearing Devan’s neat, one-sided assessment on her friend’s lips. Especially as Bill was acknowledged by all as a blatant, unrepentant gossip. It wasn’t malicious, he just couldn’t help himself. And if he’d told his wife, that was probably just the tip of the iceberg. The whole village would know by now that she and Devan were having problems and that Connie was the cause. She could just hear the twittering: That dear Dr Mac, such a lovely man and a wonderful doctor. And her away all year. It’s not right.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Jill said.

  They walked down the hill in silence. The late-morning sun was hot and Connie wished she’d brought a hat. But she’d been in such a tizz about the delivery before she left home.

  Jill said, ‘Seems he really misses you when you’re away.’

  Words fizzed and boiled in Connie’s mouth. She stopped so she could f
ace her friend and swallowed hard. Her words, when they finally emerged, were pinched, as if she were squashing them in her fist. But she didn’t want to rant to Jill, who would tell Bill, who would tell the whole county. ‘Devan was so overstretched before he retired that we never had the chance to put together a plan for what came next,’ she said carefully. ‘I think we both made the assumption he wouldn’t have any trouble finding new things to do … and that hasn’t happened. Not yet, anyway.’

  Jill rubbed her arm sympathetically, clearly concerned.

  ‘I hate him going around telling everyone I’m a rubbish wife.’

  ‘It’s not like that. Bill said he was just a bit low, that’s all.’

  ‘Which he is. And has been, even long before he retired.’ She paused, not wanting to seem too defensive. ‘But I’m glad he’s got Bill to talk to. He won’t talk to me.’

  ‘I think Bill sympathizes because he panics if I’m away for even a night … even bloody breakfast!’

  When Connie couldn’t bring herself to respond, hearing only the censure – intended or not – in her friend’s remark, Jill spoke again. ‘You two have such a great marriage, Connie.’ She laughed. ‘Remember that time we went to the Western Isles? The ceilidh? Devan claimed he could do the proper Scottish thing, hopping about and pointing his toes and waving his arms in the air.’ Connie smiled. She did remember. ‘Then he dragged you onto the dance floor and somehow, together, you managed to make it really work – although you didn’t have a clue what you were doing, you said – and the pub went wild, clapping and cheering your efforts.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Connie said, ‘but I’ve always loved to dance. God, that night was fun.’ She heard the wistful note in her voice and Jill must have too.

  ‘You’re so good together, Connie.’ She gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll sort it out.’

  When they arrived at Jill’s rambling thatched cottage, Connie excused herself, refusing her friend’s offer of tea and one of her famous madeleines. She couldn’t face any more discussion about her marriage. Not least because, although Jill had not said as much, she could tell her sympathy – Bill’s too – was tipping in Devan’s favour. After all, Jill was retired and clearly loving it. She probably couldn’t see the problem. Jill, Bill, even Neil … they’re sort of implying I’m on the wrong foot about my job, she thought, after she’d said goodbye to Jill. Not for the first time, she wondered if they were right.