The Affair (29 page)

“I think that’s a really good idea.” She stood up smoothly and picked up his coat. She wanted him out of the house. Right now.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “I don’t want to think that you’ve been making a fool of me. I don’t want to think that you’ve been using me. Maybe I just want to think we have a future together.” Then she leaned up and brushed her lips against his. “Tomorrow. Tell me the truth.”

She closed the door behind him and listened to him shuffle down the stairs. Normally, she would have walked him out, but she didn’t want him to see the tears now rolling down her cheeks. Automatically, she turned out the lights and headed upstairs to bed. Without even brushing her teeth, and still wrapped in the robe, she crawled under the thick covers. A moment later, she heard a car engine start in the courtyard outside and wondered if it was Robert’s. And then she realized that she didn’t care.

He had one last chance; Izzie would say that it was one too many. Tomorrow night—she’d know for sure by tomorrow night.

The car drove away, a lonely fading sound.

Saturday, 21st December

 

 

S
he slept remarkably well. Considering.

When she’d crawled into bed, she’d felt as if she’d been beaten and almost physically bruised. Sitting across from Robert, watching him act and react, she’d gradually realized that he was a coward, that he was never going to leave his wife, and that she’d been naïve to even dream of it.

He wanted her to keep their secret, to not even confide in her best friend. Didn’t he realize the emotional toll the affair was taking on her as well? If she didn’t have Izzie to talk to, she’d be going crazy by now. Robert’s selfishness, his fear, made him weak. The alarm bells had gone off when she’d seen how he’d sympathized with Jimmy Moran—philandering, lying, cheating Jimmy Moran. She’d seen how he’d reacted to the news that Jimmy’s wife was looking for her share of Jimmy’s money, and he’d been upset that Frances expected Jimmy to pay child support. If he couldn’t accept or understand the women’s side of the story, then how could he ever comprehend what she was going through?

She felt him slipping from her, and there was nothing she could do about it. Had she been mistaken about him? Was he, as Izzie suggested, no different from any other married man with a younger mistress? Had he been using her?

But she didn’t—couldn’t, wouldn’t—allow herself to think that. Not just yet.

He had to commit to her; she’d already committed to him. She didn’t feel guilty asking him to choose her over his wife; according to him, he’d already done that. She wasn’t asking him to do anything he hadn’t already agreed to do.

But the man who had sat across from her the previous night, the man who had said little, had almost been like a stranger to her.

She’d not expected to sleep, but as soon as her head had hit the pillow, she’d fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep and had awoken surprisingly refreshed just after eight. She’d lain in bed for an hour, deliberately not thinking about the situation, not allowing him to enter her thoughts at all. There were a few things she needed to do today—including looking at the availability of tickets to Wisconsin—and there was an open-air carol service on the Common that she thought she might check out. She’d leave her car. She could walk to the T. She needed the exercise.

She was just swinging her legs out of bed when the call came in. Caller ID identified Robert’s cell, and she actually hesitated for a moment before picking up. Six rings, seven, eight . . . She snatched it up.

“Robert.” No hello, no good morning, just an acknowledgment of his name. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him this morning. But if he was distancing himself from her, then maybe she ought to be doing the same.

“How . . . how are you feeling?”

“I’m tired, Robert.” Not physically tired; emotionally exhausted.

“Do you want to see me?”

“I always want to see you.” And it was true. She did.

“I was going to come over.”

But she didn’t want him in the house today. She wanted to meet him on neutral ground. “I’m about to head into the city; there’s an open-air carol service in the Common.”

“What time?”

“Starts about two.”

“Great. Why don’t I meet you there? We can listen to some carols, then go and get something to eat.”

“Okay,” she said shortly, feeling something shift and move inside her. “Give me a call when you’re in the city.” She hung up. And then she realized that she was smiling. She loved this man.

She leapt out of bed. Okay, so maybe she had misjudged him. When she’d seen his name on the phone, she’d half expected to hear an excuse why he couldn’t see her today, and if he had refused to see her, then that would have been that. But he had surprised her.

Robert was full of surprises. It was one of the things that had first attracted her to him.

 

Stephanie was moving away from the carol singers, pushing her way through the crowded park when she felt the phone vibrate in her pocket. She scrambled to pull her gloves off with her teeth and finally got to the phone just before the call went to her voice mail. “Where are you?” she asked without preamble.

“In the lobby of the movie theater.”

“Stay there. Don’t move. I’ll find you. It’s chaos here.”

This was the last Saturday before Christmas, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. People always thought Christmas Eve held that particular honor, but by Christmas Eve a lot of the shopping was complete, and people either didn’t come into the city or started heading out of town early. The carol service by the baseball fields in the heart of the Common had attracted thousands of onlookers, and the park was jammed with bodies pushing in to hear the singers.

Stephanie hurried through the park and toward the big red neon letters marking the multiplex. There was an art exhibition taking place near Frog Pond, and that had brought in even more crowds.

As she crossed Tremont and approached the entrance, she couldn’t see Robert. The foyer was jammed with bodies waiting for the early afternoon screening.

There he was.

He was standing a little to one side, scrutinizing a movie poster, frowning, hands pushed deep into his pockets, collar turned up, head ducked. All he needed was a hat and a cigarette, and he’d look like a forties detective. She managed to get right up in front of him before he noticed she was there. He blinked in surprise, then leaned forward to kiss her, a quick chaste peck on the cheek, before catching her arm and moving her away from the doorway. “Where did you leave your toboggan?” he asked, mocking her practical, though not entirely unflattering, winter clothing.

She smiled. “Parked it upstairs alongside the sleigh.”

They crossed the road, heading back toward the park. He nodded toward the park. “So, Christmas carols?”

She shook her head. “The choir is loud but not good, and the park is jammed. Let’s walk around and look at the art.” She pointed with both hands. “Left or right?” she asked brightly, guessing that he would want to take her to the right, away from the crowds. She knew he hated being seen in the city with her, especially on a day like this, when they might be spotted and not be able to make a work-related excuse.

“Right,” Robert said, linking her arm and leading her away toward the art show.

She was disappointed that she’d been proven right. He was just so predictable, she thought bitterly.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he began.

“So am I,” she said immediately. “I should have told you that our relationship had been discovered. But I knew you were under so much pressure; I simply didn’t want to add to it.” It was more or less the truth. She had seriously thought about telling him about her conversation with Flintoff, but Robert was no fool; he would have put two and two together and guessed that she would no longer be able to send work his way. She couldn’t afford to have him panicking and going out scrambling for more work; she had wanted to keep him focused on the DaBoyz project.

“It might have been better if you had. When Jimmy dropped it on me last night, I started to have a panic attack.”

Stephanie glanced at him curiously; was he such a coward? She stopped to look at a spectacular abstract oil, vivid in green and gold, slashed across with daubs of red and violet. She loved the raw emotion and energy in the painting. This was a work of passion. Where was the man she had fallen in love with, the passionate man? What had happened to him? The early days of their relationship—even before they had started to make love—had been passionate days, full of light and life and energy. But as time had gone by, the passion had slowly seeped away. They no longer went places; they did less and less together, and he no longer had as much time for her. He was driven by work, obsessed with the need to make money to keep the business going. If this was how he behaved with Kathy, she was beginning to understand why the couple had drifted apart.

Leaning forward into the painting, inhaling the rich aroma of oil and linseed, she said, without looking at him, “Tell me . . .”—she waited until he had bent his head to hers—“do you love me?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, she glanced sidelong at him. “That’s a mighty long pause.”

“What? No. I suppose I was just surprised that you had to ask me.”

“I want to know, Robert.” She walked away, and he fell into step beside her. “I want to know how much.”

“I’ve told you often enough.”

“I know that. But have you shown me?”

“I’ve given you presents. . . .”

She bit back a savage response and instead asked, “What is love, Robert?”

“Love is . . . ,” he floundered, “. . . well, love.”

“You’re such a typical man!” She was becoming frustrated by what she saw as deliberate vagueness. “Think about it, Robert: What is love? You tell me you love me. What does that mean?”

“It means . . . it means I want to be with you. That I love being with you.”

Was he just saying the words automatically, a rote response, or did he really mean them? Was he just telling her what he thought she wanted to hear? “So you’re saying love is commitment?”

“Yes. Commitment,” he agreed.

A tiny, delicate watercolor of a single daffodil attracted her attention, and she stopped to admire it. Constructed of individual sweeping brushstrokes, it had an Asian feel to it. It looked delicate, ephemeral, fragile, which was exactly how she would describe her relationship with Robert at that precise moment. It was either about to bloom or wither away. “And are you committed to me?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Stephanie straightened. “Okay. So how do you show that commitment?”

Robert opened his mouth to answer, but the young female artist moved in to try and make a sale. “We’re not interested,” Robert said. He caught Stephanie by the arm and led her out of the park. She could feel the tension vibrating through his hand, and he was squeezing hard enough to leave bruises. “If we’re going to talk, then let’s talk and leave the art for another day. What do you want from me, Stephanie?”

“The truth,” she said simply. “I told you that last night. Just tell me the truth.”

“I’ve told you I love you. That’s the truth.”

“And I believe you.”

He stopped, surprised, stunned or just shocked by her statement.

She walked away from him, then stopped and turned back. She believed him, truly believed that he loved her in his own way, on his own terms. But did he love her enough . . . enough to walk away from everything he had and start again, start afresh?

“If you have something to ask me, then ask me straight out,” he said.

Love and commitment, well, they were two separate things. But they should be one. Stephanie dug her hands into the pockets of her down jacket and turned to face him. She was aware that if she blinked then the tears pooling in her eyes would roll down her cheeks, and she wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. “You tell me you love me. You tell me you want to be with me. You seem to enjoy my company. You certainly enjoy my body.” She stopped and drew in a deep breath. “I need to know if there is more. If there is going to be more.”

“More?”

“More of us. Together. Not snatched half-hour lunches or one-hour dinners, not fumbles in your office or dirty weekends away. I need to know if we’re going to be together. As a couple. Openly.” She quickly looked away and brushed the tears from her cheeks before he could see them. “That’s all.”

Because in the end that’s what it came down to.

Not what had happened in the past, not what was taking place in the present and all that it represented, but the future: That’s all that mattered now. She needed a future, either with or without him.

She looked out across the Common. The brilliant weather had brought people to the park, bringing it alive with stark color against the leafless trees. When she’d first fallen in love with him, it had been as if everything were brilliantly colored, but in the past few weeks and months of their relationship, it seemed as if the colors were leaching away.

“I’ve had plenty of relationships before, Robert; you know that. I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. I love you. I need to know if you love me. I need to know if you love me enough to do something about it.”

She turned and walked away. He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he was going to walk in the opposite direction, but then he fell into step beside her. She was not going to say any more. She’d said more than she’d intended to. If he couldn’t share his life with her, be open about their relationship, commit to her . . . well, then she was done. She headed toward Beacon Street. She would walk to Downtown Crossing and catch the Orange Line. She was going home.

“You want me to commit to you.”

She wasn’t sure if he was asking her a question or making a statement. She was numb and tired. “I don’t want to be your mistress anymore. That was fine for a while, because I wasn’t sure if you were the one.”