Page 73 of The Affair
‘Couldn’t you see, right from the off, that there was something creepy about Jared?’ he asked, sounding pained. ‘Turning up like that at your hotels without you telling him where you were would have sounded loud alarm bells to me.’
Connie forbore to remind Devan that he hadn’t found Jared the least bit ‘creepy’ when he’d met him. Neither could she let on that at the time it had felt exciting, flattering. ‘The information’s all on the website,’ she replied. ‘It was just a game for him, I suppose.’
‘And you, Connie? Was it a game for you, too?’ The bitterness was back, acrid as burned coffee. ‘Way more fun than hanging out with your grumpy old man back home, I imagine.’
She stopped, taking a moment before she replied, anger churning in her gut, replacing, for once, the relentless guilt. ‘Well,’ she said, squaring up to him, arms akimbo in the winter sunlight, ‘there is some truth in that, if I’m absolutely honest.’ She saw him flinch. ‘At some stage, Devan, you’re going to have to stop bloody picking at this scab or we’ll never move forward.’
She shocked herself with her uncompromising tone, and she had clearly shocked her husband. He looked at her aghast. ‘You’re making thismyfault?’
‘That isn’t what I said. But listen to this: I withdraw pretty much all of the warmth, kindness, even sex from our marriage. I stop showering or dressing in clean clothes, drink too much and slump on my phone all day long, refusing any offers of help. I go on at you to give up something you love that you aren’t ready to give up,’ she took a breath, ‘and outwardly question where our marriage is going.’ Another breath. ‘Would you be understanding and endlessly patient? Or might you be as childish as me, feel rejected, unconfident … and vulnerable to the first woman who seemed to admire you?’ She was shaking, but she was shaking with relief. At last she’d said what she had not dared say, what had been festering in her mind for weeks now. ‘Don’t think I’m letting myself off the hook,’ she added quietly, ‘but there’s only so much guilt a person can feel, so many times a person can apologize, without any sign they’ve been heard.’
Looking indignant, but also a bit punctured, Devan replied, ‘I asked you to come home, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, and I’m so happy you did. But think about what I said.’
His face was set stubbornly. Then it fell, his body seeming to lose its strength as he slumped over, hugging his arms around his chest.
‘I honestly thought you didn’t love me any more,’ she added, more gently.
Devan’s face suffused with anguish. ‘Oh, Connie. Of course I loved you.I love you.I’ve never stopped. Not even when I found out about Jared. I hated you, too,then. I never wanted to see you again. But I never stopped loving you.’
Connie, tears in her eyes, had just nodded.
Now, sitting opposite Neil, she brushed away the memory as she tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘You should treat yourselves, Con. Get away somewhere warm for a few days. Change the record, change things up with your marriage. You’ve always been such a strong team – that still holds true, doesn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ she said diffidently, which caused Neil to frown.
‘You do still love the man, don’t you?’
Tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, God, yes. I love him so much.’ She blinked. ‘It’s just …’ Seeing Neil’s face, she knew what he was going to say. ‘I know, I know, give it bloody time. I haven’t got any choice, have I? But it’s so hard waiting for that moment when he looks at me again like he always used to – and it’s just him and me … no Jared.’ She was trying to control her wobbling mouth. ‘I just don’t know if that moment will ever come.’
33
The roof terrace was cool in the early-morning sun, which shone from a bright blue cloudless sky. Looking over the parapet, Connie had a breathtaking view across the city, the tower of the beautiful Moorish minaret sticking up above the flat red-brown Marrakech roofs dotted with satellite dishes, the Atlas Mountains on the distant horizon.
Connie and Devan, fresh from a swim in the chilly hotel pool, reclined in their white robes on rough-weave red and orange striped cushions. They sipped golden juice and strong coffee, ate hot fried eggs nestling in spicy tomato sauce, yoghurt and coriander, into which they were dipping chunks of crusty white bread.
‘Heaven,’ Connie pronounced, her mouth full.
She had taken Neil’s advice and gone straight home to speak to Devan. ‘We never got around to organizing that break we talked about last year. I think we need it now. Can you take a week off from the hospice?’ It had opened in early January and Devan clearly loved working there.
He’d said he was sure he could, but had stipulated, ‘Anything but a train tour,’ with a sardonic grin.
And, so far, it had been a success. Neither of them had been to Morocco before. There were no memories,no associations. The hotel was beautiful, their room a vibrant pink and soft green, the bed huge, with capacious pink velvet armchairs to sit in and polished patterned tiles beneath their bare feet. Connie, despite all her travelling, had never stayed anywhere so elegant and luxurious.
In the five days they were there, they made lazy explorations of the medina, the souk, the famous Koutoubia Mosque. By night they ate harira soup, ordered tagines with fluffy couscous in local cafés, or ate on the hotel terrace at small wrought-iron tables. But the greater part of each day they just sat in the sunshine, utterly exhausted by the nightmare of previous months. Their chat was all about the city, the sights, the food, the hotel, the books they were reading, neither of them willing to ruin the time away with more rows and recriminations. It felt like a fragile peace, but peace, nonetheless.
Connie, however, hadn’t managed to relax as much as she’d hoped since leaving the safety of the village. She couldn’t entirely stop herself scrutinizing the passengers on the plane, the other guests, checking the faces in the busy medina, glancing about her in the narrow alleyways of the souk. A gift of dates, nuts and little oranges left in a dainty latticework dish on their bed set her heart racing. She kept her phone off at night, in case – ridiculously – there was a text saying he was outside the bedroom door. But there was no sign of him.
She put this unease partly down to something thathad happened on the day of their departure, although she did her best to push it to the back of her mind. As they left the house at four in the morning for their seven-thirty flight, she had noticed a little posy of snowdrops tied with string lying on the top of the low wall beside the house. The beam of her phone torch picked it out as she made her way to the car.Anyone could have left it there, she told herself firmly. Most likely a passing child had dropped it the day before, although it had been raining hard all night and the flowers looked fresh.
She’d found herself racking her brain as Devan drove in bleary-eyed silence to Bristol airport, trying to remember whether Jared had ever mentioned snowdrops, whether he might have thought they held any sort of significance for her. Nothing sprang to mind, but the old churning unease was set in motion once more. It made her want to weep with frustration. Would it ever end, this constant niggling, exhausting vigilance?
‘I still don’t get it,’ Devan said, early on the morning of their last day. He was sitting propped up against the pillows, the light filtering through the half-open shutters dappling his face and naked chest. Connie was curled on her side, watching him sleepily, but his tone alerted her. She felt her body tense. ‘I know I’ve got at you for not sussing Jared out earlier, but I was the same. I liked him. He really did seem …normal. He could have been a friend. How could we both have got it so wrong?’
This was the first time Jared’s name had been mentioned on the holiday and it felt like something of a relief to Connie, despite her anxiety as to where the discussion might lead: as the days had gone on, the elephant still sitting in the room had been growing bigger and bigger in the silence. Devan was staring down at her with bewilderment. ‘And he genuinely seemed to want my friendship, Connie – however twisted that might be. I think he was quite lonely.’
