I was sorting through a jumble of feelings as I walked down the hallway to my bedroom with Angelina. Surprise was one of them. I had not known whether Charlie’s reference to Angelina having a free hand extended beyond the one occasion—and, if so, whether Angelina would take him up on it.
The heat of desire had gone, as had the fear of discovery, not to mention the shock of it happening. With the recent exception, I had never contributed to anyone’s infidelity. I had never physically cheated on Claire or, long before that, Joanna. E-mailing Angelina behind Claire’s back was not exemplary, but it was far less than my dad had done. His playing around had given my mother a lot of grief.
I would like to say that my family history had weighed heavily on me as I considered whether or not it would be appropriate to screw Angelina against the front door on my arrival at her family holiday house, and then reprise the performance a day later. Truth was, the moral questions had barely crossed my mind. Part of it was the speed at which it had happened; part of it was that it was no more than the logical endpoint of something that had been building for months; and part of it was that at some level I thought of myself as having a special, permanent relationship with Angelina. I went to see a lady / I’ve been there before.
It was warm, and we lay on top of the bed, Angelina’s head on my chest, almost at right angles to me. I ran my hand lazily through her hair, felt her cheeks, her shoulders, her breasts. “Tell me,” I asked. “Why did you get in touch?”
Long pause. “You really want to know?”
My finger traced a scar on her belly that had not been there twenty-two years ago. “That’s why I asked.”
“If you keep doing that with your hand, I’m not going to have a chance to answer.”
I moved back to her navel.
“This is going to sound embarrassing and superficial, but when I turned forty-five I said to my mother, ‘They say women disappear after forty-five,’ and Mum said, ‘That’s a lot of nonsense. You don’t disappear at all. Men just stop noticing you.’”
Angelina laughed and so did I.
“Your mother hasn’t changed.”
“Not true, actually.” She paused again, but must have thought the better of bringing her mother into the bedroom. “Anyway, I wanted to know if you would still notice me.”
There had been a long gap between her turning forty-five and her e-mail to me. She was not far off forty-six now.
“That was all?”
“I’m using ‘notice’ in a broad sense.”
“Well, now you know,” I said.
“It was nice that you wanted to flirt with me,” she said. “I wasn’t planning to take it any further.”
“That worked well.”
“Are you really okay—I mean, with Claire? As okay as you can be? I’m sorry, it’s been all about me and Charlie, but I didn’t want to … No, no excuse. We’ve just been self-centered. We’ve had a lot going on and haven’t exactly been…”
“It’s all right. I told you: we ran out of steam.” I wanted to talk with Angelina about the twenty-two years of my life she’d missed, over drinks and meals and walks in the sunshine, but I was not going to get the opportunity unless I got a grip on the present situation.
“Where’s Charlie coming from?” I said.
“With this?”
“No, with tomorrow’s wine matches.”
“He’s all right with it.”
“So he said. Do I have to point out that most husbands wouldn’t be?”
“He’s not most husbands. There are some things that are between him and me, and this is about … this … not anything more. You’re okay with that, aren’t you?”
“This” and “that” evidently meant sex, but I was not prepared to accept that it was only about sex. It never is. Angelina had implied as much: things between her and Charlie. And, more significantly, there was the feeling between us that no amount of talking—or not talking—was going to deny.
After we made love, she lay still for a minute or so before climbing out of bed.
“I’ve got to do my teeth and stuff, and I really should go back to Charlie,” she said.
* * *
Tuesday morning, I woke at dawn with a combination of adrenaline and stale alcohol in my system. I knew the treatment for a hangover, but it was tough medicine to take. No choice today, though. The last two days had turned on the sunshine in my life, and I needed to be in the best possible state to bathe in it.
In shorts and T-shirt, I jogged down to the village, then up the narrow road leading out. I needed the run; aside from the walk to the village with Charlie, I had hardly been out of the house. The sun was coming up, and there was still a bit of mist around in the valleys. I stopped at the church, which was not quite at the top of the hill, that prime location being reserved for the cemetery. The doors were open, and I stepped into the imposing space, so unlike modern churches and surely much bigger than the village could fill. Built for a future that didn’t happen.
Back down the hill I was cruising, not pushing it. I had learned Grieg’s “Morning Mood” on the piano as a child, and it was playing in my head as I passed the shops in the main street, closed except for the boulangerie at this hour. In the clarity of the morning and the music, I collected my thoughts and gave myself a talking-to.
I did not know everything that was going on, but I was accustomed to that in my consulting work. I could deal with a bit of ambiguity as long as I knew the key things.
I knew how I felt about Angelina. From the moment at the station—the moment on Skype, in fact—the connection had been back. I was sure it was there for her, too, regardless of her insistence that it was only about sex. I knew that Charlie and Angelina’s marriage was in trouble, and that Charlie was prepared to let Angelina and me be together, at least temporarily. It was apparent that Angelina wanted that.
What I did not know was Charlie’s motivation. But in the end, if Angelina chose to leave him, it didn’t really matter.
* * *
By the time Charlie made an appearance, I was showered and had made an early start on the database work. I walked into the kitchen where he was wearing a voluminous Chinese robe, brewing an Angelina Special on the espresso machine. He sprinkled chocolate and cinnamon on top and passed it to me.
“Her Majesty awaits.”
I knocked on the bedroom door of the woman I’d made love to the previous night.
“Adam?”
It was odd to hear her calling me that rather than Dooglas. “Who else were you expecting to knock?”
Their bedroom was at the front of the house, opening onto the long balcony and its views over the hills. Charlie’s bedside table had enough pills to open a pharmacy. On Angelina’s side, her laptop was on the table and her blue dress from the previous night lay in a heap on the floor.
She looked delightfully unkempt with the morning sun on her face and smiled when I gave her the coffee. “Give me a kiss.”
I bent down and kissed her softly on the mouth.
“See you downstairs,” she said.
* * *
Charlie and I did the croissant run, and he advised that dinner, subject to my approval, would be in Fleurie, half an hour’s drive away. The alternative was a Michelin three-star restaurant, but it was a longer drive and heavier cuisine.
“Gotta watch the weight,” said Charlie, with five size-six croissants in the bag. “Saw you coming back from a jog this morning. I’m working up to it. Had a bit of a scare a while ago.”
I waited for him to elaborate.
“Bit of chest pain. My GP thought it was indigestion, but he sent me to the cardio just to be sure. I’m on the exercise bike, wires stuck all over me, and I start feeling a bit off—more than a bit off—so I say to him, ‘I’m not feeling right, I think I’d better stop,’ and he says, ‘Just one more minute.’ He’s not looking at me, he’s looking at the monitor, and I’m thinking, Well, you’re the expert, you can see it on the screen, I must be okay, and the next thing I’m on the floor and he’s calling an ambulance.”
“Jesus.”
“I almost met Jesus. They had to give me CPR on the floor of his office. Heart stopped twice. Poor buggers in the waiting room: they saw me walk in and then I’m carried out on stretcher.”
“Quadruple bypass?”
“Just a couple of stents. But it was touch-and-go for a while.”
“How long ago?”
“Few months,” he said as we turned into the gate.