The Beach Hut (8 page)

Sarah could just imagine him, gliding carelessly down the most treacherous of black runs, sauntering into the hotel afterwards, pushing back his hair, greeting the doorman, confident but casual.

What on earth had he taken her number for? She wasn’t in his league. He was bored, probably. He’d look at his phone tomorrow and wonder whose number it was, then delete it. She went over to the table, where several half-empty bottles of champagne were going flat, and poured herself a glass.

Ian came over to her. He looked a bit drunk, but happy. He thrived at social occasions like this.

‘Hey, babe.’ Babe? Babe?! ‘The Johnsons have asked if we want to go to Cheltenham with them.’

Sarah looked puzzled.

‘Why?’

‘Racing,’ he hissed, looking round to make sure no one else had heard her ignorant question. ‘They’ve got a box. You’ll have to dress up.’

‘Dog-racing? Ferret-racing?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake . . .’

Sarah shrugged.

‘Sure.’ There was no point in protesting. They were obviously going, and that was that.

‘There’s no need to be churlish. It costs a fortune to hire a box. You should be flattered.’

‘I’m flattered. I’m . . . very flattered.’ He looked at her doubtfully. ‘Really.’

She drank two more glasses of champagne to get her through the rest of the evening. Twice she caught Oliver’s eye but avoided talking to him. She couldn’t cope in public with the way he made her feel. In the short space of time since they had met, he had made her ask herself too many questions.

He caught up with her just as they were leaving. She was coming out of the master bedroom where her coat had been on the bed. There was just the two of them in the corridor.

‘We’re going now,’ she said, flustered.

‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Well, that’s a shame. It was nice meeting you.’

He leaned in towards her. She turned her cheek, ready for the usual air-kiss, but he put a finger on her jaw and brought her mouth round until it was nearly touching his and brushed his lips, fleetingly, along the length of hers. Nothing invasive. Then he shut his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. She breathed in the smell of him, the clean shampoo, the musky cologne, the cigarettes. He gave a tiny sigh of longing. Then pulled away reluctantly.

He was playing her. Of course he was. If he’d pounced on her and shoved his tongue down her throat, she would have pulled away in revulsion. It was so subtle, so very nearly almost nothing, that she was screaming inside for more.

He walked backwards, holding her gaze for a couple of moments before wiggling his fingers in a gesture of farewell.

‘See you. Sarah.’

Oh my God.

It was no good. She switched off the voice in her head and touched the phone in her pocket with a smile.

He made her feel feminine.

Interesting.

Mysterious.

And as horny as hell . . .

 

When she got home, she pulled out her phone. His number was there under ‘missed call’. She sat fully dressed on the loo seat in the bathroom, staring at it, agonising for ages. Should she add him to her directory? Or leave him out, so if he did send a suggestive text and Ian happened to find it she could deny all knowledge? Should she put him unashamedly under Oliver Bishop? Or file him under Plumber or Garage Man, or even Olivia? So that if he rang at an inopportune moment she could ignore it?

In the end she put him under Bishop. He wouldn’t phone. After all, she realised, as the champagne she had drunk evaporated, she had just been a mild distraction for him at a boring party. Nothing more.

 

He phoned nine days later. Perfectly, cleverly timed. Just when she had given up hope of ever hearing from him, but before the memory of the effect he’d had on her faded. So that when she saw his name come up, her heart leapt in unison with something further down in her loins and her pulse tripled. A thousand questions crowded her mind - what did he want, what should she do, where did they go from here? Questions that could only be answered if she answered.

She grabbed the phone. Should she answer it knowingly, thereby admitting she had programmed his number into her phone? Or with curt efficiency?

‘Sarah Palmer?’ She spoke her name with a slight query, as if she was no longer quite sure that was indeed who she was.

‘Sarah Palmer.’ He spoke her name with a teasing wonder and reverence.

Something delicious slithered its way down her spine.

‘Yes?’ She tried to sound officious, but she couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice.

‘I was wondering about that lunch.’

There was no point in carrying on the pretence that she didn’t know who this was.

‘Lunch,’ she mused. ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to see if I can . . . fit you in.’

‘Well, I’m free tomorrow. I’ll be at the Stag’s Head at one. If you fancy it.’

‘I’ll . . . um, see if I can move my schedule around.’ She paused. ‘It was . . . wine labels you wanted to discuss, right?’

He laughed a dieselly, treacly laugh.

‘Wine labels. Whatever.’

 

The Stag’s Head was an uber-upmarket gastro pub that brought a hint of Tuscany to leafy Warwickshire, all creamy walls and rustic tables and expensive cars in the car park. The sort of place where a year-old Golf with a private plate went totally unnoticed. Sarah wore faded jeans, boots and a sloppy grey sweater. As if she had been working all morning and had just slapped on some lipstick to nip out for a working lunch.

But sexy. Damn sexy, she knew that, because the sweater slid seductively at will off her shoulder, and she had a grey silk bra underneath. And her hair was tousled, as if she had just rolled out of bed. And her dangly silver earrings, like corkscrews, brushed against her neck as she moved. And the sweep of grey eye-liner on her top lids made her eyes smokily seductive. Sarah knew all this, because she was an artist, and an artist was trained to observe, and judge what effect a stimulus had on its audience.

He was already in there. He’d ordered wine - Gavi de Gavi, potently rich and creamy - and a platter of antipasti which was waiting on the table: olives, Parma ham, figs, buffalo mozzarella, chargrilled artichokes, as well as hunks of artisanal bread and a bowl of peppery green oil with a slick of balsamic vinegar. She slid into the chair opposite him and put her bag down.

‘Hi.’

He poured two inches of wine into an enormous glass by way of reply, and pushed it over to her.

‘I’m surprised you came.’

‘I need work as much as the next girl.’ She widened her eyes, slightly sickened by her kittenish behaviour.

He picked up his glass with a smirk.

She sipped at her wine, unable to stop herself smiling.

To her surprise, he didn’t embark on suggestive banter. They talked. Properly. Like adults. About any number of things. Her work, his work. A celebrity’s misguided remarks in that morning’s paper. The food - delicious, they both agreed. Whether the Stag’s Head was as good as its sister pub in a nearby village. The stress of children’s homework - he never got involved, Sarah did. Anyone eavesdropping would not have suspected a thing.

Until the zabaglione arrived. Just one portion, for her, in a tall glass, with a single long-handled spoon.

His eyes never left her face as she ate. And she tried desperately not to make it suggestive. No licking the drops of sweet cream from her lips, no symbolic insertion of the spoon into her half-open mouth. No offering him a taste. Yet her eyes never left his face either, and underneath the table their legs were entwined.

‘Well,’ he said as she put down her spoon. ‘What now?’

‘I’ve never . . .’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because you’re so deliciously artless. And so obviously terrified. But so completely unable to stop yourself.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet. And I might not.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ he replied, and she threw the mint crisp that had come with her espresso at him.

He was infuriatingly arrogant, and so sure of himself. Every tiny scrap of common sense that Sarah possessed told her to walk away, to thank him for a nice lunch and walk away.

‘I’m not going to a hotel,’ she told him.

‘Of course not. It’s tacky. Premeditated. And it leaves a paper trail.’

‘So speaks the expert.’

‘Married to a divorce lawyer.’

Her stomach did a loop-the-loop. This was dangerous territory. Which was, presumably, what made it so enticing. She’d read about the adrenalin, the dopamine, the serotonin - the crack-cocaine high of an affair. And if this feeling was anything to go by, she wanted more.

‘I’ve got a beach hut,’ she murmured. ‘In Everdene.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘How very Swallows and Amazons.’

There was nothing Swallows and Amazons about what she had in mind.

‘We rent it out. I’ll be going down there soon, to get it ready for the season.’

‘What a coincidence. I’m away then too.’

She frowned.

‘I haven’t told you when.’

He smiled.

‘I know.’

 

And now, here she was, surrounded by IKEA bags, feeling simultaneously sick and elated.

For the millionth time, she asked herself what she was doing. It wasn’t as if she and Ian were desperately unhappy. He wasn’t a wife-beating bully, or a heavy drinker, or a gambler. It wasn’t as if their sex life had dwindled to nothing - if statistics were anything to go by, they were doing pretty well.

It was more that she was so tired of feeling that she wasn’t the person her husband wanted her to be. And that there was someone out there who seemed perfectly enchanted by who she was. And to feel enchanting was incredibly seductive. Added to that was the sense that she knew Oliver so well - they’d talked on the phone countless times since their lunch, and although there was continual flirting and innuendo there was also a genuine connection. He was bright and funny and interested in what she was doing - she couldn’t remember the last time Ian had so much as asked what she was working on. He viewed her work as little more than a hobby, something to keep her in baubles, which she thoroughly resented as actually she hauled in quite a bit when you added it up.

None of that entitled her to have an affair, of course. And she knew that Oliver was a womanising love rat. He’d told her as much. He was entirely unashamed of his conquests.

‘It’s just how I am,’ he told her, and she should have walked away there and then. But the fizzing and the elation and the frisson when his name came up on her phone were just too powerful.

As seven o’clock approached, she sat on the step of the beach hut. It had been a glorious May afternoon, and as the sun began its downward journey, she watched the sky turn a luminous pink, a sight that on any other day would have had her pulling out her watercolours and trying to recreate it on paper. Instead, she was wrestling with her conscience, thinking of all the times she and Ian had sat here with a bottle of beer or a glass of wine once the girls were tucked up and thought how lucky they were.

And now she was going to besmirch their sanctuary with her smutty little assignation. The hut didn’t deserve to be a witness to her infidelity. It was a happy place, a safe place, that had brought them and the girls so much pleasure. How could she even think about asking Oliver here? She was selfish, selfish and disgusting. Not to mention quite likely to get caught. OK, it was still quiet, no one had come down yet for the season, but there was every chance that one of the other owners would pop down just as she had. Or that Roy, who looked after things when they weren’t there, might wander along to say hello. What on earth would he think, finding her here with another man? He was so lovely, Roy. He had a sort of strength and wisdom to him, with his hazel eyes and his calm, gentle voice with just a hint of a burr. But he didn’t miss anything. He was constantly observing, as people who live by the sea often are - they have to be aware of their surroundings to survive. What would he think if he saw her here with her lover? Would he keep her secret?

Sarah shuddered at the thought. Imagining herself momentarily through Roy’s eyes brought her to her senses. She couldn’t go through with this - she absolutely couldn’t. She’d let Oliver come in for a glass of wine, tell him she’d lured him here under false pretences, and if he was half a gentleman he would go . . .

And then she saw him, at the top of the beach. He was just passing the first hut. Her insides leapt involuntarily as she watched him walk over the sand. He had his shoes in one hand, a bottle in the other. Was it too late to run, she wondered? She could slip behind the huts, run along the back to the car park, jump into her car and flee for home. She’d be home by ten. She’d tell Ian she missed him. She could slip into bed with him, tickle his neck like she used to, he would roll over towards her with a smile. If sex was what she wanted, she could have it. No problem.

Her heart was thumping as she stepped back inside the hut. It was almost in her throat as she picked up her car keys, her handbag. Her legs felt as if they could barely carry her. Run, Sarah, run.

But if she ran, she’d never know. And she would never have the courage to orchestrate this situation again. She wanted to breathe the same air he was breathing, to touch his skin. It was a physical yearning that totally overrode any logic in her head. Like the rabid desire for chocolate two days into a diet. No matter how sternly she told herself no, she always gave in. She put her hand on the handle, hesitating.