The Adultery Club (38 page)

Sitting at the scrubbed pine kitchen table, head buried on her arms, is a small figure in a filthy, ratty old dressing-gown. Her wild tangle of dark hair is unbrushed. Every now and again, her thin shoulders heave.

Oh, God, I shouldn’t have come. This was a huge mistake—

She looks up, and I feel a stab of shock. I barely recognize her. Her eyes are swollen and red from crying. Misery is etched on her face. Dark circles under her eyes speak of sleepless nights and long hours waiting for dawn to break. She looks bereft and heartsick, shrunken by grief. There’s no trace of the flirty, lively woman who drops off the children every weekend before skipping merrily down to the car and her hot new lover.

I swallow.
I’ve done this to her
.

She unbolts the door, and turns back into the kitchen without speaking, wrapping her skinny arms around herself. I step gingerly over a heap of muddy Wellingtons.

And then I blurt out the question I came all this way to ask.

Anger
can take you a frighteningly long way, I discover: far from those who love and hurt you, far from everything that’s familiar, and—it’s this last I find so terrifying—far from everything you thought you knew about yourself.

After I have vomited on Sara’s sofa, I wipe my mouth carefully on the back of my wrist. Without even glancing at my husband, now frantically throwing on shirt and shoes and jacket, or his mistress, still standing frozen in shock by the door, her cheap red kimono gaping, I walk out; and keep on walking.

I walk down New Fetter Lane toward Fleet Street, my feet starting to blister in the ridiculous gardening clogs I grabbed in haste from the scullery as I ran from the house, desperate to get to Nicholas before it was too late. Barely noticing the traffic or the fumes or the lewd remarks from hooded teenagers loitering in doorways, I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, terrified to stop even
for a moment in case I cannot start again. My feet are raw and bloodied by the time I reach the Strand, and the left turn that will take me across Waterloo Bridge, back to the railway station and home; such as it is, now.

But I turn right. I hadn’t known where I was headed, until now; but I keep walking, up Bow Street, with renewed purpose, and then, ducking through a maze of small narrow streets, I emerge abruptly in Covent Garden.

His beautiful gourmet shop is easy to find; but it is in darkness, of course, closed, and I realize with a shock that it’s after nine-thirty, late; that if he is anywhere, he will be at home now: or else out of my reach entirely. Jostled by tourists and theatergoers, I take a side turning out of the piazza, and within moments find myself in an elegant old street, lined with tall, narrow white houses; graceful, sophisticated houses that seem to close their eyes with pained expressions at the litter and the down-and-outs and the youths urinating into the street.

I mount the steps of his cottage, knowing that if he’s not in, or turns me away—we’ve barely spoken, after all, since Rome—I shall simply curl up in a corner and wait to be blown away, like the rest of the unwanted rubbish bowling along the street like urban tumbleweed.

But he
is
in. And when he opens the door, and I stumble across the threshold in my bare, bleeding feet, clutching the silly clogs in my hand, my hair whipped wild by the wind, my face streaked with tears I hadn’t known I was weeping, he simply picks me up without a word and carries me upstairs.

I awake to
the sounds and smells of a summer a long time ago. Nancy Sinatra’s “Sugar Town” plays distantly in
another room. Coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice scent the air—I sit up, realizing he has placed a breakfast tray at the foot of the bed, complete with croissants and muffins and a single white rose—and sunshine streams across the high, white brass bed from the bank of French windows, casting rhombuses of light on the hand-finished planked floor. One pair of doors are flung wide open; white muslin curtains billow in the light breeze, catching on the iron railing. Overhead, a woven plantation fan slowly turns. I feel like I have stepped into a Flake advert; all I need now is a lizard on the Bakelite telephone.

I sink back against the marshmallowy pillows, pulling the fluffy cloud of duvet up to my chin. Even my British winter pallor looks fetchingly honeyed against this much eye-watering white.

My thighs ache; there is a raw, sticky, unfamiliar throb between my legs.

Last night, after Trace ran me a bath in his clawfooted movie-bathroom tub, and soaped my back, and rinsed my hair free of vomit and street grime and tears, he took me to bed; and made love to me with such controlled passion, such gentleness, that the ice storm in my heart finally ceased blowing its frozen winds through my body.

At the thought of that erotic, blush-making sex—“Lights
on
,” Trace said firmly, “I want to see you, all of you, I want to see your face when you come”—I suddenly realize I’m ravenous.

I sit up in bed and pull the tray toward me. I am on my third croissant and raspberry jam when Trace comes in, toweling hair still damp from the shower. His white linen shirt and cornflower blue linen pants would look outrageously
Men’s Vogue
on anyone else. His feet are bare. Despite the satiating gymnastics of last night, a pulse beats somewhere in the region of where the knickers of a thirty-something married mother of three
should
be—which is
not
twisted inside out and hanging on the bedpost of her lover.

“Sleep well?” he asks, throwing aside the towel to sit on the edge of the bed.

I rescue my glass of orange juice as it tilts on the tray. “Oh,
yes,”
I purr, stretching lazily, “I can’t remember when I last—”

I bolt upright, nearly sending everything flying. “What time is it?” I grab his wrist to see his watch. “Eleven-thirty! Trace, you should never have let me sleep in that long!—the children!—I need to get home. And Edward,
poor
Edward, I must speak to Daisy, I—”

“All taken care of,” he says, “I rang Kit. He’s arranged for Liz to keep the girls until tomorrow evening, they’re all going to some gymkhana or another, having the time of their lives. And Kit checked with the hospital: no news yet, he’ll call me back as soon as he hears anything. But in the meantime, you,” he says briskly, taking the locusted tray from my lap and flipping back the duvet, “need to get up. I have plans for you today.”

His gaze lingers appreciatively. Blushing furiously, I grab back the bedclothes.

He laughs and stands up.

“I took the liberty of getting Alice—my right hand, Alice, couldn’t manage without her—to nip along to Whistles and get you something fresh to wear. Five minutes, downstairs. And don’t bother to shower,” he adds, with a wink. “You’re not going to need it where you’re going.”

I wait until he leaves the room before getting out of bed (thirteen years and three children is a little too much water under the bridge in the cold light of day) and open the bag he’s left propped against a beautiful cherrywood armoire. Alice, whoever she is, has taste, and common sense. In addition to the simple turquoise tunic and loose-fitting cropped cream trousers, she’s included some flat, non-blister-rubbing (oh, bliss!) sandals, a pretty pair of pink-and-white knickers, and a matching bra. All in the correct sizes. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d done this kind of errand for Trace before.

I catch myself.
Of course she has
. He’s hardly been living the life of a monk for the past decade while I’ve been marrying and giving birth to three infants. I catch up my hair with a clip, feeling a little disoriented by the speed things are moving.

“Come on. You have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get you in at this short notice,” Trace urges, as soon as I come downstairs. He tenderly wipes a splodge of jam from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “Luckily the girl who takes the bookings is a friend of mine.”

That ugly twinge of jealousy again. I give myself a shake.
It was this kind of absurd paranoia that ruined everything last time
.

Five minutes later, I’m being propelled across the cobbles toward the glass door of the Sanctuary, a girls-only oasis of spoiling I have visited only in my dreams. Liz and I always said we’d treat ourselves and book a day there for our fortieth birthdays, get Giles and Nicholas to mind the children—

A fist of pain winds me. I take a deep breath, and open my eyes again.

Dear Lord, what am I
doing
here? Wandering around Covent Garden in strange clothes with aches in strange places from a night of sex with a man who is not my husband while my children are somewhere in the wilds of Wiltshire and Nicholas is—
Nicholas is—

“Go on,” Trace prompts, “I can’t go in with you. You’ve got an entire day, booked and paid for—massage, aromatherapy, toe painting, belly-button cleaning, the works—”

“Belly-button cleaning?”

He grins, and my heart lurches as if I’ve just driven over a humpbacked bridge.

“Well, I don’t know what they do in there, do I? I’ll see you at five, a new woman.” His eyes gleam wickedly. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the old one, if last night is anything to go by—”

He kisses my flushed cheek, and I follow his long-limbed stride as it eats up the cobbled street.

There are so many confused thoughts whirling around my head, tangling into a Gordian knot of fear and panic, that the only way I can prevent myself from splintering into a thousand pieces is by refusing to acknowledge any of them. And so I meekly go inside and submit to the pampering that has been arranged for me, deliberately emptying my mind until it’s as blank and cloudless as the sky on a sunny day.

At five, pummeled
and polished and smoothed and painted, I am collected as promised, and taken straight to Michaeljohn, where my hair is smoothed and tamed and coiled on my head. And then to Gucci, where he has picked out a dress—black, thank heavens—which fits me beautifully,
and is perfect for the film première
(a première!)
in Leicester Square, where I try not to hang on his arm too adoringly, too obviously. And then to Boujis, to dance until 4 A.M., when he finally takes me, drooping, home, and to bed; and, eventually, to sleep.

On Sunday, we drive out to Oxford for an afternoon picnic—roast pheasant, grilled asparagus, truffles stuffed with Bermuda onion
confit
and the smallest, sweetest early strawberries, washed down with a bottle of cold Krug Tête du Cuvée—lolling on a riverbank across from a beautiful, mellow stone college; not the one Nicholas went to, that was further in town—

Don’t think don’t think don’t think
.

Trace finally drives me home to Wiltshire a little before eight; and then calls me on his mobile before his car has even pulled out of the gravel driveway.

“I miss you,” he says.

“You’ve only been gone two minutes!”

“I
miss
you,” he says firmly.

“You too,” I say, sifting through the clutch of envelopes on the floor, hoping Liz will bring the children back soon, to fill this empty house—strangely cold despite the Aga—with laughter and noise. “Now go, you mustn’t talk to me while you’re driving, I don’t want you to crash.”

“I’ll call you in the morning,” he says.

And he does. He rings me in the morning, and at lunch, and in the afternoon; he peppers my day with calls to see how I am, to check that the hours aren’t dragging, and then at seven he scoops me up on his white charger (well, racing green Aston Martin) and whisks me out to dinner. When he drops me off later,
much
later, that night, I am so tired that I
fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow, my tears drying unnoticed on my cheeks.

Every day that week he calls me; every night, he takes me out while Kit babysits: to the theater, the movies (a romantic comedy with a handsome new actor I haven’t seen before, someone called Matthew McConaughey; it’s
years
since I saw a film at the cinema), to an art gallery, to dinner. And afterward, he takes me back to his cottage in the village, where we spend some energetic, pleasurable hours in bed—not quite as smooth, as practiced, as with Nicholas, perhaps, not quite as
easy
, but then it
has
been a long time; we are having to learn each other all over again.

I never stay the night. The children need me home, at the breakfast table as I always am, constant and steady. Now that their father has gone.

Trace keeps me so busy, that what with the girls, and my work (for some reason the recipes come thick and fast, now; feverishly I race to write them down) I don’t have a moment to dwell. To think or wonder what I’m doing, or where this is all going. I’m a dancer whose partner has spun away, out of her reach, only for another to take her hand, whirling her back into the reel with steps so fast she barely has time to register the change.

I feel as if I’m on a merry-go-round, colors and shapes spinning past me so quickly everything has become a blur.

Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know how to get off.

It is Kit
, of all people, who sounds the first warning note.

“It’s happening too fast, darling,” he says, kneading my shoulders as I sew in name tapes, “too
soon;
heaven knows I
don’t want to rain on your parade, but you can’t just bounce from the marital bed to the arms of your admittedly toothsome lover. It’s just not you.”

I bite off a thread.

“How do you know,” I demand. “How do you
know
that about me?”

“Angel. It’s barely three weeks since you marched into his girlfriend’s flat and told your husband not to come home, before vomiting heroically all over her sofa. You then walked straight round to your childhood sweetheart—”

“Hardly childhood—”

“—and hopped into bed with
him
—”

“It’s not as if Nicholas—”

“Since then,” Kit interrupts firmly, “he’s had you gallivanting all over town, rushing off to one glam junket after another. He’s turned your head and blown your mind with premières and parties; he hasn’t given you a moment to yourself.”