The Affair (5 page)

K
athy Walker stood outside the door to her husband’s study. She rested her hand gently on the doorknob, but hesitated, reluctant to turn the handle and step into his domain.

To cross the boundary, both figuratively and literally.

The events of the past few hours had moved so swiftly that it had left her little time for contemplation. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she’d seen the red flag against that woman’s name on her husband’s phone, and she’d jumped to a conclusion. Maybe she was wrong. Her head desperately tried to convince her heart that maybe it was entirely innocent.

And her heart told her it wasn’t.

She had known, because she had suspected for a long time that something was amiss. And once you suspected, wasn’t that the first indication that something really was wrong? If you knew—truly knew, without question, without hesitation, without doubt—that your partner loved you, you would never suspect him of having an affair. But Kathy wasn’t convinced that Robert loved her anymore. Liked her probably, was used to her certainly, even tolerated her, but loved her? No, she didn’t think so.

When she had seen that red flag, lots of little things, lots of half-formed questions and slightly curious incidents started to form themselves into a convincing truth. And now, for her sanity’s sake, she needed proof.

But once she stepped into his room, once she crossed this line, there was no going back. Even if she found nothing inside, even if she discovered evidence that completely exonerated him, and even though he would never know that she had been searching, things could never be the same between them again. She would be betraying his trust.

He’d betrayed her once.

The thought crept, icy and bitter, into the back of her mind. Betrayed her with the same woman. Or so she believed. She’d had no proof then, no concrete evidence, just fears and suppositions.

And she needed to know the truth.

With no further hesitation, Kathy Walker pushed open the door and stepped into her husband’s study.

It had originally been the second largest bedroom in the house, and at one stage they’d planned on giving it to Brendan when he got older. Robert had claimed it when they first moved into the house, set up his computer and his files, his bookshelves and his computer-editing suite, and even back then she had known Brendan would never get the room.

The room was a perfect square, with a large double window looking out over the back garden. Robert loved it because it was so quiet. A row of filing cabinets took up the left wall, while a drafting table was placed directly in front of the window. Robert preferred to first sketch out the storyboards for his scripts, whether they were for a documentary or an ad, rather than just using a computer program. He felt more creative that way. A custom-built long, blond wood table took up the entire right wall. It held all the office equipment: printers, faxes, scanners, a twenty-seven-inch iMac, and a space where the shiny MacBook Pro laptop usually sat, alongside the digital editing suite where he spliced images, dialogue, and music into the advertisements that were R&K’s bread and butter. When they had first set up the business all those years ago, they had sent everything out for editing. Now, with the advances in technology and the invention of Final Cut Pro, it was possible to do most of the editing in-house on a powerful home computer.

She rarely came into this room—it was very much Robert’s domain—but she was always struck by how incredibly neat it was. It was an aspect of his personality that she found contrasted sharply with the real man. In his daily life and his personal appearance, Robert was always slightly dishevelled, slightly scattered. She’d once thought it was part of his charm. He’d turned up on a date more than once wearing odd socks, and he still had the boyhood habit of incorrectly buttoning his jacket. Lately however—even before she’d become suspicious—she’d been aware that he’d started taking care of his appearance. She’d noticed some new shirts with strong vertical stripes in the closet, along with a couple of new silk ties in bright primary colors to match them. A sharply styled new suit in a dark, Italian wool-silk mix had appeared behind his row of classic Brooks Brothers suits. She remembered the brand: Forzieri. It had sounded so pretentious, and when she had looked it up online later, she discovered that it was. Since when did her husband invest in luxury Italian suits? When she had first met him, his idea of dressing up had been wearing a blazer from the Gap. Recently, he had started getting regular haircuts. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d sat on the edge of the bath while she trimmed his hair with her sewing scissors.

When had these changes started? And why hadn’t she given them a second thought when she first noticed them? Perhaps, because she just hadn’t been paying attention. Or was it that she wasn’t interested?

Kathy stood in the center of the room and looked around. She was looking for something. She just didn’t know what she was looking for. She’d know it when she saw it: It would be another red flag item.

She started with the papers on his desk. A neat pile was stacked in a wire basket to the left of his computer. She knew from experience that he’d notice anything out of place, so she’d have to take care to leave everything exactly as she found it. She turned the basket upside down, emptying all the papers onto the desk, facedown. Then, she went through them, one by one, replacing them in the wire basket, right side up.

Invitation to a product launch . . . letter from a client . . . art student looking for a job . . . Visa bill . . . invoice from a secretarial agency . . . speeding ticket . . .

Kathy stopped. Robert had never said anything to her about getting a speeding ticket. It was a hundred and fifty dollar ticket issued in Jamaica Plain last October 31, at 11:12 p.m. He had been going forty-five miles an hour in a twenty-five mile an hour zone. She sighed as she put the ticket back into the basket; that was an expensive ticket. And it was going to bump up their insurance even more. She knew why he hadn’t said anything to her about it. Like most men, he was incredibly vain about anything related to his driving and probably felt embarrassed.

The next sheet of paper was a complaint from Tony O’Connor. Now there was a name from the past. She remembered Tony. He’d been one of their first clients. He had a number of small carpet and tile shops scattered across Massachusetts and employed R&K to do his deliberately cheesy advertisements. Tony insisted on being the star of his own commercials, and his over-the-top, hard-sell delivery had made him a local celebrity. Despite R&K’s commercials helping to nearly triple his profits, Tony always complained, even when he’d signed off and approved an ad. Some things never changed. Shaking her head, she put Tony’s letter in the basket on top of the speeding ticket.

And stopped.

Something cold settled into the pit of her stomach. She picked up the ticket and looked at it again. October 31. Halloween. She remembered last Halloween because there had been some trouble in the neighborhood. A group of older boys, whom Brendan sometimes hung out with, had gotten some unbelievably powerful fireworks and had set them off into the early hours of the morning. Fireworks were illegal in Massachusetts, but were legal to purchase in New Hampshire and Connecticut. The boys had picked up the fireworks just over the border in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and had set them off in the park near the house. She clearly remembered sitting on the bed with Brendan and Theresa on either side of her, watching the colorful explosions of light. The noise was incredible—a mixture of what sounded like gunfire, crackles, and tremendous explosions. A bonfire blazed in the distance, and showers of sparks filled up the sky. Even in the bedroom behind the closed triple-glazed windows, the air had tasted of burnt rubber tires. At one stage a spent rocket had fallen on the roof, then rolled and clattered off the tiles. The three of them had jumped in unison, thinking the roof was coming in.

The three of them . . . because Robert had not been there. She’d remembered being almost grateful. He would probably have wanted to go out and argue with the boys, and God knows how that would have ended up. That night he had been in Connecticut having dinner with a prospective client; he’d stayed over and come back the following morning.

But how then could he get a ticket in Jamaica Plain at 11:12 p.m.?

Because—stupid—he had not been in Connecticut.

Because—stupid—he had been driving through Jamaica Plain.

She quickly rifled through the rest of the papers. Something else had bothered her. Yes. There was a Visa bill. Why was it here? She took care of the bills. In the early years of their marriage, Robert had looked after all the bills, and they’d ended up paying interest on more than one occasion because he’d forgotten to pay on time. Now, she paid all the bills and utilities. They had two platinum cards, one with Bank of America and one with Wells Fargo. They ran all the house expenses on the B of A card, and the business expenses on the Wells Fargo card.

Kathy turned over the Visa bill again. It was an MBNA Platinum card. She frowned; she hadn’t known they had an MBNA account, and why had she never seen it before? Then she realized the bill had been sent to Charles Street, which was the office address in the city. It seemed to be entirely for Internet purchases: books, CDs, computer stuff. Kathy hadn’t known Robert bought anything online except for the occasional book from Amazon, and they tended to be work-related titles. There was nothing unusual in the bill . . . until she turned the page. There were three items listed on the second page. A purchase from QVC that came to $320. A bouquet of flowers ordered online from ProFlowers that came to $95 dollars. The most recent entry was for L’Espalier, the French restaurant in the Back Bay that Kathy had been dying to go to. It was for $210 dollars, and that expense had been incurred just over two weeks ago, on Tuesday, the third of December. Last night, looking at her husband’s phone, she’d noted that the Tuesdays were usually red flag days.

She looked at the few pieces of information her cursory search had revealed. He had a credit card he’d told her nothing about; he had purchased a meal at a posh French restaurant two weeks ago when he’d supposedly been working; and—most damning of all—she was able to place him in Jamaica Plain in October, when he had told her he was in Connecticut. She also knew for a fact that he was not having dinner at Top of the Hub this evening.

What more evidence did she need that he was having an affair?

She hurried through the rest of the documents. But there was nothing of any interest in them. Robert was, by nature, a cautious man, and she was more than surprised that he’d left the incriminating papers on his desk. Kathy started to get angry; he was obviously counting on her docility and stupidity, or else he had so little respect for her that he thought that even if she did come into his room, she wouldn’t notice. She had a sudden temptation to rip every file out of the cabinets, shred them, then pile them up in the center of the floor and let him come home to an unholy mess. She wanted to pin the speeding ticket and the Visa bill to the bulletin board above the computer.

She wanted to pick up the phone and scream at him.

But not yet.

Not yet.

She would confront him, but in her own time and on her own terms. The last time she’d raised the subject of his relationship with Stephanie Burroughs, he had managed to convince her that she was obviously going out of her mind. She’d had no real evidence last time, only a woman’s intuition that something was amiss. She would not make that mistake again.

It gave her a certain small pleasure to use the scanner—his scanner—to make copies of the speeding ticket and the Visa bill. When she did confront him this time, she would have the hard evidence in her hands.

Kathy carefully replaced the papers in the wire basket and turned to the desktop computer. Robert loved his technology. If he were conducting a relationship with anyone, she would certainly find the evidence in his computer. The only problem was, it was password protected. “In case it was ever stolen,” he had told her, “or the kids get into it.” She realized now that he’d never volunteered the password.

Kathy remembered the last time she’d watched Robert turn on the machine. She had been standing against a filing cabinet looking for a copy of the most recent letter they had sent out to their accountant. The IRS was claiming they had never received a tax return for the previous year. Robert had sworn he’d written to the accountant and then had sat down at his desk and booted up his computer.

Kathy now crossed the room to stand against the filing cabinet, in the same position she’d held when she’d spoken to him. She closed her eyes, remembering. Robert had been sitting directly in front of her, facing his computer screen. The log-on screen had appeared, and his fingers had rattled in the password. Except . . . except only the fingers on his right hand had moved, and they had been positioned at the right top of the keyboard.