Page 14 of The Affair
Connie gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I’m sticking to fruit.’
Dinah leaned closer, her voice lowered to conspiratorial level. ‘I love fruit, but it plays havoc with my innards. I simply can’t risk it when we’re stuck with rackety train loos all day.’
Connie sensed, rather than saw, Jared approaching. ‘Listen, Dinah,’ she said, quickly, ‘thank you so much for the incredibly generous tip. But it’s way too much.’
Dinah waved her free hand imperiously. ‘Nonsense, Connie. Not another word. You’re worth twice that.’
Before she had time to object further, Jared was beside them.
‘Hi,’ he said, his turquoise eyes gazing steadily at her as Dinah made her way slowly towards their table. Hedidn’t immediately follow. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he added. ‘I …’ He stopped, gave her a warm, brief smile that might have carried an apology, Connie wasn’t sure, before turning away without another word.
She stood stock still. Her breath was shallow in her chest. She saw out of the corner of her eye the waitress setting her coffee on the white cloth. Luckily there were tables between hers and Dinah’s and she chose a seat with her back to them. The fruit salad was too cold, the chunks of unripe melon so big they almost choked her. The coffee was perfect, though, hot and strong, made from her favourite arabica beans. It would probably cause her to shake even more than she already was. But she badly needed a hit to get through the day.
The journey home passed in an anxious daze for Connie. The long hours to Paris, with all her passengers safely stowed, gave her too much time for reflection – especially as she wasn’t occupied with a book or music.
At St Pancras the following day, she found she couldn’t wait to be shot of them all. She often felt weary as she waved her passengers goodbye and shed the responsibilities of the week, but this time it was more a need to be free from the temptation of Jared’s gaze. They had barely talked since leaving the lake. Dinah had old friends in Paris, so she and Jared had been whisked away for dinner the previous night. And Connie’s seat had been in a separate carriage on both trains.
Now Dinah was approaching, enveloping her in awarm hug. She smelt the reassuring fragrance of Chanel, felt the softness of the powdered skin. ‘Connie, my dear. How sad. It’s been such a pleasure meeting you.’
‘You, too, Dinah. I’ll miss you both.’ Which was true, although not quite in the context implied.
Jared held out his arms. ‘The wonderful Connie,’ he said, and wrapped her close against him, lowering his head to drop an unseen kiss to the side of her mouth. She stiffened in his embrace, terrified that Dinah would think them too intimate, and he let her go.
‘Come on.’ He gave his godmother a friendly grin. ‘Let’s get you home.’
Connie breathed a deep sigh of relief as she watched the pair make their way slowly across the busy station concourse in the direction of the taxi rank.I will forget it ever happened, she told herself firmly.
7
‘Sandwich at the pub?’ Connie suggested brightly, two mornings after her return.
Devan glanced up from his phone. Every time she met his eyes, now, she was sure he would see a change in her. But his gaze was dull. ‘Umm, could do.’
Connie sighed. ‘Bit more enthusiasm would be nice.’
Her husband’s brow creased. ‘Just because you suggested it, Con, doesn’t make it a good plan.’ He accompanied his words with a sham smile, behind which she could sense the stubbornness not to be seduced, to maintain his huffy position of a child abandoned by his mother.
Since she’d got back, she’d really tried. Guilt was partially driving her, it was true – and maybe he could sense that, without knowing why. But her efforts to be loving and sympathetic were not a pretence: she did, of course, love Devan. But she’d been shocked at how easy it was to slip into attraction to someone else. Treacherous attraction that still tormented her, the facile notion that she could forget what had been, after all, merely a fleeting aberration not proving so easy.
It was as if she were existing in a different zone, where the echo of arousal engendered by Jared’s kiss swirled constantly around her, like a miasma. Shewanted release, wanted Devan to snatch her up in his arms and make wild, possessive love to her, let the kiss be deleted from her body’s memory bank. But she also felt like a traitor in wanting his hands caressing her as a substitute for what she would never have.
‘OK,’ she said now. ‘Forget it, then.’
Clutching his phone in front of him, as if it were a shield against her hostile invasion of his space, Devan sighed. ‘No … no, the pub would be good.’
Connie didn’t argue. She took the scraps he offered. ‘I’m having a coffee with Neil in a minute. Meet you there at twelve thirty?’
‘Sure. Say hi to Neil.’
She thought he looked relieved that she was going out.
Neil and Connie had been friends almost as long as she had been with Devan. He was a successful food stylist, whom she’d met while she was working for Fiona Raven. He’d created all the illustrations for Fiona’s glossy cookery books and they’d bonded early on over the chef’s diva ways – although Neil was initially flavour of the month to the predatory Fiona.
It would be ‘Neil, my darling boy’ and ‘Neil, sweetie’ and ‘Come here, gorgeous one,’ all accompanied by intimate strokes and arms pressed round his shoulders, private whispers in his ear. Neil – who was still ‘gorgeous’ with his blue-eyed, blond-haired charm, even in his mid-fifties – suffered her attentions stoically at first, but rolled his eyes and pulled faces at Connie wheneverthe chance arose. Things changed, however, when Neil asked his boyfriend of the moment to meet him at the Bridgwater emporium.
‘She must have known I’m gay,’ he’d complained to Connie at the time, when Fiona’sfroideurbecame glacial.
Neil, though, was too good a stylist to be dispensed with. Gradually he and Fiona had settled into a new working relationship, of sorts. But he, too, became the victim of what Connie and the others suffered daily: her bitchy putdowns and imperious demands.
