Page 50 of The Affair
In the car going home, Connie’s head was pounding from too much mulled wine. ‘You’ve always said stout was vile. Why on earth are you going for a tasting with that guy?’
He grinned. ‘I know. But he’s nice. I like him. And you always say we should be friendly to people settling in the village.’
She had no answer for that because she was assailed by a silent shriek of panic, of blind fury.This cannot be happening to me… The words smacked the sides of her brain like a hundred-mile-an-hour squash ball.
Late morning the following day, Connie phoned her sister. She’d been going crazy since the early hours,trying to work out what to do, without success. She knew she needed someone else’s advice. ‘Have you got a moment?’ she asked, after they’d exchanged greetings. It was a Friday morning and, remembering Lynne and Rhodri’s rigid schedule, she knew they wouldn’t be at the supermarket or at church or changing the sheets. Connie had waited till Devan went out to meet Jared. She had barely slept and now felt tearful. Swallowing hard, she tried to explain.
‘Crikey,’ Lynne said, which was as close as she usually got to swearing. ‘He’s living practically next door?’
‘Three minutes away.’
‘Why? Does he think you’ll leave Devan?’ There was a pause. ‘Might you leave Devan?’
‘No.No no no!Absolutely not. And I’ve told him that a hundred times.’
‘Hmm. Weird. He’s stalking you, Connie.’
Since his arrival in the village, she herself had reluctantly begun to use that word in relation to Jared. But it was scary: she didn’t want it to fit. ‘He doesn’t call me, text me, send letters, leave stuff on the doorstep, boil bunnies, slash tyres … He doesn’tdoanything. He’s justthere.’ She felt tears of frustration, which she’d kept under firm control for weeks now, finally breaking free.
‘Please, don’t cry.’ Lynne hated tears. ‘You say he’s promised not to breathe a word. Maybe he won’t.’
‘How can I trust him, though?’ Connie wailed. ‘In fact, how do I know he’s not telling Devan every single thing that happened between us even as we speak?’Angrily she wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘But that’s almost beside the point. Even if he never breathes a bloody word, I can’t live like this, Lynne, with him breathing down my neck. I daren’t even go out in my own village for fear of bumping into him.’
‘He doesn’t sound sane to me.’
‘What he’s doing is totallyinsane. Although he appears completely normal to everyone else. They love him.’
There was a baffled silence at the other end of the phone.
‘Well, perhaps he doesn’t mean any harm, Con. Perhaps he means what he says – that he just wants to be near you.’
‘And I’m supposed to roll over and let him be part of my life, am I? Ignore the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head, the threat that one day he’ll get drunk and blurt out he had wild sex with me all summer?’
There was silence as Lynne digested this. ‘So, he didn’t mention he’d met you before, when you were introduced?’
‘No. But he turned up at Fiona Raven’s book launch. How the fuck does he know her? It’s like he’s found out every single detail about my life and is quietly infiltrating it all.’
‘It’s called stalking,’ her sister repeated patiently.
Connie let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Call it what you like. But I hardly think the police’ll send out their armed response because I don’t particularly like the look of some man who’s moved into our village.’
‘He’ll get bored, won’t he? If you ignore him,’ Lynne said, after another short silence.
Connie hoped she was right, but Jared didn’t seem to follow normal rules. ‘God, Lynne. I know I did a really bad thing, cheating on Devan like that. And I know it serves me bloody well right. But this level of retribution doesn’t seem quite fair.’
‘“He who digs a pit will fall into it”, Proverbs twenty-six, verse twenty-seven,’ Lynne murmured to herself. ‘There is a very simple solution, of course.’
‘What?’
‘Tell Devan.’
Connie felt her gut seize.
‘Then Jared has no power.’ Warming to her theme, Lynne went on, ‘He really should know, Connie. It’s such a big lie sitting at the centre of your marriage.’
It wasn’t as if Connie hadn’t considered telling Devan. Part of her was desperate to let the toxic secret slip from her grasp. Surely it would be a massive relief. But then she examined the fallout, the hurt and humiliation on her husband’s face … the probable ruination of their marriage. And now Jared had compounded the potential mortification by becoming friends with Devan.
Connie began to cry. ‘I can’t, Lynne. I honestly can’t tell him. Can you imagine? Devan would hate me for ever …’ The thought froze her tears.
