Page 29 of The Affair
Connie must have slept very deeply because when she woke Jared was gone.
A note, written on hotel stationery, was propped on the bedside table. All it said was ‘Warsaw? x’.
She stared at it for a moment, remembering. The sex had been blissful. Quick, intense and cathartic, their bodies were so ready, so pumped with desire, that all thought of what she was doing – and whether she should be doing it – was temporarily banished. She had just let go. Now, through the haze of sleep, her pulse couldn’t help but quicken at the prospect of seeing him again. Shame seeped around the edges of the thought, but she was too discombobulated, as she hauled herself out of bed and got ready for work, to give it proper attention.
Miles and Deborah Loader from Worcester – in their mid-seventies, a lively, inquisitive couple – accosted Connie as soon as she got out of the lift. They had obviously been waiting for her, but she was late down to breakfast, having dressed and packed on autopilot, her thoughts consumed with Jared.
‘Connie, dear,’ Deborah began, both of them flanking her as if they were worried she might make a run for it, ‘we don’t want to fuss, but we wondered if you could help us with something.’
Connie tried to focus. Something was wrong because Deborah, usually so engaging, looked pale and upset this morning. ‘Of course,’ she said, with her best smile.
Miles seemed a bit embarrassed as he took over. ‘We’re going home.’
‘Oh …’ Connie was surprised. No one had ever left early from one of her tours.
Before she had a chance to ask why, Deborah hurried on: ‘We haven’t told anyone, because we didn’t want to make an issue of it, but some of my family died in Auschwitz.’
She bit her lip and Connie thought she might be about to cry. She took her arm and guided her to one of the chairs in the lobby, urged her to sit. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yesterday was a journey I’d always vowed I’d make one day,’ Deborah went on. ‘But it’s taken it out of me. I don’t feel able to enjoy the rest of the trip now.’
Connie’s head was banging with tiredness. She ran through the company protocol for a situation like this, dreading the hours she might have to put in to sort things out. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’ll want to fly home?’
‘We’ve booked a flight for later today,’ Miles assured her. ‘Our problem is, how best to say goodbye to everyone. Deborah doesn’t want anyone to know the real reason – we only told you because we didn’t want to lieto you. You’ve been so kind. But we thought you might have a suggestion.’
You’ve come to the right person, if you’re after a plausible lie, she thought, guilt suddenly washing over her, like an icy wave, as she confronted Deborah’s grief for her dead family in light of her betrayal of her living one. ‘You could just say you haven’t been well, that the tour is more tiring than you expected?’
Miles nodded, but hesitated, glancing down at his wife, who was sitting very still, head bowed, as if she were in another world. ‘We wondered … would you mind saying it for us?’ he finally asked. ‘Then we could just slip away. Deborah really isn’t up to all those questions, the hugging and stuff.’
Connie knew what he meant. ‘Of course I will,’ she said, swallowing hard because she suddenly felt nauseous. She dithered, not wanting to rush off and leave them in the lurch but worried she might actually be sick. She tried to breathe, but the waves of cramping nausea pulsed through her body, like the incoming tide. ‘Will you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back,’ she muttered, fleeing to the Ladies behind the foyer before they had a chance to reply. When she reached the safety of the cubicle, she flopped down onto the seat and bent over, head between her knees, rocking backwards and forwards, finally confronting her betrayal.
People in the throes of an affair, Connie had often observed, often appeared buoyed up – the damage and distress coming later, of course – carried away, initially,by the blind thrill of it, as if it were the most glorious thing in the world to cheat on the person you love. Connie felt sick, not elated, as the reality of last night hit her. Yet she seemed completely unable to stop the juggernaut.Warsaw, she thought, as she sat there, head resting on her folded arms in the hotel toilets.Tomorrow night.And her body melted in direct defiance of her shame.
When she returned to the foyer, Miles and Deborah had gone.
How Connie got through the packed day – sorting out the Loaders’ departure, the journey to Warsaw, the settling of the group in the new hotel and supper with five of them – she would never know. But get through it she did. Now it was nearly midnight and she lay on her bed, fully clothed, too enervated even to undress.
Jared had not been in touch. But, then, he never told her what he was planning. In a way, though, the random nature of his visits made their affair – because what else could she call it now? – seem less solid, less premeditated … but, she was ashamed to admit, also more exciting.Will he come tonight?She hoped not. Sleep was the only thing she needed right now.
Connie awoke a couple of hours later, still dressed and lying on top of the duvet, the bedroom lights blazing. She was cold and disoriented, her mouth sour from the wine at dinner. Dragging herself to sitting and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, sheshivered.We’re only in Warsaw for two nights, she thought, as she stumbled out of her clothes and into the bathroom, wondering how she would feel if Jared didn’t appear.
‘Hey, Mum, glad I caught you.’ Caitlin’s voice sounded cheery.
Connie was waiting in the lobby for everyone to assemble and be told the plans for the day when she took the call.
‘I haven’t heard a peep out of you,’ her daughter was saying. ‘I wondered if you’d been swallowed up by a salt mine or something. They have a famous one in Poland, don’t they? I’ve read about it somewhere.’
Connie smiled. ‘They do indeed. But for some reason they crossed the salt mines off the itinerary this year. Could a salt mine need renovating?’ The sound of Caitlin’s laughter was so welcome … and so uncomfortable.
‘So where are you now?’
‘Warsaw. Such a beautiful city. Did you know that they rebuilt a lot of the old structures after the war to precisely what they looked like before Hitler flattened the place?’ She went into tour-guide mode, to fend off the truth of what she’d been doing in Poland. ‘You’d never know the old town wasn’t exactly that, to look at it.’
‘Wow, hope I’ll get there one day … when Bash is a bit less challenging on the travel front, perhaps. What’sbeen going on, then, Mum? Any passengers getting up your nose?’
Connie cleared her throat. She had a persistent frog, as if her sins were choking her. ‘Not so far … I’ll tell you about Auschwitz when I see you. I want to hear about Bash.’ She changed the subject and for the next ten minutes her daughter filled her in on the minutiae of her grandson’s life. Caitlin’s words soothed her, her pulse dropping for the first time in twenty-four hours. Listening, she was reminded of the normal round of her life, where she was a mum and a grandmother, a wife and a member of a solid, supportive community, all of whom she loved. Another universe to the one she inhabited with Jared.I’ll tell him, she promised herself, as she ended the call to Caitlin.If he turns up tonight, I’ll tell him he can’t come in.But her promise rang false, even to her own ears.
Unlike before, in the G-plan hotel in Kraków, she made no attempt to resist, aware of nothing except his hand sliding softly up under her T-shirt and finding her naked breasts.
