by Hilary Boyd
‘Going to rain all day, they say,’ Connie dutifully returned.
Mrs Mounce pushed the paper and loaf back across the wooden counter, handing Connie her receipt. Gathering her purchases, she turned to leave, bumping into someone standing too close behind her.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ echoed the man.
She froze. That voice. No. She hardly dared look up. But when she did, it was straight into the turquoise eyes of Jared Temple. She thought she must be hallucinating. The newspaper slid from her shaking hands.
Jared bent to pick it up, neatened the pages and handed it calmly back to her. He had a quiet smile on his face, as if this were the most normal encounter in the world.
Connie, checking round and seeing the shop was empty except for Mrs Mounce – who was fiddling with the cigarette packets on the shelves behind the till – hissed at him, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Jared seemed a bit taken aback at her tone. ‘I … I just wanted to see you, Connie.’
She felt as if she’d been Tasered. Here she was, standing in her village shop, a mere three minutes’ walk from her house and her husband, talking to the man with whom she’d enjoyed clandestine, abandoned sex. ‘You can’t be here,’ she said, desperately. ‘I can’t be seen talking to you.’
He frowned, but did not speak, did not move.
‘Please … please, Jared. Don’t do this.’
When he didn’t instantly disappear and stop the nightmare, she took a steadying breath. ‘OK, listen. Meet me at the windmill …’ she was trying to calm her delirious brain enough to remember what she and Devan had planned for today ‘… about eleven thirty? It’s only five minutes away.’ She didn’t wait for him to agree, or explain which windmill or where. She just fled the shop, Stacy from the pub holding the door for her on his way in.
‘Hey, how’s it going?’ he said, with a cheerful grin.
‘Yeah, good. Sorry, in a bit of a rush, Stacy.’ She shot past him and ran to her door, not daring to look back and see if Jared had followed her. It felt as if she’d been gone ten years, but the house was quiet, Devan still in the shower – she could hear the growl of the pump. Plonking the bread and the paper on the table, she sank into a chair, trying to control the trembling in her limbs.
A moment later, she realized the shower had stopped. She quickly got to her feet and opened the fridge for the eggs, milk and grapefruit juice. It was Saturday: they would have their usual scrambled eggs. She laid the table mechanically, unaware of her actions. Riley bounded into the kitchen and came snuffling around her, but she gently pushed him away. Devan mustn’t suspect anything’s wrong, she told herself, as she boiled the kettle and broke eggs into the Pyrex mixing bowl. Attempting to rearrange her agitated face, she stretched her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head from side to side as if to dislodge her panic.
She heard her husband’s tread on the stairs and held her breath, not turning as he came in and walked straight across to where she stood, putting his arms around her and nuzzling her neck.
‘That was superb,’ he said, chuckling to himself as he let her go and stretched up his linked hands to the ceiling, loudly cracking his knuckles. ‘Great start to the day.’
‘Hmm …’ She smiled but went on whisking the already thoroughly beaten eggs. When she swung round to the stove the butter was nearly burned, and she snatched it off the heat with a curse.
‘Think I’ll do the supermarket after breakfast,’ Connie said, as she spread her toast and ground pepper over her eggs, although her appetite had deserted her.
‘I’ll come too,’ Devan replied. ‘I want to get a chamois for the car. That cloth we’ve got is useless – it just makes the windscreen worse.’
‘I’ll get it,’ she said quickly. Devan didn’t particularly enjoy supermarkets, and she thought her plan was safe.
He shrugged. ‘OK. We need fruit and loo paper.’
She let out a careful breath. ‘We could do something this afternoon … Pub lunch, maybe?’
Devan nodded, but was absorbed in an incoming text. Watching his bent head, she felt a sudden fear for him, for the hurt she might inflict on him, if he were ever faced with how she had betrayed him. Jared’s just doing what he always does, she consoled herself. And, to be fair to him, she’d never complained before when he’d made a random appearance. In fact, she’d been waiting eagerly for him every time, to her shame. Not any longer. Definitely not any longer.
Connie was certain she just needed to impress upon Jared that she would not be succumbing to his charms this time … or ever again. Not ever. She’d had no indication that he was a vengeful, vindictive person – although she was aware she knew little about him. Surely there’d be no mileage in compromising me, she thought, months after their affair had ended. With these soothing thoughts, she readied herself for the rendezvous at the windmill.
Dashing round the supermarket as if she were a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, she bought the weekend’s provisions in record time, settling for staples like shepherd’s pie and pasta, the ingredients for which were stamped on her brain, like the words of a school hymn, and needed no concentration. Her mind was all over the place. He’ll be gone by lunchtime. She prayed no one she knew would be up at the windmill today. It was more of a tourist stop, and she very much doubted that on a chilly late-October Saturday anyone would be there at all.
When Connie arrived, she was relieved to see no other cars in the lay-by near the gate to the tall whitewashed stone tower. She sat there for a moment, listening to the silence. Will he come? She tried to remember what she’d told him, but her brain wouldn’t focus on the earlier conversation. All she could remember was blind, gut-churning panic.
She got out of the car. There was quite a wind up there, the air damp, more rain on the way. Pushing open the gate, she walked towards the mill, glancing nervously around. No one. She shivered. Maybe he got the message, she thought, clinging to a slim thread of hope.
Ten minutes later, she was still alone, gazing across towards the Cheddar Gorge. It began to rain, and she decided to wait in the car. As she turned away from the windmill she saw him on the other side of the gate, Barbour buttoned to his neck, hair dusted with drizzle. He must have walked, because there was no sign of a car. She hurried over to him.
‘Let’s sit inside,’ she said, pressing the fob and pulling open her door. Jared, who had said nothing so far, gave a brief raise of his eyebrows in greeting, but made no attempt to reach for the door handle. There was none of the characteristic amusement in his face today as he stared at her over the roof of the car. ‘Get in,’ she urged. He gave her a half-smile, which didn’t convince her, finally opening the passenger door and sliding into the seat.
Skewing herself sideways so she could face him, she spoke softly. ‘What are you doing, Jared?’ Seeing him there, on her home turf, the absolute manifestation of her worst nightmare, made her body feel leaden, cold as the stone of the windmill tower. The unrestrained lust that in the past had ignited at the sight of him was now like the ashes of a dead fire in the morning.
Jared bowed his head, hands clasped in his lap. When he raised his eyes to hers, he appeared defiant. ‘I was worried about you, Connie. You were in such a terrible state when I left you. How was I to know that you hadn’t died right there in that grim hotel room?’
She saw his point. But she had to make hers. ‘We agreed this thing between us was over,’ she said evenly. ‘In Inverness, I said it had to stop, that I couldn’t see you any more … and you agreed, Jared.’
‘To be fair, I didn’t agree,’ he replied, his tone also reasonable. ‘I said I understood what you were saying.’
Alarmed and frustrated by his semantics, she responded more sharply: ‘Can’t you see what you’re doing to me by being here? You must go. Please, Jared, please … Just leave me alone.’ Connie could hear the anguish in her voice, and clearly he could too, because his outstretched hand was prising hers from where
it was clamped, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel. He folded her icy fingers gently into his warm palm. ‘Don’t,’ she said weakly, wrenching free.
Another car pulled up beside them. Heart hammering, she peered through the rain-spattered window at the occupants, then let out a small moan of relief: it was no one she knew. ‘Jared?’ she prompted, as he still didn’t acknowledge her entreaty.
‘I would never do you any harm, Connie, you know that,’ he said eventually. Then he fixed her with his turquoise eyes. ‘I love you,’ he said simply.
His words stunned her. ‘Love?’ she croaked, her throat closed with fear.
He nodded, suddenly at ease with himself again, now he had played his trump card. ‘That night when you needed me … in the hotel room … you looked so vulnerable, Connie. I realized then, as I watched you sleep, that it went far deeper.’ He smiled. ‘Although sex like that? Wouldn’t you say it’s a powerful touchstone? One that indicates the absolute strength of our connection?’
Connie tried to control her pounding heart. ‘For God’s sake, Jared, what part of “I’m married” don’t you understand? You talk as if Devan doesn’t exist.’ How can I make him see? she asked herself desperately. How can I make him go away?
He shrugged. ‘He obviously doesn’t make you happy. If he did, you’d never have let me do all those things to your gorgeous body.’ His voice had dropped to an intimate purr.
A sharp, unconscious frisson of desire stirred through her loins at the familiarity of his tone, the reminder of ‘those things’. It shocked her that he still had that power over her. Now, when she feared him, almost hated him for being there. She looked away, tried with all her might to tamp it down.
‘Would you?’ he asked, a smile in his voice, as if he knew exactly the effect his words would have on her.
She shuddered. ‘Stop it.’
There was silence in the stuffy, enclosed space. Through the steamed-up windows, she watched the people from the other car get out – a middle-aged couple in matching purple anoraks – open the gate and walk slowly across the turf to the windmill.
Connie took a deep breath. ‘I told you … we were going through a bad patch. But things are better now.’ She bit her lip, struggling for the right words to convince him. ‘I should never have betrayed him.’ Jared gazed at her but didn’t speak. ‘You dazzled me. I was overwhelmed,’ she added, feeling the need to acknowledge what had happened between them. ‘But this,’ she waved her hands expansively, ‘this village, with my house, my husband, my dog, my friends, is my life.’ She wanted her next words to have the fullest impact. ‘Please, you have to listen to me, Jared. I will never leave Devan. What happened between us is absolutely over.’
He nodded, as if he understood. Then he said, ‘I’ve taken Foxwood for six months. I moved in two days ago.’
Foxwood? The name meant nothing to Connie. She tried to process what he was talking about, but her brain cells were in chaos, compromised by the mass of adrenalin pumping through her veins. Then the penny dropped.
She gaped at him, open-mouthed. ‘You’re the one renting Mr Solomon’s cottage?’
He nodded. ‘They’ve done a good job on the renovations. The kitchen’s a bit small for my liking, but I’ll be nice and cosy over the winter.’ Grinning, he added, ‘Pop round later and see for yourself.’
Connie was lost for words. She hunched in her seat, her arms crossed rigidly against her chest in an attempt to stop herself screaming.
‘Bring Devan,’ she heard him say, through a fog of disbelief. ‘I had a great chat with him and his friend in the pub the day I signed up for the cottage.’
The silence in the car was profound, as if she’d suddenly gone deaf.
‘Are you completely out of your mind?’ she whispered, all strength gone from her body.
With a puzzled frown, he leaned over and put both his hands firmly on her crossed forearms, staring intently into her eyes. ‘You look terrified, Connie.’ He drew back a bit. ‘Oh, my God … you’re not worried about your husband finding out about us, are you?’ He sighed. ‘You know I’d never betray you. I will never tell a living soul what happened between us, not in a million years.’ He smiled his gentle smile. ‘I just want to be near you.’
20
‘You’ve been ages,’ Devan commented, raising his eyes from the newspaper as Connie hefted the bulging shopping bag onto the kitchen counter.
She glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly one thirty. She’d been with Jared barely half an hour, but she was in such a state as she watched him walking back towards the village that she knew she couldn’t go home straight away. Those last words of his, spoken with such chilling reasonableness, had felt like ice forming around her heart. She could hardly breathe. It didn’t seem possible that they came from the same man whose casual, smiling flirtatiousness had got her so willingly between the sheets.
She’d driven around blindly, in a haze of distress, stopping by another gate somewhere west of the village and bursting into tears, her body shaking with dread. Jared had repeatedly assured her that their secret was safe. But revealing the truth or not was just the end of a long road stretching miserably ahead, littered with his presence in her life at every turn. How was she to survive that?
‘I kept bumping into people. You know how it is.’
‘Did you find the chamois?’ Devan was up, pulling things out of the bag, opening the fridge and stacking the packets inside, tearing open the plastic mesh round a bag of satsumas and tipping them into the wooden fruit bowl, emptying an old carton of cream that was off when he sniffed it. Connie stood and watched. It was as if she were witnessing the last moments of her life as she knew it. The chamois, she thought. I forgot the sodding chamois.
‘Sorry, they only had the huge ones … which were twelve bloody quid.’ That was two lies in less than five minutes. And she knew it was only the beginning.
Jared is living in the village. She tested the words, unable to believe what she was hearing in her own head. Mentally, she began the journey to his house. Walk down to the corner, past the pub, turn right, then left through the small arcade of boutiquey shops, and the cottage was across the road, sandwiched between two identical ones. It was pretty, red brick with cooking-apple-green painted window surrounds and front door. A large bright yellow mahonia was flowering by the gate, the garden tidy and mature. Connie knew it: she walked past regularly, taking Riley for a walk. She’d watched the progress of the renovation, even chatted to Dougie, the young guy doing most of the work.
‘Connie?’ Devan was waving his hand in front of her face. ‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’
She came to as if from a dream. ‘Sorry …’
‘Are you OK? You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.’
She tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled cough. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, making a huge effort to compose her features.
Devan looked sceptical, but obviously his stomach took precedence over his curiosity. ‘Shall we get going? I’m starving.’
Images of Jared seated on a bar stool, chatting cosily to Stacy, came to mind.
‘Can we not do Skittles today?’
‘Oh … I had my eye on one of Nicole’s chicken pies.’
‘It’s just we always go there.’
‘Fair enough. Where do you fancy, then?’
Connie’s mind was blank. All she could think of was getting as far from Jared as possible. ‘Umm, what about … There’s the Pig?’
Devan’s face lit up. ‘Good plan. We haven’t been there in ages.’ Then he glanced at his phone. ‘Will they still be serving lunch? It’s a good twenty minutes’ drive.’
I don’t care if they are or not, she wanted to shout at him. Her stomach was so knotted, she doubted she’d be able to choke down even a mouthful of food, anyway. She felt on the verge of tears again, but knew she had to pull herself together. This was not going away. He was not going away.
Being with her husband was ago
ny. Connie wanted to hug him close, whisk him away, rescue him from the mire into which she feared he was about to fall. Because even if Jared did as he promised and never told a living soul their secret, Connie knew. She would need to pretend, constantly pretend, always wondering what little thing he might be divulging – and to whom – that would blow her world apart. The toll was incalculable. Devan would notice. He would suffer accordingly. Unless I can persuade Jared to leave, she thought, now, as Devan tucked into his beef brisket sandwich and she played with a fishcake on a bed of puréed spinach.
‘I’m off,’ Devan said, two days later, holdall in hand as he stood in the hall. ‘Be back tomorrow lunchtime.’
He was attending a board meeting of the Royal College of General Practitioners – about GP education and support – in Bristol. Although it was less than an hour’s drive, he was staying overnight. After the meeting, he and his doctor friends liked to settle in at the hotel bar and make a night of it, catch up with all the affronts they’d suffered at the hands of their patients, and the NHS.
She put her arms round him and gave him a tight embrace. ‘Have fun,’ she said, breathing in his warm scent and loving him so much.
Connie had not seen Jared again. But, then, she’d barely been out, except to scurry to the car or hurry up the road in the opposite direction to his cottage when she took Riley out. She’d almost managed to convince herself that he wasn’t really there. But the tenderness she’d been showering on Devan was already making him wonder what was up.
‘You’re being very nice to me,’ he’d commented the day before, when she’d helped him tidy the garden shed, then made cheese scones for tea.
She’d laughed nervously as she poured his tea. ‘Am I usually such a harridan?’
‘No,’ he’d replied, then looked across the table, suddenly serious as he buttered his warm scone. ‘You know I wasn’t ever really questioning our marriage before. That would have been nuts.’ He grinned. ‘Especially as you make such delicious scones.’