Page 2 of The Affair
She stopped herself seizing a cloth and getting down to it immediately, knowing she was more pernickety than some and not wanting to wade in the second she was through the door in such an obviously censorious fashion. She would unpack first, have the bath she’d been longing for. She didn’t want to pick a fight on her first night back.
‘Think I’ll go up. Been a long day,’ Connie said later, pulling herself off the sofa and yawning as she reached for her reading glasses on the side table. They’d spent the evening with a bowl of ready-meal shepherd’s pie, frozen peas and ketchup in front of the next episode of a Belgian-police box set. Devan had held it over while she was away, although now she couldn’t remember a single thing about who’d been bumped off or why – and was too tired to concentrate anyway.
Devan glanced up from his phone – which, these days, seemed to have become a physical extension of his hand. ‘I’m sure it has,’ he said absentmindedly, but made no move to join her. ‘I might stay up for a bit.’
Connie felt a pang of disappointment. She just wanted to connect with him again, to be close. They had barely spoken all evening, except to catch up with trivial domestic news – such as the flush button coming loose in the downstairs loo and Rees, the gormless plumber’s apprentice, coming to fix it. If she went tobed now, she would be dead to the world by the time he crept in beside her. Then in the morning, he would still be asleep when she got up.
‘Please … come with me,’ she said quietly, and saw his face go still for a moment. Then he sighed and nodded.
‘Sure, OK,’ he said. But his reluctance was evident, and she was upset.
Does he worry I’m after sex or something?she wondered wryly, as she climbed the stairs to their bedroom, placing her glass of water and specs on the bedside table. But she’d stopped having expectations in that arena after a number of humiliatingly unsuccessful seductions on her part during the previous two years.
The last, months ago now, had been the worst – and such a sorry cliché. She had put on a slinky silk camisole in delicate lilac and matching knickers – saved at the back of her drawer from years ago and barely worn – then waited for him to finish in the bathroom, heart knocking as she sat on the bed, hair fluffed and loose. When Devan had seen her, he’d stopped short and stared, eyes wide, as if a woolly mammoth had landed on the duvet. From his twitchy, but resigned expression, he might have been anticipating an unwelcome appointment with the dentist.
He’d recovered sufficiently to force a smile and come over to sit beside her on the bed, picking up her hand and kissing it. But she’d seen the effort it took and she’d snatched it away, leaping up from the bed and shutting herself in the bathroom. She’d felt so utterly mortified – so unsexy, unattractive – that even the thought of it now made her cringe.
Although there had been many wonderful times in the past when they’d made love in this very bed, over the thirty-three years of their marriage. They’d always been good together, their attitude to sex one of relaxed mutual pleasure. No bells and whistles or swinging from the chandelier, neither of them trying to prove anything. Just a light-hearted lust for each other – which she sorely missed.
She realized with a jolt that it was over two years since they’d properly made love – if you didn’t count that night last summer when Neil, Connie’s best friend, and his husband, Brooks, had asked them over, inventing this lethal cocktail of something green and sweet and fizzy, then burned the chicken pie in the Aga. The only thing they’d eaten all evening was a handful of crisps and a piece of toast. Neither she nor Devan had known which way was up and they’d fallen into bed, heads spinning, and fumbled around in some half-hearted rendition of sex. Because although her husband had only just retired, things had been difficult between them for much longer than that: the strain Devan had been under at the surgery had taken a heavy toll.
He lay beside her now, his book – the usual weighty siege-and-massacre tome – propped on his chest. Connie tried to read, but the sentences swam before her eyes and she knew she was wasting her time. She put down the reader and her glasses and switched off the light, turning on her pillow to face her husband. Despite implying earlier that he wasn’t tired, his book was swaying back and forth in his hands, his eyelids fluttering. Asmall fly was spinning in the beam of the desk lamp he read by, and she watched it for a while, then gently removed his book from his hands, turning down the page corner and closing it.
Devan jerked. ‘Hey, I was reading.’
‘You were almost asleep.’
He sighed and didn’t object, removing his second pillow and slinging it to the floor, then turning off his own light. Their bedroom faced the main street of the village, and a car passed, headlights raking the ceiling in the semi-darkness. Connie placed her palm on his chest and stroked his warm skin. She just wanted some sign of affection, but he made no move to offer any. All he did was clamp her hand to his chest to still her stroking. She could feel the tension flowing off him, like steam from a kettle.
‘A cuddle would be nice,’ she said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Devan lifted his arm so she could lie against him, her head on his shoulder. She felt his hand pull her in, bringing her closer, and she wanted to cry.
‘Love you,’ she said softly.
‘Love you too, Con,’ he replied automatically.
She sensed his heart wasn’t fully behind his words. Despite that, Connie luxuriated in his embrace. He smelt musty, but she didn’t mind. His body was so comforting, so familiar, even in the state he was in, that she didn’t want to let him go. When she woke around three in the morning to pee, she remembered that she’d gone to sleep in his arms, something she hadn’t done for a very long time.
2
‘Oh, come on, Devan.’ Tim Hutchison snorted his loud, confident laugh, his jowls wobbling above his pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt, champagne flute waving in Devan’s face. ‘Admit it! You’re a true-blue Conservative at heart. All this whiny-liberal bollocks is just a throwback from your student days.’
Connie watched her husband’s mouth twitch. The discussion about immigration, despite Tim’s joshing, had been bordering on rancorous, like most current debate in the country. But the difference today was that Devan had got stuck in. As the village doctor, he’d made it his business to stay neutral – except in private – when it came to politics. ‘I don’t need to know what my patients think about the world,’ he always told Connie. ‘If I did, I might not want to treat them.’ But today he’d been truculent, almost aggressive, when Tim blamed the current crisis in the NHS – which Devan believed in passionately and knew was wobbling for a whole variety of reasons – on migrants.
Connie nudged him surreptitiously, but all she got in return was a glare. She knew he’d had a lot to drink, the delicious champagne flowing from a seemingly bottomless well. But she didn’t want him falling out with Tim, who nonetheless possessed the precision of abrain surgeon in his ability to stick the needle in where it would have the most effect.
‘Well, if you’re a good example of conservatism, I’ll take whiny liberal any day of the week,’ Devan said.
It was spoken in the same jokey tone, but Tim’s eyebrows rose just a fraction and he turned away.
‘That was rude,’ Connie hissed. ‘He’s our host.’ They were standing by the French windows, from which there was usually a spectacular view across the Somerset Levels, but this afternoon she could barely see past the end of the garden because of low cloud, brought on by a sudden spring squall raging outside.
Devan just shrugged. ‘He’s an arse, is what he is,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t even be here.’ He bent awkwardly to set his empty glass down against the wall on the strip of parquet floor not hidden by the vintage Turkish rug – where, no doubt, it would be knocked over and broken. She immediately picked it up, then felt his hand in the small of her back, beginning to guide her away.
The large sitting room was full, people standing around in groups and pairs, the hot air reverberating with laughter and chatter, heavy male voices and lighter female ones vying for dominance. A couple of girls from the village were weaving in and out, refilling the glasses and offering trays of unidentifiable one-bite canapés, while Carole bustled and twittered nervously around her guests.
‘We can’t go yet,’ Connie said, resisting the pressure on her back. ‘They haven’t cut the cake.’
