Page 42 of The Affair
Connie didn’t know what to say. But before she had a chance to offer yet another denial, he threw up his hands in horror. ‘You don’t think you got this lurgy because of our swim, do you? It was bloody freezing that morning.’
She laughed, on safer ground now. ‘Of course not. Cold swims are supposed to boost your immune system.’ She took a sip of tea, which, like everything else these days, tasted rancid and bitter. ‘It’ll be something I picked up from the trains.’
‘Hmm …’ Neil was eyeing her. ‘So you’re not going to tell me?’
She heard the front door open. ‘Nothing to tell,’ she said softly, before rising to get her husband a cup for his tea.
Later, when she was alone, she thought about what Neil had said.Am I grieving?Sex with anyone, even Jared, was the last thing currently on her mind, but she was forced to acknowledge that it was a loss. She had gone to a place with him where she’d never been before. Knowing she would never go there again was a grief she was not allowed, but that did not make it any less real.
She had also lost her peace of mind. Devan was being so loving, so solicitous – she could not have asked for a better husband. But guilt made her jumpy and Jared still encroached, unwittingly, upon her thoughts. She wanted to be fully present with Devan, but memories snuck back through the cracks, unbidden, like mice into an empty house. It was hardly surprising, thinking about it, that she’d fallen victim to the nearest virus. She remembered Devan saying he just wanted things to go back to how they were. Even knowing the impossibility of this, Connie wanted it too, more than anything else in the world.
18
‘I talked to Monica today,’ Connie said to Devan, as they drove the twenty minutes to Glastonbury. It was a month since she’d collapsed in her hotel room and she was on the mend at last. But the cough persisted and drained her energy, making sleep – even drugged to the hilt with knock-out syrup – intermittent. She was sleeping in the spare room now, because trying to control her cough and not wake Devan just made the spasms worse. ‘She groaned when I said I couldn’t do Croatia either.’ Connie had cancelled her Jungfrau Express tour, which should have started a week ago, as soon as she realized she wasn’t shaking off the chest infection. But she’d assumed she would be well enough for the Croatian trip. It took in the beautiful Plitvice Lakes and the Postojna Cave, which she’d not yet seen and had been really looking forward to. It was a thirteen-night tour, though, which she knew would be exhausting.
A thought flashed across her mind.Will Jared know I’ve cancelled?She silently chided herself. But a small part of her still had not fully accepted that she would never see him again. ‘So that’s me done for the year,’ she added quickly. Croatia was her last booking before the European tour season ended.
Devan shot her a sympathetic look as he drove. But she knew he must be secretly relieved. He’d been really worried about her. Too much medical knowledge was sometimes a burden, with mutterings of pneumonia, collapsed lung, broken ribs and heart problems as he watched her body torn apart with the paroxysms. ‘Are you upset?’ he asked.
‘Bit disappointed. I’m never ill, as you know.’ She thought back to when she’d last spent a whole day in bed and couldn’t recall a single one.
There was silence. Then Devan glanced at her again. ‘Listen … You don’t have to retire next year if you don’t want to, Connie.’ He was concentrating on the road again. ‘I know you said you would. But you love it so much … you can always change your mind.’
Connie’s eyes filled with tears. Her husband had controlled himself valiantly since she’d been ill, not once digging at her about the job being too much for her. But as she began to show signs of recovery, she had thought he might bring it up again. Although, quite honestly, the thought of going anywhere at the moment, let alone on a long train ride across Europe managing forty passengers, made her feel quite faint.
‘Thanks … Maybe see how things go,’ she said, reaching over to lay a hand on his arm as they pulled into the car park next to the abbey. But Devan was scrabbling about in the well under the dashboard for coins, almost as if he were self-conscious about finally meeting her halfway on the issue.
If she wasn’t touring, though, the thought of doingonly what they were doing today, maybe for the rest of their lives, filled Connie with mild dread. Devan’s cunning plan for building up her strength was working so far. He kept arranging leisurely jaunts into the countryside, where they would walk short distances, rest, walk some more. They might visit a church, a beauty spot, or do what they were doing today – poke around the brightly coloured shops of Glastonbury – making Connie exercise without realizing it. She was always wiped out by the time she got home, but she was grateful to her husband. And she enjoyed the days out, after weeks cooped up, too wobbly to make it to the end of the road. But they also made her nervous.This is what retirement could look like, she thought, as they passed yet another purple-painted crystal shop on the crowded pavement.
They found a seat outside a vegan café on the town square and ordered mint tea for Connie and a black Americano for Devan, with two banana and peanut butter cupcakes – about which Devan was highly suspicious.
‘I hate feeling like this,’ Connie said. ‘I’ve been so dependent on you, so whiny … and I feel really vulnerable when I’m out in crowds. I seem to have lost my nerve.’
‘That’s normal. You’re convalescing,’ Devan assured her, biting cautiously into the cupcake, then nodding slowly in appreciation.
‘Yes, but I feel so old, Devan. Like really crocked andold. It’s horrible. And I worry it’s a slippery slope …’
She looked towards the spire in the centre of the square, around which a number of tanned young people in shorts and hiking boots were hanging out, laughing and smoking, tinnies in their hands, lumpy backpacks lying at their feet. She pointed to them. ‘This is where we started,’ she said, with a smile, remembering the medical tent at the festival as if were another life, she and Devan other people.
Her husband turned to look. ‘I thought you were the craziest girl I’d ever met.’
‘Crazy? Me?’ Connie was astonished. He’d never said that before. ‘Gaby was the crazy one.’
He laughed. ‘She was stoned. You were crazy. You kept dancing barefoot around the tent to the music, your gorgeous hair all over the place, legs covered with mud, laughing like a lunatic and saying things like “You look soweirdin those trousers”, which were perfectly standard jeans. I was sure you were on something too.’
Connie stared at him. ‘You’re making this up. I don’t believe you.’
Devan’s face was alight with mischief. ‘You don’t remember, though, do you?’
‘I do! I remember everything. You did look a bit peculiar in those tidy jeans. But I liked it.’ She frowned. ‘I remember the mud … Did I really dance around the tent?’ Her memory was of being the sober, responsible friend, saving Gaby’s life.
He nodded. Now they were really laughing.
‘I probablyhadbeen drinking,’ she admitted.
‘You probably had,’ Devan agreed. Suddenly serious,he added, ‘You’ve always been someone who grabs life by the balls, Connie. I love that about you.’ He reached over and took her hand ‘You’re so not old. I think you’re gorgeous.’ His words made her want to cry, especially given the dilapidated state she was in. She felt like an animal who’d just crawled out of her cave after a long winter in hibernation. Her hair was faded and wild – badly in need of Janine’s ministrations – her nails were flaking, her skin felt like the surface of a prawn cracker and was pretty much the same colour. She was still too thin. ‘Gorgeous’ did not really cut it.
September plodded by. It was now six weeks since Connie had become ill. Six weeks during which she’d cried with despair that she would ever be well again. Six weeks of being home, being cosseted … being loved. And six weeks since she’d seen or heard of Jared. She was a lucky woman, she knew, and tried not to think of how much she didn’t deserve Devan’s love. Not when the occasional dream of Jared still made her body vibrate and quiver, like a leaf in the breeze. But she thought about Jared less and less. Her brain was quietly beginning to wrap her memories in the convenient mists of time.
