Page 11 of The Affair
Later that evening, Walter in bed and given the all-clear by the brusque Italian doctor the hotel had summoned, Connie closed the door of her bedroom with relief. Although she was pretty sure that Walter had never been in mortal danger, there was always the chance that he might have become really ill and needed hospital treatment – with all the attendant worries that would have entailed.
She undressed and washed, taking a few minutes to open the French windows and step out onto the balcony in her bare feet. Her room faced the gardens at the back of the hotel – no lake view for the tour manager – but the air felt cool and soothing on her face, the stars an extraordinary display in the clear spring night.
It was gone eleven, but only ten o’clock in England, so she got into bed and reached for her phone. ‘Did I wake you?’ she asked, because Devan sounded groggy.
‘No, no. Just watching some dross on the television.’
‘How are you? You didn’t answer my messages.’
She heard him shifting about, a low grunt.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked, when he didn’t reply.
‘Yeah …’
‘You don’t sound it, Devan.’
There was an irritable harrumph. ‘Sorry about that.’
Connie winced at his sarcastic tone. She knew he must have been drinking and regretted calling. ‘OK, well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said curtly, and was about to hang up when she heard his voice.
‘Connie, wait. Sorry, sorry … I’ve just had a bad day with my back and I’m feeling a bit low … missing you.’
Now she felt terrible. ‘Poor you,’ she said, more gently, searching around for something she could tell him that might cheer him up, and finding nothing. Recounting what a beautiful day it had been here would hardly cut it. This was new, the lack of spontaneity in their exchanges – they’d never been short of something to say to each other.
‘How’s it going with you?’ she heard Devan ask, obviously making an effort now. ‘Any PPs so far?’
She pulled herself together and adopted her brightest tone. ‘Ha! Well, I think that title goes to Sandra, who’s seriously Hyacinth Bucket and makes me nervous, because she always seems to be brewing a kick-off. But, to be fair, she hasn’t been too bad, and the rest seem reassuringly normal.’ As she said it, though, her thoughts returned to Jared Temple and his grand godmother. ‘Well, perhaps not entirely normal …’
She heard him chuckle and it lifted her heart. ‘I miss you too, you know,’ she said sincerely. Because in that moment she would have liked nothing better than to be sitting curled up on the sofa between Devan and Riley, pulling apart the TV drama they’d just watched, a glass of wine in her hand, the dog’s head warming her bare toes. ‘You’d like Varenna, where we were today. You come in on the ferry and there are these ranks of cute houses – terracotta and ochre, cream and red – nestling on the hillside around this gorgeous harbour. It takes your breath away.’
She heard him sigh. ‘Maybe you can show me one day.’
Connie loved the idea, but wondered if she ever would. Devan generally preferred to take his holidays in the Highlands, the Lake District or Northumberland, with the accompanying horizontal rain and peat bogs. And, although he seemed obsessed with them travelling the world, she wasn’t sure either of them was in the mood, at the moment, to take any trip together.
They talked on for a while, an easy, companionable conversation at this distance, during which Connie was able to daydream that Devan was back to normal and that things would always be good like this between them.
But when she said goodbye and lay down beneath the soft hotel duvet, she felt the sadness return.Can we only communicate properly these days when we’re nine hundred miles apart?she wondered, as she drifted off to sleep.
5
Dinah waved her over. ‘Our turn,’ she said, smiling, as Connie sat down at their table for dinner on the last day. They were not eating in the hotel that night, but at a restaurant just along the lake.
It had been hot for two days now, in the mid-twenties, but the evenings were still cool in May and Connie had assumed they would eat inside. But while most of the group chose to, Dinah and Jared had brought their jackets – Dinah also wore a beautiful cashmere wrap, in delicate blues and greens – and were determined to brave the potential chill and eat al fresco on the restaurant’s terrace. The space, jutting out over the water, was covered with a wicker canopy and dotted with terracotta pots planted with lemon trees, their star-shaped white blossoms glowing in candlelight from the tables.
‘Isn’t it romantic?’ Dinah gave a long sigh as she gazed towards the coral sky and the setting sun throwing gold splinters across the lake. ‘I wish I were twenty again.’ Then she laughed. ‘Although, come to think of it, I was on the verge of marrying the ghastly Ambrose then. Such a brute. So maybe not.’
‘How could you tell, at twenty?’ Jared commented.
‘Exactly,’ Dinah agreed, then turned to Connie andlaid a hand confidentially on her sleeve. ‘Do you have a family? You know all about us and we know absolutely nothing about you.’
Connie grinned. ‘I prefer to keep it that way.’
She saw Jared smiling too, but Dinah was not giving up. ‘A husband? Children?’
‘I have one daughter and a husband, Devan. He’s a doctor, a GP.’
‘Devon with ano, like the county?’ Dinah queried.
