Almost Love (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Alex did not broach to Tom the subject of going into a business partnership with Edmund. When she had had time to think about it, she wasn’t sure that embarking upon a new business venture was actually what Edmund said he had negotiated with the trustees; what they seemed to be proposing was just a dressed-up extension to her job. There might therefore be no need to talk to Tom about it at all. Besides, she and Tom were enjoying an unexpectedly pleasant weekend together. She reflected wistfully that it had been more like the weekends and holidays of their early married years; she was not about to cast a shadow over it by mentioning Edmund.

Marie Krakoswka and her partner, Max, dined with them on the evening after her visit from Edmund. Despite Alex’s reservations about Marie, she had to admit that she and Max had been extremely good company. Tom had relaxed visibly and, unusually for him, had then decided not to work over the next two days. On Saturday, he had taken Alex for a pub lunch followed by a long walk on the marshes. While holding Tom’s hand, she had watched a heron flapping slowly over the reed-beds and felt a sudden access of pure happiness. She told herself that she would remember the moment for the rest of her life. On Sunday they had lingered over breakfast and then set out on a ‘grave-grubbing’ expedition, as Tom good-naturedly put it, to read the inscriptions on the graves in the older part of Spalding cemetery. It was the first time in years that he had spared the time to share her interests. Alex herself was discovering a talent for living her life in compartments. While she was with Tom, she hardly gave Edmund a thought. She and Tom went to bed early on Sunday evening and made love lazily and slowly.

She awoke after Tom had left for work on Monday morning and enjoyed the luxury of getting up gently, of taking a long leisurely bath instead of her usual hurried shower and of dressing in serviceable but pretty clothes for her day in London. She was quite excited by the prospect of a day of freedom in ‘town’ and looked forward to seeing Carolyn again.

Predictably, Carolyn was late. Alex had suggested that they meet for an early lunch in a tapas restaurant near to Euston station and had sent Carolyn the URL for directions. The restaurant was one of her favourites. Its unpretentious plain wooden tables and chairs were offset by the wonderfully kitsch pseudo art-deco bar, which was shaped like the hull of a boat and studded with pieces of enamelled broken mirror in flamboyant shades of turquoise. The food was delicious, based mainly on authentic Spanish seafood and vegetable dishes, with a range of starters made from fine Iberian hams and delicate shavings of pungent cheese. Alex had always come here alone or to meet her girlfriends and this in itself contributed to her current exhilarating sense of liberation. Her mood was light-headed and frivolous. These feelings were overlaid by the even more seductive sensation that today she could forget all of her worries and responsibilities.

She was telling herself this, and debating whether to enhance the holiday mood by ordering a glass of the strong white Rioja that was one of the house specialities, when Carolyn suddenly burst through the door, carrying a collection of up-market carrier bags and dragging her suitcase behind her.

Carolyn was the sort of woman Alex would have loved to have been bold enough to be. She did not watch her weight, she had never stayed with a man for more than a few years, had no intention of ever ‘settling down’ with one and, although she made quite a lot of money as a freelance recruitment consultant, was in no way wedded to her job. She divested herself of her fake fur coat, also leaving the suitcase by the coat-rack, and hauled the carrier bags across the room to the table where Alex was sitting and dropped them on the floor; she flung her arms around Alex and said: “It’s lovely to see you. I’m so sorry I’m late. One thing and another happened and then I couldn’t get a taxi in Oxford Street.” She stood before Alex, plump, glamorously made-up, heavily perfumed and slightly dishevelled, her thick hair dyed raven black and arranged in a slickly-shaped, feathery bob. She was wearing a short, gauzy red dress and four-inch black patent stilettos. Only Carolyn could consider this apparel to be suitable for a shopping expedition in London on a fiercely bitter winter’s day.

Alex returned the embrace, and gestured towards the carrier bags.

“You look as if you’ve been having a good time.”

“Absolutely out of necessity,” said Carolyn. “I’ve got no clothes that fit. I’ve gone up a dress size – one of the hazards of getting old. It will creep up on you, you’ll see.”

Alex laughed. Carolyn did a good line in irresponsible, fluffy female. It did not fool Alex for a minute.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said. “I’m only six months younger than you – remember? I just don’t have such a sweet tooth, that’s all.”

“Very kind,” said Carolyn, “but I think that what you really mean is that you have more willpower. Or perhaps that I have zilch willpower.” She shrugged happily. “It probably amounts to the same thing.”

“Whatever the truth of that,” said Alex, “and I suspect it’s more down to genes, I don’t intend to exercise any willpower at all today. First we are going to have a wonderful lunch. Then we are going to go to a gallery, or to the shops, or just please ourselves all afternoon. Then we shall have dinner, if you wish. And then, if you haven’t got anything that you have to do tomorrow, I suggest that you might like to come home with me and stay the night.”

Carolyn pouted.

“I’d love to do all of that, Alex,” she said. “And I can’t wait to catch up with your news. But the fact is, this trip isn’t just for pleasure. I’m here because I’m recruiting on behalf of a client for a new appointment and unfortunately I’ve arranged to do some early evening interviews with him later on. So I’ve got until about five o’clock. I suggest that we have quite a long boozy lunch here and tell each other all we know. I’ll come to stay another time,” she added. “It would be heaven to get away for a few days.”

Alex’s heady mood was punctured immediately. She saw her grand plan for the day melting away and snatched somewhat desperately at what remained.

“OK,” she said levelly. She smiled at Carolyn in a fixed way which did not convince her friend. Carolyn had always been a sharp observer.

“There’s no need to look like that!” she said, touching Alex tenderly on the arm. “I’m doing my best by you. I can’t help it if I need to work or manage the eccentricities of clients like Vernon Matthews any better than I do.”

“Sorry!” said Alex, suddenly realising that it was not disappointment that she was experiencing, but fear: fear that she would have to see Edmund again this evening now that Carolyn would not be able to furnish her with an excuse not to. “I’m being ridiculous,” she muttered, half to herself. Of course she did not have to see Edmund if she didn’t want to.

Carolyn was scrutinising her.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“Yes, of course. Sit down and I’ll order some wine. They do a very nice white Rioja here.”

“Sounds good,” said Carolyn, taking the chair opposite Alex’s. She shoved some of her parcels under the table and piled the rest of them on to the free seat beside her. “But that last comment wasn’t meant for me, was it? Why are you being ‘ridiculous’, Alex, my love? You’re the most sensible person that I know!”

“Not any more, I’m not. Tom sends his love, by the way.”

“Ah, yes, Tom. Your sensible husband. I take back what I said –
he’s
the most sensible person I know, by several miles.” She leaned in to the table, her beautiful flecked golden eyes searching Alex’s. “You’re not having an affair, are you?”

“Really, Carolyn, your sixth sense is outrageous,” said Alex, laughing uneasily.

“So you
are
having an affair? Well, congratulations. It should shake Tom up enough to appreciate you, if nothing else can. But I’m surprised in one way: I’d always thought of you as Mrs Married Fidelity personified. Who is it, by the way? I’m amazed you’ve had the opportunity to meet anyone, the sort of life you lead, poking about among holes and ruins. I suppose he must be a farmer. Did you find a hoard of something ancient on his land and exchange his priceless treasure for your own?”

Alex threw back her head and laughed without restraint, simultaneously knocking the order pad from the hand of the waiter who had silently materialised at her side.

“Oops!” she said, retrieving the pad and handing it to him, her face flushing red with the effort. “I didn’t mean to do that.” She gave a little giggle by way of apology. “Could you bring us a bottle of the white Rioja? And a jug of tap water?”

The waiter nodded gravely. She pushed aside her laughter and regarded Carolyn more soberly as he retreated to the turquoise bar.

“That’s not quite as prescient,” she said, “though even more outrageous. He isn’t a farmer, but I did meet him through work. He’s actually someone I’ve known for a long time – someone whom I considered quite asexual until recently. And Tom doesn’t know about him, of course. There is no point in hurting him. As a matter of fact, Tom’s been angelic just recently – attentive and wanting to share in my interests, just as he did when we first met.”

“Which suggests to me that he does know, or at least suspects,” said Carolyn. “But don’t let me interrupt. And ‘asexual’ is a word that sets my alarm bells clanging – it makes this bloke sound too cerebral to be bothered much with sex! You still haven’t told me who he is. Lover boy, I mean. I must say you don’t seem head over heels with him. If it were me I’d hardly be able to speak one sentence without mentioning him. ”

“I know that to be true,” said Alex. “But I also know that the next time we met you’d be similarly unable to stop talking about his successor.”

“Oh, touché,” said Carolyn, rolling her eyes. “Well, at least that way I don’t get hurt. Not often, anyway. But you keep on sidestepping me. What is the man’s name, for God’s sake?”

“Edmund Baker,” said Alex. “He’s an archaeologist. He works for the council and is paid by the Heritage Commission.”

“I might have known. ‘Eminent in his field’, is he? Or one of those distinguished-looking academics who have slightly gone to seed and are always hell-bent on getting their own way? He is older than you, I take it? If he’s younger, I really take my hat off to you.”

“Yes, he’s older than I am. Quite a lot older, in fact, so no doffed hats for me on that score. I’m not sure that ‘eminent’ is the right word to describe him and he’s certainly not academic – or distinguished-looking. He’s more of an administrator than a scholar. But you’re probably right about him liking to get his own way.”

“Well, watch that, my love, particularly as you seem to be saying that the whole thing’s just about having a fling.” The wine arrived, and she poured out two glasses while the waiter was setting down the water-jug. “If he’s unscrupulously self-interested, and deeper in than you are, he might just leak the situation to Tom in the hope that Tom’ll leave you. And you could easily end up worse off than you are now. I take it that this Edmund is also married?”

Alex felt her scalp crawl. From the start she had dreaded Tom’s finding out about Edmund, precisely because she did not know how he would react. Or rather she did: Tom would be silently outraged and instantly unapproachable. He would be capable of walking out in seconds and leaving everything behind that they had shared together. And, if she were honest with herself, she was much more dismayed by contemplating the break-up of her marriage than by the prospect of hurting Tom’s feelings. She wondered again why she had felt impelled to take the risk with Edmund.

“Don’t,” she said, gulping down a large swig of her wine. “Yes, he’s married. Not very happily, I think, but he’s given no indication that he wants to leave her; or to come between me and Tom, for that matter. Actually, I think that our romance came out of our professional connection, rather than the other way round. He wants to work with me – permanently work with me, I mean. In that respect, we probably went too far by mistake – or accidentally, at any rate. The two types of relationship got mixed up, somehow.”

Alex had said this to comfort herself, to make the vivid mental picture of Tom leaving her recede, but, as soon as she had spoken the words, she realised that they were true, at least on her side. Yet again she circled back to the same question that had nagged at her ever since the Archaeological Society conference: why had Edmund made that first pass at her? She was convinced that it had been more than the alcohol talking, especially when he had renewed his pursuit of her weeks later, but she was less persuaded that Edmund was motivated by love.

“You’ve gone quiet on me again,” said Carolyn. “And although I’ve been telling you to have a fling for years, from the clues that you’re giving me I’m far from convinced that your Edmund is a good thing. It’s probably my fault that we’ve jumped right into the middle of your story, but can we start again? Tell me from the beginning. Then I’ll understand. And we’d better order some food first – we’re halfway down this bottle of wine already. I don’t want you passing out before you’ve TOLD ALL.” She exaggerated the last two words, pulling a clown’s face as she did so. Alex laughed again, but sadly, now.

Two hours and a second bottle of wine later, Alex had told her story. It had taken a long time, because she wanted to explain both the facts and her own feelings to Carolyn as precisely as she could; and also because Carolyn interrupted frequently with exclamations and observations (some of them penetrating) of her own.

“Well,” said Carolyn at length, having been uncharacteristically silent for some moments after Alex had concluded, “you certainly have got yourself deep into an intrigue here.” She picked up Alex’s hand, which was lying limply on the edge of the table, and stroked it a few times before replacing it carefully.

“What do you mean? And what do you think I should do?”

Carolyn frowned.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s something about all of this that just doesn’t fit. Oh, I don’t mean that I don’t think you’re gorgeous or that I’d ever be surprised that someone could fancy you. And I’m not criticising your morality, either; you’ve been a saint for far too long since you married Tom. But Edmund Baker doesn’t sound like a budding Lothario to me and he doesn’t seem particularly smitten by you, either. Are you sure he doesn’t just want something from you and sees embarking upon an affair as the easiest way of getting it?”