The First Mistake

by Sandie Jones

  The barman smiles and sets about slicing a cucumber into a crystal bowl, its cool, fresh fragrance finding its way across the bar.

  ‘Are you staying here or just visiting?’ asks the man, tilting his head towards the opening into the lobby.

  ‘We— I’m staying here,’ Alice says, her interest piqued enough to change her story, if only to see how far this game can go.

  ‘I see,’ he says, his piercing blue eyes never leaving hers. She wonders if he can see straight through her.

  ‘What about you?’ she asks, crossing her legs and flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘Are you staying here?’

  ‘Yep, just for tonight. I’ve been trying to sleep for four hours, but I’m battling horrific jet lag and the harder I try, the more it eludes me.’

  ‘Where have you flown in from?’

  ‘I’ve worked a double shift, flying from New York to Shanghai and Shanghai to here.’

  She can’t even compute the geography involved. ‘So, you’re cabin crew?’

  He nods modestly. ‘Pilot.’

  She smiles. Does he think I was born yesterday?

  Beth unexpectedly springs into her mind and Alice feels a pang in her chest. She remembers Beth telling her that she’d always fancied the idea of dating a pilot. ‘Imagine that uniform,’ she’d breathed, as they had adopted the downward dog pose in their yoga class. ‘Imagine him walking in with the cap under his arm and picking me up to the sound of “Up Where We Belong” . . .’

  As Alice had tried to picture the scene, which she’d been able to conjure up all too easily, she’d lost concentration and collapsed into a fit of giggles. ‘But they’re never what you think they’re going to be, are they?’

  ‘Are you speaking from experience?’ Beth had squealed in astonishment.

  ‘No,’ Alice had replied in mock horror. ‘I mean, whenever you hear them on the tannoy on the plane, they always sound so gorgeously smooth and authoritative, and then when you get off, there’s a puny little fella who looks far too young to be flying a metal tube thirty-six thousand feet up in the sky. They’re not all Richard Gere, is all I’m saying.’

  But looking at the man in front of her now, Alice notes that he isn’t that far off. His dark hair curls ever so slightly at the collar and his steely eyes follow the barman’s every move.

  ‘Can I get a Scotch and soda?’ he asks.

  Alice raises her glass to him and he gives a smiling nod.

  ‘Will the Scotch do the trick?’ she asks. ‘Get you to sleep?’

  ‘I’d like to think so, but right now all I want it to do is stop my eyeballs from burning.’

  He smiles, and she laughs a little louder than she’d intended. She pulls herself up, then wonders why she should.

  ‘I don’t know what’s worse – the inability to sleep, or the need to sleep far longer than you’re permitted to. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.’

  ‘How long have you been a pilot?’ Alice asks, showing herself to be a willing player in his game.

  ‘Fifteen years,’ he says, with a glint in his eye. ‘So, what brings you here?’

  ‘Business, actually.’ As soon as she says it, she’s overcome with panic as she remembers that she’s signed contracts for a site worth a million pounds. With a faithful husband and business partner by her side, it had felt manageable; nerve-wracking, but manageable. Now, adrift in the ocean, without Nathan’s anchor, the thought leaves her nauseous.

  ‘What kind of business?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m in property,’ says Alice, clearing her throat and sitting up straight in an attempt to shrug off the impostor syndrome that always seems to linger whenever she achieves something she doesn’t feel she deserves. ‘Interiors and development,’ she adds, taking ownership of the words this time.

  ‘Interesting,’ he says. ‘Are you buying or selling?’

  ‘I’ve just bought a site today,’ she says. ‘I’m building twenty-eight apartments on it.’

  He looks like he’s been given an electric shock. ‘Wow, really?’

  ‘You seem shocked,’ she says lightly. ‘Did you not realize that women are able to do that in this day and age?’ She didn’t dare let on that without Nathan, she would never have entertained the idea. She brushes off the insecurities that snake through her and tries to silence the voice that says, And without Nathan, you’ll never complete.

  ‘Not at all,’ he says carefully. ‘I’m just genuinely impressed. Does that make me a male chauvinist?’

  Alice shakes her head.

  ‘So, you’re doing this all on your own?’ he asks, stepping into dangerous territory again.

  ‘Without a man, you mean? Well, it’s my company, my talent, my money.’ She didn’t feel the need to share that most of the funds had been raised by a loan from the bank.

  ‘Well, hats off to you,’ he said, holding up his tumbler. ‘And I’d say that to a woman, man or child. It takes a brave person to do what you’re doing, especially in a market as competitive as here. I’m in awe.’

  And so you should be, she says silently, before asking herself why she’s even contemplating not being able to go ahead without Nathan being on board.

  ‘So, I’m guessing you’re from England?’

  Alice nods as she takes a sip of her drink. ‘London.’

  ‘I love British women,’ he says. ‘The accent drives me wild. There’s just something so damn sexy about it.’

  ‘We can talk real dirty as well,’ she says.

  ‘Oh yeah . . .?’ he says, encouraging her to go further.

  Alice raises her eyebrows suggestively before leaning in to whisper, ‘Mud, Dirt, Soil . . .’

  The man throws his head back and laughs. ‘You Brits have also got a wicked sense of humour.’

  Alice smiles, her eyes boring into his. She’d forgotten what it felt like to flirt; to feel attractive and desired. The power it gave her was an aphrodisiac in itself. Maybe she was now beginning to understand how unfaithful partners were able to let their guard down. Was it really this easy?

  ‘Look, I don’t normally do this,’ he says. ‘But –’ she smiles sweetly, pretending that she believes him – ‘would you like to join me for a drink in my room?’

  ‘For just a drink?’

  He smiles, and her insides flip over.

  If her husband wasn’t cheating and lying to her, then she wouldn’t be in this position, but he is, so . . .

  The thought of what Nathan might be doing right now breaks her heart, and as she looks at the handsome man in front of her, she wonders why she shouldn’t allow this stranger to glue a little of it back together. Would going to bed with him make me feel better? she thinks. Would I feel that I’d somehow got one over on Nathan? That we’d be on a level par?

  The pilot leans in close. ‘Is that a yes or a no?’

  She locks eyes with him. ‘What’s your room number?’

  ‘1106,’ he replies.

  ‘I’ll meet you there in five minutes.’

  He takes his glass and Alice watches him as he walks out of the bar. Every fibre in her body is on high alert, even the tips of her fingers are tingling. She forces herself to stay where she is, to calmly finish her drink, all the time counting loudly in her head to silence the nerves that are circling in her stomach.

  ‘Can I get the bill please?’ she asks the barman.

  ‘Mr Anthony has already signed for it, madam.’

  Slick. He’s obviously done this before.

  She lowers herself off the stool, careful not to make eye contact with anyone in case she sees their disapproving expression. She smooths down her dress as she walks through the lobby, pretending that what she’s about to do is perfectly normal. It must be, because her husband does it with no trouble whatsoever. In fact, both her husbands seemed to share a similar lack of conscience.

  As she waits for the lift, she can’t determine whether her body is shaking with nerves or fear. She looks at herself in the highly polished gold doors and
is taken aback by the reflection. There’s a smudge of mascara around her eyes, and she wets a finger to rub it away. She pinches at her cheeks and watches as the blood instantly rushes to colour her pallid skin. She ruffles her feathered fringe and tucks one side of her hair behind her ear.

  Forcing herself to take deep breaths, she walks slowly along the low-lit hallway, her heels sinking into the plush carpet. Just as she draws level with the door, it swings open and he’s standing there, his eyes wide.

  ‘There you are!’ exclaims Nathan. ‘I was just about to send out a search party.’

  ‘I got a second wind,’ she says, brusquely. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Now you know how I felt,’ he says.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Alice asks, as she steps out of her shoes. She can’t bring herself to look at him for fear she’ll see the truth.

  ‘In the bar,’ he says, without missing a beat. ‘But if I’d known you were awake I would have stayed here and carried on where we left off.’

  He comes up behind her as she stands at the dressing table taking her earrings out.

  ‘You were incredible,’ he whispers into her ear.

  Alice closes her eyes as he kisses her neck, imagining that it’s the man in the bar. When she opens them to see Nathan, she can’t help but feel duped.

  34

  By the next morning, Alice has made a decision. In order for her to go into battle, she needs to know who she’s fighting against. Nathan, Alice has decided overnight, isn’t going anywhere. Why would he, when his whole life is with her? He’d lose his home, his kids, his job, the lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed, for what? A sleazy bit of rough on the side? It’s easier for Alice to think this way, believing she’s in control, and can dictate the outcome. Because if she allows any other scenario to play out in her mind, she simply wouldn’t be able to function.

  So she needs to find out who the threat to her family is, and once she does, she’ll know what to do about it. But in the meantime, she’s going to try her damnedest to be the wife and mother she needs to be to stop her world from going off-kilter. Though that doesn’t mean she’s going to give her all to her philandering husband; she slips out of bed just as he moves towards her with an outstretched arm.

  She takes a quick shower and puts her hair up into a messy top-knot – there’s no point in doing anything else when the humidity outside turns even the sleekest style into a ball of frizz. She knows she’s trying to keep her mind occupied – to stop it from alternating between Tom and Nathan, asking the questions she so desperately wants to know the answers to.

  But what will she do with the answers once she has them, if they’re not the ones she wants? Is Tom still alive, living happily with his new family? Had he set the whole thing up? But then why would he be so audacious as to continue using his real name? Who is Nathan having an affair with? Will it make a difference if it’s someone she knows? Will she stay if he promises it didn’t mean anything? Will it crucify her if he says he’s fallen in love? She can’t possibly say how she’ll react without knowing what she’s dealing with.

  It pains Alice to admit it, but Beth had been right all along. She’d had a sixth sense that Nathan was cheating, probably because she’d had it happen to her and knew the signs to look for. But then Alice pulls herself up at the stark realization that, in fact, Beth’s partner hadn’t been unfaithful to her. Tom was already married. It was Alice he was unfaithful to, not Beth. The intense fury that she’d tried so hard to contain was in danger of boiling over.

  She remembers listening to Beth over and over as she’d relived their intense love affair, revealing their most intimate moments against the backdrop of its sudden demise.

  ‘How could he do it to me?’ Beth had cried as Alice held her. ‘I thought we were everything to each other. He told me he loved me and never wanted to be without me.’

  Alice could even recall asking Beth if he might have been married.

  ‘There’s no way,’ she’d said abruptly, seemingly offended by the suggestion. ‘He used to stay over. How could he do that if he had a wife and, God forbid, kids at home?’

  Alice stops buttoning up her shirt. He’d stayed over? So it couldn’t have been Tom. But as fast as her brain wants to grab onto the tiniest semblance of hope, it removes itself from her grasp just as quickly, as she acknowledges that Tom had often been away with work. She laughs wryly at the memory of him going backwards and forwards to Dublin, in a supposed attempt to win new business. Had the client even existed? Had the whole set-up been an elaborate ruse to be with Beth?

  She pictures Tom kissing her and Sophia goodbye at the front door, with his overnight holdall in his hand.

  ‘I wish I didn’t have to do this,’ he’d say.

  ‘So do I, but it’ll be good for business,’ Alice would reply. ‘So go make it worth our while.’

  He’d look back at them forlornly, like a lamb going to slaughter, and Alice used to feel a little piece of her heart break each time. Now, she wonders, how long it had taken him to get his game face on and get round to Beth’s. She imagines it was only a matter of minutes.

  Alice does all that she can not to blanch when Nathan takes her hand as they walk down to breakfast. He sits down and orders a coffee whilst Alice heads to the buffet that is laid out along one wall of the huge room. She’s debating between fruit or cereal when a male voice behind her says, ‘I missed you last night.’

  Taking her time to turn around, assuming that whoever it is must be talking to someone else, her mouth drops open and a thousand words crowd the space in her brain as she’s faced with a uniformed pilot. He looks like the man from a dream she thinks she’s had.

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’ she starts, without really knowing where she’s going with it.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he says, smiling. ‘It happens all the time. I get stood up by beautiful women every night of the week.’

  Somehow, she doubts that. ‘I’m not here on my own,’ she says, feeling like a schoolgirl caught playing truant.

  ‘I know,’ he says, his eyes avoiding hers as he picks up what looks like granola in a glass pot. ‘I saw you walking in with your husband.’

  Alice’s cheeks flush and her pulse quickens as she scans the room, desperately trying to remember where they’d been seated.

  ‘Anyway, it was very nice to meet you,’ says the pilot. ‘And good luck with that venture of yours.’ He continues along the buffet without missing a beat.

  Her heart’s done exactly the opposite as she sees Nathan heading towards her.

  ‘What are you having, sweetheart?’ he asks, as he literally rubs shoulders with the man Alice could have had sex with last night.

  She could have done, perhaps should have done, but she hadn’t. Nathan, on the other hand, most probably had, as he certainly wasn’t in the bar where he claimed to have been. Yet, he was only gone for an hour or so. Would that have given him enough time? If the woman who proclaimed to ‘need him, now’ was waiting in a room down the corridor, then it gave him plenty.

  Alice can’t help but scan the room as she walks back to the table, picking out any lonesome woman and assessing whether she might have had sex with her husband last night. There are disappointingly few possibilities, but it doesn’t stop Alice fawning over Nathan, just in case they’re being watched.

  She puts her hand on his as they talk, careful to give him her full attention. He, in turn, seems to give her his, which confuses her. Why would he do that if he knows his mistress is there, watching?

  ‘Looking forward to going home?’ he asks, as she leans in for a kiss. He doesn’t flinch.

  ‘It will be good to see the girls,’ she says.

  ‘Has it been as hard as you thought it would be? Coming away? Leaving them at home?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ she says, honestly. She imagines that’s probably because she’s had other things to think about.

  ‘It would be nice if we could do this again,’ he says. ‘Perhaps a little more o
ften. If last night was anything to go by, I’d like to do it a lot more often.’

  She remembers their love-making before she’d seen his phone; the warm tingle of alcohol making her lose her inhibitions, the sense of abandonment as she finally cast off the shackles of the past, content to give her all to the husband who deserved it. The words of the text flash in her mind and it hits her again, hard, that he doesn’t.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she says, watching his reaction carefully, ‘but this time yesterday, I was so excited about this project.’

  His brow furrows. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now, I don’t feel like I want to do it.’

  ‘But what’s changed in that time?’

  Everything, she wants to say. ‘Nothing,’ she says instead. ‘I just don’t want to do it.’

  Nathan sits back in his chair and laughs. ‘Well, it’s a bit late to change your mind.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asks, tilting her head to one side. ‘What if I wanted to pull out?’

  He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Well, you can’t . . . we’ve exchanged. We’d lose the hundred grand deposit.’

  ‘But losing one hundred thousand would surely be better than losing a million?’ she says.

  He picks up her hand and holds it to his lips. Any notion of his mistress being in the room evaporates. ‘I understand why you’re nervous, it’s only natural, but it will be okay.’

  ‘I just don’t know if it’s the right thing to do,’ says Alice. ‘I don’t know if I’m prepared to risk AT’s money . . . Tom’s money.’ She thought she’d throw that one in there, just to remind Nathan whose money they were playing with. She doesn’t care if it makes him flinch a little. And ironically, she no longer cares what Tom may or may not think about what she’s doing. He’d lost that right.

  ‘We can’t back out now,’ says Nathan. ‘We’re too far in.’

  Alice reclaims her hand. ‘But there’s not really a “we” in it, is there? This is all on my shoulders. It’s my money, my reputation and my responsibility if it all goes wrong.’

  ‘But it won’t,’ says Nathan. ‘This is going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to us and I’m going to be with you every step of the way.’