Page 13 of The Affair
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.
Opening it, she found Jared, barefoot, his linen shirt pulled out of his trousers, looking apologetic.
‘Sorry to disturb you so late, Connie.’ He glanced up and down the corridor. ‘I wondered if I could have a quick word.’
Connie hesitated. He was looking as if he didn’t want to be overheard, so she opened the door more fully, leaning against the edge to prevent the spring lock banging it shut again. Jared took a step forward, stopping respectfully on the threshold, although Connie found herself instinctively crossing her arms at the sudden intimacy she sensed between them.
‘Dinah asked me to give you this.’ He pulled from his pocket a cream envelope – one of the hotel’s, with the pale, cursive script of the establishment’s name in the top left-hand corner – and held it out to her.
It was normal for passengers on tours to tip the tour manager at the end. Given a comments sheet on the last train home – to rate the tour itself and her performance – they were encouraged to include a tip for Connie when they handed back the forms. But this envelope was bulging.
‘Oh.’ Connie took it and they stood there in silence. ‘Wow, thank you.’ She gave Jared a self-conscious grin. ‘That’s very kind of Dinah.’
He shrugged. ‘I keep telling you, you’ve been marvellous.’
There it was again, the tone that kept making her cheeks hot.
‘I’m just doing my job, Jared.’
His gaze seemed serious, as if he were giving great weight to her reply. She felt his presence strongly, the warm smell of him, his face lit only by the bedside lamp from inside the room and the glow through the open French windows from the security lights in the garden. As the silence lengthened, the atmosphere thickened between them. Connie didn’t want to examine why, to name the feeling that was making her breath stutter in her throat.He should go, she thought. But it was as if someone had stopped the clock.
Jared said nothing. She didn’t like to dismiss him, not when he had just pressed what looked like a substantial tip into her hand – even if it hadn’t come specifically from him. But she wished he would leave.
‘I should let you get to bed,’ Jared said, finally releasing the deadlock. He began backing into the corridor with a final lingering glance.
Connie took a deep breath. ‘Yes, long day tomorrow,’ she said, her voice faint. She waved the envelope. ‘Thank you so much for this.’
She breathed a sigh of relief as she let the door go. But Jared had stopped and was holding it back with the flat of his hand. As if in slow motion – a second seeming to stretch into eternity – he stepped forward and dropped a very gentle, very composed kiss on her mouth. A strand of his hair brushed her cheek. She had time to be shocked, time to clock the faint tang of mint on his breath and also to feel a sharp tingle at the touch of his lips against her own. On some unacknowledgedlevel she had known what he was going to do, but she’d done nothing to stop it.
‘Goodnight,’ he said, sweeping his hair back, no trace of awkwardness in his eyes. He reached out, his fingers briefly pressing the bare skin above her elbow, then slowly walked off down the corridor.
Her door slammed shut. Connie was stunned. She walked unsteadily over to the window, fanning herself with the envelope still clutched in her hand and taking big gulps of cool night air. She could feel a warm vibration washing through her body and swallowed, trying to compose herself.What just happened?she asked herself, leaning her hot cheek against the smooth cold of the glass door. She knew she should feel guilt, knew full well she could have avoided the kiss. But right now all she felt was a breathless arousal.
6
Connie was up before dawn with a muzzy head and scratchy eyes. She’d barely slept, and began packing without her usual care. Normally she loved the process of filling a case with the utmost precision until it was a work of art with its neatly arranged layers, no space unemployed. But today she was hardly aware as she folded and piled and squashed her clothes any old how into the small wheelie.
It was going to be a long day, herding her passengers, plus luggage, tickets and passports – which someone always managed to mislay – onto the bus, then the train to Paris, across the city in another bus, then settling them into the hotel, before getting them back on the Eurostar in the morning. But she could cope with that. What she was really dreading was seeing Jared.
In the long dark hours of the night, Connie had attempted to analyse the kiss. Over the years, there had been the occasional passenger who’d tried it on with her. Just a mild flirtation – unsuccessful in every case – and harmless, occasioning the odd raised eyebrow from an irritated wife. On an Edinburgh tour to see the Tattoo, a burly Mancunian called Roy – who’d been putting it away, but was not so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing – had come up behind her, pinnedher to the hotel bar and attempted to kiss her. Connie, horrified, had used the wooden bar as leverage and shoved him violently off, sending the man flying into a table and landing in an ignominious heap on the patterned carpet. His wife long since in bed, another man in the group had helped him to his feet and carried him off upstairs.
Roy had made a complaint about Connie, saying she was lazy and unhelpful. But Connie had got in first, immediately reporting the incident to her boss at the company, who knew beyond question that the adjectives ‘lazy’ and ‘unhelpful’ could never in a million years be applied to Connie McCabe. Roy was put on the banned list thereafter.
It was different with Jared. It had never even crossed her mind that he found her attractive.Why on earth would he?Connie had been told she looked good for her age, but there it was, her age. She was probably ten years older than he. As she thought back over their interactions during the week, though, she did accept that, after the first awkwardness, she’d begun to enjoy his company and find him amusing … sympathetic to chat to. They had bonded over Dinah, mostly. But also everything Italian and travel in general. It was good to talk to someone who shared her passion – Devan saw Italy as a rival, not a conversation.
But a kiss?And not just a random kiss: one that had set her body buzzing. She had been entirely faithful for the thirty-three years of their marriage, had never even been close to kissing another man,not once. Which wasno hardship, just an unconscious faith in the love she bore for Devan. Sometimes, inevitably, she met men she found attractive, but she and Devan would joke about it, just as they did about women who caught his eye. She would not be joking about Jared.
After she’d finished packing, she sat down on the bed in a daze.It was a stupid moment, she told herself.I’ll never have to see him again after tomorrow.The thought was a relief, but the memory of his mouth against hers would not go away. A wave of panic swept through her. Would Devan detect something in her eyes?It was just a kiss, she tried to console herself.But she couldn’t escape the fact that she had enjoyed it … She had enjoyed another man’s kiss.
In her confusion, she realized she hadn’t opened the envelope, which was currently lying on the bedside table. She reached for it now and lifted the flap, withdrawing the wad of English notes. Counting, she saw Dinah had given her two hundred pounds. A fortune! The average tip from a couple might be between twenty and forty pounds, occasionally a bit more from warm-hearted Americans. But two hundred? She wondered if Jared had put her up to it.
Entering the breakfast room, she spotted Jared and his godmother at the hot-food section of the buffet, Dinah looking suspiciously under one of the domed stainless-steel covers. Taking a deep breath, Connie put her key on her table and went – head down to avoid Jared’s eye – to fetch some grapefruit juice and a bowl of freshfruit salad. She wasn’t hungry, her stomach was in knots, but she knew she should eat something.
The young Polish waitress who had been serving them all week accosted her as she filled her bowl. ‘I bring you coffee?’ She grinned. ‘Black, hot milk on the side.’
Connie found a smile from somewhere and nodded, thanking her.
‘Morning, Connie.’ She turned to find Dinah at her side, holding in front of her a plate of scrambled eggs and a sad-looking grilled tomato as if it were contaminated. ‘I shan’t be sorry to leave these miserable offerings behind,’ she said, in a voice that must have carried clear across to Bellagio. ‘They cook it at five in the morning then leave it to wither till nine.’
