Page 84 of The Honeymoon Affair

‘I love you,’ says Charles. ‘I couldn’t love you any more than I do.’

‘I love you too,’ I tell him, and then I kiss him.

He carries me up to the bedroom, although the stairs are so narrow I bang my head on the wall.

Maybe that’s why I see stars when we make love.

Chapter 23

Ariel

Some editors are failed writers. But so are most writers.

T. S. Eliot

I have a hangover. I never have hangovers, but I’m starting this year with gritty eyes and a mouth that feels like the bottom of a birdcage. I’m also raging with thirst, but at least I don’t have a migraine. I roll out of bed and walk unsteadily to the kitchen, where I drink the half-litre bottle of water that’s on the countertop. I’m remembering last night, although remembering isn’t exactly the right word, because every moment of it is seared into my consciousness and it’s like a continuing reel in my head. Charles and his new fiancée. The woman he plans to marry. The slip of a girl in the green dress and high heels.

He’s lost his mind, of course. He does this from time to time, gets wild enthusiasms and drops them again. Like the time he got into golf, joined a club and bought all the gear. He spent an absolute fortune on drivers and putters and electric caddy cars and stormproof jackets and trousers. As far as I recall, he played twice. Not that getting engaged is the same as playing golf, but with Charles, well . . .

My feet hurt. It takes a minute to remember that I ended up walking home from the New Year’s Eve party. The fiancée and her friend had clearly bagged the last available taxi in Dublin, because no matter which app I tried, all I got were chirpy messages saying that their drivers were ‘super busy’ at the moment.

‘You don’t have to walk,’ Charles said to me as I fumed. ‘It’s late and it’s cold. Stay over.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’ I stared at him. ‘Stay over? When you’ve announced your engagement to somebody else?’

‘Oh, it’s fine. She’ll understand. It’s you, Ariel, not some random woman. You can use a guest bedroom.’

He said it as though sleeping in the master bedroom was an option. As though I was actually considering it. Naturally, I’d no intention of staying at Riverside Lodge. Did he really think Iseult would be happy with her fiancé’s not-quite-ex-wife staying in his house overnight? Was he that naïve?

‘Charles, it’s highly inappropriate for me to stay here and I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Look, I know you’re upset—’

‘Upset?’ The word came out as a squeak. I cleared my throat. ‘I’m not upset. I’m angry that you didn’t have the common courtesy to tell me what you were planning. Not because it matters to me, but because . . . because . . .’ I couldn’t finish the sentence. Mainly because I was lying. I was angry, yes. But despite what I’d told him, I was upset too. Who wouldn’t be? And even though there was a part of me that was tempted to stay and seduce him from under his brand-new fiancée’s pert little nose, I’m not that sort of woman. I might want to ensure there’s no change to our working relationship, but that’s it. At least, I think that’s it.

I turned away from him and went to the utility room, where I knew there was an old pair of my boots that I’d never bothered taking home with me.

‘Honestly,’ he said, when I clumped back up the stairs wearing them. ‘This is madness. How can you walk in them?’

‘They’re flat,’ I pointed out.

‘But your dress. It’ll drag along the ground.’

‘I’ll get it cleaned.’

‘Ariel—’

‘It’s fine,’ I told him. ‘I’d be home by now if we weren’t spending so long talking about it.’

And so I put on my coat (not warm enough for the bitterly cold temperatures) and stepped into the night air. My breath immediately misted in front of my face. Charles stood at the door and didn’t shut it behind me until I walked out of the gate. I heard the thud of it closing.

It was a bloody cold walk, and although there were plenty of taxis on the streets, none of them was free. By the time I let myself into my apartment a little over half an hour later, I was frozen to the bone and had blisters on my toes. The boots might have been flat, but I was wearing fine stockings and not the woolly socks that would have been far more suitable. I eased the boots off and noticed that my expensive stockings were laddered and useless. I swore softly, then made myself a hot whiskey with lots of cloves and honey, which I drank standing barefoot at my patio window, allowing the underfloor heating to warm my sore feet. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t tell if it was from the exercise of walking home, the throbbing of the blisters or the sheer rage I felt at Charles, both for getting engaged and for blindsiding me in his announcement of it.

I turned away from the window and opened my laptop. The wallpaper on the screen was of me and Charles shortly after he won his Booker Prize. He was holding his award in one hand; the other was around my waist. I allowed myself to remember that night, how great it was and how I felt that everything in my life was as perfect as it was possible to be. I didn’t for a second allow myself to think that ultimately it had all been downhill from there.

I banged at the keys and changed the wallpaper to a picture of me getting my Agent of the Year award. Then I burst into tears.

I drink another bottle of water as I walk back to the living room, locating my discarded tights beside the sofa and chucking them in the bin. I allow myself an additional moment of rage, then blow my nose and wipe away the stupid, stupid tears that fill my eyes before checking social media to see if there are any more posts about Charles’s party, and more importantly, the announcement of his engagement.

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