The Winter Folly (20 page)

They climbed into the bed, slipping between the cool sheets, before they took off their underwear between long kisses. The taste of his mouth, the delight of the expanse of his skin pressed
against hers, the almost unbearable delight of the nips and sucks he gave her neck and nipples had stoked her need. She wanted him to do everything to her and when he was finally completely naked
against her own soft flesh, she wasn’t afraid at all. The part of him that had seemed so fearsome was now pressed against her, hot, velvety soft and yet hard with desire for her. His fingers
stroked her softly, caressing her stomach and then trailing downwards. In the place where Laurence discovered only confusion and obstacle, Nicky’s gentle touch found surrender and warmth, and
she felt the first shiverings of pleasure as he touched and teased her. They didn’t speak but kissed and looked into one another’s eyes as his hand found her open and ready for him. She
knew now what was going to happen, there was no more mystery, and she let her thighs fall open as he took his place between them. She put her hand down and touched him. His eyes filled with love as
she stroked him softly, running her thumb over the soft tip, and then guiding him to the place that seemed most natural.

‘Alex,’ he said throatily as he hesitated a moment.

‘Please . . .’ she said. ‘I want it so very much.’

‘You’re so . . . irresistible.’ He dropped his head and kissed her, then began to gently press forward, bit by bit, and she felt with astonishment that she was able to take him
inside her quite easily, but after only a short way, he hit an obstacle. He frowned, bemused.

Disappointment flooded her. So it wasn’t Laurence. It was
her
, after all. It was she who was the failure and now she was going to let Nicky down too, after she had promised him so
much. She wanted to hide her face and run away.

‘Alex, darling . . .’

‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she burst out.

He looked tentative, then he said, ‘Has Laurence made love to you? He has, hasn’t he? I mean, after five months of marriage . . .’ Then he saw her stricken face and stopped. He
took a slow breath. ‘Oh my God. I see. Darling, you could have said, you could have told me . . .’

‘But I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,’ she muttered, trying to keep a check on the hot tears that had sprung to her eyes.

‘Wrong? You’ve done nothing wrong – what do you mean?’

‘But I can’t . . . he can’t . . .’

‘And you think it’s your fault? Oh—’ His eyes filled with tenderness. ‘My sweetheart, please don’t think that. My beauty . . .’ He kissed at the two
tears that had slid out from under her lids. ‘Darling, if you want me to, I’m going to carry on but you must know that you’re a virgin and this first time may hurt you a little
– do you understand? But once it’s over, it will be much better, I promise.’

She gazed up at him, and sniffed. ‘All right. I understand.’ He was still partly inside her, and he kissed her passionately until her arms wrapped around his back and she was urging
him to press onwards, to do whatever was necessary to make them one at last. Her whole body cried out to have him, her back was arched to him, her legs entwined in his strong muscled ones. His back
shuddered slightly with the effort of holding back and then as she whispered encouragement, he put more force behind his thrust and the next moment she gasped as a sharp pain stabbed her and he was
deep inside her. They were pressed closely together, his breath in her ear loud and urgent. The pain was over almost at once and she said, ‘Oh, keep going, please,’ and so he did, and
at last she understood it all.

The other wives noticed. Perhaps it was naïve to think that they wouldn’t, but Alexandra was still astonished when they began to ask her if there was some good news
to share – a baby, perhaps? They said with meaningful smiles that married life must be going well. She glowed, they said, and they wanted her secret, but none of them guessed it. She had been
married for far too short a time for them to guess that there was a lover making her eyes sparkle and her step spring with happiness.

One day, as she and Nicky lay in the long grass by a tree in the park, there had been a terrible and terrifying moment when she’d heard the voices of women and children as a small group
approached. One of the small boys came running over and the next moment Alexandra found herself looking up into the solemn eyes of the four-year-old son of one of the army wives she knew. She
gasped and lay still while Nicky said, ‘Now then, young chap, you run along back to Mother,’ unaware of how close they were to discovery. The woman’s voice came floating over from
the path, calling the boy back, and after a moment he turned and ran off. Alexandra was breathless and appalled at the close shave, and after that they went further afield. She knew that soon they
would have to decide what to do next. She could only assume that at some point they would resolve to part, but that seemed so impossible at the moment that she preferred not to think about it at
all. When they were together, nothing else mattered, and the lovemaking was so intoxicating that she could not have enough of it.

‘If only I’d known what it could be like, I’d never have married Laurence,’ she told Nicky as she lay in his arms after the storm of passion had passed for a while.

‘Perhaps you could have married me instead,’ he said casually.

The words hit her like punches. Really? Could a life with love really have been in her reach? But they hadn’t met since they were children. In all the years since, when they might have
grown to know what they felt, they hadn’t laid eyes on one another.

‘My father would never have allowed it,’ she said. ‘He’d have stopped it.’

‘I wish I knew why,’ Nicky said, frowning. ‘What did he have against us?’

‘It wasn’t just your family. There were other friends he made me give up. He seemed to think I was better off by myself.’

‘Bloody odd behaviour,’ Nicky said. ‘Very rude of the old man, as well. And it makes things awkward in a small place. It doesn’t look right.’

Alexandra suspected that very few people had spurned the friendship of the Stirlings. ‘I shouldn’t think you cared much, really, did you?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ He kissed her swiftly. ‘Of course I did. We were friends. I was fond of you. But’ – he nuzzled against her – ‘not as fond as I
am now.’

Alexandra smiled happily at the tickling caress but a thought struck her. ‘If my father knew about this, he’d be so furious, I hardly dare think about it.’ A sick feeling
vibrated through her at the image of her father’s anger.

‘I shouldn’t think mine would exactly be over the moon either,’ Nicky replied. ‘But it’s our lives, isn’t it? Aren’t we the ones that matter? Not some
crusty old men who’ve had their chances and simply want us to be as miserable as they were. Let’s just be happy and to hell with what they all think.’

This seemed outrageous subversion. Everyone knew that duty and obedience were virtues and that pleasing oneself was wicked and indulgent.

Nicky kissed her nose. ‘The expression on your face at the moment is one of the reasons I love you. Let me get my camera; I want to capture it right this instant.’

She lay, trying to keep her face still to preserve her expression for Nicky, but exulting inside with pleasure at the way he had said, so naturally, that he loved her.

Life with Laurence was tolerable now that Nicky was the centre of her universe. The fact that Laurence was her husband was something she tried not to think about and his
presence couldn’t dim her bright happiness. She was being so appalling, so sinful, and yet it was so wonderful. The only way to cope with it was not to think about it at all.

She stood at the stove in the early evening, humming to herself as she stirred the cream sauce that she intended to pour over the piece of fish roasting in the oven. Potatoes boiled away in
their starchy bubble bath, making clouds of steam.

She felt his presence before she saw it, and she turned to see Laurence standing in the doorway, holding something out to her, his face alive with fury.

‘What the hell is this?’ he hissed.

Her stomach did a sick flip and she felt a nasty prickle down her neck and in her fingertips. He was holding out a magazine that she had bought that day, but not yet read. There on the page,
under the headline ‘London’s newest star photographer’, was a print of a photograph that Nicky had taken of her a few weeks ago. It was captioned ‘The Bath’ and she
wasn’t named but it was obvious who she was to anyone who knew her. Her hair was pinned casually upwards, strands escaping at her neck, and she was gazing out over the side of a bath, her
neck and shoulders bare with the suggestion that she was nude in bathwater behind the high cast-iron sides. She was smiling, her gaze tender, and the portrait was intimate and suggestive. It was a
clever photograph that trod a fine line of decency: the nudity was concealed but absolutely there.

Laurence thrust the open pages towards her, his eyes blazing. ‘Explain this,’ he said, a note of hopelessness in his voice alongside the anger.

‘I . . . I . . .’ She couldn’t begin to understand what the photograph was doing in this magazine. What was Nicky thinking of sending it to be published?

Laurence stared down at the image on the page. ‘It’s indecent!’ he said in a harsh voice. ‘Disgusting! Look at you! How could you humiliate me like this?’

Her world was shaking on its axis. She knew that the photograph itself was just the start of it and any second now he would realise that too.

‘For God’s sake, Alexandra!’ he snarled. ‘Look at me! Talk to me. What were you thinking? Anyone could see this, anyone, and they’d know . . . they’d know . .
.’ He couldn’t say what they would know. His white face was covered in crimson blotches, his neck scarlet.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a quiet voice. She needed to be calm.

He stared at her, agonised, his pale blue eyes wide and glassy. ‘
He
took it,’ he said in a strained voice. She knew at once that he’d guessed the full extent of the
betrayal.

‘Yes,’ she said in a voice that sounded almost firm.

‘Christ!’

She’d never heard such a word from him before and it shocked her. He was shaking now, the magazine trembling in his fingers. He seemed unable to speak any further but instead threw the
magazine at her feet where it landed splayed and creased. Her own face gazed up at her with its knowing smile and sideways look. Then he turned and strode out of the flat, slamming the door behind
him.

She waited a few minutes but there was no sign that he was coming back, so she stopped cooking, leaving the pots and pans on the stove top and turning off the oven. She picked up the magazine
and deposited it in the bin. She wondered if she should find a telephone so she could tell Nicky what had happened and ask him why on earth he’d decided to have the picture printed when a
fearful thought struck her – perhaps Laurence had gone to find Nicky so that he could fight him. But Laurence had no idea where Nicky lived and besides, Nicky was probably out.

Alexandra tried to relax but she was on edge with a kind of horrified excitement. It was terrible that Laurence knew her greatest secret but there was also a sort of nervous anticipation, as
though she was waiting for the next instalment in a thriller. What would he say? What would happen? Surely he would demand that she give up Nicky . . . and she was certain she couldn’t do
that. So what on earth would they do? She felt a wave of relief that surely the deception was now at an end, followed by panic at what would happen next.

The hours ticked by and she finally went to bed, although she couldn’t sleep as she played scenarios through her mind. Would Laurence want a divorce? Or would he forgive her and ask her to
relinquish Nicky?

Just after one o’clock in the morning she heard the front door open and the sound of someone moving heavily about in the sitting room. He must have been drinking in the mess. There
wouldn’t be any sense out of him tonight – just a whisky or two was enough to slur his speech and make him lose his train of thought. She closed her eyes and willed herself to
sleep.

Footsteps approached the bedroom and then the door was flung wide, letting light from the sitting room pierce the darkness.

‘Get up,’ said Laurence in a tone of voice she had not heard before.

She turned around, blinking in the glare. ‘What?’

‘Get up!’ he snarled.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘Laurence, it’s late. You’re drunk. I know you’re upset—’

‘Upset?’ he drawled. ‘Why on earth should I be upset? My wife, my wife of less than a year, is fucking someone else.’

She drew in a breath at the word he’d used. A ripple of fear shot down her spine.

‘Tell me,
darling
,’ he said, slurring slightly, ‘what made you able to do it with him, huh? You’re a cold fucking fish to me. I thought you were frigid with your
bloody shut-off body. But you’ve been with him, haven’t you? Don’t lie, I can see it in your face. I should have realised it before with the way you’ve been acting, the way
you’ve been around me. Your little childhood friend has got some damn privileges, hasn’t he?’

Alexandra was still, listening to him with mounting fear as her mind began to race over what he might mean to do.

‘I should have listened to what they told me about you and your family before I agreed to take you on. Bad blood in it. You seemed so bloody pure but you were just waiting for the right
scent to put you in heat.’ He swayed forwards. Instinctively she cowered back, a movement that seemed to infuriate him. ‘I’m your fucking husband!’ he cried, a tormented
expression on his face. ‘How
dare
you . . . how dare you be like this, you thankless bitch.’

‘Please, can’t we talk about this in the morning?’ Her voice quavered with fright. The language he was using was harsh and showed how unanchored he was. She’d never
dreamed Laurence could utter words like that.

He was approaching the bed. ‘Do you know what the worst part of this sordid business is? The whole world is going to know I’m a cuckold, with your shameless parading of your
behaviour in the press. And what they don’t know . . .’ He laughed bitterly ‘. . . what they don’t know is that I’ve not even had a taste of the favours you’re
so happy to give out. So . . .’ He reached a hand to her nightdress and began to tug at the neck. ‘Come on, I want my share. I demand my rights.’