Page 36 of The Affair
After a long moment he said quietly, ‘OK.’ Then shrugged, turning back to the river.
She stared at his profile.Did he understand what I just said?She tried again. ‘Devan and I were going through a bad patch …’ She found herself explaining, anyway.
Jared raised his hand. ‘I said it’s OK, Connie.’ When he turned his eyes on her, his expression was blank: there was no light in them now. She saw him swallow. ‘Your call.’
The effect on Connie of his immediate acquiescence was searing. Maybe she’d thought he would put upmore of a fight. Not that it would have made any difference, of course. She groaned, tears filling her tired eyes. ‘I’m going to miss you.’ She immediately cursed herself for her weakness, but it was the truth.
Jared nodded. ‘So …’
She gazed at him. He had such a quiet face. Devan’s was so expressive by comparison, his emotions flitting boldly across his features for all to see. She had no idea what Jared was feeling. Had no idea about his life at all, which perhaps was what made it so easy for her to compartmentalize him in this bubble.Where will he go when he leaves me? Who will he be with? What will he do?She wanted to ask, but instead she said, ‘I can’t keep on lying to him. Or, more to the point, I don’t want to.’ Because it was as simple as that.
Jared seemed to be considering what she’d said. ‘We aren’t hurting him.’
‘Yes, we are. On some level.’
‘He hurt you, I think.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I love him,’ she said. What she said was true, but even she heard the equivocation in her voice. Which was not about her love for Devan, but about never seeing Jared again.
Jared, gazing off into the distance, picked up her hand and placed it between his two warm ones, resting it in his lap. She could feel his thumb stroking her palm. ‘It’s a different world you and I inhabit, Connie. It doesn’t touch Devan. I’ve never stopped you loving him.’
‘You don’t exactly help.’
He laughed, and she did too.
‘This isn’t easy for me … Please try to understand,’ she said, staring at his profile, her voice rising in her need to make herself clear. ‘I can’t make love to him when I’m remembering how it is between us … when I’m waiting to be beside you again. I can’t meet his eye across the breakfast table. I can’t say,I love you, when you’re filling my thoughts.I can’t do it any more, Jared. I just can’t.’ Her voice dropped for the last sentence, weariness washing over her. She slumped against the bench.
Jared rose, stood with his back to her, his hands in his jacket pockets. She held her breath. Getting up too, her eyes were fixed on his still frame. The sun was gone now, and a breeze blew sharp off the river. She shivered, battling the scratchy stupor from a sleepless night.
‘I should get going,’ he said. He did not turn to her and she felt a tiny pang of rejection she knew was unjustified.
Jared began to walk back to the hotel, Connie following in silence.What will he do about his hire car? When does his plane leave?It seemed easier to think about the practicalities, her tour-manager muscle automatically flexing, but she held her tongue.
He turned to her when they reached the hotel. ‘I hear you, Connie. I do.’
She felt the finality of his words, like stones in her gut. An involuntary flash of last night’s lovemaking made her catch her breath.One more kiss, she thought, but knew that was something she could not ask for … and would never have again.
‘Goodbye, Jared,’ she said.
Their eyes locked. She saw the turbulence in his and closed her own, feeling them both swirling upwards together, like leaves in the wind. When she opened her eyes, he had turned away and was walking slowly towards the bridge.
15
Normally the night train to Euston was a series of rattling, swaying, jolting patches of fitful dozing. Connie hadn’t expected anything more. But last night she’d passed out, still fully clothed, as soon as the train started to move, only waking when the steward rapped sharply on the door of her compartment, informing her they were an hour from Euston.
In her bleary state, London seemed painfully loud and frenetic as she manoeuvred her wheelie-case through the crowds to the Underground and Paddington for the journey home. She kept picturing Devan at the station, imagining that smile of his, the enthusiasm he would show at her return. Because she wanted to prepare herself, plant herself firmly on the path back to her marriage.
But her night with Jared intruded. It was like trying to master the breathing exercises in her yoga class. ‘Focus on the breath,’ Nadia would say. ‘Acknowledge your thoughts, then let them drift away, bring yourself back to the breath.’How long will it be like this?she wondered, in despair.
Devan, however, appeared subdued in the days after she got back. He was loving and attentive, but the burstof enthusiasm he’d shown around their anniversary seemed to evaporate on her return. He kept looking at her as if he were trying to gauge something about her. Connie found it hard to meet his eye. She couldn’t allow him to see what lurked in the depths.
‘We should talk,’ Devan said, one evening. Supper was on the table, the doors to the garden closed against the teeming summer rain outside. It was hot in the kitchen, and Connie had drunk at least two glasses of white wine while she was cooking the chicken and vegetable stew.
Her husband was leaning on the back of one of the wooden chairs, although she had doled out his chicken into one of the Delft-patterned bowls she’d picked up in a charity shop, and pushed the dish of buttered peas towards him. With seeming reluctance, he pulled out the chair and sat down. But he didn’t begin to eat.
Frowning, she said, ‘What?’
He flicked his eyebrows up, his blue eyes clouding as they looked at her. ‘I sense you’re not onboard, Connie.’
