The Affair (12 page)

Up the street, less than a hundred yards away, Robert stood with his phone pressed against his ear.

“I’m just wondering what time you’ll be home?”

Kathy and Sheila saw Robert lift his left arm to look at his watch. “I’m just leaving the office. I should be there in about forty minutes.”

Kathy’s hands were trembling so hard that Sheila had to take the phone out of her hand and switch it off.

“Now what?” Sheila asked when Robert’s car pulled out of its spot.

“I’m going to see Stephanie Burroughs tomorrow,” Kathy said, her voice growing firm and cold with resolution. “I have to talk to her.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“I don’t know whether it’s a good idea or not. I don’t care. I have to talk to her.”

“It will bring everything to a head,” Sheila said.

“It’ll bring everything to a conclusion,” Kathy said firmly. But even as she was saying the words, she didn’t believe them.

The Husband’s Story

At first, I didn’t know what I was doing.

That’s not an excuse. Simply a statement of fact. But I swear I didn’t set out to have an affair. It just happened.

And then things got out of control. They got complicated.

By the time I knew what I was doing, it was too late. I was in too deep.

I was already in love with her.

Thursday, 19th December

 

 

R
obert Walker sighed as the hot spray hit his body. There was an iron bar of tension stretched across his shoulders and what felt like a red-hot coal in the base of his spine from sitting in traffic.

He hated Christmas.

Hated everything that it stood for: its falseness, artificiality, pressure to spend, the cloying Christmas songs, and the traffic—he especially hated the traffic. One year, just one year, he would love to take off in early December and return around the middle of January and give the entire Christmas and New Year’s nonsense a miss. Play hooky from the holidays.

Robert touched the dial, inching up the hot water. He dipped his head and turned, allowing the water to dance across his neck.

Also, this year R&K Productions had shot a Christmas advertisement in June—when finding a Christmas tree had been next to impossible—and early in December had shot a segment for a docudrama that was set in the middle of August. Inasmuch as finding sunshine in Boston in the middle of winter was nearly impossible, and the budget wouldn’t stretch to moving cast and crew to a sunny locale, they had ended up using a few incredibly expensive HMIs to light the sets in such a way as to suggest brilliant weather. It meant that his entire year was topsy-turvy.

But it was the traffic he really hated. Inner city Boston traffic multiplied to the power of ten because it was Christmas. Add lousy weather, and the seemingly never-ending construction, and the city was practically at a standstill. The politicians had claimed that traffic would get better after the Big Dig. But the Big Dig had become the Big Dug and, as far as he could see, there was no difference. The never-ending construction was suffocating.

Robert tilted his face to the water. He ran his long fingers through his hair, pulling it back off his forehead. Then he grimaced and opened his eyes; a few strands had come away in his hands, entangled in his fingers. He was losing his hair. There had been a time when it wouldn’t have bothered him—he didn’t like to think of himself as vain—but things had changed.

Not so long ago, it had been experience that counted in his business, and no one really cared what you looked like. But with the impossibility of getting real work—or what he called real work, artistic television documentaries—he had been forced to make more commercials. And he quickly discovered that in this end of the business, looks were everything. He was in the running to shoot a pop video for a boy band at the moment, trying to convince them that he was the right person to create something dark and cutting-edge to match their song. There was no way they were going to give the gig to someone who looked like their father. He would have to get some more Botox in his forehead, and perhaps Restylane injections in his mouth creases. He had to make himself look younger.

He squeezed some shampoo into his hands and began to hum as he rubbed it gently into his scalp. Maybe it was also time to look at some of the treatments that were supposed to restore hair. He had started taking Propecia, but he wasn’t sure if it was working. He needed something faster, something that would have more immediate results. Robert saw ads in the papers all the time, special shampoos, electric caps, brushes that massaged the scalp . . . maybe there was a documentary in it. He grinned; he could try out all the treatments and charge it to the company as research. Although, with the way his luck was running, he’d probably go bald. Tilting his head back, he allowed the shower to rinse away the soap, then turned off the tap and stood for a moment, dripping, before pushing open the shower stall door and stepping out onto the bath rug.

When the new power shower had been installed, he’d used the opportunity to redo the en suite bathroom. It was clean and white—he knew Kathy thought it was too cool and clinical—and one wall was completely covered in mirrored tiles. He felt that it gave the otherwise small room a great sense of space, but she had told him she hated the reflections, which allowed her to see all of her imperfections at the same time.

He looked at his reflection in the glass. He was forty-nine years old and looked a couple of years younger. The age showed in the set of his jaw, the lines on his face and around his neck. But he was still in relatively good shape for a man pushing fifty, and although his waist had thickened a little, there was still no hint of a paunch. He worked out regularly and paid particular attention to his stomach and chest. He’d had a couple of sessions on a tanning bed—the new turbo kind, which you stood up in—and he was really pleased with the results. Now, if only he could save his hair.

Robert stepped up to the mirror and patted his hair dry with a towel. He’d done a piece for a hair company a couple of years ago, and he remembered they advised that patting and gently rubbing were better than briskly scrubbing the hair with a towel. That damaged the delicate follicles. He tilted his head to one side. Earlier in the year, he’d noted the first real and dramatic signs of gray appearing. However, he’d gotten hair-coloring foam that blended it away before anyone noticed.

Well, Kathy hadn’t noticed.

Stephanie had.

She’d spotted it immediately. She preferred his silver wings; she thought they made him look distinguished. He thought they aged him and blended them away despite her objections.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, Robert reached for the aftershave. He thought he heard a sound in the bedroom outside and popped his head around the door. “Kathy?”

There was nothing there but a depression on the bedcovers that was gradually filling in. There were a few red Christmas envelopes on the bedcovers alongside the clothes he’d stripped off before climbing into the shower.

“Kathy?” He stepped out of the bathroom and pulled open the bedroom door. He was in time to hear the kitchen door click. He picked up one of the Christmas cards, leaving damp fingerprints on the envelope, and glanced at it. Then he tossed the card back on the bed again; he knew what this was all about. Every year, Kathy would fight with him about Christmas-card addresses. She never seemed to have them, even though she’d sent out cards to the same addresses every year. He simply didn’t have the time to write dozens of cards. She did. What did she do all day anyway? His iPhone was sticking out of the pocket of his jacket, and he picked it up and turned it on, checking the screen for any missed calls. There were none.

He splashed on some of the new cologne that Stephanie had bought him, wrinkling his nose at the musky smell. He hadn’t been sure about it at first, but it had slowly grown on him. He also liked the fact that it would mask the heavy musky perfume that she sometimes wore when they went out at night.

He dressed quickly in jeans and a cashmere sweater and hurried down the stairs. The house was still and silent . . . and cold, very cold. There was a chill to the air. He trailed fingertips along the tops of the radiators, but they were scalding hot.

When he pushed open the kitchen door, he discovered the cause of the chill: The back door was wide open, and Kathy was standing on the step.

“Hey, what’s up—it’s freezing out here.” He came up behind his wife, wrapped his large arms around her waist, and rested his chin on the top of her head. He felt her stiffen and knew immediately that she was going to draw away from him.

Kathy stepped back into the kitchen, forcing him to release her. “Just getting a breath of air; the kitchen was stuffy. Nice cologne.”

He couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or not. “Yeah. It’s new. I didn’t know if you’d like it.” He spoke evenly and watched her pull the door closed and move to the table to clean up the cards.

“I do. I left a couple of cards on the bed,” she began.

“I saw them. . . .”

“I don’t have addresses, and besides they’re personal cards—it would be better if you wrote and signed them.”

After eighteen years of marriage, he’d come to know when something was amiss. He could tell from the set of her shoulders, by the way she refused to meet his gaze. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

“Nothing. Why do you ask?”

“Because you’ve got the tone in your voice.”

“Which tone?”

“That tone.” He smiled, covering his growing irritation. “The tone that tells me that you’re pissed off at me.”

Kathy sighed.

“Oh, and the sigh is another sure sign. The sigh and the tone. You’re like a great jazz band, Kathy . . . always in syncopation.”

“Look, I’m tired,” she snapped. “I’ve been writing cards for hours. Mostly your cards, to your friends and your colleagues. I do it every year. And every year it’s last minute, and I’m always missing addresses. You don’t help.”

Robert bit back a response. He was going to say, you’ve had weeks to do it, but you always leave it to the last minute, and you always blame me. You could have been doing these a few at a time instead of sitting on your ass watching
The View
and
Judge Judy.
But the last thing he wanted was an argument. Instead, he said calmly, “Kathy, I’ve just come in from a ten-hour day. I had a meeting in Framingham, the Pike was a parking lot, and I’ve got a really important presentation in the morning. Just . . . give me a minute to decompress, and I’ll go through my address book. Or you can; I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“I’ve done them all,” Kathy said tightly. “The four on the bed are all you have to do.”

“We’re arguing over four cards?”

“No,” she growled. “We’re arguing over the one hundred and twenty I’ve already written. Without your help.”

Robert nodded and shrugged. “I should have taken some into work with me,” he said. Then he glanced up at the clock. “I’ll go and get the kids.” He turned and hurried from the kitchen before he said something he regretted. It was the same argument every year. They probably even used the same words. He snatched his leather coat off the rack behind the door and left, resisting the temptation to slam the front door.

He pressed the remote, and the Audi clicked open. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he grabbed the steering wheel and took a deep breath, calming himself. He counted to ten before slowly exhaling the air from his lungs, trying to push out the frustration as well. Today was Thursday. This would be the third argument this week. An argument over nothing. Or over something so small that it counted for nothing. Easing the car out of the driveway, he turned left onto the quiet street. Ice crackled under his tires; it would freeze hard later on.

They had been married for eighteen years, and he recognized that an argument never really came from nowhere, and it was never—
never
—about the subject under discussion. Everything had subtext. Today, Kathy was arguing about Christmas cards. Yesterday she’d fought with him because he had forgotten to bring home milk; earlier in the week she’d had a go at him because he had failed to get home in time to go to a parent-teacher conference.

He had explained to her—more than once—that this was his busiest time of year. He simply didn’t have the time; but she found it difficult to accept that. Plus it was particularly awkward now with Maureen out of the picture. The new receptionist was good, very good indeed, and she came without all the awkward baggage that know-it-all Maureen brought to the job, but he found he had to check and double-check everything, and that just increased his workload and his stress level.

Kathy liked to think that she knew about the business, but in the years since she’d stepped back from being involved in the day-to-day running of R&K, things had changed. And not only his business; Kathy had been home for too long and had become isolated from the realities of doing business in the real world. And the real world now included traffic. Incredible traffic. Standstill traffic. She simply didn’t understand that it made no sense to leave the office at five thirty and sit in traffic for an hour, when he could just as easily leave at six thirty and sit in moving traffic for twenty-five minutes.

Plus, of course, it allowed time for him to see Stephanie.

Robert smiled as he pulled up outside the kids’ high school. Both Brendan and Theresa were home late on Thursdays; Brendan had extra classes, and Theresa had basketball practice. Brendan was slipping behind in just about every subject, whereas Theresa was ranked second in her class this year. She took after her mother, he thought proudly.

Robert turned off the engine and dropped the window a fraction. Icy wind curled in around the stuffy interior of the car. He pushed the CD button and a Christmas compilation that had been given away free with the
Boston Herald
came on. He found himself humming along with the Bing Crosby–David Bowie version of “The Little Drummer Boy,” and he felt a little of the tension ease away.

Maybe after Christmas they would find time to get away together. Have a talk, mend some fences; he could tell her exactly what was going on with the business. And Stephanie? Would he talk about Stephanie Burroughs? Would he tell her about his mistress, and why he needed to keep her sweet?