The Adultery Club (26 page)

If I’m honest: All I care about now is not getting caught.

“You can’t mark me again,” I whisper, stroking Sara’s bare shoulder as we lie in the darkness of her bedroom, both of us spent. I can’t afford Claridge’s on a long-term basis; we have no choice now but to use her flat, whatever the risk. “After the conference room, I had to get up half an hour earlier for a week so that I could finish showering before Mal was awake.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know. But we have to be careful—”

“Enough, already,” Sara says tightly. She leans over me to pick up her cigarettes from the bedside table. “What do you want me to do, wear surgical gloves?”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that. Smoke. It’s not like you smoke the rest of the time; I hate that you do it in bed.”

“So let’s stick to having sex in the great outdoors.”

“Now you sound like a petulant child.”

“So stop talking to me like one!”

She swings her legs out of bed and stalks naked toward the window, parting the blinds with one finger and exhaling moodily. “I’m fed up with being fitted in between lunch and conference with Counsel. It’s like you get here, we have sex, and then you leave. It’s not exactly romantic, is it?”

“We have dinner—we went to the opera—”

“Fucking Wagner!”

“I thought you
liked Wagner. Tristan und Isolde
was your idea—”

She drops her cigarette into a revolting mug half full of cold coffee and sits back down on the bed beside me, her expression instantly contrite. “I
do
, Nick. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a pain in the arse. I just like being with you, that’s all. I hate that it has to be like this—”

“How else do you expect it to be, Sara?”

“I’m not asking for anything,” she answers quickly. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I stay here as late as I can,” I say tiredly. “I missed the last train from Waterloo last week; I had to get a taxi from London all the way to bloody Wiltshire; do you have any idea how much that cost? I’m sorry that I can’t stay here more often, and I’m sorry that I can’t stay all night; but you
knew
it was going to be like this.”

She gives a light half-laugh that doesn’t quite come off. “You
could
call me a bit more often at the weekend.”

“It’s not that easy. I can’t call you from the home phone; it’s too risky. Mal could overhear me, or the children could pick up the extension.” I throw a pillow behind my head. “And my mobile doesn’t pick up any reception at home, we’re in a network-dead zone. I have to drive halfway to Salisbury to use it, and there’s a limited number of excuses I can come up with to do that. I’m sorry.”

“Nick, I know the score. I’m not asking for any kind of commitment, you know that.” She averts her gaze. “I’d just like to wake up with you once in a while, have breakfast, read the newspapers, that kind of thing.”

No
, I want to tell her,
those are the kinds of things you do with your wife, and I already have one of those
.

I watch her picking fretfully at a loose thread in the sheet with a mixture of pity and exasperation. She’s in too deep. She is starting to have feelings for me, whatever she may say now; and I am going to end up hurting her. I have to end it.
I have to end it
.

But carefully. I can’t risk her running to Mal afterward. Perhaps if I take her away, explain it all, let her down gently.

“Look,” I say, “Mal mentioned something about a trip to Italy around Easter—some sort of sourcing trip for her new restaurant; I didn’t pay much attention. She’ll be away for a few days; the girls will be with her mother. I might be able to arrange something then.”

Her naked left breast is an inviting two inches away from my shoulder. Jesus. My cock stirs, and I reach for her; but she pulls away from me, chewing her lip and looking down at her nails. “Nick?”

Christ, what now?

“Nick, do you and Mal—do you still, you know?”

“Do we still what?”

“God, do I have to spell it out?” She flushes. “Do you still have
sex?”

There’s no right way to answer this question.
I’m married
, I want to tell her;
of course I still have sex with my wife
. Not as often as we did once—our bedroom could not be mistaken for a French brothel—but yes, we have sex, and yes, it’s very nice, thank you, sometimes quite a bit
more
than nice. And it’s very different from sex with you, which is to nice what interstellar travel is to a trip to Bournemouth; but I’m a man, which means that sometimes I’m in the mood for a trip to Bournemouth, and sometimes I want to don a spacesuit.

But this isn’t what Sara wants to hear. And I want to keep Sara happy—for her sake, because I truly like and respect her, I don’t want to hurt her—and for my own.

“She’s not really that interested in sex anymore,” I say, flinching inwardly at this new betrayal. “What with the children and everything, she’s never really in the mood. And since I met you,” and this time Sara doesn’t move away when I reach for her, “
I
haven’t been in the mood, either.”

She slides astride me, satisfied now. “Really?” she says, easing me inside her. “I can’t say that’s a problem
I’ve
ever noticed.”

Three weeks later
, I pad barefoot down the narrow stairs of our rented cottage in Rock and find Mal already busy in
the kitchen. Something rather foul-smelling is cooking on the stove. I lean over to peer into the frying pan and do a double take.

There, being skillfully sautéed to a crisp, is one of my black wool socks.

“Mal, what on
earth
are you doing?”

“What you asked me to do last night,” she says, flipping it expertly with a fish-slice, “when you came to bed very drunk.”

“I don’t remember asking you to cook my sock.”

She grins wickedly at me, her dark eyes dancing, and the penny drops. “Oh, very funny,” I say, grabbing my burnt sock out of the pan and blowing on my fingers. “How long have you been waiting to set me up with that witty little play on words?”

“Since about eight this morning.” Mal giggles.

Sometimes my wife seems little older than the children. It’s at moments like this I realize from whence Evie has acquired her unorthodox sense of humor and attitude to life.

I arranged this long weekend because I’d promised it to Mal; I packed for it with a heavy heart and deep sense of misgiving. Four days together at close quarters, without the distractions of children and work, lacking even the diversion of household chores or television to dilute our unaccustomed intimacy. A delightful scenario for newlyweds; a testing one for even the most devoted long-standing marriages. How much more so for a husband in the midst of an adulterous affair?

I expected it to be awkward—difficult, even, with long silences and stilted conversation. I thought the distance between us would be painfully obvious to us both.

What I did not expect was to fall back in love with my wife.

I stayed up into the small hours last night, trying to make sense of the chaos in my heart and head. Intoxicated as I am with Sara, I am not such a fool as to mistake my feelings for love, or anywhere close. The nature of my betrayal is entirely sexual; there is no question of any emotional involvement. I’m not sure whether that makes it better or worse.

Sex with Mal is pleasant. Tender, in a way it never is with Sara. But with Sara, it’s like nothing I’ve ever known. I can ask for anything, be anyone I want. There’s no fear of being judged, of being thought dirty, or perverted, or selfish. She won’t look at me as I slice the tops off the girls’ boiled eggs at breakfast and remember what I did to her the night before. To have to turn my back on that sexual freedom forever, to give her up; it’d be like waking up blind and knowing you’ll never see a sunrise again.

When Mal goes away
, I remind myself.
I have to tell Sara it’s over then
. If I don’t, sooner or later, Mal is going to find out, and I will lose her. And I love Mal: more than I crave Sara. It should be easy.

It won’t be, of course.

I wrap my arms around my wife and kiss the top of her head.
“Mea culpa
. I guess I got through rather more of the malt than I’d realized after you went to bed—”

“My own fault for not staying awake and supervising you. But it’s not like the ending to
Casablanca
is ever going to change, and I was
so
tired after yesterday—”

She blushes, and I can’t help but smile. My wife of ten years, the mother of my three children, reduced to flushing like a teenager when she’s reminded of our agreeable
afternoon in bed. “I meant the climb down to the cove, Nicholas.”

“Ah. Fancy doing it all again today?”

“We don’t want to keep going down the same old paths, do we, Nicholas; that would get rather dull, wouldn’t it?”

“Would it?”

“It would.” She pulls a freshly baked pie out of the oven—even on holiday, my wife the cook—and bats my hand away. “Wait. A little anticipation will do you the world of good. This is for lunch. I thought an alfresco picnic would be fun, and the weather is supposed to be rather nice, later, for March; we can wrap up warm and sit on the beach—”

“Alfresco works for me.”

She giggles again.
“Nicholas—”

My mobile telephone shrills. It’s on the windowsill beside Mal; she reaches for it, but in a moment that lasts a lifetime I just manage to get there first. “It might be a client,” I say quickly. “I had to give Mrs. Wasserstein my number; it was the only way to get Friday and Monday off.”

Mal looks surprised. “Don’t do that too often or you’ll never get a break.” She covers the pie with a linen tea towel. “I need to get my tennis shoes out of the car boot if we’re going to go for a walk—have you seen the keys?”

“In my jacket pocket, on the banister.”

I take the phone out into the back garden, shivering in my dressing gown and bare feet. “Sara, what the
hell
are you doing calling me at home?”

She sounds stricken. “Oh, God, Nick, I’m
so
sorry. I didn’t mean to call you; I must’ve hit redial by mistake. Jesus, I hope I didn’t cause a problem—I’m
really
sorry.”

I sigh. “Never mind, I’ve done that enough times myself.” The incriminating potential of my mobile terrifies me:
the text messages, the call records. I’ve started charging it at the office, just in case Mal should see something on it she shouldn’t. “Is everything OK?”

“I suppose. I’m at my parents’. Dullsville, you have no idea. They want me to come down on Easter Sunday for some village egg race or something; as
if
. How’s it going in Wiltshire?”

“What? Oh, yes, Wiltshire. Fine, fine. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you on Tuesday—”

“Can you come round after work?”

“Maybe.” I glance up as Mal appears in the back doorway. “Look, I have to go.”

I click the phone shut. I always knew having an affair involved deception; that I would end up lying to not just one woman, but
two
, I had no idea.

Mal waits until I reach her, and then holds out her hand palm upwards, her eyes never leaving my face.

“Nicholas,” she says evenly, “whose lipstick is this?”

“Oh
, Nick. You fucking bastard,” I breathe.

I tap my finger on the urgent DHL package Emma has left out on her desk for the courier to take to Nick for signature. He’s
not
at home in Wiltshire with his ditzy wife and cute photogenic children. The lying shit is in bloody Cornwall getting his—forgive the pun—rocks off.

Well, aren’t you a quick learner, Nick Lyon. Amazing just how fast you’ve got the hang of this lying-through-your-teeth shit. You’re right up there with the pros.

I do what I always do when the Big Bad World gets too much for me: I decamp to my parents’ for the weekend.

There’s something deeply reassuring about sleeping in my tiny single bed with its Barbie-printed sheets. My old, cuddly teddy bear (from Harrods, natch) is waiting for me on top of my pillow, still wearing the holey sweater I knitted for him the Christmas I turned ten on my new automatic knitting machine (Nagged for: 364 days. Used: 47 minutes).
I wouldn’t mind growing up if it was all late nights watching cartoons and chocolate ice cream for dinner, like you think it’s going to be when you’re seven. I just don’t want to end up like my mother, stuck with a ton of carrots to peel and an ironing basket the size of Everest. Where’s the fun in that?

By the time I show my face downstairs on Saturday, it’s past eleven. My mother is at Sainsbury’s. (Planning Your Meals: another very good reason not to grow up. I prefer to hit the local 7-Eleven approximately fifteen minutes prior to dinner. Nick practically had a coronary when he opened my fridge to make a post-shag sandwich and beheld the sum total of my larder: two out-of-date plain live yogurts left over from my last failed diet, three cans of Red Bull, and, in the freezer section, a half-empty bottle of vodka.) My mother actually aspires to be a Waitrose shopper, but she can’t bear to pay their prices when Sainsbury’s does the same things so much cheaper. She consoles herself with the fact that at least she hasn’t sunk as low as Asda.