Page 43 of The Affair
Today, Saturday, Jill picked Connie up after breakfast. ‘Are we bonkers, driving all the way to the Forest of Dean?’ her friend asked, as they headed west towards the M5.
Connie laughed. She loved food festivals: cookery theatre and sampling cubes of local produce, hot lunchin pots with little wooden spoons, mini plastic beakers of cider, beer and wine to test, and the general good humour and friendliness foodies inspire. But that morning she had almost cancelled.
She just couldn’t seem to get her spirits up – or her enthusiasm for anything. Her life seemed just a grey trudge from hour to hour, day to day. Although physically she was no longer ill, the cough only plaguing her occasionally, it felt like a monumental effort to respond to Devan, let alone the few friends she’d been in touch with recently. A whole day with Jill – who liked to talk about things on which Connie might have to concentrate – rendered her a bit panicky.
‘It’ll be worth it,’ she assured her friend.
‘Should be. Although, according to the app, rain’s forecast. Shame for all those stallholders.’
Connie sat in the warm womb of the car and couldn’t think of a thing to say. She wanted to close her eyes, but knew she must not: it was barely ten o’clock.
‘You know old Mr Solomon’s cottage, down by the post office?’ Jill said.
‘The one with the wooden dolphin outside?’
‘That’s gone now. The son-who-never-visited has done the place up and is renting it out, according to Chloë, my mate at Tovey’s. I bumped into her with that yappy terrier of hers that always growls at me as if I’m a burglar.’ Jill fell silent for a moment as she negotiated a right turn, as instructed by the satnav’s imperious Astrid, then added, ‘Someone’s taken a six-month lease, apparently.’
Connie wasn’t really interested, but she made noises as if she were. ‘It’ll be weekenders, I expect.’
‘It’s only two bedrooms, and one’s a cupboard, apparently. Probably a couple who live in London and have a yearning for fresh air and farm shops.’ She sighed. ‘Another one empty most of the year.’
The fair was packed and cheerful – music playing, lots of small children, delicious smells all vying with each other to make her mouth water. Connie blindly followed her friend around the stalls, responding to Jill’s enthusiasms. The predicted rain didn’t arrive till later, but it was chilly and Connie – who felt permanently cold these days – wished she’d worn more jumpers under her anorak. They ate beef, olive and sultana empanadas from a Chilean street-food stall, then shared a cone of hot, sugarychurroswith chocolate sauce, and sampled numerous beverages from plastic cups, some of them alcoholic, which Jill sipped, then passed to Connie to finish. So by the time they reached the car – a tiring trek across a bumpy, muddy field – Connie was pleasantly tipsy. It had been a good day and she was glad she’d made the effort.
She slid into the passenger seat of Jill’s Mini Countryman and sighed with relief, her body limp with fatigue. Eyes half closed, she glimpsed in the side mirror a man in a Barbour, his bushman hat pulled low against the rain, walking past the rear of the car. He stopped to speak to Jill, as she went to open the boot in order to change out of her wellies. After a minute, hestrode off along the row of parked cars. Although she couldn’t hear what was said from where she sat, the raised tone of his ‘goodbye’ struck a chord in her sleepy, slightly intoxicated brain. After a second, she knew whose voice it reminded her of: Jared’s. It jolted her out of her lethargy.
‘Who was that?’ Connie enquired, as Jill climbed in and banged the door, throwing her bag onto the back seat.
‘Nice man. Lost his car keys, poor sod.’
‘Heavens … What’s he going to do?’
Jill started the engine and put on the wipers. ‘Go back and have another look around the fair, see if someone’s handed them in. Although he didn’t hold out much hope. Then call a garage, I suppose. He didn’t seem as upset as I’d have been.’
‘What was he asking you?’
‘Nothing. I think he just wanted to share his misery.’ Jill gave her a sharp look. ‘You OK?’
‘Fine … Just thought I was going to sneeze.’
Connie laughed silently at herself. As if Jared would turn up in a muddy field at a food festival in the Forest of Dean!I’m going senile as well as getting doddery.But during the drive home she sat in silence, her thoughts unwillingly returning to the times they’d shared in the various locations around Europe. As she slumped in her old blue anorak and jeans, her face gaunt and pale, her limbs weak from ill health, she wondered if those nights had really happened. Now she was back in the slow, rhythmic flow of home life, it seemed almostimpossible that she was that woman … that she had allowed herself to be.
Do I regret it?she’d asked herself over and over. And the answer was both yes and no. She was ashamed of – and deeply regretted – the breach of faith in their marriage, which she could never recover now. Some people thrived on the thrill of the lie. Not her. The guilt had made her physically ill.
But on the no side, however wrong she knew it to be, and however much she felt regret for those nights, she was aware that she would not have missed them. As she crept into her seventh decade, a man celebrating her body in the way Jared had – especially at a time when Devan had seemed not to find her the least bit attractive any more – had been nothing short of a miracle.If he could see me now, she thought tiredly, and almost smiled.
Devan had cooked supper. He’d been practising while she was ill, having no choice unless they were to exist entirely on supermarket ready meals. Tonight, it was grilled lamb chops, flageolet beans, baked tomatoes and a green salad. Connie helped herself to mint sauce, then handed the jar to him.
‘Thank you. This looks lovely,’ she said.
As they ate, Connie regaled him with her day at the fair: an English wine she’d tasted, the goat’s cheese she’d almost bought, and a demonstration of knife skills. ‘Jill forced me to try one of those slithery rollmops and I thought I was going to throw up.’
Devan smiled, but she could tell he wasn’t really concentrating on what she was saying. ‘OK,’ he began, widening his eyes at her, ‘so something happened today, which I’m rather excited about.’
She nodded but didn’t interrupt him.
‘You know Sylvie Masters, the doctor who did locum work for the surgery for a while?’
‘Vaguely.’
