Page 76 of The Affair
‘No,’ Connie cried out. ‘You’ll never fit through.’ It was also true that she couldn’t face being left alone with Jared, maybe watching as he gave up his hold on life. Devan was much better qualified, anyway. ‘I’ll go. You deal with him.’ She went over and pushed her husband out of the way.
He hesitated for a second. ‘Are you sure?’
She didn’t reply. She was terrified, but also driven as she twisted the lock and yanked open the window. Cold wind rushed in, a welcome breath of air after the heavy, fraught atmosphere in the room. She knelt on thewindowsill and put one leg gingerly out into the night, squeezing her body through the gap, hanging on for dear life to the sill.
‘Take my hands,’ she heard Devan say. ‘I can lower you.’
Balancing half in, half out, and loath to let go of the sill, she managed, nonetheless, to grab one of her husband’s outstretched hands, then, after a moment, the other. She took a deep breath as she slipped her other leg outside. Her bare feet scrabbled at the wet brick as she hung there, clinging to Devan’s strong grip as he leaned out, lowering her slowly towards the ground. She looked down. There was a ledge above the sitting-room window, but it was just out of reach and too narrow to hold her weight anyway. Paralysed, she cowered as rain lashed cold on her back, the wind blowing her hair across her face so she couldn’t see.Jump, she urged herself.Jump – it’s not far. But she couldn’t.
Devan’s voice cut through the storm, steady and reassuring. ‘It’s OK, Connie, you can do it.’ She felt her hands – soaked with rain – sliding in his, her grip weakening. There was no choice: the strain on her arm sockets was unbearable. Her fingers finally broke free and she fell.
The impact knocked the breath out of her. Pain shot through her right ankle as she tried to stand, but she was in one piece and inhaled a huge breath of relief. ‘I’m OK,’ she shouted up.
Devan waved. ‘Hurry,’ he yelled back, and his head disappeared.
In their haste, they hadn’t discussed the next step. She tried to think. She didn’t have her keys, but maybe she could break a pane in the kitchen door? But it was bolted top and bottom. Oblivious to the pain shooting up her leg, she hobbled as quickly as she could along the wet pavement to the pub. Even if Stacy and Nicole were asleep, their two Alsatians would bark for Britain – that was their job.
Connie shouted the publican’s name over and over, pounding on the heavy, varnished oak. Almost immediately she heard the dogs barking, scrabbling frantically on the other side. She held her breath. ‘Please,’ she begged out loud, ‘please, Stacy, wake up.’
After what seemed like an eternity, she detected the sound of someone thumping down the stairs. Then Stacy’s voice bellowed from the other side of the door, ‘Who is it? What do you want?’
‘It’s me, Connie!’ she shouted back, her voice sounding feeble, blown away on the wind. But Stacy heard. Her body shook with relief at the sound of the bolts being drawn back. Then her friend, in what must have been Nicole’s pink towelling dressing gown, was speaking her name, dragging her inside.
‘Fucking hell, Connie,’ he said, as she gave him a brief, garbled account of what had happened. He ran behind the bar and she watched, shivering and almost unable to stand, as he lifted the receiver and dialled 999.
34
The police arrived first, assuring her the ambulance was right behind. Connie quickly led them round to the kitchen door, where PC Ben Thurlow, swinging a heavy red-metal cylinder, forced the frame, the glass in some of the panes shattering as the wood buckled and gave way. Stamping heedlessly over the shards in their boots, they ran ahead. Stacy, without a word, swiftly picked up Connie – still barefoot: in her haste to rescue Jared she’d forgotten her shoes – and carried her over the broken glass, setting her down safely in the hall.
They found the bedroom key, her phone and what must have been Jared’s on the landing carpet. They were only inches from the door, but out of reach to anyone inside. Connie noticed the metal steps leading from the loft were hanging down.It wasn’t mice.She shivered at the thought he’d been up there all the time they’d been arriving home, having supper, unpacking, getting ready for bed.
She watched, breathless, as Yvonne Youngs – a sergeant and the one in charge – fiddled with the key in the lock.Come on, come on, Connie whispered silently as the seconds ticked by. Then at last the policewoman was asking them to stand back as she pushed the door ajar.
The room was still in half-darkness. Devan was bythe window, clutching Jared round the waist, one of his arms pulled tight around his neck. ‘Stay with me, Jared, stay with me …’ he was intoning to the semi-conscious, lolling head, as Jared’s feet dragged uselessly across the carpet.
Connie rushed over to help Devan, but Ben was quicker.
‘Let me, sir.’ The policeman tried to take Jared from Devan’s arms.
But Devan clung on, kept walking. ‘I’m OK,’ he insisted. ‘Take his other arm.’ He glanced round briefly at Sergeant Youngs. ‘Where’s the bloody ambulance?’ he demanded, before turning his attention back to Jared. ‘Come on!Wake up, Jared! For God’s sake, wake up.’
Yvonne made a call to chivvy the emergency services. Connie watched and waited, shivering, on the other side of the bed, while they continued to walk Jared’s dead weight slowly back and forth across the room, her nerves strung to breaking point as she listened out for the sound of the ambulance. It was probably only a matter of minutes before the green-uniformed paramedics clumped up the stairs and blasted, businesslike, into the crowded room, relieving Devan and Ben of their burden – although it seemed like a lifetime to her.
Devan had his arm around her shoulders as they stood in the corner of the crowded room watching the scene playing out in front of them. ‘He’s going to be OK, isn’t he?’ she whispered to him.
But the look he gave her was bleak. He didn’t answer.
‘Can’t find a pulse,’ she heard one of the paramedics mutter a moment later, as they prepared to bundle Jared onto the stretcher.
The next minutes passed in a blur for Connie. Nobody panicked. Nobody shouted. There was just a controlled frenzy around the body on the floor. Yvonne tried to make them leave the room, but neither she nor Devan would budge.
This is all my fault. Responsibility lay on her shoulders like a ten-ton weight. She thought back to that first fatal kiss.I should have stopped it right there, she thought.He was vulnerable … and I chose not to see it.She felt tears of exhaustion behind her eyes.If he dies, I will never forgive myself.
It could have been minutes or hours, but suddenly she realized the room had gone very still. Devan was pulling her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry, Connie,’ he said softly.
She stared up at him, clocking his expression. Gasping, she dragged herself away. Looking over to where Jared lay, she jolted. His body was in shadow, his face, previously so full of pain and distress as he begged her to stay with him, now pale and motionless, his turquoise eyes closed.NO …
Connie watched as Devan carefully picked up the bigger pieces of glass from the kitchen floor and swept the rest into a dustpan, tipping the contents into a cardboard box. Then she waited in numb silence, her soreankle raised on a chair, as he followed the trail of splinters trampled through the house by the police and paramedics with the vacuum cleaner. She was still wearing her coat because it was ice cold in the house, although she’d replaced her damp clothes with pyjamas. The noise of the vacuum, in her sensitive state, sounded brutal and deafening.
