There was an Australian girl, when I was barely nineteen. It was Oxford’s long vacation; impecunious and newly jilted by a girlfriend whose name I’ve long since forgotten, I was spending the summer with my parents in the Rhônes-Alpes, in a tiny village called La Palud, half an hour northeast of Grenoble.
I awoke one morning to find my parents had gone hiking, leaving me alone with my law books (whose spines, I regret to say, had yet to be cracked; a state of affairs presumably noted by my all-seeing mother). This being Jean de Florette country—a simmering feud between the villagers over the communal well had led to scythes at dawn just a few weeks before our arrival—if you wanted a reviving morning shower before turning to your neglected studies, you had to make the short walk from our remote mountain chalet to an impossibly photogenic lake nearby.
And so began the headiest ten days of my life.
The erotic imprint left by Kristene as she rose naked from the lucent water, a modern-day siren, is such that even now, nearly twenty-five years later, I grow hard at the thought. Her skin glistened in the morning sunlight as if she’d been dipped in syrup. I watched as she smoothed back her wet hair from her face with the palms of her hands, her back arched, presenting high, firm, raspberry-nippled breasts to the sky. A burl of chestnut hair wisped between long, endlessly long, brown legs.
When she saw me standing there, openmouthed and overcome, she simply smiled, winked, and dived gracefully backward into the water.
She was twenty-nine, her mood as pliant as her warm and willing body. I’d shed my burdensome virginity at seventeen to a girl my own age scarcely more experienced; two years on I still knew less about the way a woman worked than I did a jet engine. Kristene rectified my woeful ignorance. She guided my hands, my tongue, my cock, my mind, with wanton, audacious confidence, unashamedly taking as much pleasure as she gave.
It was clear from the beginning that our relationship, which occupied no dimension other than the gloriously physical, had no life outside this particular time and space. I was being admitted to a sensual Eden for reasons I neither knew nor cared to discover; soon, the door would close again. So I greedily slaked my thirst while I could. I returned to that lake day after day, gorging myself on her, determined to wring every moment of pleasure from her body in the hope that the memories would be enough to sustain me when she was gone.
They were not. For years afterward, sex with every woman I bedded seemed as dry and stale as week-old biscuits when you have tasted nectar.
I’d forgotten how Kristene made my body feel until I met Sara. One remembers the taste of a strawberry: but even the most vivid memory is but a faint, dull facsimile compared to the sybaritic pleasure of biting into the strawberry itself.
That one night with Sara has reawakened senses I’ve not felt since those halcyon days by the lakeside when I was a priapic nineteen-year-old. How to describe the indescribable? Losing myself in her lush, ripe body, it was as if I was all cock, every muscle and sinew of my body throbbing with the heat of her. I felt her sweet wetness down to the tips of my toes. For the first time in my life, I actually lost my mind when I was inside a woman; even Kristene hadn’t come close to this. I was conscious of nothing else but the need to possess, and be possessed by, her.
A need utterly at odds with the fact that despite everything I still love my wife.
“Not really on, is it, old man?” Giles says. “With the best will in the world. Not blaming you, of course, old chap, seen the girl myself; hard for a fellow to resist, absolutely. But the thing is, Nicholas, Mal’s a lovely woman. Man would be a fool to lose her for a pretty face.”
I stare morosely into my pint. “She’s a wonderful woman. I don’t deserve her.”
“So what’s this all about then?” Giles says kindly. “Not like you. Always such a sensible chap.”
“Not so sensible now, it would seem.”
He nods at the bartender. “Same again? Look, Nicholas, we all make mistakes. Fellow’s got to be a saint sometimes—the girls these days. Lot more forward than they used to be. Had a bit of a brush myself a few months ago, matter of fact. Girl on the seven-nineteen, always sits in the first carriage behind the engine, same as me. Charming girl. Works in advertising. Got chatting after a while, as you do. Quite brightened up the journey, if I’m honest. Anyway, next thing I know, she’s asking me to come with her to a gallery opening.”
“What did you say?” I ask curiously.
“Said no, of course,” Giles says briskly. “Look, old chap. Don’t mean to be a killjoy. But once you open that door—well, who knows where it’ll lead? I know I’m not every girl’s cup of tea, never been an oil painting, I know that; but Liz is rather fond, you know. Break her heart if she found I’d been dipping my wick elsewhere. Thing is, you and Mal have a good thing going. And there are your girls to think of. Why take the risk?”
I’ve asked myself the same thing a thousand times. Sleeping with her once, after the bombings, I could explain away; danger makes us all do things we wouldn’t normally. And perhaps that would have been it, if Sara hadn’t produced the opera tickets—how magnificent, that she should love Wagner!—and made it clear she was interested in a repeat performance. If we hadn’t run into Liz and Giles, I would have taken her to bed again. And this time, the only danger would have been of my making.
“Liz told Mal about last night, you know, Giles. Said you’d run into me in London and given me a lift back.”
“You were jolly lucky there, Nicholas. Jolly lucky. Could’ve been very different if it’d been anyone else. But Liz is a good woman. She takes things at face value. You’ll be all right with her.”
I drain my pint and set it down. Giles is absolutely right. Five minutes earlier, and Mal’s best friend would have seen Sara all over me like a cheap suit. I should never have let her touch me in public; it was pure bloody recklessness. I should never have gone out with her again at all.
Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur. The gods never let us love and be wise at the same time.
The thing is, one night with Sara wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.
I know this thing has to end, and soon; the stakes are too high. I could lose everything I care about. Christ Almighty, I deal with marital train wrecks every day of the week. I had a client in my office just last Friday, been married two years and nine months. Wife had a couple of miscarriages, and the bloody fool ended up in bed with his secretary. He’s now looking at giving his wife his house and a rather nasty slice of the next few years of his life; and that’s a best-case scenario, if we pull the right judge. Meanwhile, the secretary has taken one look at the interim maintenance order and made for the hills.
I have to get Sara out of my system, once and for all. But denying myself only seems to feed the fever. Perhaps if she stops being forbidden fruit, if I let this thing run its natural course, it’ll burn itself out. I’m sure of it.
Valentine’s Day. Less than a month away. I’ll give myself till Valentine’s Day, the day associated with love and romance the world over; and then I’ll put an end to it. We’ll have a final passionate liaison, and then bid each other a regretful, but amicable, farewell.
Somehow, putting a time limit on the affair eases my excruciating guilt. I’ve already broken my vows; the damage is done. A few weeks longer, that’s all I ask.
I’m not leading Sara on under false pretenses. She’s a young girl with everything going for her. It’s not like she’s in this for the long haul. She’s a smart woman; she knows I’m not a good bet for the future. And at her age, she’s probably not even thinking about the future anyway. She’s enjoying this for what it is: fun, good conversation, and bloody fantastic sex.
I send her half a florist’s stock on Monday by way of an apology for our ruined evening; and then a boxed set of the Wagner she loves so much the next day. I haven’t been caught up in such a romantic rush for years; on Wednesday I surprise myself by tracking down a rare out-of-print book of poetry—a revelation, that, to discover a dozen well-thumbed volumes of First World War poets on her bookshelves; I had expected airport bricks of the type Mal favors—while Thursday’s gift is inspired by a comment from one of my female clients.
“La Perla!” the woman says furiously; as she storms toward my office waving what turns out to be an American Express credit card statement. “I was married to the bastard twenty-seven years, and he never bought me bloody La Perla!”
Google divulges the nature of this particular feminine Holy Grail; unfortunately, I’m left to fend for myself when it came to the delicate matter of making the actual purchase. I have no idea what size to buy Sara; cupping my hands in a broadly indicative mime elicits more hilarity than helpfulness. However, eventually we establish the parameters of my quest by dint of a rather unseemly comparison with several shop assistants’ embonpoint; soon I am left to choose between a coffee-and-cream all-in-one lace confection, and an enticing plum brassière-and-panties set so flimsy it looks as if it will barely last the anticipated five-minute interlude between revelation and removal.
I buy both: one for now, and one for Valentine’s Day. It will be my farewell gift to her; a memento of one last spectacular night together before we say good-bye.
Into the folds of the coffee-colored silk, I slip a Claridge’s key card. And it is at Claridge’s that our affair moves up a gear, the day after I give her my final gift: a silver Tiffany bracelet I know she covets.
Valentine’s Day creeps ever closer as, over the course of the next few weeks, we meet up at the hotel again and again. I daren’t risk a late night more than once or twice a week, but there is the occasional afternoon tryst, when a client cancels; almost more passionate for its spontaneity. It’s costing me a fortune (my credit cards are near their limits; thankfully the firm’s profit share at the end of the financial year in April will clear them before Mal notices) but with the recklessness that characterizes this whole liaison, I find I don’t care. It’ll be over soon. When I run out of credit, I will simply pay cash.
I can’t tell Sara that I already plan to end our affair; that would be unkind. But I am careful, very careful, not to offer her more than I can give. Beyond the pleasure our lovemaking affords me, I like her; very much. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt her.
But nonetheless, there is a moment, the day before Valentine’s Day, when I almost slip.
I’m about to leave for the last train home after another wonderful evening with her when Sara takes it upon herself to treat me to one of her mind-blowing blow jobs. I should leave—I’m late already—but oh, God, it’s as if she has a dozen tongues, all conspiring to drive me out of my mind. Train times and anxious wives mean nothing. Promises, lies, love, and truth—nothing matters but the woman on her knees in front of me. Hot, warm, wet … Jesus Christ Almighty.
I let her take me to the brink, then abruptly pull away from her. More than anything, I want to drive her to lose control the way she does me; I want her writhing on the bed frantic for my touch. I taste her hot sweat when I kiss her skin, my mouth moving from breasts to belly button to her strangely naked mound. It’s like the whole of her body is an erogenous zone as she squirms erotically beneath me. I hold back, carefully controlling the pace, deliberately refusing to let her breathy little cries spur me faster.
Finally, when I know I’ve got her where I want her, I tongue her where she’s aching to be touched.
After she comes, I slide up the bed and rest my cheek on her belly, relishing its soft, cushiony feel. A relaxed warmth seeps through me as her heartbeat thuds, slowing now, a little above my ear. Unbidden, words float to the surface. “I love—”
I want to bite my tongue off. Good God, the blood rush to my cock must have caused a severe lack of its flow to my brain.
In the here and now I love her, certainly. But a woman reads far more into those three overused words than a man often means her to hear.
“I love to be here,” I amend hastily. “I feel safe, safer than anywhere else in the world.”
She’s quick to hide it; but not quick enough. I see hope in her eyes, and roll away from her, onto my back, so that she won’t see the answering pity and incipient claustrophobia in mine. I thought she was smarter than that.
A beat later, and she’s astride me, hands guiding my cock toward her, and I wonder if I imagined it after all. And then, with infuriating inevitability, my mobile telephone rings.
“Emma, would you mind getting Simon Jailer on the phone? I need to clarify a couple of points on the Wasserstein case before Friday, and I know he’s tied up in Court all day tomorrow.”
I go back into my office, glancing at my watch as I pick up my briefcase. Nearly seven; I should get going as soon as I’ve spoken to Counsel. I don’t want to leave Sara sitting alone at Yuzo’s, tonight of all nights.
This time tomorrow it will all be over. I know this is my choice, it’s what I planned all along; but it’s going to be harder to say good-bye than I thought.
I take out the glossy bag containing my farewell gifts to Sara from my desk drawer, and flip open my briefcase. As I slip it in between a legal file and my newspaper, unable to suppress a shiver of erotic anticipation, my office door opens and I shut the briefcase quickly, not wanting Emma to see.
But it isn’t Emma standing in the doorway.
Saying no to my wife’s invitation wasn’t an option. Not only was I wrong-footed by her improbable materialization in my office, barely able to summon the wit to utter her name, never mind fabricate a plausible excuse to flee; but the searing guilt which I have successfully banished from my mind these past few weeks is now rising up a thousandfold stronger for its exile.
I have no idea what will happen in the next twenty minutes; nor any control over it. In some ways this enforced abdication of responsibility is almost a relief. Perhaps Sara will betray me: inadvertently or by choice, a woman scorned. Maybe Mal will guess the moment she sees my colleague sitting in my favorite restaurant. If I am truly fortunate, this noisome taxi will disappear down an abyss in the road and swallow me whole.
Clammy and sick with fear, I try to imagine a life without my wife and daughters in it, and fail utterly.
I cannot even meet Sara’s eyes when my wife rushes over to greet her—dear Christ, did she have to comment on the bloody bracelet?—and grip the back of the nearest chair as Mal chatters relentlessly.
It seems Sara has more presence of mind than I could ever have anticipated. Within moments, she has confected some excuse and vanished.
“Well, she seems very keen,” Mal says brightly, shaking out her napkin. “How lovely.”
Nausea rises. “Can we order, please, Mal?” I say desperately.
I can barely concentrate on a word she says as we plow through the meal. Dear God, how am I going to unravel this unholy mess? I cannot believe that I, of all people, have managed to get myself into such a foolhardy, melodramatic position. Dammit, I was going to end it tomorrow! Mal seems blissfully unaware; but the possibility still exists that Sara will be so incensed by what can only seem to her as my betrayal, that she seeks revenge by confronting my wife. The hurt that would inflict on Mal doesn’t bear contemplating. And my girls. How can I ever look them in the eye again if they find out what I’ve done? I have been seven types of idiot, led by my genitals like a schoolboy. Christ Jesus, let me walk away from this unscathed and I swear to God, I will never—
“—So go on, don’t keep me in suspense.”
I startle. “Sorry?”
“Oh, Nicholas, don’t be mean, you know I saw you put it in your briefcase,” Mal teases, “and I just can’t wait any longer, I’m dying for my present, please can I have it now?”
This unedifying, shameful farce is clearly destined to play itself out to the bitter end. I reach beneath the table for my briefcase.
“I’m sorry. I—um—I didn’t get you a card.”
“Oh, Nicholas. As if that matters.”
She opens the bag and unwraps the underwear I selected for another woman. I feel sick with shame as she innocently holds the wisps of silk and lace up against herself. “Oh, how beautiful! Do you like them?”
“Of course,” I mutter. “I wouldn’t have bought them otherwise.”
“I can tell it’s been a while.” She laughs, examining the label. “These are two sizes too big; I’ll have to take them back and exchange them. You kept the receipt, didn’t you?” She peers back into the bag and gasps. “Oh, Nicholas. You didn’t—”
Please don’t notice that these match the bracelet Sara was wearing, please don’t put two and two together, please be your usual sweet, trusting, innocent self.
“Nicholas,” she breathes, gazing at the earrings. “They’re exquisite. I don’t know what to say.”
And suddenly, in a moment, the fog lifts. Non pote non sapere qui se stultum intellegit: A man must have some wit to know he is a fool.
I love Mal; I always have. From the moment I first met her, I’ve known she’s The One. She’s my dearest friend, my love, the mother of my children. There is a sweetness to her, a purity of heart and spirit, that I have never known in anyone else. And she loves me, far more than I deserve. I know she would never contemplate betraying me; her loyalty and fidelity are absolute. How can I have risked all of this for what amounts to no more than a glorified roll in the hay?
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I tell my wife, meaning it.
Later that night, after Mal and I have made love for the first time since I slept with Sara—not the roller-coaster of eroticism that it is with Sara, granted, but laced with a love and gentleness I can only ever find with my wife—we make plans for a romantic break in Cornwall, where we honeymooned; we build castles in the air and articulate our dreams for our children, for ourselves. I fall asleep with my head in the curve of her arm, and promise from the depths of my soul that it will all be different from now on.
For four days, Sara manages to avoid being alone with me for a single moment with the same expertise with which I once evaded her.
She whisks in and out of my office with armfuls of files, careful to make sure that Emma is within earshot before doing so. Christ knows how her bladder is holding up; I’ve stationed myself outside the women’s toilet for hours without glimpsing her. Much as I’d be happy to play ostrich with her, I know we can’t bury our heads in the sand forever; I need to end this liaison cleanly, and with as little acrimony as possible. I have to explain, for my own peace of mind; and to somehow find the right moment to discuss a very good job opening at Falkners Penn for a young, ambitious lawyer keen to make partner before she’s thirty.
I have to be certain she’s not going to betray me.
My chance comes on Friday, when Emma’s sister unexpectedly arrives from Worcester, and she begs for an unscheduled afternoon off.
Joan and David are out of the office; a secretarial leaving party has decimated the remainder of the staff. I give the one temp on duty a free pass, and she scuttles off, delighted, to join her colleagues across the road.
Sara looks startled as I walk into the conference room, and instantly leaps up from the table. “I just have to get this FDR statement to Emma—”
“She’s not here. She’s taken the afternoon off to go shopping with her sister.”
“Perhaps one of the other girls—”
“They’re all at Milagro’s for Jenny’s leaving party. Sara,” I put out a hand to detain her, “I need to explain.”
She stiffens.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“I know this must be hard to believe, but I had no idea she was going to turn up until she appeared in my office. I swear it. I wouldn’t do that to you; you must know that. I didn’t have a chance to phone you; she was with me the whole time, and then she insisted on Yuzo’s—Christ, what are the odds—”
“Quite high, I should imagine, when you declare your preference to the world in The Lawyer,” Sara says acidly.
“But I really had no idea she—”
“Nicholas, please. I think we both know the situation. You’re a married man; I knew that from the beginning. There’s really no need to rake things over anymore. We had a good time, but we knew all along it had to end sooner or later. At least this way no one’s got hurt.”
Her eyes are suspiciously bright. I brush my thumbs beneath them. “Haven’t they?”
I sought her out with the most honest of intentions. I truly meant for this to be a tying up of loose ends.
But that touch is all it takes. A fire ignites between us; my cock is rock hard in an instant, and as Sara’s eyelids flutter, I smell her arousal. Gripping her face between my palms, I bruise her lips beneath mine. I taste the metallic tang of blood and don’t know which of us is cut.
She yanks my shirt out of my trousers as I propel her backward toward the glossy mahogany conference table and shove her skirt up over her thighs. She fumbles with my belt buckle. Buttons plink across the table as I rip open her shirt. I push aside her panties with fierce fingers. In a moment I’m inside her, forcing her down onto the surface of the table, frantic and angry and hot with desire. My mouth descends on one cinnamon nipple, biting it roughly through the flimsy fabric of her bra. There’s a crash as her heap of files tumbles from the table to the floor.
Her legs curl around my waist, and I drive my cock deeper into her. She pulls my shirt free from my shoulders as I unhook her bra; our skin hisses as it hits. She smells of vanilla and sweat and peppermint and sex. Her ripe breasts splay lushly either side of her breastbone, eddying with every violent thrust. Throwing back her head, a guttural growl vibrates low in her throat, her sharp white teeth biting down on her swollen lower lip. Her nails dig deep into my shoulder blades and I flinch don’t leave marks and then oh God oh God oh God—
She comes a moment later, her body jerking so hard that her spine thumps against the table. I feel her juices flood us both and it’s almost enough to get me hard again.
“Oh, Christ, I’ve peed myself—”
“No. You just came. You know. Ejaculated.”
She laughs disbelievingly. “Fuck off.”
I pull out of her and yank up my trousers. “You’ve done it before. Not many women do it, but those that can—Jesus. You have no idea how erotic it is.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Would I joke about something like that?”
“You tell me.” She sits up on the table and pulls down her skirt. “Shit, you’ve ripped half the buttons off my blouse. You couldn’t have just waited a moment and undone them, could you?”
Her expression is dark and hot. “No.”
“It’s not over, is it?” I whisper, cupping her breast in my hand and pulling her buttocks toward me with the other. “Between us.”
Her nipple stiffens instantly. My cock is already halfway to being ready for her once more. I drop to my knees and spread her legs as she sits on the edge of the table, burying my face in her wet pussy.
“We haven’t even started,” she groans.
My mother had a saying: No one misses a slice of cut cake. She meant that the first cut is the one you notice. After that, the difference is much harder to see.
The first night I slept with Sara, I was tormented with guilt. Each subsequent liaison has compounded the betrayal; but somehow, where once guilt blistered my skin and rubbed my soul raw, now it merely chafes like an ill-fitting shoe.
If I’m honest: All I care about now is not getting caught.
“You can’t mark me again,” I whisper, stroking Sara’s bare shoulder as we lie in the darkness of her bedroom, both of us spent. I can’t afford Claridge’s on a long-term basis; we have no choice now but to use her flat, whatever the risk. “After the conference room, I had to get up half an hour earlier for a week so that I could finish showering before Mal was awake.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I know. But we have to be careful—”
“Enough, already,” Sara says tightly. She leans over me to pick up her cigarettes from the bedside table. “What do you want me to do, wear surgical gloves?”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that. Smoke. It’s not like you smoke the rest of the time; I hate that you do it in bed.”
“So let’s stick to having sex in the great outdoors.”
“Now you sound like a petulant child.”
“So stop talking to me like one!”
She swings her legs out of bed and stalks naked toward the window, parting the blinds with one finger and exhaling moodily. “I’m fed up with being fitted in between lunch and conference with Counsel. It’s like you get here, we have sex, and then you leave. It’s not exactly romantic, is it?”
“We have dinner—we went to the opera—”
“Fucking Wagner!”
“I thought you liked Wagner. Tristan und Isolde was your idea—”
She drops her cigarette into a revolting mug half full of cold coffee and sits back down on the bed beside me, her expression instantly contrite. “I do, Nick. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a pain in the arse. I just like being with you, that’s all. I hate that it has to be like this—”
“How else do you expect it to be, Sara?”
“I’m not asking for anything,” she answers quickly. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I stay here as late as I can,” I say tiredly. “I missed the last train from Waterloo last week; I had to get a taxi from London all the way to bloody Wiltshire; do you have any idea how much that cost? I’m sorry that I can’t stay here more often, and I’m sorry that I can’t stay all night; but you knew it was going to be like this.”
She gives a light half-laugh that doesn’t quite come off. “You could call me a bit more often at the weekend.”
“It’s not that easy. I can’t call you from the home phone; it’s too risky. Mal could overhear me, or the children could pick up the extension.” I throw a pillow behind my head. “And my mobile doesn’t pick up any reception at home, we’re in a network-dead zone. I have to drive halfway to Salisbury to use it, and there’s a limited number of excuses I can come up with to do that. I’m sorry.”
“Nick, I know the score. I’m not asking for any kind of commitment, you know that.” She averts her gaze. “I’d just like to wake up with you once in a while, have breakfast, read the newspapers, that kind of thing.”
No, I want to tell her, those are the kinds of things you do with your wife, and I already have one of those.
I watch her picking fretfully at a loose thread in the sheet with a mixture of pity and exasperation. She’s in too deep. She is starting to have feelings for me, whatever she may say now; and I am going to end up hurting her. I have to end it. I have to end it.
But carefully. I can’t risk her running to Mal afterward. Perhaps if I take her away, explain it all, let her down gently.
“Look,” I say, “Mal mentioned something about a trip to Italy around Easter—some sort of sourcing trip for her new restaurant; I didn’t pay much attention. She’ll be away for a few days; the girls will be with her mother. I might be able to arrange something then.”
Her naked left breast is an inviting two inches away from my shoulder. Jesus. My cock stirs, and I reach for her; but she pulls away from me, chewing her lip and looking down at her nails. “Nick?”
“Nick, do you and Mal—do you still, you know?”
“Do we still what?”
“God, do I have to spell it out?” She flushes. “Do you still have sex?”
There’s no right way to answer this question. I’m married, I want to tell her; of course I still have sex with my wife. Not as often as we did once—our bedroom could not be mistaken for a French brothel—but yes, we have sex, and yes, it’s very nice, thank you, sometimes quite a bit more than nice. And it’s very different from sex with you, which is to nice what interstellar travel is to a trip to Bournemouth; but I’m a man, which means that sometimes I’m in the mood for a trip to Bournemouth, and sometimes I want to don a spacesuit.
But this isn’t what Sara wants to hear. And I want to keep Sara happy—for her sake, because I truly like and respect her, I don’t want to hurt her—and for my own.
“She’s not really that interested in sex anymore,” I say, flinching inwardly at this new betrayal. “What with the children and everything, she’s never really in the mood. And since I met you,” and this time Sara doesn’t move away when I reach for her, “ I haven’t been in the mood, either.”
She slides astride me, satisfied now. “Really?” she says, easing me inside her. “I can’t say that’s a problem I’ve ever noticed.”
Three weeks later, I pad barefoot down the narrow stairs of our rented cottage in Rock and find Mal already busy in the kitchen. Something rather foul-smelling is cooking on the stove. I lean over to peer into the frying pan and do a double take.
There, being skillfully sautéed to a crisp, is one of my black wool socks.
“Mal, what on earth are you doing?”
“What you asked me to do last night,” she says, flipping it expertly with a fish-slice, “when you came to bed very drunk.”
“I don’t remember asking you to cook my sock.”
She grins wickedly at me, her dark eyes dancing, and the penny drops. “Oh, very funny,” I say, grabbing my burnt sock out of the pan and blowing on my fingers. “How long have you been waiting to set me up with that witty little play on words?”
“Since about eight this morning.” Mal giggles.
Sometimes my wife seems little older than the children. It’s at moments like this I realize from whence Evie has acquired her unorthodox sense of humor and attitude to life.
I arranged this long weekend because I’d promised it to Mal; I packed for it with a heavy heart and deep sense of misgiving. Four days together at close quarters, without the distractions of children and work, lacking even the diversion of household chores or television to dilute our unaccustomed intimacy. A delightful scenario for newlyweds; a testing one for even the most devoted long-standing marriages. How much more so for a husband in the midst of an adulterous affair?
I expected it to be awkward—difficult, even, with long silences and stilted conversation. I thought the distance between us would be painfully obvious to us both.
What I did not expect was to fall back in love with my wife.
I stayed up into the small hours last night, trying to make sense of the chaos in my heart and head. Intoxicated as I am with Sara, I am not such a fool as to mistake my feelings for love, or anywhere close. The nature of my betrayal is entirely sexual; there is no question of any emotional involvement. I’m not sure whether that makes it better or worse.
Sex with Mal is pleasant. Tender, in a way it never is with Sara. But with Sara, it’s like nothing I’ve ever known. I can ask for anything, be anyone I want. There’s no fear of being judged, of being thought dirty, or perverted, or selfish. She won’t look at me as I slice the tops off the girls’ boiled eggs at breakfast and remember what I did to her the night before. To have to turn my back on that sexual freedom forever, to give her up; it’d be like waking up blind and knowing you’ll never see a sunrise again.
When Mal goes away, I remind myself. I have to tell Sara it’s over then. If I don’t, sooner or later, Mal is going to find out, and I will lose her. And I love Mal: more than I crave Sara. It should be easy.
It won’t be, of course.
I wrap my arms around my wife and kiss the top of her head. “Mea culpa. I guess I got through rather more of the malt than I’d realized after you went to bed—”
“My own fault for not staying awake and supervising you. But it’s not like the ending to Casablanca is ever going to change, and I was so tired after yesterday—”
She blushes, and I can’t help but smile. My wife of ten years, the mother of my three children, reduced to flushing like a teenager when she’s reminded of our agreeable afternoon in bed. “I meant the climb down to the cove, Nicholas.”
“Ah. Fancy doing it all again today?”
“We don’t want to keep going down the same old paths, do we, Nicholas; that would get rather dull, wouldn’t it?”
“Would it?”
“It would.” She pulls a freshly baked pie out of the oven—even on holiday, my wife the cook—and bats my hand away. “Wait. A little anticipation will do you the world of good. This is for lunch. I thought an alfresco picnic would be fun, and the weather is supposed to be rather nice, later, for March; we can wrap up warm and sit on the beach—”
“Alfresco works for me.”
She giggles again. “Nicholas—”
My mobile telephone shrills. It’s on the windowsill beside Mal; she reaches for it, but in a moment that lasts a lifetime I just manage to get there first. “It might be a client,” I say quickly. “I had to give Mrs. Wasserstein my number; it was the only way to get Friday and Monday off.”
Mal looks surprised. “Don’t do that too often or you’ll never get a break.” She covers the pie with a linen tea towel. “I need to get my tennis shoes out of the car boot if we’re going to go for a walk—have you seen the keys?”
“In my jacket pocket, on the banister.”
I take the phone out into the back garden, shivering in my dressing gown and bare feet. “Sara, what the hell are you doing calling me at home?”
She sounds stricken. “Oh, God, Nick, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to call you; I must’ve hit redial by mistake. Jesus, I hope I didn’t cause a problem—I’m really sorry.”
I sigh. “Never mind, I’ve done that enough times myself.” The incriminating potential of my mobile terrifies me: the text messages, the call records. I’ve started charging it at the office, just in case Mal should see something on it she shouldn’t. “Is everything OK?”
“I suppose. I’m at my parents’. Dullsville, you have no idea. They want me to come down on Easter Sunday for some village egg race or something; as if. How’s it going in Wiltshire?”
“What? Oh, yes, Wiltshire. Fine, fine. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you on Tuesday—”
“Can you come round after work?”
“Maybe.” I glance up as Mal appears in the back doorway. “Look, I have to go.”
I click the phone shut. I always knew having an affair involved deception; that I would end up lying to not just one woman, but two, I had no idea.
Mal waits until I reach her, and then holds out her hand palm upwards, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Nicholas,” she says evenly, “whose lipstick is this?”